#if there isnt actually a punchline pretend there is

[sweetmapple]

Even archangels have disappointing pizza roll nights

[unknownorigins-uo]

i had a realization about dirk/bro recently.

for a while i wondered if he was meant to be abusive from the start of the comic or if that was added later. them i saw a problem sleuth readthrough and it finally clicked. bro was meant to be abusive as a punchline.

think about it. johns dad is a lovong and caring father who john assumes is antagonistic even when he obviously isnt, rose assumes her mom pretends to love wizards to mess with her when really she just obviously loves wizards. so the theme is set up and we know what were supposed to be expecting: dave will have a guardian he talks about negatively that is actually nice. then dave talks about how cool his brother is and then his brother haunts him with a rapping puppet his whole life and attacks him with an actual sword.

andrew hussie fully intended daves bro to be abusive as a setup to a rule of 3's style subversion of expectations. he did this so much in problem sleuth because of its 2 sets of 3 main characters that i finally realized that was the intention behind it.

[martyrbat]

i got such a bad migraine someone pls remind me to come back to this when i can form a good thought™ and word it properly but. dc officials have to have SOME level of awareness of the constent mistreatment of talia's character to reduce her to a punchline or antagonist again and again... like, we see it in worlds finest, gotham knights, whatever recent that features her — you cant tell me that it isnt just intentionally decided again and again to continue writing her like this despite being aware of the problematic qualities of it. they have enough awareness in the fandom to bring up uwu batfam moments and make little gags and schticks in multiple pieces of media but they just coincidentally dont see people being rightfully upset at how dc continues to portray her?? bullshit. its as if theyre constantly trying to pretend she wasnt disgustingly retconned and she was just always like this because then they dont have to admit their own continue history of racism and misogyny.

theres still so many batfam focused ppl that will willingly choose again and again to either ignore or excuse their raciam and misogyny. they know they can get away with it and avoid accountability so they continue to do so. theres no reason she had to be brought up and mentioned for a shitty joke — the only reason it was *talia* was because they HAVE to be aware of the reputation they gave her and it was the essiest, most laziest writing chance they had to make a joke thatll just end up posted on twitter without context. theyre aware of the backlash and outcry but all press is good press and they know theres enough people in the comic fandom to defend them so they can avoid actually acknowledging why shes written this shittily in the first place (again, its from raciam and misogyny. literally thats it.)

in fact!!!! they didnt have to have a joke point blank. let the fucking moment sit or better yet — write an actual decent story that does anything. isnt that the point of creating something? to actually say and mean something instead of just filling the comic with shit thatll age badly in a month, much less be iconic for years to come.

they think theyre making a jokey comic that's a fun adventure but instead all they continue to do is make a joke of once beloved characters and reduce them as two dimensional flat mockeries of themselves. its to the point where the only things that are still so iconic about them is their own fucking names — which even that is dwindling rapidly due to their inability to write sincerity or anything meaningful. everything has to constantly end on a punchline or joke so it can be dismissed easier instead of having to take credibility for their shallow, halfassed characterization thats used to cater to their flat writing — which just gets ignored anyways in the favour of pretty art

[martyrgargoyle]

Upon reading your pinned post I feel as though fans of celebrities should not pressure celebrities into activism. If they want to use their platform for an important cause then that's great but they should not be forced to. Because at least when they want to you'll know it is genuine and has good intentions. However if they don't want to or mock the cause you'll know their horrible stance and that will be genuine too.

(pinned post being explaining the Tyler Joseph platform joke and history of racism in 21P) please forgive me if im reading this wrongly or you meant something else, dm me or send another adk but 'forcing' is a very bold vibe and sends the wrong message.

first, im speaking from the privilege of being white and saying what ive seen and heard from POC fans - especially from Black fans due to the platform joke being a direct mockery to BLM. so if anyone reads any of this and take it to heart please let it be to go to Black members of this community and to actually read and listen to their voices on him being racist and racism in the emo community. dont demand to be educated by them but fucking listen to their experiences.

second,,, Black fans weren't pressuring anyone. they asked a rich, cishet abled white man to show support as they're literally having to protest just for their right to be alive and he ignored them until it was time to exploit their fight for a shitty joke. the fact they had to even ask and it's seemed acceptable if 'the celebrity doesnt see their fight as something worthy for their platform its their right and we shouldn't question it' is an issue in general that gets ignored too. its shitty he made the joke but it was shitty when he ignored them in the first place and let his racist fanbase attack anyone that was disappointed or angry at him not doing anything.

21p (and the emo community in general) 'big themes' or message is support for the mentally ill until it comes time for Black fans - especially teenagers or young adults since its the age group the music is generally catered to. then we all fail them because its centered around white tears. anytime a POC is vocal on how theyre being neglected by the fanbase or being mocked by the artist (all tylers previous racist jokes that white fans excused, for example), they get attacked and driven out of the community.

no one expected tyler joesph to be a leading ally, Black fans literally just asked for support and to not ignore the suffering white privilege causes... and tyler made it a joke and then made himself the victim so Black fans would again, be attacked and told theyre overreacting or demanding too much by asking for him to not be racist. pretending that showing support for Black lives being this big burden or obstacle for him or any white celebrity is wrong. hes a rich white cishet abled man. he isnt facing any dangers or fears by showing his support. he isnt going to be killed, get blacklisted, get evicted, lose his job, or anything. the only reason he didnt do anything is because hes racist, no excuses.

you cannot have good intentions if you ignore Black lives to make it a safe space for white people only or because you deem their liberties unworthy of being vocal on beyond a shitty punchline. just like how you cant be a good ally to POC if youre not actively working on being anti-racist and unlearning the privilege you're born with. and if youre not fighting for their rights in your daily life because you got the privilege of being less likely to be targeted for it or face those risks

[shoezuki]

god, the thing that especially bothers me about the dteam gay jokes is often that the punchline is they’re pretending to be gay. and if you think abt why that is funny for a second, you realize there are homophobic implications. i cant articulate it properly but the punchline is they are straight men pretending to be attracted to each other. that is funny bc being gay = funny, bc implicitly there is the notion being gay is weird/wrong/against the norm, thus being overtly sexual about it is funny bc it is trangressive of heteronormativity

straightup this gave me SUCH deja vu for some fucking reason. but also I Know cuz

back when my twitter was Baby n i was followin dream he was doing his ‘list of gay ppl’ tweets n i got so frustrated i replied exactly saying somethin like this

i dont. know how we are expected to interpret their ‘jokes’. if we boil it down to the bare bones then like. its literally cishet men acting like the prospect of themselves being gay or being in a gay relationship is Strange and Weird. or at its worst something for audience consumption. 

also i actually went and found one of the tweets i repeatedly mentioned. where back in september during his ‘gay list’ thing he responding to someone’s tweets about how it’s essentially ‘isnt being gay Weird??’ type jokes. 

i couldnt get the person’s exact tweets that he replied to cuz he deleted em but. yeah. yeah., 

idk how else to interpret it besides ‘people thinking we’re gay is funny/weird’

[angeloncewas]

yeah i totally agree with what you said about satire and schlatt basically taking the easy way out. it seems like since that video he's kinda eased back from doing that shit, either bc the backlash or bc his friends have started verbally calling him out on it, both to his face and through making comments about him on stream (comments as in like saying they dont agree with what he did and saying they thought that video was terrible, not like them shading him or whatever ajsksk) which is good but also i wouldnt be surprised if something like that video happened again just bc like. it is his career and at this point he has to know what his larger fanbase is like to an extent, which means he also knows those terrible fucking jokes will make him money. i dont like that, but im also not gonna sit around and pretend like i cant see the fucking obvious, ya know? from what ive seen of him when he's not putting on a show for his main channel, or when he isnt around people who both encourage and enable his bad behavior (not saying this to shift blame, ive just noticed how he goes from making actually funny jokes that are harmless or, at most, a pretty obvious example of him poking fun at shitty people, at least imo, to like. straight up just being offensive when he's with people like swagger, miz, etc. vs ted, charlie and so on), he seems like a pretty good guy and its pretty clear to me that he doesnt hold the same views as the character he plays up for his main channel but that doesnt change the fact that his audience is now full of the worst kinds of people and that is how he makes money.

as someone who, again, watched idubbbz, as well as filthyfrank, they both stated they were playing characters and they didnt agree with the shit they were joking about, joji especially, but them saying that isnt very well known by even their own fanbase who just watches their main channel stuff, bc the one video where joji made that explicitly clear what he was doing, he later deleted for people harassing him in the comments (it was an old ass video where he basically said that playing those characters was giving him literal health problems, specifically stress induced seizures, and his comments were so bad that he never made an ooc video on his main channel again) and the one video i can think of where ian explicitly said he was playing a character was like an hour long podcast with h3, which most people dont even wanna watch bc it is a painfully uncomfortable one hour, considering the fact that they are supposed to be friends. besides that, the only other time they were really out of character was in vlogs with maxmoefoe, and they still did their offensive bits from time to time bc it was still going up on youtube, even if it wasnt their main channel. compare that to schlatt who has, as far as i know, never explicitly said he's playing a character, and the closest he has gotten to saying that was in some weekly slap video that i cant remember the title of bc all those videos kinda blend together if im being honest. like they definitely show a different, better side of him, but they are also all really short videos with only gameplay to watch and he never even promotes the channel, so its not like the shitty people watching him are like "hm time to take some time out of my day to go watch big man schlatt give people advice and be a genuine person for once", right?

idk. schlatt is just such a weird person for me bc like. he is a big comfort for me, i really do enjoy his content when he's not making bad stabs at satire (bc sometimes he does it right!! but a lot of the time, at least recently, he has just missed the mark entirely, to the point where it feels like he wasnt even trying to hit the mark at all), but he is also so uncomfortable to watch sometimes just bc he seems to either not know where the line is, or thinks crossing it is okay bc its him playing a character and that's not fun to watch as a minority who often ends up being apart of that "punchline".

that aside tho...yes, unfortunately idubbbz does still make content (and i say unfortunately bc it is not very good) though it seems like he is very slow to upload and last i checked, the views arent too great, but ive seen worse. probably the only thing that could bring back his views at this point would be a content cop, but like a year or so back he said he has no plans of continuing the series bc he finds it boring now, which is fair enough. i dont really keep up with him anymore, but as far as i know, he just got married to anisa and he streams on twitch sometimes, besides that the dude is a mystery to me!

—🦷 (also im sorry if this is formatted weird, for whatever reason tumblr has indented each of my paragraphs with one of those grey line thingys and it wont let me remove it. if it doesnt show up in the actual ask then ignore this!)

This is kind of old now (sorry), but I still wanted to respond because I really appreciate your perspective :)

> I always wonder how people not involved in the fandom view Schlatt. Because wasn't there this thing about Hasan genuinely thinking that he was conservative? And like he obviously doesn't now, but does that not impact how he sees him and his content? I don't mean to dictate friendships - of course - I'm just curious as to the impact of having that audience from an outsider pov. I remember being shocked what that thing happened with the pdp fan, but I later found that many people weren't because they knew the nature of the audience he cultivated; maybe I'm just stupid, I had no idea. (Not that Schlatt and pdp are the same, it's just a loose comparison.)

> No one should face harassment, but I doubt Joji deleting that video helped his case. (I mean ig it worked out in the long term considering everything that happened with his music, but yk.) I'm very sorry for the health problems he faced with the characters themselves though. I don't know much about him but that sounds awful.

> I have thoughts on The Weekly Slap, but I think they make me sound bitter and don't add much so just know that they're there ajfdkjdf. I will say that he doesn't seem like "Jschlatt" in them, and moreso just a guy. I know that he quit it for a number of reasons and one of them was not being comfortable with that kind of connection in relation to his increasing fame, but honestly I think his complete dislodgement from his fanbase isn't healthy either.

> I mean, I get it. I've watched a lot of content from a lot of people - ranging from kind of unpleasant to very unsavory - and it's kind of a weird feeling with YouTube and Twitch stuff. Idk it's like - when I go to the grocery store, I'm not wondering if the guy checking my things out is a racist. When I see a commercial, I don't wonder if that guy advertising chicken nuggets is a secret creep. But with content creation of this kind, it's just a weird thought in the back of my mind. I don't know if this makes sense lmao

> Weird that Idubbz finds content cop "boring." I guess the formula is kind of stale and half of the content was the edge, but it seems like the kind of thing that'd be perfect to capitalize off of around now. Cool that he got married... I think. I mean if he's happy ???

> Don't mind the formatting, and sorry to respond like WAY past when this conversation was relevant T_T. I read it right away but the timing got off with actually being able to type stuff out.

[bi-dazai]

15 yr olds on this site really go around totally unsuspicious of fictional media discussing gayness or including gay characters huh

idk about you but i was born in 2000 and my entire life i dealt with blatantly homophobic media (power puff girls is one example!) and intense queerbaiting coupled with homophobic plotlines (supernatural, the 100). i had to ferret around the internet desperately to find a shitty copy of a somewhat decent film involving gayness that wasnt something like philadelphia or debs or rocky horror. when i was struggling the most with coming to terms with my bisexuality was around the period of 2010-2015. during that time antibisexual sentiment was incredibly high (this was when the post-myspace backlash of bisexuality and the rise of mogai and pansexuality came about). every time a tv character was announced to be gay (extremely rarely) they were killed off or forced into homophobic plotlines and stereotypes within episodes. they were the butt of jokes, fandom and the world made fun of them to hell. our expectations for gay representation were extremely low, to the point that we were happy with the kill your gays trope because at least we got screentime. 

korrasami was the breaking point of all this. since then, the media has been much more inclusive and receptive to actual gay criticism and queer theory (as flawed as it is). a children’s show with a massive fanbase made their two female protagonists of colour bisexual and in a romantic relationship. this was huge. this is the best gay representation to date in children’s media. the backlash was still huge, and even more chose to ignore it and pretend it wasnt canon, despite the creators and writers specifying in interviews almost immediately that it was, and that nickelodeon had in fact forced them to cut a kiss scene.

but nothing has really changed. even if there is slightly more gay representation, even though our criticisms are now part of the public conscience, what has changed in western media really? gay representation is white and middle class and vague. it’s liberal, it never depicts any form of the community that is so important to gay film as an establishment, never depicts proper homophobia. it is safe and consumable for homophobes. it’s straight gayness. films such as love, simon and call me by my name depict sanitised, and even homophobic depictions of gayness. it’s hollywood gayness.

queerbaiting still exists - for example, the voltron reboot frequently hinted at lance’s bisexuality and keith’s gayness, constantly foreshadowing a romantic relationship (and yes, there is proof for this. analysing the show and looking at interviews from the time, as well as looking at the complaints about the showrunners from the writing staff in particular who specified that they did not allow the writers to plan a plot and anything that had the potential of upsetting their ratings and upstanding with dreamworks higher-ups were quickly cut - this makes it clear that something was going on there), constantly talking about it with fans, only to have this foreshadowing, the various promises to the community, fall away. shiro was revealed to be gay, a teaser trailer showed him with his boyfriend. in the actual series, the boyfriend got less than a minute of screentime and was killed immediately. shiro, an asian gay man, was made into torture porn. this is queerbaiting and a homophobic trope as well. 

ive seen this with innumerous shows as well. gay characters are introduced as a grab for a larger audience and free advertising via people discussing the show on the internet. 

so yes. on the surface, it seems that things have changed. younger people are being told that gay media is the norm, that we are living in good times, and they are being taught queer theory criticism of media via a hollywood and social media lens.

but beneath? nothing has changed. i still get twinges of fear when hollywood and netflix try to appeal to gay audiences. i still dont trust the representation they provide. i am still ferreting about the internet to find a copy of an independent film. i am still watching the same four gay films. 

it sounds strange when i say that i hate gay representation. but this is what i am referring to - hollywood representation, netflix representation. 

i have seen a strange gap in ages and response to gay representation in hollywood and netflix productions. young people who were born after about 2003/04 are the current main targets of most hollywood gay representation. korrasami became canon when they were just 10 years old. this cultural shift happened before they were old enough to truly realise what was happening. and with no one discussing just how big that cultural shift was and has been, there is no consideration for their own past that can take place within their own thoughts. it is normal for a tv show to have a gay character and so long as that character isnt killed off they’re happy. ive seen this sad trend of young teenagers consuming characters and representations of sexuality like this with total happiness. even some of the smartest, most media-critical kids ive ever met still engaged with love,simon with complete and utter praise. 

but to those born before, we grew up with something different. shows like the powerpuff girls had transphobic depictions. gayness was reserved for adult, latenight shows like the l-word. homophobic and transphobic punchlines were the norm. lesbian was ugly or a porn category. bisexual was unheard of - our flag was only designed in the very late 1990s. or we were whores. for a moment in the mid-2000s we were celebrated in teenage underground movements such as scene, punk, emo, etc. but by the early 2010s we were being named as affronts to the lgbt community (once again). transgenderness was completely reviled (still is). we were queerbaited and slandered and hated by hollywood

ten years later we are said to be “welcomed” in media. but i feel no difference. i am still suspicious and bitter and disappointed and disgusted. i dont feel welcomed nor celebrated. i still feel disgusted with myself and i still feel hollow and hated - because i am. we are. hollywood is not your friend. it never has been. representation is a cash grab.