#maybe a video essay

[justloatheyoulately]

I genuinely interested from a sociological perspective of the connection between queerness, celebrities and the social context we talk about that in.

Like it seems like there are several examples in recent consciousness of fans trying to reconcile the existence of queer people and how/if to talk about it in celebrities.

Examples:

1. Thinking about Kit Conner and how he was accused of queerbaiting because he was in a queer tv show and was seen dating a woman. Begging the question: should straightness be assumed as the default? If people hadn’t assumed his straightness would he have felt forced to come out?

2. Billie Eilish saying she likes women in a public interview on the record. Later in another interview, the interviewer asked her about her public statement and Billie accused her of outing her. Can queerness be acknowledged if a celebrity has talked about it publicly? Is queerness ok to talk about if someone has explicitly come out? Or is it to be ignored?

3. And also thinking about how celebrities talk about the lgbt community. For example, Harry Styles wrote in his song Medicine “The boys and the girls are in/I mess around with them.” Are fans allowed to wonder about the meaning of that statement? Wonder what it means in the context of the song? Wonder what it means in the context of his life? Or is it not allowed to be talked about?

Many celebrities have had different reactions to queer questioning from anger to indifference to appreciation for the LGBT+ community and setting the record straight (lol). Should celebrities get mad at fans for talking about queerness? Should their fans? Is it an insult to imply queerness? If so, why? Is it a bad thing to be queer?

Previously fans waited for a huge coming out like Ellen. But now, after the legalization of gay marriage, general sentiment has changed in the last few years. Many queer people feel like they don’t need a formal coming out. Do fans have to wait for a celebrity to say I’m queer? Should fans assume straightness in all people until proven guilty?

Though queerness has become less detrimental to a persons well-being in recent years, there are still don’t say gay laws and serious harm that could come to a person if they come out as queer. Especially a celebrity who greets fans, can be stalked and sent death threats. Is it ok to speculate publicly if a celebrity is queer if they could be harmed by it either physically, socially or financially?

How do people reconcile the two ideas? That there are queer people and some of those people might be celebrities? When is it okay to talk about queerness? How do people acknowledge that there may be queer people who don’t want to make a huge deal of their sexuality? Is it invasive to talk about queerness?

Artists like Renee Rapp, Girl In Red and Fletcher have arguably made their careers marketing their queerness. Is it okay to market queerness? Is it okay to market queerness if you have not specifically come out?

I’m not seeking answers. I don’t think these questions have simple answers but I think they are important to ask. I also think the public’s perspective on these questions have changed greatly in the past 30 years. I think it would be interesting to analyze and to see how social context impacts people’s perspective of queerness in celebrities.

I think it’s also interesting to see how our connection with celebrities sexuality also impacts our interpersonal relationship with sexuality. Should I assume straightness in every person I see on the street? My mom? My friends? When is it okay to talk about queerness? To whom? Is it a secret we should continue to keep ourselves? If so, how will queerness become normalized if we are not able to talk about it openly?

Idk if this makes sense, just some unorganized thoughts

[babytreepiig]

i am absolutely not normal about oc2path

(no this isn’t a fanfic, this is literally just me rambling about the game. i started this yesterday.)

[angstflavoured]

shakes my hands above my head and paces around the room im so sick of everyone acting like ford is a dumb stupid idiot baby who was completely tricked by bill and did nothing wrong. yes he was lied to and bill was abusive, but theres so much more to everything that happened. ford was soooo incredibly willfully ignorant and pushed other important people in his life away, YES bc bill tricked him, but mostly because he wanted to be important. he was actively ignoring red flags from bill and hurting the people around him and was complicit in so much stuff bill did just because he wanted it to be true that bill picked him bc he was special. ford was the one who summoned him in the first place, but then bill just??? told him that he picked ford bc he was special which makes no sense and ford is smarter than that, but he didnt care bc wowwwww he picked me bc im so awesme and smarter and better than everyone!!! he was fucking HEAD OVER HEELLLSSS OBSESSED WITH BILL BTW THAT SHIT WAS NOT ONE SIDED!!! idk why everyone pretends it was. he was building shrines and worshiping him like a god. and never questioned him for a second????? like girl he is the most scientific, curious man in the world and he never once thought bill was lying. he let bill into his life and let him take it over sooo fucking quickly. and he didnt tell anyone bc "they would throw him in a loony bin" ?????? THATS OBVIOUSLY NOT WHY HE DIDNT TELL FIDDLEFORD. he was LYIIINNGG. They were building an interdimensional portal, fiddleford obviously wouldve believed ford and taken him seriously and kept a secret for him. he didnt tell fiddleford bc he was one of the only people in fords life who saw through his bullshit. hes nice, but he stands his ground. as soon as things got too hot, he left. and ford knew that if he told fiddleford about bill that he would immediately be like "dudddeee this is so fucking sketchy you need to research this guy theres obviously smthn else happening." if ford looked into the runes and the messages in the caves, hed probably deduce pretty damn quickly that bill was evil!! but he didnt bc hes selfish and self righteous and wanted to be a part of soemthing bigger than himself. thats literally all he ever wanted. I think the most interesting thing about TBOB is that it shows that it wasnt as black and white as it seemed and that ford wasnt the perfect victim. its shown in the show sooo much how fucked up his morals are. and im not saying this with malice, i fucking love ford and his character so much, i just think so many people act like billford was like a fucking domestic abuse situation where ford was just sad and pathetic and helpless. its so much more complicated than that. ford is not a super great guy and thats such an interesting part of his character. IDK.

[nutsack90]

just a normal girl

[thechekhov]

I've been working on this since.... September? And I have been trying to piece it together like legos for two months now, and I've finally just decided to give up and leave it as is.

If you've ever wanted to read The Locked Tomb but were scared off by the worldbuilding and the terminology, this is for you.

[ingoodjesst]

have you put the pieces together yet, detective

[courtrecord]

honestly i hate how that “maybe the curtains are just blue” post has become shorthand for anti-intellectualism and shit bc as someone who has an utter passion for media analysis now, I WAS THAT PERSON IN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH CLASS.

english class never taught me how to analyze stories, it taught me how to remember what things the teacher said were “symbolism” and how to take quizzes where we had to match a quote to the character who said it. i didn’t give a shit about any of it, bc literally why should i. it was bullshit.

there’s this idea online that people are forgetting or rejecting what they learned in english class when they’re bad at media analysis, and maybe that’s a little bit true, but i think the much bigger problem is they never learned it in the first place. cinemasins & “maybe the curtains are just blue” aren’t convincing people to abandon an intellectualism they already had, they’re filling a void.

when all you learn in high school is to write on the test “blue = depression”, why is it surprising that so many people don’t give a shit about the curtains.

[squuote]

i wish more people made video essays talking about things they love. i love hearing people talk in depth about things they love, especially if its something new to me. like cool sure yeah you can talk about the history of something but like, maybe i wanna know your personal connection to it. maybe i wanna know what fascinated you to talk about it in the first place. many such wonders in the world, let me know why it tugs you to speak of it

[bottlehawk]

i had this fun early 2000's family comedy spy movie idea in my head where dirk is a super secret international spy who had kids with roxy when they were young (accident). roxy took the twins and now dirk lives with his buddy and spy partner jake out at some super secret hideout in the middle of nowhere. they're planning one of the biggest heists of the century when someone manages to trigger one of the alarms and infiltrate their base and they catch the intruder and it's dirk's 12 year old daughter, rose, who's doing a presentation on her family for school and wants to interview dirk so she can get an A+ for it.

meanwhile at home dave is freaking out because he's been dressing up and pretending to be rose for the past few days but the babysitter their mom hired after heading out on an important business trip is starting to get suspicious about the fact that dave and rose never seem to be in the same room...

yeah. rose would be one of those advanced college reading level genius kids who uses big fancy vocab words and is extremely smart and adjusts speedily in a scary way. she'd tag around dirk and jake in the base for a while as they try to figure out what to do with her and get involved in their heist and try to help out somehow. also there'd probably be some family drama moments between dirk and rose and all that. dave would be wearing one of those gamer boy middleschool tshirts in every scene and playing fake videogames on a xbox. simon pegg would appear at some point.

[doomdoomofdoom]

Apparently there's currently discussion in science (humanities in particular) about whether video essays could be accepted as academic writing on par with the academic papers we currently have

I think that's awesome as fuck tbh

[froschli96]

You know what, fuck it, I have to speak my truth! (this is gonna be a rant, so anyone who actually likes assassin's creed revelations and/or the secret crusade, be warned or maybe don't read this at all)

remember how altaïr talks to king richard at the end of ac1, and richard is like "[humans] come into the world kicking and screaming, violent and unstable. it is what we are. we cannot help ourselves."? and how altaïr answers "no. we are what we choose to be." and how that ACTUALLY has meaning bc he himself was "violent and unstable" at the beginning of the game but he has learned and is now CHOOSING to be a better person who cares about others and humanity at large? remember how his calmness and gentleness was something that he ACQUIRED over the course of the story?

and remember how in revelations they then suddenly had a PRE-AC1 altaïr say about the first of his targets "no man should pass from this world without knowing some kindness." and be all wise and calm and collected during a nice little chat with al mualim, who suddenly acts all fatherly? (like, this is suddenly supposed to be a positive relationship? what??)

also, during the confession the target says to altair: "you put too much faith in the hearts of men, altaïr. [...] humans are weak, base, and petty." and altaïr answers: "no. our creed is evidence to the contrary." KJASJFJDKL???? like, it’s almost insulting how close this exchange is to the one with richard. you know, the one that was actually earned after a whole game of character development. like WTF??? cool congrats now that development means nothing. like, apparently that was just altaïr reverting BACK to being the exemplary assassin who understands and believes in the creed that he was apparently just born as. (i also hate how having a young inexperienced altaïr saying this implies that altaïr's faith in humanity is a sign of naivete instead of a sign of the wisdom he has gained after being confronted with counter arguments for a whole game, and also something that distinguishes the assassins from the templars who use humanity's supposed wickedness to justify controlling them like in AC1, but whatever)

altaïr’s development in AC1 mattered BECAUSE he is not NATURALLY a good person, it actually said something about humanity's capacity for both bad AND good and how humans don't have to be forced to be good through mind control bc they can by their own free will choose to be better when taught how and when allowed the freedom to grow. but no. apparently altaïr has just always been calm, wise and gentle. and he just sort of forgot about that during AC1 bc…. ? bc of adha?? bc of abbas???

oh don’t get me started on the whole abbas thing. (it doesnt even make sense that abbas is so hung up about his father and "his family’s honor", like what about the whole point of al mualim not allowing parents to be close to their children bc it would make them weak? like, my dude, you’re not supposed to HAVE any family aside from the brotherhood)

they used the throwaway character that had like 5 lines and made him into altaïr’s main antagonist in revelations… like, abbas wasn’t supposed to be this ONE dude who had personal beef with altaïr, he was just supposed to show how while altaïr’s revered by many, a lot of his brothers also hate him, bc 1) altaïr is a shitty person at this point and 2) bc there’s no real feeling of community and family in this version of the brotherhood, but just a pervasive sense of competition and jealousy — these assassins don’t care about their goal of safeguarding humanity bc they’re too hung up on petty squabbles and divided by rivalries (you know, the things that made malik hate altaïr even before solomon’s temple and that he overcomes in the end which enables him to forgive and to reconcile with altaïr so they can work together and stop al mualim? (you ever just think about "we are one. as we share the glory of our victories, so too should we share the pain of our defeat. in this way we grow closer. we grow stronger." and cry? bc i do. all the time. malik, the man that you are))

and now abbas is altaïr’s childhood best friend turned lifelong enemy?? like, bowden bent over backwards to come up with an explanation for why altaïr is an arrogant ass at the beginning of AC1, when the explanation is right there: he was raised to kill without asking questions and was constantly praised for how good he is at murder, which resulted in him becoming arrogant and disregarding human life. like, it doesn’t have to be some shakespearean family feud type shit. and guess what, this "simple" explanation actually plays into the story’s themes, who’da thunk!

(like, abbas might not have been a "fleshed out" character in AC1, but he had a specific function and now that function is gone. mr bowden, mr mcdevitt, you know characters are allowed to simply exist to tell us something about their worlds and the systems they live in and sometimes that’s more important and also more interesting than having every single character have a detailed backstory to explain all their behaviors, right?)

with all of this revelations loses all nuance in regards to the levantine brotherhood and also the creed in general. like, altaïr being a master assassin at the beginning despite being a terrible person and not actually understanding the creed is a criticism of the brotherhood and the creed itself. like, it said something about the order that someone like altaïr was able to get that high in rank, simply bc he's good at killing, which also tells us what is considered important in the al mualim era assassin order. when you make altaïr’s arrogance the result of his personal conflicts instead of how we was raised by a brotherhood that only valued one's ability to kill, you lose that characterization of the assassin order itself!

and by suddenly making al mualim a semi good "father figure" you also downplay his manipulation of not only altaïr but all those under his care. (altaïr says something about al mualim being "as a father" to him exactly twice in the codex, but he doesn’t mean by that that he WAS a father to him, what he means is that he was the CLOSEST THING he had bc HE DID NOT HAVE PARENTS, not because his mother died in childbirth and his father was executed when he was young btw, BUT BECAUSE IT WASN’T ALLOWED, like his parents actually lived but weren’t allowed to be close to him, he says he came to view al mualim’s "weak and dishonest" love as enough and even better BECAUSE HE HAD NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE AL MUALIM ISOLATED HIS ASSASSINS FROM THEIR FAMILIES. al mualim "loved" him bc he was good at killing people for him! hm, i wonder if this could be trying to say anything about cults and indoctrination and the inherent contradiction in fighting for peace and free will by taking children away from their parents and raising them to become killers?? like, altaïr wasn't ~the special orphan boy~ taken in by al mualim bc his father died a hero's death, it was "the way of the order" to have al mualim be the closest thing to a parental figure for everyone to ensure absolute loyalty! altaïr saying al mualim was like his father is not supposed to make you go "oh, he must have actually been a good guy for altaïr to consider him a father", it should make you go "oh that's kinda fucked up that he considers the dude who made him into a killing machine and who manipulated him a sort of father figure"!)

and then in revelations they suddenly portray that relationship as positive and healthy??? like, it would be one thing to give it some nuance by delving into the psychology behind al mualim’s "love" and maybe showing how al mualim did care about altair in a complicated, fraught sort of way (like, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could say about al mualim at several points addressing altaïr as "my child" in AC1 and how that parallels Garnier referring to the people he drugged and abused as his "children", and what that says about how the templars view the people who they say they want to save and in whose best interests they supposedly act (in any case, al mualim doesn’t use that phrase because he has any real parental feelings but rather to patronize and to invalidate any objections, like in a "mother knows best" way))

but they even fucking DARE to parallel that relationship with that of altaïr and darim in revelations, by having the reflection in the puddle of darim hugging altaïr showing altaïr hugging al mualim…. like their relationship wasn’t inherently abusive but just tragically cut short because al mualim was just "corrupted by the apple"… like WHAT???? so it’s not the very real problems like grooming, manipulation and indoctrination and the hierarchical structure of the brotherhood itself (all of which are antithetical to the assassin ideology), it was just the evil apple all along. great. that’s DEFINITELY a lot more interesting.

god im sorry i really dont want to spread negativity but this is driving me INSANE. like, somebody please tell me im not crazy bc i feel like somehow most of the fandom is in agreement that revelations and the secret crusade have better storytelling and characterization than ac1.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, can we talk about how, even IF we completely ignore AC1 and treat revelations altaïr as his own character…. the narrative still doesn’t really work?

basically, the whole point of his story in rev is that "he gave his whole life to the brotherhood", this obsession led to him not using his time with his family which has him ending up dying alone in a dark library and this in turn makes ezio reevaluate his life choices…. except. he doesn’t? neglect? his family? or whatever? like, his devotion to the assassins is sort of painted as this tragic flaw that leads to a lonely death bc it supposedly comes at the cost of his family, but… his wife has joined the assassins, (at least) one of his sons is in the brotherhood and even when he goes to protect the assassins against the mongols, he takes his family with him (except for the son who stays behind bc he has a family of his own and who, ironically, ends up dying bc of that)… like, you can’t describe altaïr as a good husband and father in the database and have his son tell him that "everything that is good in me began with you, father" when they say goodbye, and then want to make us believe that he put his family behind the brotherhood and that that is a character flaw that leads to his tragedy.

because you HAVE to have a character’s tragedy be the result of a character flaw. like. that is how tragedies work. otherwise it just becomes tragedy for the sake of tragedy which is… boring bc it has no purpose. and we know it is SUPPOSED to have purpose bc ezIO FUCKING QUITS BEING AN ASSASSIN AFTER WITNESSING IT!

it’s like they want to have their cake and eat it, too — they didn’t want to actually make altaïr a bad husband/father, but still wanted to make his life a tragedy where he loses his family which is why instead they outsource all responsibility to abbas who now has to be the reason for ALL the deaths.

like, they try to make at least maria’s death kind of sort of the result of altaïr’s rashness or whatever but like… these guys KILLED THEIR SON and TOLD HIM THAT ALTAÏR HAD ORDERED HIS DEATH. like, altaïr losing it in response to that is not rash, it’s fucking logical and justified! if anything the scene made me angry at maria for trying to stop him. like, GIRL, he was YOUR son too??? but god forbid we give female characters actual real emotions, she has to fill the role of "voice of reason who dies for altaïr’s man pain" i fucking guess.

like, it’s this weird mix where his tragedy is simultaneously painted as his own fault but also not really bc abbas is the one responsible for all the shit that happens. it just… it just doesn’t really go together.

the only way to make his story make sense narratively and to give it actual purpose is by looking at it in the context of ezio’s story, bc the things he sees in altaïr’s memories are supposed to be a revelation (ha!) to ezio specifically. and i guess that’s maybe the crux of it all — altaïr’s story in revelations was conceived of first and foremost to support ezio’s story and development. which is probably also why many people maybe don’t notice bc, having skipped ac1 and started with ac2, the majority of people mostly care only about ezio and only really appreciate altaïr’s story in as far as it serves to push ezio forward. (tho i’ve also seen a few people say that ezio is also written kind of weird in rev, but i’ve never really been an ezio girly myself so i can’t speak to the truth of that)

like, altaïr dying alone in the library doesn’t really have to make sense for his character, i guess, bc it’s only really supposed to be a cautionary tale for ezio.

so, i guess, for once, they actually had a MAN dying for another man’s character development, which is pretty woke actually. ubisoft, i take everything back jksdsfjhgdsahfhsdhfghfdsgjhsdgjh

[riggedbones]

videos games fun yay fun video games happy smiler will NOT take over your game and reduce you to nothing... perfectly niceys skull motif

[mimikyuno]

i always thought i might be bad, now i know that it’s true / ’cause i think you’re so good, and im nothing like you

[70x1cnature]

I have thoughts about q!Cellbit and q!Tubbo.

These two characters from the very beginning have had pretty similar situations. Causing problems with the Fed, getting attacked, going on mystery solver on their asses, whatever. The interesting thing to me is how they're different, and how much they've diverged from each other.

When Cellbit was fucking with things initially, Cucurucho terrified him by chasing him with a chainsaw. From then on Cellbit absolutely hated the Federation. He tried to infiltrate them, figure out a way to take them down from the inside. He got kidnapped, and he half went along with the assignments given to him.

Tubbo on the other hand just doesn't give any shits at all, and makes it very clear from the beginning. He does illegal big things, goes against Cucurucho, and when threatened with a gun he's not scared. That mother fucker taunts him and runs away because he's not scared of death. Death in this world is not permanent, so he doesn't give a shit. He couldn't be threatened in any way that truly mattered. Tubbo briefly considered joining the Fed but decided fuck that, he doesn't give a shit about the Fed, and let's that be known.

Then Tubbo went and befriended Fred, talked to him and learned about the Federation slowly through a growing friendship and love. Cellbit was finding things out secretively, trying to be covert while also doing his job.

This is the major difference of where their characters diverge. Cellbit was isolated from the other workers, just doing his job and only interacting with Cucurucho- who he's hated sense he chased him with a fucking chainsaw. Tubbo was on the complete opposite of this. Not interacting with the Federation at all (other than Cucurucho trying to get him to stop doing illegal shit) while interacting and getting close to a worker.

Now we've gotten to the point where Cellbit has snapped, he doesn't give a shit anymore and he will kill anyone who says on the side of the Federation. He won't listen to reason, he doesn't care anymore, he just wants the Federation dead, and he'll kill every single worker to make that happen.

Tubbo is closer to the Fed workers than ever. His love is dead, he held a funeral for Fred where only other Fed workers showed up. He's vowed to help them if they ever need it, and they've promised the same. He still doesn't give a shit about the Federation, but to the workers, he's the Hero of the Village.

[cillyscribbles]

i think i need to accept that what i actually want more than to write an essay called "adaptation theory applied to cats 1998 and 2019" is to write an essay called "CATS IS GOOD, ACTUALLY, AND IF YOU GUYS HAD JOY AND WHIMSY IN YOUR HEARTS YOU WOULD SEE THIS"

[fruitsofhell]

I used to be one of those guys when I first joined the Kirby fandom, but everytime I hear a discussion of the series writing that starts with "So the Lore is InSaNe-" and not like, "Kirby has a fun writing style that takes advantage of its cute exterior to tell cool stories that reward player's curiosity and leave lots of room for imagination-" I cringe so goddamn hard.

I kinda just hate that people approach things that encourage investment when they don't expect it as inherently absurd. Like it is fun to joke about how absurd Kirby lore can be, but it really often comes with an air of disrespect or exhaustion rather than like, appreciation that these games are made by people who want to tell interesting stories when they could easily make as much money just making polished enough fluffy kiddy platformers. And when it's not met with exhaustion, it's met with - like I said before - that tone that it's stupid for a series like this TO have devs who care about writing stuff for it. Which is a whole other thing about people not respecting things made to appeal to kiddie aesthetic or tone.

Maybe the state of low-stakes YouTube video essays just blows cause people play up ignorance and disbelief for engagement, but like I STG I hear people use this tone for like actual narrative based games sometimes. Some people don't like... appreciate when a game is made by people who care a shitton in ways that aren't direct gameplay feedback. And they especially don't appreciate it when it comes from something with any sense of tonal dissonance intentional or not.

Anyways, I love games made by insane people. I love games made by teams who feel like they wanna make something work or say something so bad. I love that energy, especially when invested into something that could easily rest on its laurels or which obviously won't be taken seriously. I love this in a lot of classic campy 2000s games, I love this in insanely niche yet passionate fanworks, and I love it in the Kirby series and its writing. Can we please stop talking about it like it's an annoyance or complete joke?