#we can all agree that he was queercoded right

[alarrytale]

Hi Marte. So I'm probably completely wrong here but I'm just theorizing. Harry and Louis have talked about wanting kids since they were young and Harry mentioned it again in HH promo. If they had plans to eventually CO and start a family then would they get involved with beards who stipulate in a contract that they can't CO? Would they agree to that? Harry would be digging himself into a hole by adding more and more beards and making it increasingly harder for himself. There is probably something in the contract to say that either party can't CO until 5 or 10 years after the relationship ends, or that they have to keep up with the pretense that the relationship was real. But I can't imagine Harry would agree to a contract knowing he could never CO. So there are 2 options here. That they plan on never CO or they agree to a contract knowing that they will be able to CO at some point. The only thing is that I wonder if they were to CO if there were some grounds that the other party could sue them for damage to their image but maybe they can come up with a way that does minimum damage. In Leo and Bradley's case with Gigi, I don't get the impression that Leo and Bradley want to CO so it might not matter so much to them. But I can't imagine Harry and Louis wanting to be closeted forever. If that was the case then wouldn't they shut down any speculation about their sexuality? It would be so easily to do a written interview or in depth IG post talking about how harmful the speculation has been, or they even could get fake married. On the other hand, speculation about their sexuality is good publicity for them. But I'm not sure they would welcome the speculation if they planned on never CO. Wouldn't that be like queerbaiting? What do you think?

Hi, anon!

I don't think kids are a priority for them right now. They're a celebrity gay couple, kids will basically mean the end of both their careers. I don't see either of them wanting to be the primary care taker while the other one's on tour. That wouldn't be fair either. So they will both have to be there and be present for their kids. I think they'd both want that too, in 7-10 years or so.

I don't think H or L would go into a contract willingly with a beard, stipulating that they can't come out. But all this started in 1D when they were young and impressionable, and i'm not sure if they knew the consequences of what they were forced/pressured/convinced into by Sony. Bar TS or Kendall maybe, i think H's team has been the one in power and written the contract stipulations. I don't think H would have put himself in a situation where it would be neccessary to agree to such a term. So i don't think that's what's stopping him from coming out. Bg is a bigger hindrance for them.

I agree if they never plan to come out all the queercoding, fights with management and bargaining they've done have been pretty pointless. It doesn’t make sense as a theory based on all we've observed over the years. I'm pretty sure they both would come out this second if they could. H and L have always given attention to and praised people who have come out. Like L with the rainbow apple t-shirt for tim cook and H with the michael sam football shirt. They so badly wish it was them having that opportunity.

If they never plan to come out, because they can't or because they don't want to, we would have seen a totally different behaviour from them. What on earth is the point of singing i love him i hate it if you don’t want the world to know you're gay and in a relationship, because you'll never be out? It's not queerbaiting, it's queercoding and wanting people to see beyond the stunts and lies, and see the truth. Speculation about their sexuality isn't good publicity if you have to go on twitter and shut it down, making yourself look like a right douche and a homophobe by doing it. It's harmed Louis' image and popluarity immensely, both among fans, the gp and journalists.

Since they want out, there must be a way out. Louis wouldn't be all faith in the future if there never was a way out for them. Harry wouldn't be jumping from stunt to stunt if he's in this for life. He'd find a more permanent solution. If there weren't a way out they would have given up the fight long ago. They're still fighting.

[mileven11forever]

“Like if you actually just watch the show and listen to what the characters say, then you'd know how Mike feels.”

That’s just it. Most Bylers have watched the show many times and genuinely found the evidence that Mike truly loves El romantically to be severely lacking. Most Bylers went into the show believing in Mileven with no agenda or reason to believe otherwise and simply came to a different conclusion by watching it

And also the monologue isn’t really strong evidence in Mileven’s favor either, even if it seems that way on the surface, cause it’s full of transparent lies and contradicts both what we see in the show and what the writers have said about not believing in love at first sight. If the monologue was genuinely romantic, disconnected from Will, and full of concrete and beautiful moments in their relationship, I’d agree with you. But that’s not what happened

And most importantly, a character dating a girl doesn’t make them straight. People can date girls and still be bi or even gay and closeted. Mike is a very queercoded character in general and how he feels HASN’T actually been clear because there’s been an emphasis on his confusion between El and Will throughout the show, and the only reason he was able to monologue to El is cause of Will’s words/painting confession.

The set up for Byler is all there, and it really won’t be difficult at all for Mike and El to breakup in S5. It’s the next natural step in the characters’ journeys and arcs. Eight episodes is almost eight hours. That’s a lot of time.

I'm just gonna quote what I've heard another Mileven say when arguing with a byler:

"That's very... interesting. I also have a story: I [a girl] dated boys, I date boys and I always will date boys. ... Sometimes people just stay straight. That also happens. Or you know, she could be his girlfriend. Who he loves. Crazy, I know, but there are straight people who love their partner and don't turn gay for their childhood best friend, no matter how much he whines or how many times they look at each other while talking"

I don't necessarily agree with everything that person said, like people don't "turn gay" obviously. But while there are people who can be bi, or closeted gay, there are also people who are just straight too.

This person also said in that argument:

"I can very much deny that Mike is 'queercoded', but go off I guess. You all act like Byler is real and valid while the only proof you can provide is made-up subtext and the denial of a straight ship that's been going on for four seasons. I'm telling you, if Mileven was gay and Byler was straight, people would be yelling 'lgbtq erasure' left and right. Also, in all seasons, Byler's relationship matches basically every sign of 'idgaf about you cause I have a goddamn girlfriend' relationship, so chill out"

Once again, I don't agree with everything they said, but I don't see how Mike is at all queercoded. So much of the evidence is just triangles, rainbows, and invented color schemes. Not everything has a deeper meaning, sometimes it is just there for no real reason, sometimes things are surface level. And Mike was not lying in his monologue, he was being honest, just like how he has said he loves El in the past. You can ship Byler and claim Mike is queercoded all you want, but that doesn't make it true.

[eisforeidolon]

Hellers can claim that they've been queerbaited as much as they want, the fact is that it is their fault for continously listening to someone like Mooch even after the 'straight-coming-out' fiasco. It is obvious what this guy's aim was/is. He is attention and money seeking from a rather rabid fan group who can fill his needs.

Hellers also have absolutely no right to accuse the show of queerbaiting. Despite self-proclaiming themselves as 'master readers of queer text and subtext and coding', Hellers do not even know how queercoding subtext or text even work.

Dean drinking cucumber water in one scene or the so-called ''bi lighting'' or wearing ''bi colored flannels'' are not queer-coding. It's literally making stuff up your ass and calling it a day and tapping yourselves on the back for supposedly realizing the 'obvious queercoding and subtext'. These are the guys who claimed Dean dancing with a lamp was a proof that he was imagining dancing with Castiel because Castiel was supposed to be the lamp in that scene, so it was queercoding and a nod to Destiel (yeah buddy sure....). These are the guys who legit claimed and pointed to Dean's FBI jacket (with the collar covering the 'F') as "proof" that he's bisexual.

That's straight up baiting themselves. They're still doing the same thing regarding the prequel, trying to find things that are not there, deluding themselves and thinking the show is baiting them. That's just insane.

Agree completely. They want queercoding to mean "calling literally everything Dean does queer means it's totes true". No. That's not what queercoding means or how subtext works.

In their heads, finding super sneakret signals to Dean's REAL sexuality in his every action shows how totally intentional and undeniable it is! It's literally impossible for Dean to be straight with all of this proof that shows up every single second he's onscreen! Except in reality, what it actually shows? Is how obsessed they are that they're insisting literally everything is a signal of queerness and how little they care about actual representation because it all magically only counts when it's Dean. What he eats, what he drinks, what he wears, what he stands next to, how he makes eye contact, who he talks to, etc.? There is nothing they haven't tried to turn into a hint towards proving bi!Dean and D/C.

That's not about what the writers intend, nor even any kind of genuine unconscious social cues about queerness. That's entirely about their personal myopic obsession with trying to force what they want to happen in a fictional show into reality by insisting everything is about their ship because they say so.

They weren't queerbaited by anyone but themselves and Misha, and as you say, even that is pretty much on them because subtle he is not. There was literally nothing the show could do that hellers wouldn't see as proof of what they wanted to see anyway. They ignored the million times it was reiterated by all the showrunners that SPN was the story of Sam & Dean. Singer and J2 explicitly said D/C wasn't part of the canon story. Dean's orientation was clarified several times in his own words. Even having Castiel and Dean spend less screen time together was turned into batshit "negative space" meta where we could supposedly see how in lurve they were by how Castiel's presence was missing from scenes!

It is genuinely an unhealthy, unhinged obsession of their own creation, nothing more and nothing less.

[sweetdreamscometruth]

Rant about this Gaylor stuff

Hetlors coming onto gaylors at any given chances for their "dirty thoughts", "unrespectful behavior" and so on and so forth because "taylor swift is straight" and "to stop assuming her sexuality"; first of all "who cares" like if you don't agree with what someone think go on on your day, block them, block the topic. I'm seing too many of you going after gaylors, posting your opinions under their posts or tags. Every is free to have an opinion, everyone is free to express it. You don’t agree and you know you will never agree with it, then you leave and don’t interact with the people/subject. You all are like little soldiers coming to defend her straightness (which I may say is a bit hypocritical, because as far as I know saying she is straight is also assuming her sexuality, but I guess her being queer is such an horrible and far reaching thought that it must be taken down quickly). I need you to stop a moment, look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself what does it bring to your life to defend TS sexuality like that. To go off after people like that. Are you getting pay or something? Everyone (gaylors and hetlors) is just making speculations (based on facts, hints, etc...), but at the end of the day YOU don't know s*, I don't know shit, NOBODY knows what she identifies as except HERSELF and the people she trusts with this information.

Some people have superiority complex because they are hetlors or because they got a/multiples notice from TS herself or TN, well you're not her friend, you are just a fan and at the end of the day, you just know what she wants you to believe. She is a celebrity but she is also a human. She has an public image and the person she is in her personal life. Just because you can get a glimpse of the latter, that doesn't mean that YOU KNOW HER

Going back on assuming someone sexuality. Truth is that it might be not morally okay to do it, but you do it anyway consciously or not. Not to get into cliché but you see a guy with long painted nails, make up and idk heels, you think (even for 1 second) "oh he's gay". You assumed his sexuality. Maybe you're right, maybe not. Queer people tend to "recognise" themselves through signs or references. There are wordings, imagery, and many stuffs used in the queer community. So when someone tells you "well you know as queer I do recognise or I relate to some of TS actions or lyrics, so maybe she is queer too" and you first reaction is to insult, dox, or tell the person to k word, you are a disgusting human (I'm staying polite). If there are queer people upset about YNTCD video and if lesbians are upset about her using the term lavender (which is FACTUALLY a historical lesbian term, you can put it in any way you want but it is what it is) well they have the right to be upset about the fact that a *publicly* straight cisgender rich white woman is using/appropriating/hetwashing queer/lesbian things

Also did some of you ever study? Because I'm sorry but if you take her discography and you study her lyrics in depth, it can be interpretated as pretty queercoded whether you like it or not. As someone who is having some LGBTQ (and I can go as far a feminism) classes, it sometimes does feel like these women writers/ poets/ or even random people back in these old century who through hidden messages were expressing their sexuality and whose messages are now analysed as queercoded. It is also a fact.

I won't go into what I think TS should or shouldn't do. It is not my life. I don't know her. I don't know her situation and it is HER life. I couldn't care less if she is straight (althought I will admit that I would feel a bit upset) or if she is straight (even if I will admit that a celebrity of her status coming out would be huge). It is not something that keeps me up at night. What I think is MY opinion, I know at the end of the day that I know NOTHING.

Side note: even if we are in 2022, the entertainment industry is still an industry. Practices like closeting, PR relationships, lavender marriage are still actual. It is not because the LGBTQ+ community seems more accepted than before that it actually is. Practice are still used to keep some things hidden from the public. So if (big if) TS is queer and in the closet maybe it is because of the industry, maybe it is because she doesn't want to be out. Who knows.

I will finish by saying that I believe that Taylor Swift has really mastered the art of keeping both her straight and queer side of the fandom active. Enough references and lyrics to satisfy the hetlors while keeping the queer speculations alive.

[asexual-juliet]

rob thomas doesn’t know cassidy casablancas was queer but he absolutely was

[absynthe--minded]

If you don’t mind because I love to hear it, what editorial choices did Christopher Tolkien make that really frustrate you?

My top one would be Turin’s character assaination.

I do not mind being asked!! this is an incomplete list but I hope it gets the point across

Túrin’s character assassination is astonishing, you’re right, for me it’s specifically everything in Nargothrond as well as the minimizing of Saeros (and sometimes Daeron) harassing him for racist and xenophobic reasons. This is really well-known so I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it unless people want me to? it’s probably best encapsulated in another post lol.

WHERE ARE THE WOMEN, CHRISTOPHER, WHERE ARE THEY. Haleth’s all-woman bodyguards get cut out! Míriel being the inventor of sewing gets cut out! Indis and Nerdanel having a friendship gets cut out! Andreth gets cut out, with not even a mention of the Athrabeth! Morwen and Niënor lose all their character traits! Finduilas is a ghost of her former self! Idril’s character gets cut down to nothing!

Findis and Lalwen not existing. I’m actually going to give them their own bullet point because Lalwen goes to Beleriand with her brother Fingolfin. That’s an entire extra Finwëan princess to talk about!

cutting the Wanderings of Húrin from the Silmarillion was a Bad Choice because it robs Húrin of his status as like. almost a warning of divine punishment. With the Wanderings, and specifically his travels to Gondolin and Menegroth, you can make the argument that Doriath falling and Gondolin falling were in large part because they failed to look after innocents and refugees, and that’s a really neat angle

Gil-galad Son Of Fingon. Gil-galad’s parentage changed so many damn times. I am all for Gil-galad the adopted son of Findekáno and also kind of Maitimo? but Gil-galad the biological son of Fingon has caused so many fandom problems. Leaving his parentage ambiguous would have been the right choice, and Christopher himself agrees with me here.

Beren and Lúthien being directly involved with killing the dwarves who killed Thingol. Christopher also admits in HoME that having Guy Gavriel Kay help with ghostwriting that Silm chapter was a mistake, and that he probably could have succeeded in creating a coherent narrative from his father’s later work (specifically the draft where Celegorm and Curufin kill the dwarves, assuming they have the Silmaril, but Melian actually took it and went to Lúthien)

I’m still doing research on this so I can’t actually speak authoritatively on it yet but what inspired my original frustrated post was the fact that as far as I can tell, the bits in the Silm chapter “Of Maeglin” about Maeglin’s desire to marry Idril being seen as incestuous and twisted and disgusting? Entirely absent from the drafts. All I’ve found in HoME and TFOG so far indicates that J.R.R. Tolkien never wrote anything close to that - Maeglin wanted to marry her, sure, but in the Book of Lost Tales, their marriage is frowned upon because Turgon thought that his nephew was clout-chasing rather than genuinely in love with his daughter. And the other HoME volumes usually have some variation on “Maeglin wanted to marry her, and Turgon loved and trusted him, but she married Tuor instead”, if they mention him at all. All the stuff about how he loved without hope, and how she saw him as terrifyingly warped? I’m willing to say that there’s a very good chance he invented that. Maeglin’s characterization in JRRT’s writing is very different from how he is in the Silm.

Amrod surviving at Losgar. I feel like this is a pretty agreed-upon fandom thing? We all sort of just accept that he died. But it still annoys me that Chris decided not to follow that path.

Argon not existing at all. Argon’s death mirrors Amrod’s death - both Fëanor and Fingolfin have to lose a son before they can begin life in exile, and one dies in fire and the other dies in freezing cold. It also sets up an interesting relationship since Argon died defending his family and his people and Amrod died because of someone else’s selfish and misguided attempt to defend his family.

the removal of a lot of the more queercoded/queer-subtext moments. Túrin and Beleg kiss in front of the Gaurwaith in the Lay of the Children of Húrin, and in that version and the Book of Lost Tales version of the story, Túrin kisses Beleg after he dies. The green Elessar that Galadriel gives to Aragorn is mentioned to be a betrothal gift in Laws and Customs among the Eldar, and there’s one version of the story where that same green stone was given to Fingon by Maedhros.

downplaying the presence of Taliska in the narrative and stripping out a lot of Edainic cultural worldbuilding. Taliska, one of the Edainic languages (or an Edainic language with several distinct dialects) hasn’t had any publicly released information about grammar and construction. We never find out in the published Silm that the Atani - the mortal Men - call themselves the Seekers, the way the elves call themselves the Quendi. We don’t learn that nothlir is the Taliska word for “folk” or “people”, so nothlir Haletha means “folk of Haleth”. All the lengthy discussion of Edainic philosophy from the Athrabeth is gone, and Chris’s decimation of the Narn i Chin Húrin means we don’t know anything in the Silm chapter about life in Dor-lómin under Húrin and Morwen’s leadership.

I hope that answers your question? sorry, this turned out to be long.

[descent-into-the-rift]

What if Will Byers is bisexual

Mike turning out to be gay and Will turning out to be the one that’s bisexual is a very funny twist and all but, what if it did happen.

Maybe someone has talked about this before, and if so I’m sorry and I’d love to read it xx And please, don’t take this as a straight-up rejection of Will being gay, I still think it’s very plausible that he’s actually gay and not bisexual, (and of course, everybody has the right to their own view of it) but I really wanted to talk about this cause I actually think it’s interesting and I honestly really like the headcanon of it.

Will is the only character in the party who’s verbally queercoded, called “queer”, “gay”, “f*g” and “fairy”. He also did things such as a project of Alan Turing, claiming a day “free of girls” and so on. But actually, can we talk about something for a second?

I’ve seen it mentioned that the scene where the boys are playing Dragon’s Lair in the Arcade in 2x01 and Dustin and Lucas’ conversation is foreshadowing for Max. I agree with that, and in addition to that here’s a thing, Will is genuinely hyping Dustin up as he’s playing, Mike is too but he remains a step behind, while Will and Lucas are at Dustin’s sides.

And when Dustin loses, while Mike looks unaffected the entire time, when Lucas says “- Until then, Princess Daphne is still mine” Will grins, seemingly more interested than Mike.

There’s a palpable difference between the rest of the party’s interest in Max - and Mike’s, this is something everyone knows. And Will looks just as interested in her as Dustin and Lucas. And I may be crazy but when Dustin says "And plus, she skateboards so she’s pretty awesome” it does seem like Will’s nodding and smiling (like Lucas) even.

A reason he doesn’t straight up fancy her is he’s already in love with someone else (Mike), regardless of whether he is aware of it or not at that point, and nothing changes that. I know that he could just be impressed by the fact that she’s Madmax but, they make it a point to show you that, unlike Mike, Will is also willingly looking at her distinctly amazed, running to her crumpled paper and looking abashed (as Dustin and Lucas) when she calls them out. Mike is the only one that, unbothered, finds her note amusing.

Fine, could be a stretch, but it doesn’t end there. If I'm not entirely wrong, inside the show, Jonathan happens to compare Will to a singer that was bisexual; David Bowie.

This is probably a straight-up reach but from what I have understood, Spring Awakening (the musical Stranger Things Writers on Twitter chose to describe Will) is a musical that includes an mlm couple, in which one of them (Hänschen) is bisexual. I’m not saying just because said boy is bisexual in Spring Awakening it means in Stranger Things one of the two has to be, but if it was; Mike’s shown a lot of signs of not being attracted to girls at all, so that would leave Will.

That doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything though, but yeah.

I’m just saying if I’m not wrong, Will has never shown actual signs of not being attracted to girls, he’s shown signs of being attracted to boys; signs such as The Cure’s poster and the Alan Turing project on whose their hero - and liking Mike specifically; an endless number of signs.

Him claiming a day free of girls is not a general rejection of girls, it’s claiming a day that Mike isn’t spending with Eleven, and Lucas isn’t spending with Max, back when he didn’t feel like he was being pushed aside for the sake of their girlfriends. When he didn’t feel like Mike was pulling away from him to spend every hour with Eleven.

His comments about girls such as “Girls don’t play video games” and “Girls go to science camp?” are pretty general, a lot of teenage boys thought those things, especially back then.

His reaction to Mike’s comment “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls” could actually just be how hard it hits him that, after everything that’s happened, Mike would ever say this to him. Something like what Troy, James, and his own father used to say to him, coming from Mike.

His smile being hinted as fake when he’s dancing with the girl at the snowball is not the girl herself, it’s that it’s Mike he wants to dance with. Even the script mentions that Will is thinking about someone else entirely (Mike) rather than the girl he's dancing with.

I’m not gonna mention Jennifer Hayes because having a number of girls like you doesn’t necessarily mean you like them back.

Well, I’m not saying all this is unarguable, for sure, I’m just saying it actually could be a thing. And “Mike turning out to be gay and Will bisexual” seems less and less crazy the more you think of it. At the end of the day, Will and Mike are in love, regardless of anything else, so I just think, additionally, this possibility is really cool.

Anyway, thank you for reading all of that if you did. Regardless of that, I hope the best for you xx

[frogboyandzombieface]

Hey !!! I heard your bored , so am I :) I have a few questions for you , you can answer them if you want <3 ( I‘ll only ask stranger things questions I hope that’s ok )

Favorite season ?

Favorite characters ?

A scene you want to see in season 4 ?

Is Mike gay or Bi ( or straight ) ?

What season 4 storyline are you most excited to see ?

Favorite ships ?

Favorite quote?

Least favorite character ?

Least favorite ship ?

I can’t think of more questions right now lol sorry 🙈. Have a great day and stay safe!! 💗

HIII OH YM GOD THANK YOU!??? I LOVE YOU???? DHDHDHS 😭i did NOT expect to get this many ... yes of course it's totally fine non !! (that's my nickname for anons lolol) THANK UUU ok here we go

favourite season?

SEASON TWOOO BAYBEEEE i just LOVE THAT motherfucker . it's got the BEST 80's vibes and awesome soundtrack and THE BYLER!!!!😭😭😭😭and also MAX AND STEVE AND ALSO I LOVE PUNK EL I KNOW THAT THAT PART OF THE STORYLINE IS CONTROVERSIAL AND I AGREE IT HAS SOME ISSUES BUT I LOVE PUNK EL OKAY and i love her exploring her darker side and using her powers to get revenge but she too much of a sweetie to be like kali. she's an angel. i love el . adore her <3333 and the colour palettes and the scenes and GAH!! i just love season 2 okay. though season 1 is SUUUPER close because holy fuck that one is so beautiful and emotional especially with joyce and will being missing and learning about hoppers past and GOD !!!! just fuckign great. And I LOVE THE LITTLE KIDS THEYRE SO CUTE ! AND SO MUCH FUN!!! god i love it . season 2's my fav but s1 is So So close by like a sliver ...

favourite characters?

MAX . ROBIN. UHH WILL. DUSTIN. MIKE. uM .... csnt fucking decide oKAY 3)33&28/8922 i love them all!!! they're all my blorbos and i adore them with every bit of my tiny little pathetic gay heart !!!?2! THOUGH.... my fav FAVs are max will and robin. im not gonna chose they're all at the same level i love em thoigh robin maybe just a tiny bit less because we don't know as much about her yet , i get more attached the more we learn though i guarantee that when season 4 comes out and we get a bit more robin stuff (hopefully)... she will definitely be with max and will. I just love them. though I LOVE DUSTIN AND MIKE TOOO!!!! dustin is such a great character he's been such an awesome staple and the show definitely would be bad as hell without him. and i love mike because i LOVE HIS FUCKING STORY AND HIS CHARACYER ARc he's just my pathetic little sad gay repressed homosexual. this is probably not making sense im so sorry😭

a scene you want to see in season 4?

GOD. anything. i just want to see A SCENE . i am so desperate for content that i will literally take anYYYTHINGZZZ ... though we have gotten some new shit lately in the lead up to s4 but it's been like what?? 3 years since we've had new stuff ? or is it 4? no it's gotta be 3 .. im terrible ag maths. but tbh i reALLY REALLY want to see ronance content , el discovering herself and like finding more things she's happy about specifically a hobby, i really want her to have an interest in something because she's had like . literally NOTHING except like all her trauma or just interest in like . mike. lIKE WHAT DOES SHE LOVE OTHER THAN THAT?? can she paint? will she write ? like give me a hobby pls!!! 💀as max says there's more to life than stupid boys please let her flourish as an individual . but like dude .. there as so many scenes i wanna see and this is So long already and i think i will leave it there before i go on an incomprehensible annoying ass tangent thank u

is mike gay bi or straight ?

ohhhkay so this discourse i been seeing a lot lately . ummm ima be dead honest he seems to be more queercoded as gay rather than bisexual like .. he throws himself into a relationship with el and like yes he does show genuine interest at first and like im going off the top of my head but basically just read @beepboop358 's byler proof google slides. that will summarise my whole opinion on the whole thing tbh. BUT !! im not opposed to him being bi!!! we have no idea at this standpoint guys rememebr that ! mike has a long way to go in terms of accepting himself and coming to terms and discovery etc let's just see what the duffers are gonna do with it !!! :)) so im gonna say it can be either one but i am leaning slightly towards gay because of all the subtext .

what season 4 storyline r u most excited to see ?

ALL OF THEM !!!! literally all of them. god im so so fuckimg exicted we're gonna get CONTENT BAYBEEEE i been watching the same 3 seasons for what feels like a goddamn lifetime like PLS.. ima be a bit basic and say the pizza gang mainly because i wanna see byler develop (and it looks like they're really leaning into it now !! HOLY SHIT FHDHDJDJB!!!!! i been shipping them since 2017 and ppl thought it was like a crack ship my god we've come so far .. ) though also very excited to see the older teens storyline especially with eddie seeing what kinda character he is !!

favourite ships ?

ummm obviously byler 😭😭😭😭and also elmax GOD elmax ... and also lumax !!! fucking love them. but also ronance and stoncy and also byclair and henclair .... like so much. i love em all. AND HENDERHOP very cute <3 and hopclair!!! i just love them ALL and also steveddie even though we barely have any content yet but i have a feeling it's gonna be really fun :))

favourite quote ?

mmm this is a good question honestly !!! i really like jonathan's quote "you shouldn't like things just cause people tell you you're supposed to" i love that honestly . makes me very happy :)) but like .. also hoppers letter at the end of s3??? it just gets to my heart in a way i can't explain... like damn. i remembr first time i watched it i CRIED my eyes out like jesus but also. half the quotes from season 1 i love 'em . so many iconic bits in that season

least favourite character ?

lonnie and brenner . those cunts can go rot in hell 🥰

least favourite ship?

umm i don't know to be honest. i don't have a ship that i hate , well actually h*rringrove i DESPISE they can fuck off .. hate the billy / karen thing years are taken off my life ever time im forced to see it..

i don't like j*pper very much (but only season 3, im not about to get into it rn i cant be fucked though i don't hate it) j*ncy is eh and m*leven . i don't hate melvin but i don't think they right for each other same with j*ncy. but otherwise idk i don't hate that many ships .. there's not that many that get under my skin except i don't prefer it if they don't really have chemistry or have issues though not saying relationships can't ever have issues that's unrealistic ,

and ITS OKAY THATS PLENTLY OF QUESTIONS FJDJDJ and i hope u like my annoying long ass answers becaude i have so much shit to say !!! I HOPE YOU HAGE A GREAT DAY/NIGHT TOO ANON THANK U I LOVE U <3333

[variousqueerthings]

Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Two of Three

Part 1

Part 3

6. Sexual Awakenings part 1: Love, Obsession, & Size Differences

[Insert that post talking about the creators making sure that Daniel’s antagonists were much bigger than him so that the audience would sympathise, spawning 10000 size kink fics]

I’m sure this won’t awaken anything in Daniel

Corporate wants you to find the difference between these two pictures

The hallmark of feminine fairytales tends to be growing into womanhood, with all those symbolic sexual under/overtones, searching for a prince, encountering monsters (or evil stepmothers), on the surface tending to be quite passive/reactive, but actually being about young girls and women getting out of their environment and choosing to tussle with those deep, dark desires – monsters. They’ve got to function within the limitations of power that they have – escaping an abusive situation through marriage, chasing forbidden desires under the guise of duress, asking questions about sexuality through things like symbolic plucking (flowers) or consumption (fruit) or pricking (needles), etc.

Daniel isn’t striking out to find his fortune or win a girl or a kingdom Like A Man, he’s not a threat to Silver, who – like Jareth in Labyrinth – is in control for almost the whole of the narrative, he’s not actually able to do much more than react until he makes the decision to stop training, and even then he’s immediately ganged up on and assaulted, needing to be saved by Miyagi while he stands and watches, bloodied and bruised. 

Daniel’s journey in the third movie is to be forced into an impossible situation, seduced by Silver, and then prove that whatever violence Silver did to him isn’t enough to destroy him. It is incredibly similar to Sarah’s in Labyrinth, who by the end declares: “you have no power over me,” and that’s her winning moment. Not strength, not wits, not a direct fight, (although Daniel does fight Barnes and gets beat up again – only winning in in the end by taking him by surprise, unlike in TKK1 or TKK2 where you could argue that he proves himself to be a capable physical opponent to Johnny and Chozen), but by declaring that whatever power was held over her is now void.

Daniel’s narrative isn’t satisfying in the same way, because the dynamic of Silver and Daniel only accidentally emulates this - it’s not an intention on the side of the film-makers.

When Miyagi tells Daniel that he has strong roots, when he tells him not to lose to fear and Daniel wins over Barnes (in an almost fairytale-esque set of events), on paper he’s defeated whatever hold Terry Silver has over him. In the film itself though, Daniel never defeats Silver (which will likely be confirmed once he returns in Season Four). Daniel cannot simply say “you have no power over me,” and see Silver shattered into glass shards. 

The film is a contradiction: It wants to be a masculine sports film, but it exists in the same realm as Goblin Kings seducing young girls with the promise of: “Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” Unlike Sarah, Daniel doesn’t claim the power that’s been promised to him on his own terms. His subtextually sexual awakening is so corrupted that all he can do is pretend it never happened.

Still, Daniel proves in the film that his strength is not in his fists. It’s in his praying to the bonsai tree that’s healed despite a violent boy brutally tearing it in two.

These looks on Daniel and Silver though?

So why does Silver become obsessed with him? What’s up with all those red outfits (that he doesn’t wear in Cobra Kai)? What does the temptation reveal about Daniel? How does it recontextualise TKK1 and TKK2? Is Daniel bisexual? (yes).

Ah, beach-Daniel, in your red hoodie and your cut-off jorts. Iconic hot-girl summer vibes. 

If you didn’t want me over-analysing this, you shouldn’t have put him in so many red outfits and then have this man leering at him like he wants to eat him alive.

Surface-level it’s not hard to read into a Dude Story: Masculine power fantasies are about strength in a very direct way. Fighting, control, suaveness – and if you’re not the most traditionally masculine of guys, asserting dominance through being a good lover or intelligent or overcoming that unmanliness in some way through beating the bully or convincing the hot girl to go out with you, levelling up in coolness. Being A Man. It’s not too dissimilar from Daniel’s arc in the first movie, if you watch it without taking later events into account, although Daniel is never interested in proving himself as a man, and more in making Miyagi proud. Still, he does win and gain respect, and arguably “get the girl,” although Ali’s interest in him was never dependent on the fight.

7. Sexual Awakenings Part 2: Sexual Assault, Liberation, and Queerness

Feminine power fantasies are often about sex. Metaphorically. More accurately it’s “owning sexuality.” Even more accurately: “Freedom.” They also inhabit a fluid space in which empowerment through monstrous desires and non-consent can happen at the same time. And on top of that, many of these “fantasies” are actually being written by men, so whose fantasy is it really? A lot of them are based in oral traditions so presumably they were originally from the mouths of women, even if modern iterations (starting with Grimm’s collections) are filtered through cis men’s perspectives.

All of that being acknowledged: In Angela Carter’s “The Company Of Wolves,” Red Riding Hood unambiguously sleeps with the wolf. Belle discovers her freedom from expectations and unsuitable suitors (and in some versions, evil stepsisters) by falling in love with a Beast (the original novel was written by a woman, the 18th century Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve). Jareth informs Sarah of his obsessive devotion to her in Labyrinth. To lean into horror for a moment – Buffy is stalked and eventually has relationships with both Angel and Spike, Lucy in Coppola’s Dracula (which I have mixed feelings about) is raped by the werewolf and Mina is stalked by Dracula, The Creature Of The Black Lagoon kidnaps Kay (the lead’s girlfriend) – subverted in both The Shape Of Water in which Eliza forms a consensual relationship with the amphibious sea-god and in the short-lived horror series Swamp Thing, in which the connection is purposefully framed as seductive…

and in The Karate Kid Part Three Daniel LaRusso punches a board until his hands bleed because an attractive, older man tells him to and in this moment he gives in to what he (thinks he) wants.

Not all of those examples are equal. Some are consensual, some are hinted as abusive and/or stalkery, all of them have large age gaps, and a few are outright non-consensual.

But they’re all fantasies.

They’re all power-fantasies.

Except for Daniel, because he’s a man and the idea that being obsessed (lusted) over by an older man who keeps you in his thrall, specifically because you tickle his fancy for whatever reason, because you’re beautiful, breakable, different – could in any way be considered empowering is a difficult concept to wrap your head around. It doesn’t contain that “but I’m a good girl, I’d never go off the path and pluck flowers if a bad wolf told me to, honest,” societal context or the social context of rape culture. It’s closest comparison is closeted (perhaps even unknown until that point) queer identity.

There have recently been some comparisons of Daniel LaRusso to Bruce Bechdel in Funhome (and everyone who says that Ralph Macchio ought to play him in the upcoming movie: you’re right and I’m just not going to enjoy it as much without him). I’ve written a post about Sam being the heir to his legacy and trauma, specifically as a queercoded man. It’s not dissimilar to the plot of Funhome in a lot of ways.

The other interesting source that’s been going around in connection with Daniel is the essay “The Rape of James Bond,” which discusses the use of sexual assault as a plot device for women and not for men: “About one in every 33 men [in the US] is raped. … [your statistically average, real life man] … doesn’t have a horde of enemies explicitly dedicated to destroying him. He doesn’t routinely get abducted, and tied up. Facing a megalomaniac psychopath gloating over causing him pain […] is not the average man’s average day at the office.” That last bit is just a descriptor of Terry Silver, (although I take issue at the blasé use of psychopath).

The two part youtube essay  Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs posits that there is nothing more de-masculinising than the threat of sexual assault and therefore any narrative that features this “rightfully” must mock any man who has been a victim or who fears being a victim of sexual assault. It is feminising. There is nothing more humiliating – and therefore unheroic – than a man dealing with sexual assault.

So what do we feel when we see an attractive young man being put into a vulnerable position by an older man? A trope associated with female characters, a trope that is considered unpalatable for men (see reactions that happened when the hint of sexual assault was introduced in Skyfall).

Was it the fact that he was being threatened, or the fact that James’ next line is: “what makes you think this is my first time?”

Some thoughts added by @mimsyaf​ are around the idea of safety in how a lot of cis women might relate to this narrative through Daniel’s eyes. He’s not a woman, he has – societally – more power than a girl or woman would have, which makes this a different watch to, say, if Danielle were to go through the same narrative. Daniel doesn’t carry that baggage of rape culture, or of the male gaze that you might find in a similar scenario of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Christine in Phantom of the Opera (and once more the age differences between these characters and the men who love/lust over them are substantial), which makes the narrative “safer” to engage with.

I agree with that, although as a transmasc person I also come at it differently. I specifically like to headcanon Daniel as a trans guy and find his fraught interactions with masculinity through his own non-toxic lens relatable, as well as the way other boys and men react to it – also I think Terry Silver is hot. I know there are people who write Terry Silver with female OCs, which is also a form of empowerment.

On the flipside putting Daniel in this space runs a risk of fetishising him as a queer youth who is either Innocent and Pure, or a bisexual stereotype that deserves to be assaulted for not being a real man. After all, Real Straight Men don’t run the risk of sexual assault.

 Alas, the road to empowerment never did run smooth. 

The comparisons between the way Daniel is treated by the text and how female characters are often treated in texts are undoubtedly there. Through Ralph Macchio and TIG’s casting and the direction and acting, but also within the text itself. 

It might not be with the same purpose as Neo’s symbolically trans journey, but it puts the whole narrative that Daniel’s going through from TKK1 under a different light than if there had only been one movie that ended on a triumphant sports win and a girlfriend.

Johnny’s masculinity and the use of tears as liberation, now that’s a whole other analysis….

[thekatebridgerton]

The only thing I care about Sophie's casting is that when she gets announced she receives more love messages than hate ones, I'm sure a lot of people will be upset about her BEING A WOMAN! I'm sure Benedict's storyline in S2 will upset the people who believe he should end up with a man even if they said since the beginning that all the couples will end with their canon couples

Okay I've been debating how to answer this for a while and I guess it's all in how you see it Anon.

While it's true that Benedict's character is 100% queercoded (and Eloise to a lesser extent) and deserves a chance to explore all that can of worms on screen for all the glory of the LGBTQ community to enjoy. The reaction to Sophie being a woman would also have a lot to do with WHEN the audience started liking Bridgerton. For book fans who have been in this for ages and have gotten used to the idea of a Sophie for years, having Benedict's ultimate love interest turn out to be a man would feel incredibly like betrayal. Because the character in a way has aged with the readers who are looking forward to Benedict's relationship with Sophie.

But if people were only introduced to Benedict in the show, where Benedict is way more queercoded than in the books his character development in season 1 would feel too much like queerbaiting. And fandoms are usually very very passionate in their dislike of this particular type of 'almost' LGBTQ representation. They would be right to be angry. It sucks when a show just uses a character's sexual orientation to lure in viewers without giving them the pay off.

But at the same time should Benedict turn out to be either Bisexual (or Pansexual). And still end up with Sophie, then it should be treated in the show as bluntly as possible. Because Bisexuals are notoriously misinterpreted in media and if they're going to do it, do it right!! So that his storyline feels less like queerbaiting and more like character development.

I am personally hoping their relationship progresses as organically as possible with Ben's bisexuality coming into play in a natural way. (Not in a forced representation sort of way.)

All in all I do prefer Sophie as a woman, I grew up with the Bridgerton books and would love to see my beloved character Sophie Beckett be played on screen by a great actress and be given the love she deserves. But if she isn't and Benedict's storyline ends up being super gay, and instead of Sophie we get a Solomon then that's okay too.

I've got a ton of romantic white Hetero oriented media I can enjoy. If I want a Cinderella story with X and Y characteristics, I can have my pick. Because it's all the media that's been allowed to exist since the founding of Hollywood. The LGBTQ community doesn't have that. They don't have a large pool of options that show the spectrum of their representation. And they're allowed to demand it.

Does this mean a Benedict gay storyline would be more interesting for me and that I won't feel sad if Sophie is erased from the storyline? No! I'll still get sad and I'll still be mad about it. I'm human and I love that character.

The difference is that I just won't go into people's internet safe places and rant about it. I'm not a jerk. If I don't like things I don't try to make those who like it feel bad. That's not okay. And those who do that need to seriously re-evaluate themselves.

I think this is something that needs to change in fandom culture. The whole thing about shaming others for liking what they like. It's not something I agree on. Especially because it just makes the fandom more toxic and unwelcoming.

And there are people who do it on both sides of the argument so this needs to be addressed

[alarrytale]

It's another way to closet him without having to rely so much on spinning stories about him with women. Old queer stereotypes still work on the general public unfortunatly. By presenting a more straight stereotypical image, he doesn't have to stunt as much. Maybe that's what we see happening here. //

How much I believe clothes have no sexuality so I also believe specific sport also doesn’t have sexuality (you can wear basic clothes without any queercoding and still be very gay and so you can be pro boxer and still be gay as fck), if this is how to proove gp that H is indeed straight because old fashioned stereotypes then I will take it anytime rather than seeing him stunting with woman. But unfortunately he’s currently officially in relationship so there’s no way for him to hint he’s gay.

But btw him doing sport is so complex, like we know he’s also into pilates, doing meditations (at least I want to believe it) and he has purple belt in jiu jitsu. So there’s much more than manly boxing and heavy weight lifting but bare anyone know.

Hi, anon!

I agree. I'd also take straight image Harry if that means less stunting. Even if he's in a public relationship (we haven't seen them together in a good while...) this new look could mean less appearances together for Harry. Harry being in a public relationship hasn't stopped him from queercoding, acting super gay and hint he's gay before. Doing double communication is both H and L's specialty. So i don't think he's adopted this straighter look because he's currently in a public relationship with a woman.

My biggest issue with this new straight(er) look is that larries who think he's willingly closeted will take this as an argument to not talk publicly about larry and give H and L P-word around their relationship. They will probably ignore the fact that Louis is still out there singing 7, bringing attention to larry in the media and inviting Dylan to his festival.

Harry loves all kinds of sports and work outs. I think he's tried it all. We used to get pics of him and get fan stories of him doing bikram yoga, coming out of S*ulCycle and running. Right know it's focused on football, golf, boxing and weight-lifting. There is a narrative shift here for me. But i don't know why and where it's leading.

[autisticandroids]

i was reading ur alt s6 stuff and i think they fumbled the heaven and angels plots so badly in s6 and the following seasons so much because they simply didn't care about heaven at all. they wrote it because they needed cas to be Away and Busy. partly because of the superpowered character thing and partly bc of the dean thing. so instead of actually thinking anything through they would set up and knock down angels plots so cas would always be off chasing something 1/3

pi KNOW they were worried about having such an overpowered character with suddenly no qualms about being loyal entirely to them, but the solution to that is to simply make him human. there is so much to explore there and he wouldn't be useless - his knowledge alone would be incredibly useful, not to mention his connections. he would be the anya (from buffy) of spn - has a bunch of comic relief moments but also bc he's new at humanity & played as autistic he can cut through the bullshit by 2/3

simply questioning things that are taken for granted. which would help both boys question their status quo's and continue to grow instead of falling back into the same brother drama over and over and over again. anyway this all started because i was commenting on how the spn writers had zero interest in heaven but i guess i ended up opposite of where u are and i propose getting rid of heaven politics altogether and bring cas down to earth lmao. but anyway i love reading ur alt s6 stuff! 3/3

okay so, i have my own theories on the specifics of why the angel shit happened the way it did, but yeah you’re mostly right. basically: i think s6, specifically, suffered more from “sera gamble is a bronly” disease than “we need to get rid of cas for uhhhhhhhhhh reasons” disease. 

i actually wouldn’t mind if s6 was a jeremy carver style “we need to get rid of cas for uhhhhhhhhh reasons” plot, that’s actually basically what my season six au is! like my au is in many ways “what if season six, but carver style (but good because carver is incompetent as a writer and showrunner)?” like, i think fundamentally the problem with the angel bullshit in carvernatural is threefold. first, carver’s seasons were just, like, bad, because carver was a bad showrunner. like, he was a heller, he loved cas, he intentionally queercoded dean so hard that i’m shocked he didn’t get shut down by the network, but he was a bad writer and showrunner. reason number two is that he was always trying to separate cas from the bros but never for like..... reasons that made sense. it was all kind of manufactured conflict, or a lot of it was. plus i feel like once cas has lost his wings it makes more sense for him to actively try and stick w the bros, vs before that it does make sense that he’d be off doing his own shit. and then the third, biggest reason why the carver seasons angel bullshit didn’t work was fucking! because godstiel was SO critical to all the angel bullshit but sera gamble didn’t give a shit and made a hash of the worldbuilding!

like, i actually really like angel stuff because i am, in my heart, a star trek fan, i love stories about governments and bureaucracies and diplomacy and politics and espionage and institutions. and the only real place for that on spn is heaven. hell, that’s actually why a lot of the heaven stuff feels out of place: the basic vibe of spn requires that governments not exist. this is something i’ve always found kind of galling about spn, actually, BECAUSE i love stories about governments. but heaven politics can be that, so in my spn it will be because i think it’s sexy.

but like, no, the problem with season six specifically is first and foremost that sera gamble is a bronly, and only cares about cas insofar as he affects or illuminates the brothers, which is CRAZY given that he was the one having the character arc in season six.

but also i do agree with you. if i was allowed to cause the show to go totally au after or mid s4? i would completely be like..... keep angels as fucked up and mysterious and inhuman as possible and just nerf cas and then keep him fucking nerfed. i actually made a post about this a million years ago where i said if i could make like, a couple things about spn good good instead of like, spn good, then one of those things would be angels and keeping them big and scary and other. and the best way to do this is never have them play too big a role and to keep cas fucking nerfed.

also, i LOVE the concept of cas as the anya of spn fkjgneirjgneign

[dgcatanisiri]

For the love of...

Look. Let’s address the obvious first off: Fandom has problems with women. We all know this. We also know that “has problems” is putting matters rather mildly.

That is a fine premise. Plenty to go on from there.

What is NOT a fine follow up is defending the idea that “fandom hates women” by pointing to the reaction to R*ylow. Because that entire ship? That is a dumpster fire in its own right even before getting to the whole dust up where, because of him making a harmless joke about sex, specifically his character in Star Wars and Rey, another fictional character in Star Wars, having sex, there’s a movement within that group to discredit and tear down John Boyega. 

Like, we’ll get to that business in a bit. But let’s address the fact that the majority of R*ylows are shipping CHARACTERS THAT ARE NOT SHOWN. 

The whole business of this ship is to use Rey to “redeem” “Ben Solo,” a character who metaphorically killed himself in TFA through the literal killing of his father. The two meetings of Rey and Kylo Ren in TFA were first him rendering her unconscious and kidnapping her, and then her attempting to kill him for his murder of Han Solo and attack of Finn - killing her mentor and attacking her friend.

But those who ship this transplant the characteristics that defined Finn onto Kylo Ren, who they refer to as Ben Solo, a name he rejects until about the last hour of the most recent movie. They make him into a tortured character who is tragically torn between the light and the dark, has not made a decision on where he stands and needs to be pulled back. EXCEPT Kylo Ren was introduced ordering the slaughter of an innocent village - a slaughter that Finn refused to participate in. 

All of this is, let’s not mince words, based off the fact that Kylo Ren is a white man and Finn is a black man. Because we saw, back before TFA released, a heaping TON of abuse hurled towards him purely for BEING a black man - I remember vividly all the anti-blackness going around when we had no more than a trailer for the sequel trilogy. 

I am not - let me repeat this NOT - shaming anyone, male, woman, enby, whatever you identify as, for wanting the narrative of “saving the monster.” As a queer person, yeah, I get that, considering that a lot of my narratives growing up that I can identify with have all kinds of queercoding throughout them, even when involving straight pairings. But the defining difference has always been that in those stories, the monster wanted to be accepted as a person. TFA gave us a monster who chose to be monstrous.

And TLJ only added into this narrative - Rey refused to join Kylo. ONCE AGAIN, he spurned her offers of coming back to the light, choosing to take the leadership of the First Order. We also saw in flashback that he chose to respond to Luke briefly flirting with the idea of killing him by BURNING THE ACADEMY TO THE GROUND. Whatever you want to say about Luke’s moment of weakness, that is definitely overreacting, that is taking out your pain on innocent others.

TRoS even brings this to a conclusion, a similar one to the redemption of Anakin Skywalker, being unable to live in the world that he saved, that no act he could do could balance the scales to allow him to be a part of that world, considering the deaths and pain at his hands in specific.

So that - THAT - is who Kylo Ren was on screen.

The R*ylow version of him, however, is some scared teenager/young adult, who has been ignored, emotionally neglected by his parents, nearly murdered by his uncle, and drowning in the darkness, in need of a rope.

The canon version of him, to sum up, is a roughly thirty-ish adult man, raised by loving parents who had a galaxy to rebuild and couldn’t devote every second to him, his uncle had a moment of weakness where he pointed a weapon at who he perceived as a threat (I can give this, or I would, had Kylo stayed and even TRIED to get answers, but the indications are that he ran and proceeded to destroy the academy), and at every turn gave in to the darkness until his mother gives her life to drag him back to the light side.

I don’t care what your fantasy is, what bothers me is the ignoring and VERY HIGHLY SELECTIVE reinterpreting of the on screen material to justify this idea of Kylo Ren being a broken and abused bird in need of kindness. Because on screen, he spurns all the kindness he gets until Leia sacrifices herself. And THAT I only accept because of the filming limitations of Carrie Fisher’s last content.

And then we return to the issue of this backlash to John Boyega’s tweets. All of this is because he made a joke about sex, implicitly his character and Rey - the character that R*ylows have designated “belongs” to Kylo - having sex. And this has led to him being harassed (and not for the first time, because TFA did seem to be building to something between Rey and Finn), and by these same people.

We led with “fandom has problems with women.” This? This is “fandom hates black people.” And “fandom REALLY hates interracial couples.”

Like, take a stroll through AO3. How often do you see interracial M/F couples in the top of the listing of pairings? About the only serious example I can come up with off the top of my head is Sleepy Hollow and Ichabod/Abbie, which ended up never being canon. Because of the white showrunners and producers getting cold feet about it and deciding to repeatedly throw white women at Ichabod while continually sidelining Abbie until her actress finally decided to leave - given that she hadn’t even been invited to be part of the special features for the season two DVDs, and the fact that she’d already gotten reduced to the sidekick on a show where she should have been the lead.

Or even on a show where a non-white man is the lead - let’s look at Teen Wolf for another fine example. The show’s lead was a Latino teenager. The favored fandom pairing involves two white guys who, the initial episodes featuring them interacting showed, didn’t particularly care for one another. This led to the fandom turning that dynamic into “they secretly want to fuck,” and, as we see with Finn and Kylo, transplanted characterization and dynamics onto the other characters to prop up their ship.

I repeat myself above. I am not judging fantasy. Hell, I’m not even against writing alternate universe variations where the good guys are bad guys and vice versa. The problem I am seeing here, the reason that I cannot abide R*ylow, the reason that I see that specifically as a toxic fandom element, is because it actively diminishes the black man involved in matters - MANY fics will either downplay or completely trash Finn’s canon character in the name of making him the villain who Kylo must defeat to claim Rey.

These people claim to love “Kylo and Rey,” but frequently they are treating her as his redemptive sexy lamp, her purpose is to be his reward for reaching the bar that is basic human decency, having no interest in her beyond her being there to reward him for finally rejecting the darkness, when she has no canonical romantic interest in Kylo and only knows Ben as an idea. Even when the canon has her trying to reach to him, she is NOT doing it because of her intense love - love is not a switch, it is not some snap decision. It comes about because of knowing a person. Lust is instant. Attraction is instant. Love? That requires time. The ideal of Ben as a person could be attractive. But Kylo is not who Rey is or would be attracted to. 

All of this is still secondary to the fact that, because of an actor making a joke about his character and another character - a character who repeatedly has an inherently far kinder dynamic with his - having sex, there is a group of this fandom who has decided that this was an attack on them, and they must respond in kind. 

Whether or not you agree with ANY of what I have said of the interactions of Kylo and Rey, PLEASE tell me that you agree that THAT behavior is unacceptable. And THAT is the group that people are referring to when they speak so derisively about R*ylows. 

Because that is the group that speaks loudest. They’re who come to mind when the topic turns to this ship. You may not be part of it, but guilt by association comes into effect, because this group is hostile to anyone who doesn’t implicitly agree with them. And when you get this hostility from what comes across - whether it’s fact or perception - as a massive wing of total strangers, strangers who decide that, because you disagree with them, you are The Enemy, and you must be destroyed... Yeah, your reflex becomes “That group is trash, do not listen to them, do not engage with them, and god, aren’t they pathetic for devoting themselves to this ridiculous thing of made up characters.”

You want to go after the issue here? Root out the bad behavior that is the cause. Not the symptom. The symptom might be hating on women. But the cause is still the racism that started all of this.

You want to talk about how fandom hates women? Fine. Go right ahead. But don’t use a topic that came about because of racism to do it.

[kittyprincessofcats]

I know I’m about to open a can of worms here, but... Can someone explain to me how the mind of a Loki-hater works? I just don’t understand? I mean, if someone just doesn’t like him or doesn’t care... fine, whatever, we all find different characters appealing. But what I don’t understand is the people who genuinely call him “a priviledged white murderboy” or compare him to characters like Kylo Ren (who is a priviledged white murderboy, just to be clear on that).

How can someone watch Thor 1, The Avengers, and Thor TDW and somehow come to the conclusion that Loki is a priviledged, sheltered, rich kid who never had problems and kills people for the lulz. HOW? Did they watch the movies with both eyes and ears closed? Did they only watch The Avengers and skip through half of Thor 1? Is it the misogyny (most of Loki’s fans are women so obviously they must only like him for his looks, “dumb fangirls” etc.)? Seriously, how do you watch these movies and miss out on:

- Odin being a dictator and colonizer who kidnapped Loki from his home country as a baby, changed his appearance with a spell to make him “pass” as Asgardian, stripped him of his birth culture and even raised him to consider his birth country evil

- Loki being neglected and not taken seriously his whole life, having his “feminine” interests mocked in Asgard’s partiachic society, constantly being made fun of by Thor’s friends, his own brother - who he adores more than anything - putting him down all the time, his father never acknowleding him

- Loki (who never wanted the throne in the first place) having to suddenly run a kingdom when his brother gets himself banished and his father falls into the Odinsleep, having to suddenly manage a war he didn’t start, dealing with Thor’s friends commiting treason, dealing with the revelation of his heritage and the feeling that he has to prove himself to Odin now. (Okay, to be fair, I think Frigga handing him control and telling him to make his father proud was a deleted scene, so the actual movie might make it look like he took the throne and planned all of this, but he didn’t. Think about it for one second: There’s no way he could have predicted the Odinsleep or Thor’s banishment. He looks shocked when both happen.)

- Loki trying to destroy his birth realm in a desperate attempt to prove that he’s “not like them”, Loki being so desperate that he commits suicide when Odin doesn’t approve.

- No one in Asgard (except for Frigga) mourning Loki at all. Loki asking Thor “Did you mourn?” in The Avengers, because he knows they didn’t and he’s right.

- Loki being tortured by Thanos and forced to attack New York. How is that something people miss? Did everyone take their bathroom break during that scene where The Other threatens Loki? Did they conveniently ignore the after-credits scene?

- Odin telling Loki “Your birthright was to die” and acting like Loki should be grateful Odin didn’t murder him as a baby. Just in case you forgot: This was their first interaction after Loki’s suicide attempt. Odin found out his son - whom he drove to try and commit suicide - was alive, and the first thing Odin did was telling him he should have died and that he would have executed him for his crimes if it wasn’t for Frigga.

- Just to put this into perspective: When Thor started a war and killed hundreds of Frost Giants, Odin banished him to Earth without his powers for three days. When Loki tried to commit suicide, got tortured and attacked Earth and killed people because Thanos forced him to, Odin wanted to execute him, only agreed not to because of Frigga, then locked Loki up in solitary confinement for the rest of his life and didn’t allow Frigga to see him.

- Loki wasn’t even allowed to go to his mother’s funeral. Thor never even asks him why he attacked Earth, only visits Loki when he needs his help, refuses to comfort him about Frigga’s death and promises to lock Loki up again if he does help him. And people are blaming Loki for not telling Thor he was alive? Would you have told the man who promised to lock you up for the rest of eternity that you’re alive? I kinda doubt it.

- And even after all of that, Loki was merciful enough to only banish Odin to a care-home on Earth instead of killing him. (Friendly reminder that Kylo Ren murdered his father while his father was offering him a second chance. Odin never offered Loki any chances, straight-up wanted to kill him, and Loki still showed mercy. But sure, tell me more about how your comparison is totally appropriate.)

How do people watch ALL OF THAT, and somehow not end up at least admitting that Loki was treated unfairly? How do people watch these movies and say that he’s selfish when all he’s ever been doing is sacrificing himself for his family over and over again and getting nothing in return? HOW??? Someone explain this to me, because it blows my mind.

And sidenote - the whole “straight white murderboy” thing is such complete BS it makes me want to slam my head against my desk. 1) Loki’s not straight. He’s canonically bi/pan in the comics and queercoded in all of this movies. 2) Not even the “boy” part is true - Loki is genderfluid. 3) The “white” part is what really blows my mind when people use it as a reason to hate this character. Because first of all Loki’s entire story is about being a different race than the rest of his family and being treated like shit because of it. (Yes, I realize it’s “fantasy blue people racism”, not real-world racism, but it’s still an aspect of the character that - in the fantasy context - makes him the opposite of priviledged.) And secondly... all of the Avengers in A1 are also white? 5/6 of them are straight white guys? So who are we supposed to root for, according to these Loki-haters? In Star Wars, there’s POC heroes who get ignored by the fandom and I understand the frustration of everyone loving the white villain instead - but in the first(!) Avengers everyone is white? So who does tumblr think is a more deserving fave here??? I just don’t understand this logic even in theory??

(Seriously, someone explain this to me? Is is because of the Hitler comparison in The Avengers? Because that honestly should be blamed on Joss Whedon being a shitty writer who can’t get a ‘character is evil’ message accross differently. Narratively, this comparison doesn’t fit at all. Or is it because people took the ‘Loki keeps betraying Thor’ line from Ragnarok and took it seriously instead of judging the movies by what actually happened? I tried to read posts where people explain why they hate Loki, and whenever they list all the “horrible things he’s done” half of them are things that never even happened? Like... “repeatedly betrayed his brother who trusts him” - NOT TRUE, “tried to commit genocide on earth” - NO HE DIDN’T??, “killed more people than anyone else” - FACTUALLY WRONG, “always fakes his death” - HE LITERALLY NEVER DID, “betrayed Asgard” - BITCH WHEN?, “only did one selfless thing in his life” - which one of them are you talking about, just wondering?, “freed Hela” - are we just making shit up at this point? he didn’t even know about Hela!, “caused Odin’s death” - why is anyone acting like that’s a bad thing and Odin didn’t deserve to die?, “facist dictator” - again: WHERE? Do any of you stupid Americans even know what facism is? Stop throwing around big words if you don’t know how to use them.)

Or is it just that people don’t actually know the movies, see a villain who has huge female fanbase and come to the “obvious” conclusion that it must be because those women are stupid and “like making excuses for bad boys”? Do people take Tom Hiddelston more seriously when he talks about Loki’s motivations and says he’s just misunderstood and not evil? Because this time it’s a man saying it?

[variousqueerthings]

look I know we’ve been through this, we’ve been over it, we’ve unpicked it at length, but let me try and take off my queercoding hat for a moment (”try”)

Desire, Devotion, Discipline

Desire and Devotion to what? 

To karate? 

I “Desire” karate, I’m “Devoted” to karate... it’s... an odd concept... Desire in particular isn’t something you’d typically use in this context, desire... to get stronger? a devotion to karate techniques? 

and then that phrasing “the first two I can’t give you, the last one I can, but you have to be willing to receive it”

that’s... I mean, it’s Silver teaching him discipline so he can enact his desire to get stronger, because he’s devoted to karate. I’m guessing this must be the reasoning behind that phrasing? 

Which, if that was the intention, that takes away Silver’s effect on Daniel/makes it entirely about karate as a non-metaphorical concept (as in, karate gives Daniel safety, strength, a home, a sense of self, peace).

It kind of stands in contradiction to the fact that it’s not really about karate as a sport, it’s about how Silver corrupts the thing that makes Daniel feel safe, strong, protected and replaces it with him.

So it doesn’t really make sense, except for as a stretched attempt to try and find a non-sexual context for those words (or, trying to figure out just how heterosexual, cisgender and in no way ever come across kink/bdsm as a concept the people making this movie were/the showrunners have got to be in order to not see a sexual subtext to those words). 

Which leaves... Silver. Obviously.

Silver isn’t really asking Daniel to pour his desire and devotion into karate

He’s telling him to desire and be devoted to him, right? He wants to destroy Daniel and he wants him to thank him for it (textually).

And okay, we’re still without the sexual subtext for the moment, that still makes more sense as a reading, because Silver is trying to make Daniel submit to him/trying to own Daniel (this from the titles from the soundtrack) and to do that Daniel has to give over to him completely. Not to the nebulous concept of karate, which he already practises, but to Silver as his teacher/mentor, which again, explicit in the way Silver bullies/coerces him into dropping Miyagi-do teachings.

which Daniel then at the last moment doesn’t do - he doesn’t give himself over/give his desire and devotion wholly to him, hence Silver’s heel-turn, impulsive beating up of him, when the original plan was to wait for the tournament (I’m giving this movie too much credit, indulge me). We all wonder what would have happened if Daniel had just continued down this path.. a different kind of destruction, for sure

Queercoding hat back on (*phew*):

Once you’ve put “desire” and “devotion” into the context of a person, it’s that much harder to argue that there isn’t at least subtext in that phrasing, regardless of gender. 

And once you’ve agreed that karate is a metaphor for all kinds of things in this verse, then adding that sexual component - specifically as a corruption of everything that draws Daniel to karate in the first place - and the fact that it’s a man enacting this onto a boy riiight on the cusp of manhood...

Terry Silver is grooming Daniel, is what I’m saying here. 

Again, nothing new, but since he’s the dark side to everything that Daniel already feels... reading Daniel as bisexual is just... it’s a very in-your-face read (if you’ve got a swanky queercoding hat on)

And here comes the obligatory “if this were a man and a girl it’d be so much more obvious” disclaimer (Terry Silver tells “Danielle” to desire him... horrifying, very sexual...), but you really do wonder, what possible other read can come out of this just because Daniel’s a boy

Boys can’t be groomed, I...?

I just

I need to know what other alternative reading there can be, what is, say, a heterosexual cisgender audience member who, let’s say, is familiar with tropes, but who’s never heard of queercoding before going to get out of that? 

He’s giving Daniel Discipline (textually), so that Daniel can enact his Desire and Devotion onto him. He is teaching Daniel how to show his desire and devotion to him!

this is

can somebody give me a possible alternate reading of this. I’m thinking there’s got to be something that I’ve missed, because this is barely even a read, this is like.

the shallow end of the pool, this is picking up a glaringly shiny seashell of information right where the tide hits the beach on which it says: An adult man tricks a young boy to meet him after dark without his parental figure knowing and hurts and manipulates him, while convincing him that he has the boy’s best interests at heart.

And the words he uses to convince the boy to trust him are Desire, Devotion, Discipline

it’s not very subtle

anyway, give me alternative reads of this, I want them, silly and serious, I want to know what the cisgender, heterosexual, non-kinky (or ever heard of kink) viewer component might be thinking at that moment

[airagorncharda]

Surprising no one, I have some Fucking Thoughts about Infinity War:

(I don’t know if it actually is, but this FEELS like the longest post I’ve ever written. And that is impressive because I am a long winded motherfucker on a good day and because it’s literally ALL negative)

So first off, I Did Not Enjoy this movie. For my complete list of things I DID like, read this very short post instead. If you enjoyed the movie and don’t want to read somebody absolutely slamming it, you should probably leave now.

Secondly, if you don’t want spoilers I’m not sure why you clicked the readmore, but you’ve now been warned: 

SPOILERS past this point!!!!!!!

I disliked this movie so much that I need to break down the varying ways I disliked it into fucking sections. So starting right off:

I find shock value character death to be cheap and lazy.

And boy did they go hard on the shock value character death. Boy, oh boy. BOY oh boy, did they ever. That was pretty much the entire movie.

If you can’t make the stakes feel high without death, you’re a bad writer. If death is the only card you know how to play, you’re a bad writer. 

I was expecting the characters who’s actor’s contracts are up to get killed off as a cheap and lazy way of explaining why they’re leaving. I was instead handed a movie in which literally everyone ELSE died for even cheaper and lazier shock value reasons that are almost certainly going to get undone (and thus be made pointless) in the next film. I was not impressed. 

The writers are painfully white, and refused to stop reminding us.

When the setting of the movie shifted to Wakanda, I wanted to be happy to see Wakanda. But I wasn’t, because the whole reason we went to Wakanda seemed to be so that the racist ass writers could jerk off while watching Wakanda (and Wakandans) get wrecked (and killed in horrific numbers), all so Wanda (who the MCU super duper whitewashed) didn’t have to kill her white robot boyfriend. 

“If Wakanda falls, it will have been for a noble cause” said the racist white writer puppeting T’Challa. 

Prioritizing the feelings of a white girl and the life of her white boyfriend over not just the hypothetical “half of the universe” Thanos thing, but also the very immediate and literal danger to the lives of ALL OF WAKANDA AND ALL OF THEIR FRIENDS was absolutely bewildering levels of antiblack racism and I was just sitting there shaking my head through it all. It was horrible. It is horrible. I cannot believe that line from T’Challa even made it into the movie. “A noble cause” my ass, that’s so violent, what the fuck.

The writers are painfully heterosexual, and refused to stop reminding us.

Again I scream at Wanda and Vision. Wanda and Vision, who I was hyped about being brought into the MCU because I liked them in the comics, but who have been a constant frustration and disappointment (whitewashed and underutilized as they have been) since their introductions. 

Also Quill and Gamora. 

Like, the writers couldn’t figure out a way to make the story interesting or have stakes without threatening hetero’s heterosexual feelings and heterosexual partners. They just.... couldn’t....................... do it............

Like, lets be real. If the lives of literally half the universe was at stake, everybody I know would be like “sure, I’ll die for that cause”. The conflict felt fake as fuck. People who are that selfish aren’t interesting, and half the characters they made that selfish didn’t used to BE that selfish.

Also, like, Gamora demanding Peter promise to kill her was weird on multiple levels. 

She definitely could have been like “I know the location of an infinity stone, and I know he’ll be able to get it out of me if he gets me alone, so I need you to kill me if that happens” but instead she was just like “I can’t give you a single explanation or detail, just promise me you’ll murder me because you love me so much.” Bad writing. 

And I feel like for Peter specifically, asking him to do that was really cruel. His whole issue with his parents was that his dad murdered his mom, like... asking him to kill her seems extra cruel? And she would know that. Doesn’t she have other friends? Couldn’t she have asked Peter to, like, not get mad at Rocket if Rocket kills her for the same reason? Or Drax? Why did it have to be Peter?? Why ask the person who’d be most emotionally traumatized by having to kill you to be the one to kill you if necessary? And why have her remind him of the death of his mom as a way to convince him to kill her? Bad writing.

Also Bruce and Nat were never interesting to begin with.

Also also Tony talking about wanting kids to a very obviously frustrated and uninterested Pepper was weird and uncomfortable. I feel like we’re supposed to be getting some sort of “they should have kids!” vibe but all I got was a “she doesn’t want to have kids and he’s not getting the memo” vibe. I also am very tired of “my partner wants me to stop being a superhero, guess I’ll feel conflicted but do it anyway but also not break up with them” narratives. Bad.

Thanos’ “random” selection of half of earth didn’t seem that random to me. Like, at all.

The shot of Wakandans dying wasn’t half of them dying, it was like 90% of them dying. And if you pay attention to who disintegrated, it’s.... 

T’Challa (black king of a powerful beautiful African nation, the most technologically advanced nation in the world)

Bucky (disabled and neuroatypical)

Sam (a black man)

I forgot to watch the end credits scene because I was so mad but apparently NICK FURY disintegrates in it, my blood is boiling with rage.

Apparently Maria Hill also disintegrates in it, so there goes a strong female character too.

Again I point to the, like, 90% of Wakanda who survived the combat turning to ash anyway.

Mantis (a woman, played by a Korean actress)

Wanda (a woman. Also whitewashed, but Jewish and Romani in the comics)

Groot (played by a man of color)

Peter Quill (played by one of the three white Chris’ in the movie, but dating a character played by a black woman, so of all the white men to die I find this suspect as fuck)

Drax (played by a Filipino actor).

And that’s not to mention Heimdall (a powerful black man), Loki (who is queercoded, and actually queer in the comics) and Gamora (played by a black woman) who Thanos also killed.

“Random.”

Right.

Except the movie was written by people who clearly have a bias and think it’s quality entertainment to watch PoC and marginalized people in general die. And/or they wanted most of those characters out of the way so Infinity War 2 could focus on the white dudes. Which brings me to my next hated point:

Infinity War 2.

Just.

Fuck that.

Fuck that cash grab bullshit of splitting major motion picture movies into multiple movies for no good reason. Fuck letting people go into a movie with a cliffhanger not knowing it’s going to have a cliffhanger. Fuck forcing people to commit to a years wait for closure on a plot without agreeing to. 

People don’t go to superhero movies to watch the villain win, motherfuckers, we want to see HEROES win! It’s supposed to be a movie that feels GOOD to watch because you can pretend for 2 hours that good people triumph over bad people, and we fucking NEEDED that 2 hours of escapism right now! We did not need a movie about a megolomaniac who wins the election and ruins the lives of everyone we love! We didn’t pay for that shit!!!! 

I mean, I didn’t pay for anything, I watched a bootleg version while curled up in bed, but if your movie hadn’t been a sack of cash grabbing propaganda horse shit I WOULD have paid to see it.

Also. 

People are “SPECULATING” a bunch of stuff like “Dr. Strange did what he did to ensure the eventual defeat of Thanos!!” and “everybody who got disintegrated is going to be resurrected in the next movie!!” but like... it’s not speculation if it’s obvious as fuck, guys. Don’t give the writers more credit than they deserve (they deserve zero credit). Don’t act like it’s not obvious and predictable when it is. 

1) Dr. Strange was not being subtle. “I’ve looked at all the potential outcomes and foreseen one in which we win” “We’re in the endgame now.” “It was the only way”. That’s blatant. That borders on heavy-handed. 

2) Most of the characters who died have movies scheduled. They’re coming back. This is not unclear.

As a result... their deaths don’t even feel real, they just feel like racist shock value fodder deaths. I’m not sad about it, I’m furious at the writers. They just killed them off so they could watch them die, and/or so they could avoid utilizing them. And that’s... so gross.

Ending a movie with the genocidal villain winning is not edgy or whatever. It’s just dissatisfying and, especially in the current climate of the world, it feels violent. 

Like, I’m mad that they split the movie, because it’s a cash grab, and then ending it on that note was just violent.

I guess the writers just really hated Ragnarok (and Black Panther).

Cuz like... they just completely wrote Ragnarok out of the MCU, made the whole movie pointless, and backpedaled on everything it accomplished. 

Ragnarok: “Asgard is destroyed, but it’s okay because the people of Asgard survived, and can rebuild somewhere else. Thor lost his eye and his hammer, became a leader to his people, learned that he didn’t need a weapon to harness his powers, and Thor and Loki finally managed to be a team again. Heimdal is given the credit he deserves as a hugely important part of Thor’s life. Also here, have an AMAZING black female character! The story ends with hope for a ship full of refugees.”

Infinity War: “Thor immediately gets a new eye, all (or maybe half??? it was really unclear) of the other Asgardian refugees are slaughtered off screen (big middle finger to refugees and also hope) and then Thor goes off on his own so he’s not really a leader anymore, Loki and Heimdal are dead within 5 minutes of screentime, Valkyrie doesn’t exist, and Thor’s entire plot in the movie is about how he needs a new weapon because he can’t be useful without one :)”

Me, who enjoyed Ragnarok: “wow, fuck you”

Similarly, after watching all the characters from Wakanda in Black Panther be written as their own people, whose stories and lives didn’t revolved around white people... their white-prioritizing characterization in Infinity War, as well as the IMMEDIATE choice to fucking wreck Wakanda at the first available opportunity, was a real fucking let down and kind of a slap in the face.

Peter Dinklage played a literal (though giant?) dwarf??????????

I FEEL LIKE THIS IS FUCKING OFFENSIVE??? Honestly I’m just so so tired of this poor guy getting hired only for roles where his dwarfism is a character trait. He’s a really good actor and I wish he got hired to play characters other than “the dwarf” every fucking once in a while, like jfc. 

(Side note apparently he’s been cast as “the dwarf” in a movie adaptation of the awful book “the dwarf” so that’s... happening........ i guess...................)

I FEEL like this role was particularly weird and maybe particularly offensive, but maybe I’m wrong, idk.

Also his actual visual design was bad. I looked up the character (Eitri) from the comics, and he looked pretty cool in the comics and animated show. He did not look cool in this movie. 

Bendick Camdsfgbitch has too big of a role.

Literally I’ve never met anybody who cares about the Dr. Strange movie or MCU character. The only people who care seem to be Sherlock stans who cannot let go and still think Bean Cummerbund playing [an intolerable asshole who we’re told (but not shown) is smarter than us, who never lets the audience in on his genius] is compelling. 

He’s boring, he’s an asshole, he’s playing an arguably whitewashed role (which is a pattern for him) and he’s not even playing it in an interesting way. Stop trying to make Dr. Strange or his actor happen. We don’t care.

And if the whole two movie plot is going to be about how he really did outsmart Thanos, the supposedly super smart supervillain, then I’m extra super bored as fuck. And so far that’s... super predictably what’s going to have happened. 

It was just really poorly written??

Idk, like it wasn’t even... funny... or good. All the lines were either predictable or they didn’t make sense. And everybody felt slightly (or severely, depending on the character) out of character. 

The plot is fucking garbage, AND THANOS IS TOO

The concept of the world being overpopulated (and that that’s why resources aren’t available for everyone) is an irl lie, my guys. It’s not true. It’s a lie perpetuated by racists and xenophobes and rich assholes who want to excuse letting people die of starvation rather than give up literally any of their giant Scrooge McDuck style piles of money to allow even the most minimally necessary distribution of resources.

We HAVE enough resources to feed and clothe and house and care for everyone on this planet, we just DON’T DO IT because of the bigotry and selfishness of the 1%. 

Also, “Genocide will fix all the suffering in the world” is literally nazism.

AND LIKE!! If the POINT was that Thanos was a space nazi and needed to be killed as a result, because his views are fucked up and have no basis in reality, and nazism must be stopped at all costs-- that could have been okay??? EXCEPT THAT’S NOT HOW THEY HANDLED IT!! Instead of going “Oh, yeah, Thanos is super fucked up and no one should agree with him or his actions or his ideology” they showed him in this weird and uncomfortably reverent light, and gave him this weird and uncomfortable side arc about how much he wuvs Gamora (that’s why he abused her, you guys-- it was because he LOVES her so much). So we’re supposed to like, feel sad for him or something? Oh no, nobody understands him and his logic, he HAS to do this to SAVE everyone. Oh nooooooo. 

But really, he’s a genocidal scrotum-faced piece of shit abuser, and his entire narrative felt like a nazi who abuses his kids just sucking his own dick on screen, and it was NOT enjoyable to watch, or compelling, or edgy. It was just gross, and violent.

ALSO there was NO REASON to give him that backstory. There was no reason to explain his desire to kill everybody. We already knew he wanted to kill everybody. That was already known, and we did not need an explanation about why. Like, they built toward this movie for ten years and they STILL dropped the ball by ignoring 90% of their own goddamn source material that built up to it in the first place.

Plus, Thanos’ plan was to kill half of everybody in order to save the other half, out of a warped sense of... mercy.... Except literally nobody wants him to do that, including (he said) himself. He doesn’t enjoy it. Neither does anybody else. Everybody is trying to stop him constantly. WHY CONTINUE IF LITERALLY NO ONE WANTS YOU TO, INCLUDING YOURSELF?? It just doesn’t hold up or make any sense as a plot once you think about it for ten fucking seconds...??? How did this ever get past the editing stage???

Additionally, Thanos’s visual design was way better in the end credits cameo he had like 10 years ago. This guy was not visually threatening to me, and did not read as powerful or ancient or anything. He didn’t even read like he was an alien, he was just an asshole, and it didn’t impress me like it was meant to.

If the only way to make your villain seem competent is to make your heroes suddenly incompetent, you’re a bad writer.

How did Loki, god of mischief, fight Thanos? KNIFE TO THE FACE!! FRONTAL ASSAULT!! Of... of course that failed? And furthermore, why did they make it a point to remind the audience repeatedly that Loki is a god, right before Thanos killed him by just, like, choking him/snapping his neck? Apparently that’s how you kill a god? Seems like it should be harder than that.

Why didn’t Dr. Strange do his “check all the different realities” thing when they first heard about Thanos? Why didn’t Dr. Strange chop off Thanos’ arm with a portal like his buddy did with one of Thanos’ underlings?

Why didn’t anybody just shoot Quill when he was obviously about to become a problem?

Why did Quill, who had been willing to kill Gamora himself earlier in the movie, suddenly go off the handle at the worst possible moment upon finding out she was already dead? And why was his response so minimal? Like I get that he’s grieving and stuff, but you need to be able to compartmentalize that shit at least a LITTLE bit, buddy-- and if you can’t, then you need to do something bigger than just like punching the guy. At least shoot out his eyes or something.

Why didn’t Thor aim for Thanos’ head? (and for that matter in all the bazillion timelines Dr. Strange looked at, why were there NONE where Thor aimed for Thanos’ head???)

Why did Wanda decide her boyfriend was more important than literally everybody else ever, especially when Thanos winning would mean Vision dying anyway, so like... I get that killing your bf would be traumatic, but suck it up? Why didn’t they consider breaking the stone and THEN reviving Vision? He’s not a human, he’s synthetic, so why would they assume he wouldn’t be able to be rebooted later with a different power source? And why did they gamble half the universe and actively throw away Wakandan lives for him?? I JUST???

The Hulk got his ass kicked by Thanos (a weird scene; why does Thanos know WWE wrestling moves??) so he just... stopped helping. Like, that could have been interesting, if it wasn’t a general theme throughout the movie that most of the characters conveniently stopped being good at what they’re good at so that the plot could progress with adequate Drama. 

Basically I just wanted to scream “get it together!” at most of the cast of this movie throughout the whole film. Don’t nerf your cast to make your villain seem stronger than he is. If you can’t make him stronger on his own merits, you’re a bad writer. 

I don’t understand the reality stone (or how Thanos used it).

It seemed to change whatever he wanted, but... only while he was focusing on it? Or only while he was nearby? As soon as he left, Drax and Mantis reverted back to their normal forms, so does he need to be in the vicinity for it to work? Or was it like an illusion? If so, that’s not changing reality. 

And either way, the ways in which he DID change reality were bizarrely whimsical and made no sense for his character. Like, he kept turning everything to bubbles. If somebody bought him a bubble wand, would he have stopped murdering everyone? Is that his aesthetic? Bubbles and spiralized people? 

Or was that the aesthetic of the stone itself? Because that’s weird too. 

That scene where the ladies fought the lady villain.

On the one hand, I’m glad there was a lady villain and her design was cool, and I’m glad whenever there are scenes where there are no men and only ladies. 

ON THE OTHER HAND I’m fucking tired of the trope where male heroes fight the male villains and female heroes fight the female villains because.... ??? Because they’re fighting someone in their own league? Or because men can’t hit women? Or something?? I find it very weird and suspect whenever a combat situation gets evenly split up between the genders. 

Wanda's powers >:(

Wanda is more powerful (by a LOT) in the comics than she is in the MCU, which is sort of understandable because she’s pretty universe-breaking levels of OP in the comics (like, one time she literally broke the universe), but it’s also pretty frustrating as a fan of comic!Wanda just how MUCH they nerfed her for the MCU. HOWEVER! In this movie they implied that she IS more powerful than she’s seemed up until now. 

And then they barely used her at all. 

I, a fool, thought maybe they were going to do something interesting about her magic. With the repetition that her power mirrors that of the stone, I thought maybe she was going to kill Vision, and then Thanos would use HER instead of the stone because she’s got it’s power inside of her. 

But no. 

They couldn’t have done something interesting where a woman has a role beyond “she’s precious to a Man and therefore important”. Nope.

Every Single Scene was a foregone conclusion.

Honest to god, I don’t remember a single scene where I was like “gosh, what’s going to happen next??” Every single scene was just me thinking “I know exactly what is about to happen, and I don’t want it to” and then I was right, and disappointed.

Every part of this movie was predictable with certainty, except I suppose for the scenes where I thought “surely they wouldn’t do something so weird and/or boring as what it seems like they’re setting up here” but then they did anyway.

Why did Tony think Steve would know where Vision was when Tony didn’t? And why was he right?

They just never explained this and I found it utterly perplexing. 

Tony was like “Probably Steve Rogers would know where Vision is” and my friends and I had to pause the movie to compare notes and be like “wait, why? Why would HE know?” and none of us could figure it out, and then the movie never explained it either.

Nebula was underutilized.

I was just really frustrated at how few scenes she was actually in and how little she was allowed to DO in a movie completely centered on trying to fight the guy who tortured and experimented on her for her whole life. Like, she was in it and she was relevant, but mostly only as a set piece, not a person. But I guess they couldn’t figure out how to make her Precious To A Man, so she didn’t really matter to the writers.

My only hope is that she’s vitally central to the next one, but like... I expect literally nothing good out of the next movie, so it’s not exactly a thriving hope.

The female characters were all underutilized.

The writers are misogynists and you could tell by how few lines any of the women had when they weren’t being shown as Precious To A Man. Which female characters got to be involved in whole entire conversations (rather than just one-off lines)? 

Wanda (while being Precious to Vision)

Gamora (while being Precious to Quill, then to Thanos)

Pepper (while being Precious to Tony)

Honorable mentions for Mantis, Nebula, Shuri, Okoye, and Nat for having a handful of lines each in the entire movie that was HIGH KEY centered on white men. 

The Thanos Fandom

I’ll leave off on people who actually LIKE Thanos right now, because I assume they’re mostly eugenicist nazis and aren’t worth my time.

No, I’m talking about people who like him AS A VILLAIN and think that the movie did a GOOD JOB of making him clearly and wholly and unequivocally a villain who the audience should clearly and wholly and unequivocally feel antagonistic towards. 

It didn’t. 

The movie portrayed him as someone trying to do “the right thing” who has to “make hard choices” because of his “tragic past” which is NOT an acceptable portrayal of a genocidal megalomaniac-- ESPECIALLY not in the current climate of the world. 

If the audience is not explicitly told how to feel about a villain (by point-by-point countering and condemning them), the lowest common denominator of the audience (which is not a small percent of said audience) is going to interpret the villain’s tragic backstory as justification, their “hard choices” as being worthy of empathy, and their worldview as something worth considering. Especially if you write them as such, and ESPECIALLY if they WIN. 

And yet all I keep seeing is people who want to justify enjoying the movie (unnecessary: you can enjoy it and admit it’s content is bad at the same time) by yelling “Of course Thanos’ is CRAZY-- that’s the point!! People complaining about it aren’t giving the audience enough credit!!”

Please read this relevant post talking about Fight Club (and Mad Max). 

“Media designed to teach morals often backfires [because] just exposing [people] to bad behavior is enough to make them internalize that the behavior is [...] acceptable for people to do, [especially when a] movie only really devotes 5% of its screen time to explicitly denouncing [said bad] behavior, and that [...] only arrives at the very end of the film.” 

--a summarized quote from the above, much longer, post.

This is extra EXTRA relevant if you have to WAIT A YEAR before you even GET to the “consequences” part of the morality story. “The typical adult audience member does not think critically enough about film media to process this moral” is a true statement even when the moral is in the last 10 minutes of a 90 minute film-- it’s WAY more true if the moral doesn’t come until A FUCKING YEAR LATER. Another relevant quote from that post is “The director has the responsibility to clearly spell out to the audience the difference between supporting a behavior by depicting it, and criticizing it by depicting it.” This movie half assed that at best. 

Another relevant quote: “Every villain is the hero of their own story. And when the villain is the narrator, the audience is hearing the version of the story in which the villain is the hero, and the audience is moved by that perspective.” 

Thanos was in charge of the narrative of the entire movie. He was functionally the central and thus main character on which the story turned, made clearest by the end screen “Thanos will return”, which up until now has been reserved for PROTAGONISTS. That’s what I’m talking about here. 

He was the villain, but he was also functionally the main character, and the narrative did not put in the work to properly condemn him or his actions. They spent all their time and energy making him fake deep, and then threw a couple “You’re insane!!!” lines in there from heroes to cover their asses that really didn’t have any effect on Thanos whatsoever.

Also please consider that “He’s just CRAZY!! That’s why he’s violent and evil!!” is a tired and ableist trope used primarily to villainize real mentally ill people and to let white men (who are not mentally ill) off the hook for violent toxic masculinity. Mentally ill people in reality are disproportionately likely to be the VICTIMS of violence, not the perpetrators, no matter what media would have us believe. 

Thanos isn’t crazy, he’s a self absorbed, entitled, genocidal megalomaniac, and calling him crazy is a cop out. 

Assuming everyone understood that he’s purely and simply wrong is giving the audience WAY too much credit, especially when his motivation is based on a fabrication that the writers seemed to actually believe. 

No one in the movie said “Thanos, our world isn’t overpopulated-- people in power are just greedy. If you’re going to kill anybody, kill those people. Don’t ‘randomly’ kill half the populous when some people are actually at fault." No one in the movie said “Your logic is based on fallacy” they just said “I don’t care about your logic because murder is always wrong (except when I do it).” Most or all of the protagonists in this series have killed people. I’m not saying they were wrong to, necessarily, but saying “You can’t just kill people” rings hollow from these characters in particular, especially when they’re actively trying to kill Thanos as they say it. Again, they’re right to do that, but IF they’re doing that, they need to be written to have a better argument than “Murder is wrong!” 

Basically the writing of this movie, where the heroes clashed with the villain, was just countering a fallacy that major parts of the audience may actually believe with some fallacies that fall apart at 10 seconds of critical thinking. Therefore, plenty of people will walk away with the wrong message.

ESPECIALLY when you depict Thanos in a reverent light, and have an entire subplot about how much he Loves the daughter he abused and continues abusing and then murders on screen. ESPECIALLY when he faces no genuine threat throughout the entire movie and then wins at the end, and the consequences for his actions have to wait a YEAR to be seen.

Thor "needed a weapon" to survive after taking the full force of a star??? I dont?? Get that.

That’s it, I just don’t understand it. 

Eitri the dwarf was like “BUT YOU’LL DIE!!!” and Thor did the thing anyway (predictably) and didn’t die (predictably) but was sort of dying for The Drama (predictably) and then Eitri was like “He needs the weapon!! to live!!!!!” and I still don’t understand what that meant or why. 

Relatedly, I don’t understand why Groot’s arm is an adequate substance for Thor’s anti-infinity-stone-weapon, when Groot #1 was obliterated by an infinity stone. Am I remembering that right? I don’t understand this. It feels like somebody thought “Hey you know what would be cool?” and that was literally the only thought process behind it. Nobody thought very hard about this before writing it into the movie. Though to be fair, that tracks with pretty much everything else in this movie, so why not, I guess. 

Also stars are way bigger than that, that was not a star. Just saying.

The Red Skull cameo made no sense.

I understand that the tesseract spat him out somewhere else in space, and I’m fine with that (like, that could have been interesting actually), but I don’t understand why he ended up as, like, a ghost doing the bidding of the soul stone or whatever??? Do the stones interact? Did the tesseract tell the soul stone to fuck that guy up cuz he’s an asshole? Was that just the effect of being transported too close to the soul stone? I don’t... understand that at all.

And, in line with the rest of the movie, he was very out of character.

“Thanos is sad because he LOVED Gamora”

Then he shouldn’t have fucking killed her. 

Even the smallest violin in the universe playing “my heart bleeds for you” would be too much. Fuck that guy and his fake depth.

Look I’ve touched on this multiple times already, but I keep coming back to it because it’s absolutely one of the worst things about the movie. 

If they wanted to make a point about Thanos' abuse not being mutually exclusive to the emotional experience of love on his part, they really should have hit it home instead of letting it just flounder. Abuse and love are not mutually exclusive, and we DO need more media that acknowledges that, but this is not how to portray that.

Gamora (or literally anyone) needed to actually SAY “I don’t care if you love/d me, you HURT me. You ruined my life. Your love is worthless and changes NOTHING.” 

Gamora suffered under his abuse pretty much her WHOLE LIFE and then he KILLED her. And he did it BECAUSE he “loved” her? And it was done to give him some sort of fucked up complexity/depth? That’s fucking violent. 

They didn't go hard enough on any of their character arcs/points

like... Steve was clearly shut down and depressed but that was never addressed. 

What was that about Tony wanting to stop being a hero and settle down and have kids??? They spent like 5 whole entire minutes (which is a long time in a movie actually) setting that up as a plot point and then never addressed it again. 

Bucky looked so tired when he saw the arm, like you could see on his face when he realized he was being sent back into war. Another assignment. Gotta kill more people. He looked so TIRED but then the next time we see him he’s smiling at Steve, and it never got addressed (AND THEN HE DIED SO???)

Bruce and Nat shared like one line, and then never spoke again (and while I’m not interested in them as a couple, that still felt weird). 

Rhodey went against that hologram asshole’s instructions and then it never came up again.

Rocket talking to Thor, asking if he’s okay, and Thor saying basically “I have nothing left to lose so I’ll be very useful” never became relevant. Rocket saying “Well, I mean, I’ve got a lot to lose actually” also never became relevant. 

Dr. Strange’s whole “duty” to protect the stone was supposed to be more important than anything, and yet it was not in practice more important than... like... anything, tbh. Nor did he have to deal with the consequences of failing his duty, even a little bit.

Vision was having headaches and then it turned out to be the stone, like, warning him about Thanos or something?? Never became important. 

Bruce couldn’t get the Hulk to help out. That’s... that’s it, that’s the whole character arc, he just couldn’t get the Hulk to help out.

Peter Quill was asked by Gamora to kill her. When the time came, he was actually willing to, but was stopped by an outside force. This was never addressed again, and then they both died. Cool. 

I understand that they might be trying to introduce all these plot points so they can address them in the second half, but.... like........... half these characters died already, and also that’s not a good way to write a two-movie story. Series’ need to have satisfying arcs within each independent installment. This movie did not.

((You may have noticed, also, that most of the characters the movie TRIED to give actual character arcs to, even if they failed, are white men. I noticed that too.))

Characters who have barely if ever been allowed to know happiness or contentment or safety, and then just die, are not enjoyable character arcs, fuck off.

Especially Bucky, but also somewhat true for Gamora, Mantis, Wanda (plus I’m still mad about Pietro). Don’t kill characters who’ve never really gotten to live well. Don’t make characters who only get to suffer and then die. Character arcs like that are almost always written by white male writers about marginalized characters, and it just feels violent. 

Steve’s new shield was weird.

I was actually hyped about T’Challa being the one to get him a new shield, because then it’d still be made of vibranium!! And everything from Wakanda so far looks rad as hell. But, uh... I wasn’t a fan of the design. It doesn’t look throwable, or big enough, or particularly useful. It didn’t do anything cool that I noticed. I thought maybe it was going to have a force field like the shield capes W’Kabi and the other male warriors used in Black Panther, or something else technological. Instead it just, like, gets 4 inches wider if you... put it on... or something??? Mediocre. Not worthy of having been made in Wakanda.

I just wasn’t a fan of pretty much any of the new designs they added to this movie (except the new spider suit, and that one lady villain; but that was really it). 

“All the stones together can alter reality!! Obviously the only solution is murder.”

I know everybody has said this, but why... didn’t Thanos just... create more resources. If the problem was too few resources, why didn’t he snap his fingers and make more??? If you have the ability to alter reality and remake the universe with a snap of your fingers, and your intentions are to improve the quality of life of all people’s throughout the universe, why the fuck is your only solution “murder half of everybody”?? 

And why would you murder a RANDOM half of everybody? Why wouldn’t you murder, like “the half of everybody who is the shittiest to other people, on a planet by planet basis” or something? Like, if your intentions are truly benevolent but you also truly can only use murder to improve the universe (which, like, is a very VERY bullshit “if” but I digress), why would you think the best use of murder would be “random”? That just seems like a privileged person trying desperately not to sound bigoted (while sounding bigoted nonetheless). 

So it doesn’t matter if they’re a mass murdering dictator, or a serial killer, or a sexual predator, or a corrupt politician lobbying for a skewed distribution of resources based on bigotry? They’d still only have a 50/50 shot at dying, even though you claim to be doing this for the betterment of the remaining people’s quality of life? 

What about communities that have already suffered genocide? They have to suffer that again, because you can’t get your head out of your ass long enough to comprehend the nuance of this bullshit situation you’ve created?

What about people who are studying genetically modified food to make resources more plentiful? People who spend their whole lives making hugely positive differences in the distribution of resources? People who are just good, and care about others, and take steps to improve the lives of others, people who aren’t going to fuck up the paradise you want to create? They also have that same 50/50 shot?

And if your goal is only the deaths of 50% of the people in the universe, what about bus drivers who are actively driving buses? What about surgeons who are in the middle of surgery? What about people driving cars on the highway? Killing half the population instantaneously would result in way more death than just half the population. 

This plan falls apart more and more the more you think about it.

"The biggest cast of all time” and NOBODY is queer. 

Like, there are two characters in the entire MCU who could conceivably be considered canonically queer: 

Valkyrie, because she was supposed to have a scene indicating her canon bisexuality. And even though they cut it, it was IN THE SCRIPT so it’s halfway canon.

Loki, but only because he’s queer (genderfluid and pansexual) in the comics. So like, he’s NOT canonically queer in the movies, but he’s also not specified as NOT queer, so...? The writers definitely didn’t intend it, despite queercoding him, but we can pretend. 

And in infinity war, Loki dies 5 seconds in, and Valkyrie straight up doesn’t exist. So????? It was boring and sucked.

They attempted to address the MCU Villain Problem, and failed.

The MCU villain problem, AKA the villains in most MCU movies are forgettable and boring because they and their schemes always came as an afterthought. 

Recently, to address this, the formula (as seen with Killmonger and the Vulture) seems to be "a villain that needs to be stopped, but who is understandable and maybe even relatable and likeable". In both the case of Killmonger and the Vulture, this worked (not perfectly, but it did). They made the villains PEOPLE outside of their villainy. They made them complex, and it was compelling and therefore memorable and interesting. 

They tried to apply this formula to Thanos... in the worst possible way. 

As I’ve already talked about. They tried to make him complex to avoid their usual villain problem, except in the process they MADE HIM THE PROTAGONIST. There wasn’t a hero protagonist. There was only Thanos and a lot of heroes trying to stop him, and posing no real threat to him or his plot at any point.

And the heroes OPPOSED him, but they did not properly condemn him or his logic, and then he won.

Fatphobia and emasculation aimed at Quill for the lulz  

They wanted Peter Quill to be threatened by Thor for some reason, and the way they chose to do that was to make Quill’s friends call him “one sandwich away from fat” and thus “not a man”. 

Then he started vowing to commit to a better exercise routine or something, and tried to lower his voice to sound more like Thor. Bless Thor for not understanding what was going on and thinking Quill was mocking him (aka, not thinking of Quill as having anything he’d need to compensate for), but Quill being threatened by Thor, as well as his jealousy of Gamora’s attention to a “more attractive” man, honestly just felt like the writers scrambling for a reason to give the characters conflict, and settling on a toxic and offensive trope. 

Especially because Chris Pratt is In Shape. He has like a six pack. He’s objectively NOT fat. If he were, and they mocked him for it, that would be fatphobic and shitty, but the fact that he’s NOT just makes it baffling on top of being fatphobic and shitty. It’s like those makeover movies where they put glasses and baggy clothes on a conventionally attractive woman and then claim she looks terrible. 

Bad.

There were better options for Thanos' reasoning and the writers... really should have taken them.

I have HEARD that the comic version of Thanos’ motivation was “He’s in love with the embodiment/god of death, and wanted to kill half of everybody to impress her” and to be honest that would have been a better option.

(Side Note: Maybe the use of Hela as the Goddess of Death in Ragnarok is why the writers of Infinity War hated Ragnarok. Maybe they were mad they couldn’t use her for this movie, and that’s why they murdered and buried everything Ragnarok accomplished with such thorough dedication.)

Other better Thanos motivations just off the top of my head: 

He wanted to take over/colonize/enslave other planets to house his own people who DID use up the resources on their own planet.

There’s actually something ELSE he wants to use the Infinity Stones for, but he needs to kill tons of people to get it, or to get the Infinity Stones.

He was cursed to be immortal and will not be allowed to die until he kills enough other people.

He needs to trade like 10 million souls to the embodiment of death to bring someone he loves back from the dead.

He plans to harvest people from a bunch of different planets to produce a youth serum for alien elites-- (no wait that’s the plot of jupiter ascending)

He just hates people and thinks people should die.

He literally eats people, and he’s enormous so he needs to eat a lot of people.

Just saying, all of these are better motivations than “I’ve just gotta murder people cuz if I don’t then people will run out of food, and then they’ll die. I don’t WANT to, nobody else wants me to either, but I’m going to anyway. I’m sad about it.”

"We don't trade lives" 

This was a line from Steve about killing vs not killing Vision, and in the subsequent context of the movie, it’s violent as hell. 

“We don’t trade lives” he says, to discourage Vision from consenting to death to save everyone. Then he/they take Vision to Wakanda where Wakandan soldiers lay down their lives by the dozens to hundreds to protect Vision. Vision, who was willing to die. 

Steve Rogers is a soldier. He KNOWS that trading some lives for other (hopefully more) lives is how this is going to go. He knows. This was like the “Language” line from Avengers; it doesn’t make sense for the character.

But even beyond that, as I’ve said, they are absolutely going to-- and for that matter they were PLANNING to trade black Wakandan lives for Vision’s safety. And even if that weren’t a plot point, they’d be planning to potentially trade their OWN lives for those Thanos would kill if (when) they fail. 

“We don’t trade lives.” Yes, you do. Of course you do. And the audience knows it because the audience has seen all your other fucking movies. 

Why couldn’t the writers take a breath and stop trying so hard and just let the characters say what they mean. “I don’t want you to die.” “Please let us try to save you.” 

Why couldn’t they have just, like, made up an actual reason why they couldn’t afford to lose Vision? Maybe Vision’s headaches could have been actually utilized as a warning system? Maybe Vision could have communicated telepathically with Tony’s AI all the way through space, so Vision was their only was to know what was going on with Tony and Co.? Maybe destroying the stone while it was inside Vision was massively dangerous (like, could have gone off like a bomb or something....? I mean he CAN use the stone like a laser, maybe trying to destroy it would make it detonate.). 

THERE WERE OPTIONS. Instead they went with the absolute fallacy of “We don’t trade lives,” delivered by a character who would never have said that, and followed by the traded lives of MANY black people for one white man.

Bad.

The Soul Stone has really low standards for supposedly having high standards

Why require somebody to go through with a whole test of “give up the thing or person you love most” to acquire the Soul Stone? Like, the explanation “A soul for a soul” was kind of cool, but what does that have to do with love? It’s not the Love Stone, it’s the Soul Stone. Love doesn’t have anything to do with that, and even if it DID, Thanos’ version of love should have made the stone go “Um, I think the fuck NOT, you abusive motherfucker,” instead of “Sure! I’ll hand phenomenal cosmic power over to you because you just seem super legit. Nothing could go wrong here.”

Was the love thing even real, or was the Red Skull just bein’ his racist self, and wanted to watch Gamora get tossed off a cliff because he’s a nazi and bored as hell?

Furthermore, why did only one of the stones require a test? Is the Soul Stone just really needy? What is the deal with these stones??? Nothing was ever explained at ALL and it made NO SENSE.

Gamora deserved better, and so did every audience member who’s ever been abused.

I’m just gonna circle back to this point and address it head on.

Here’s a great article on this subject from somebody better equipped to address it than me.

But basically just... fuck the writers for showing us her power, and then making it pointless. Making her stab Thanos in the throat and then allowing him to wave it off like it didn’t happen or didn’t matter or like he was just testing her. Fuck the writers for letting her be murdered at the hand of the man who ruined her life, to further HIS goals, and to give HIM ‘depth’. 

If she doesn’t get resurrected in the next movie and deliver the killing blow, I will be even more furious than I already am, and that is honestly already an impressive level of fury. 

God I’m so fucking glad I didn’t pay to see this garbage fire of a movie.