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Head in hands queer baiting and queer coding are different things for the love of god stop just saying shit
#rat rambles#sorry was forced to see a bad take again </3#would yall believe it wasnt a bndori one this time#also yall have gotta start taking cultral shit more into context too#not even always in a homophobic government way just like different cultures have different queer cultures#like Im not gonna pretend to be an expert on this sorta stuff but its still smth one should consider and look into yknow#like you can be critical at how theyre written but not every bad written queer coded character is queer bait#homophobic writing bad writing and queer bait are all seperate things and they can overlap but it shouldnt be assumed that they do#although queer bait and bad writing inherently do at least a bit lol#but yknow bad writing isnt queer bait on its own#idk it just dumbs down the conversations surrounding these stories soooo much yall have got to be bored of it by now#rat rants
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I think the discourse is why I’ve never fully gotten into ACOTAR. I really liked the story when I read it! But others made it hard for me to enjoy it.
People are totally allowed to “critically” read something! But some of the beauty of reading is everyone takes away something different when they are through
A moral, a lesson, a flaw, something to self reflect on, or purely watching the character overcome an obstacle one has in their own life and giving them hope. Sometimes you find things you don’t like, don’t agree with etc, and it makes you feel more impassioned about that thing
That’s good as well
But just because you found nothing in the story doesn’t mean everyone else has to hate it or a specific character! (Unless they are racist or something else objectively horrible) I love SJM’s books! I’m kind of sad people have to bring so much drama to the table for the ACOTAR series! I loved what you had to say about Feyre 💚 These are just thoughts I thought added to that post 😂
i completely agree! and i think that a lot (or at least a lot of what ive seen - across this whole website) is a misunderstanding of the concept of a “critical reading”
when you critically read something (or critique, or being a critic - in the traditional pre-social media sense) you analyze a piece of media to uncover its themes, character work, conflicts, essential statements/meanings, and also postmodern theoretical critique which also includes racial/sexist/queer biases and subtexts:
and then you figure out how well those were executed and what it means for the story.
liking or not liking a character is never a moral action in itself unless you let it shape your views and actions in the real world, with real people. (of course - liking/not liking certain things in the context of modern society can tell you a lot about a person however - not an easy either/or black/white system. for instance bronies. you can tell a lot about a person if theyre a bronie. not necessarily hating! but still.)
critically reading something is NOT going through and itemizing all the bad things characters have done in a text/all their faults/all their conflicts! you can have a well written character that is a piece of shit (like hannibal lector) or you can have a character that is written to be just the most amazing pure wonderful lovely perfect whatever, in the worst piece of media every brought to the screen (like edward cullen in twilight. yes i actually love twilight tho please no one @ me)
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i just so deeply believe (and im right) that capitalism and putting a best face forward destroys art and also your will to want to create. the things that people make, that most people know about, become popular because industries pick people they know will comply, or need money, or are naive enough to think they can get what they want.
there’s no reason productions should be that expensive and draining on crew members (i care less about actors bc i am a crew member and guess what actors just sit around all day sorry not sorry and i was one :P) but i always say: the little progress we make, is it really progressive? transgressive?
and how could it be? how could it b ewhen companies refuse to relinquish themselves and break themselves up into parts. a web series could give people so much more freedom, but that is a whole lot more of a difficulty. i’ve made my own shorts (that i hate) and said what i wanted to say and even the pressure from how my school would receive it fucked up my psyche.
and it takes so long for people who refuse to be stifled and be obsessed with this capitalist nightmare to get their shit released. if they get really popular still theyre not rolling in money (as they should not be) but they struggle to get shit together bc it’s harder to work with someone whose vision is opposed to this white supremacist garbage nightmare.
i have a theory about parasite which is that SK has a totally different history with labor and capital than my country (US) does and it was done with that in mind and as an ttack on imperialism very clearly. that movie is not without its flaws, which can be discussed, but to date next to sorry to bother you which i havent seen it’s pretty much the most antagonistic film about that subject i’ve seen in a while.
and in SK there’s tons of queer cinema (i may be exaggerating) but a lot of it is very gritty or uncomfortable (i am going to try and find this list my friend made of good sk queer cinema i think? or just n gen) and western gay shit is so popular overseas bc there’s a plethora of (BAD OR ANNOYING MOVIES I HATE CAROL) to go off of and see. a lot of international lesbians, for ex, really are into like hwood gay films or some shit bc that’s also what they can access and consume (let’s not get started on that fuckin dichotomy of man/woman but w/e)
i wish i could be more cheerful and positive. it’s not that i don’t want to have fun or escape or watch these shows, in fact i do, and there’s legitimate shock when you see sth like ITSAY and it’s a beautiful cinematic experience. oh and on top of that i hate most TV and most TV is trash and films are better. imo ITSAY is like a movie split.
why do we keep having hope in these systems? what i want in the future, because theyre not going away, is for more corps to reach out to collectives and diff types of filmmakers or artists and support them without making them stick to a contract and not do what they want. UNFORTUNATELY that’s really not how anyone feels like working.
in my belief, at a time like right now, we have to be clear about not accepting austerity from the relief and to not fall into the trap of advancement via cultural artifacts. it’s bullshit—we fight against it. that doesn’t mean we can’t get excited when shows have things to say but i refuse to withhold critique because it’s so necessary in every piece
btw there’s this filmmaker called Park Kyoung Mi and though she’s married to this irish dude (who i think is like a professor of social theory idk) she was an AD to park chan wook (also a socialist) and a great filmmaker. in each of her works there’s a focus on women and queer themes of women and teens and their isolation and subsequent connections with each other. how men let them down, how you have to band together, the scariness of growing up. she made this miniseries for netflix called “school nurse files.” SNF was a book, it was written by a woman and its about desire, loss, and conformity, particularly for teenagers. there’s lots of queer themes and adult themes that make it so we understand the precious lives of teenagers and how they need love and guidance instead of being shunned and pit against each other.
it’s one of my favorite miniseries. netflix has this habit of picking up shows and telling NO ONE about them or very little advertising (it’s diff for south korean shows i think since a lot of production companies may come on board) and then canceling them. it is for a LEGIT reason which is MONEY!!!! but the director said she said yes bc she was given complete control and without it she would refuse. she also said she couldn’t get work or was feeling like the work she was doing was terrible (and in the reviews of the show or explanations about her it was always beginning with “PCW’s protege”) but she almost quit bc the pressure hrut and whittled at her
atp we need to take advantage of these systems if we have things to say and not let them take advantage of us. unfortunately, the opposite happens because people need work, have things to say whethere they’re shallow or not, and CONSTANT production means work and BS. this is how i feel about pretty much all industry and i’m the least critical of BL as opposed to say, kpop, or uhhhhhhhhh any celebrity ever bc it DOES have an edge over others but it’s an edge that they can barely fucking reach for or do well with.
nothing and i mean nothing abou oversaturation and constant production will yield results that are going to be radical and “good” bc we’re approaching things ass backwards. the norm isn’t the ones that hurt you, the ones that stay with you, the ones that mean something. the norm is the bullshit you have to parse through. and even for things that do a great job of storytelling they still have their flaws or still have to buy into a system eventually, if the work calls for it, that they would long to eschew
if anyone sees this read this profile on arthur jafa, a prolific DP who i got the pleasure of seeing live AYYYY, and what he has to say. he left filmmaking then came back on his own terms and frankly i believe that’s just...what we have to do if we want to make a better world. that’s just me personally but this is my counterbalance to a fallacy that a work is revolutionary when it has zero intention of being so or will lie about its intention to save itself
this piec is called ARTHUR JAFA’S RADICAL ALIENATION and it reminds me of all the artists—particularly thai—i’ve seen that have had this radical alienation or refuse to water down their message and people will deal
i present one of my fav pieces i’ve read frm the past year (it’s from 2014 but i read it end of 2019 when i was questioning me future) Radical Art is an Act of Uncompromising Passionate Resistance
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hey its me again wall of text sorry not sorry
k i saw your little treatise justifying zadr and yknow its a cartoon its not the worst thing ever of course nobody is gonna sue you for reblogging fanart or burn you at the stake or w/e and im glad you decided to open yourself up to a differing opinion but zim IS portrayed as an adult. there was even an unfinished episode where zim’s childhood and growing up training from start to finish would be shown so by the time of the pilot he is definitely a full grown developed adult by irken standards especially if hes a former member of an elite military force like the invaders. jhonen has said that the irony and sad comedy of zims character is that hes a grown ass man and a war veteran to boot who VOLUNTARILY goes to an elementary school every day and throws hands with an 11 year old boy who should be well below his notice because he’s that pathetic and desperate for validation that he’ll stoop to seeking it from a child. it also sets up a dynamic between them where dib is CHALLENGED by having to go up against an adult with way more experience than him while dib is just a child, so when he wins its more meaningful, which is a common trope in childrens fiction that an underdog young hero has to take down a powerful adult villain.
jhonen might joke a lot but he’s serious about this part of the characterization of zim and dib and he even went to great lengths to make dib look and act more like a kid in ETF (more emotional and naive, designed to look smaller/softer, going in depth with his relationship to his dad and sister and needing his dad to protect him at the end when he’s too overrun to fight alone) just to drive home the point of how young he is. it was a very deliberate move and jhonen knows what hes doing ESPECIALLY since he also left zim pretty much unchanged and also includes gags about zim’s relative maturity like animating him briefly grimacing because his joints are sore and the part where he pretty much gestures to his crotch and goes “theyre afraid to look at ALL-A THIS”. like you would not see jhonen do that sort of joke with an underage character ok. dont confuse his social awkwardness and self deprecating/trolling humor for not knowing the difference between right and wrong and not acknowledge when he means something sincerely because he doesn’t just clown on people and troll ALL THE TIME 24/7 hes a human, and times have changed with more awareness on issues such as the grooming of minors so he can go back on things he may have said in the past that he doesn’t agree with now or said by mistake. he has said enough times that zim is older than any human alive that its safe to take his word for it by now. judging by the one strip he did in JTHM about johnny murdering a pedophile who was about to prey on squee i think his stance on protecting kids is pretty clear. also i wouldnt put it past jhonen to have redesigned membrane to be more chaddy looking to divert the adult fandom’s attention away from dib and throw the fangirls a bone but thats a whole nother can of worms lol.
and the justification that zim is immature so hes essentially on dib’s level is a reversal of something lots of kids hear from either creepy or ignorant adults who tell them theyre “so mature for their age”. no matter how emotionally mature you are it wont ever compensate for the number of years youve been alive so that’s not very sound logic, and even in fic where theyre both adults it’s still pretty weird because it doesn’t erase their history where zim knew dib as a kid. that’s sort of like a grownup waiting with bated breath until a kid is “legal” so they can start dating. kinda like when jacob imprints on bella’s newborn daughter in twilight then having it handwaved away by saying he’ll wait till she’s grown up, which understandably drew a huge amount of criticism. it’s a loophole that might be mildly acceptable in some cases but the context leaves it colored with a residual ickiness that sets off some red flags for me and a lot of other people.
also you said zim is an alien and therefore the situation itself is unrealistic, but the reason invader zim’s writing resonates with people is because zim is written with very HUMAN emotions and motivations and part of the humor again is how irkens despite being aliens from another planet mirror some of humanity’s worst flaws such as being petty, gluttonous, willfully ignorant, arrogantly believing they are special and better than everyone else, easily manipulated by propaganda, all too eager to greedily colonize other societies etc making them not so different from us at all. so the premise out of context might not seem realistic but the idea of a sad burnout adult who doesn’t realize how humiliating it is to be consistently outsmarted by a kid less than half their age IS realistic and applicable to human interaction since we’ve likely all met someone like this before at one point in our lives for example a schoolteacher who has a personal vendetta against one or more of their students and has nothing better to do than antagonize them, or a really dumb parent that you fight with a lot.
another thing, i know you and other fans probably have a lot of sentimental value and nostalgia attached to zadr because you probably shipped it back when you were a kid yourself and you cant be blamed for something you liked as a kid, but youre an adult now, and you have to listen to the portion of kids in the fandom who dont like zadr and say without question that the age gap makes them uncomfortable. those kids ARE the priority. we’re grown up now and we have to put our feelings aside for them because that’s part of being responsible and mature. i feel like zim himself is a pretty good example of how not to act at our age [shrug emoji]
and anyway a lot of the same elements of zadr can be explored with zadf just as well with just as much potential for cute moments and as a bonus is it’s not creepy
You do bring up some good points, and I’m not saying you’re wrong... But honestly I’m still not convinced. I mean, stuff that Jhonen said, the thing is even if it’s the author saying it it’s still outside of canon, that’s the reason why Neil Gaiman got flack for Good Omens because they didn’t write an actual kiss or hug or hand-hold between Aziraphale and Crowley yet Neil Gaiman went on Twitter saying they were queer representation. I still don’t really put much stock into what he says because the unfinished episodes and Jhonen’s commentary don’t really change the dynamic that’s actually in the show. And again...Jhonen said if there were going to be romance in the show it would be Zim/Gaz, so he’s either a huge hypocrite or doesn’t view Zim as being incompatible with Gaz.
I do think it’s much better when Dib is an adult and it just makes more sense, and I actually do prefer zadf to zadr and if i were going to ever write fanfiction or make fanart it would probably just be zadf, just because i know this does have some stuff to think about and I totally respect that you have a different view of it, but i honestly just don’t see it that way. The analogy with Jacob imprinting on Bella’s child in Twilight isn’t really the same thing honestly. The author in that situation tried to make it not......that....by saying that imprinting isn’t always a romantic relationship thing, and that Jacob would be more of an older brother, but honestly that doesn’t really negate the impact of grooming that kid would have with Jacob around. The idea that Zim would somehow be grooming Dib seems really silly to me although you’re right, I think his characterization in Into the Florpus has evolved somewhat especially with regard to Dib wanting to get his father’s approval, but again Zim has parallels with that in trying to please the Tallest. the world-building and characterizations are inconsistent and scattershot at best. Like no, zim isn’t waiting for him to turn legal, that’s absurd, they’re nemeses coming at each other then learning to be friends. You’re right that that doesn’t have to be zadr but I still tag it as zadr so people can block it if they want to.
Like, I’ve seen people ship Zim with Professor Membrane instead of Dib. That seems very weird to me. that professor membrane would have a relationship with someone who literally goes to his son’s elementary school and who doesn’t know anything at all about human behavior and emotions.
I feel like with this discussion people don’t really understand the problem with age gaps. With age gaps, it’s not a matter of mature/immature, it’s about development. A ten year age gap sounds like a lot right? a 25-year-old and a 15-year old would absolutely have a predatory “relationship.” But a 35- and a 45-year old, that’s perfectly fine. Having a difference in age doesn’t automatically make the relationship unhealthy. so if Dib is 25 and Zim is [whatever the hell aliens years i still don’t really take Jhonen’s word for it bc he’s not consistent], that’s doesn’t mean it has to be bad. The thing about telling minors they’re “so mature for their age” to try and convince them that a person interested in them isn’t a pedophile is that we know a human being who is 15 isn’t developmentally at the same level as a 25-year-old regardless of their behavior. What is Zim? All we have to go on is how he acts, and he acts like Dib is an equal match, it’s not “he’s immature for his age,” it’s very unclear. Raw number of years isn’t the ultimate decider, for example in DnD lore elves reach maturity at, like, 100 years old so a 25-yo human trying to get with a 50-year-old elf would be predatory to the young elf even though the “younger” one is technically twice as old as the human. Do you see what I’m saying?
I also don’t really buy the idea that Invader Zim’s writing resonates with people because Zim is ~~so human~~. The guy steals a bunch of kid’s organs in one episode and flies into a tantrum over the slightest inconvenience. You have to be reading really deeply into it and dig into some old internet archives of things Jhonen Vasquez has said to paint it as realistic. You can do some interesting things with it wrt like, Zim being defective and starting to experience human emotions but that’s mostly fanon.
Well, you’ve given me some things to think about, thanks for explaining your side to me. I’m still going to tag things as #zadr so people can block if it can’t plausibly be categorized as zadf. I’m not actually making any fan content for Invader Zim so the point is kind of moot, but if I ever do I’ll definitely take this into consideration.
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