#is now at 50% instead of ?queerbait?

[chicken-wayng]

Us:

#everybody stay fucking calm #oliver stark #ryan guzman #911 abc #911 spoilers #911 fox #911 season 7 #bucktommy #911 #chickenwayng #evan buckley #buck x eddie #eddie diaz #eddie x buck #buddie #buddie endgame #is now at 50% instead of ?queerbait?

[chaoskirin]

Media and Mistakes

In light of the video Alex Hirsch posted about the emails with Disney Standards and Practices, I’d like to remind everyone of the following: 

Creators often have limited control about what they are able to “get away with” on screen. S&P creates problems where there are none. And instead of telling religious people to fuck off (as they should) they bow down and cater to them. 

Yes, shows created in the United States are controlled by what the most religious people in the country will think of them. This is often because if Momma Born-Again Christian doesn’t approve of two men hugging, she won’t let Junior watch the cartoon or buy any show-based merch. 

So you get things like ‘bottles will be spun’ getting shit-canned because what if kids conjure images of kissing in their heads? How will they remain chaste for their future monogamous partner? 

It’s censorship under the guise of protecting children. And while this seems innocent enough--if a bit misplaced--it’s led to further censorship on materials written and meant for adults. I’m not going to link it here because then tumblr will tank the post, but look up a Virginia judge’s decision on “A Court of Mist and Fury,” wherein she opined that the book was obscene, and so as not to be seen by children, should not be sold in book stores. 

There are several other cases of book censorship in the United States RIGHT NOW, mostly involving queer material.

And with Democrats becoming disillusioned with the current administration and either not voting or (more confusingly) voting for Republicans, this is only going to continue.

Change does not happen overnight. The GOP has been playing the long game for over 50 years and are only now seeing their goals come to fruition.

With left-leaning voters’ impatience and resistance to playing the long game, I see attacks happening at the front lines denouncing shows for “not being representative enough.” If a creator tries only to be handcuffed by their network’s standards and practices department, the entire show is thrown in the trash. I often see the term “queerbaiting” thrown around without knowledge of what it actually means.

And just last week, left-leaners had a knee-jerk reaction against Lizzo--A known ally--telling her she should have known the meaning of a certain word and to literally “do better.” 

Lizzo, upstanding as always, changed the lyric to the song. The backlash was never necessary. Yet some people on Twitter have decided that the slip was unforgivable.

(And no--not everyone knows everything about every issue. This requires a whole conversation about positive Dunning-Kruger effect that would be too long to post here.) 

With left-leaning disillusionment, the initial response is always anger and dismissal. So often when well-meaning people make mistakes, they go vehemently unforgiven, especially when there is any initial pushback or questioning. 

While pushback and defensiveness are frustrating, I’ve often seen confused allies become initially defensive, only to change their mind with more information. Unfortunately, it’s become taboo to ask questions, which means by the time these people come around, they are unceremoniously dropped, and a new champion finds themself appointed in the eye of public scrutiny. 

And this cycle perpetuates. Perfection is expected. Any deviation from perfection is unacceptable. 

I will concede that after so many years, so many deaths, so much pushback from the right... Anger is often an appropriate response to many things. But it’s important to temper that anger and use it appropriately. When queer media is discarded for a single mistake, the people involved stop trying. When queer media is discarded, it sends a message to conservative networks that that media is not wanted, and so no more media of that type is made. 

Boycotting a show for not being representative enough does not send a message to networks that they need better representation. It sends a message that they need LESS representation. 

We also run into a new effect brought on by the age of the internet wherein well-meaning people essentially dogpile creators and messages of concern and constructive criticism are lost in a sea of absolute vitriol and rage. I’ve seen queer creators and allies run off their platform for a mistake they corrected many years prior, and I’ve also seen creators disconnecting completely from their fanbase to protect themselves. 

This leaves behind people who don’t care what you think. For example, no matter what you say, JK R*wling is never going to leave her platform. Conversely, no matter what you say, Jenna Marbles is never going to return. 

I know you’re tired. I know you’re tired of handholding. Again, I accept that the anger is righteous and oftentimes deserved, but it is SO IMPORTANT to remember that you are now a participant in a long game and you HAVE to play it. Become savvy. Learn who can be talked to and who is a lost cause. Reserve your anger for those who refuse to change. Try to give the people who mean well but made a mistake a second chance. 

I hope I was able to adequately able to convey what I wanted to say here. And I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of people whose response will be that it’s not their job to educate people. But the anger has gone so far as to be damaging, and I’m afraid what the future will bring if queer media is allowed to be censored for being obscene. 

#american politics #not bestiary

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

now that it’s all over, i gotta say how incredible and bitterly hilarious it is that not even greed is stronger than homophobia.

like, people love misha collins. people love castiel. when they killed cas off in s7, viewership dropped by thirty percent and they had to scramble to rewrite him back into the show - and he’s only gotten more popular since then. at spn conventions, they have two costume competitions - one for castiel cosplayers, and one for everyone else. there are only a fraction of sam and dean costumes compared to cas costumes. misha is, as far as i know, the only cast member to do photo ops as his character - he puts on the suit and coat and takes pictures with fans while behaving like cas. people love it.

and people love destiel. it’s one of the biggest ships on the fucking planet. it has 90k+ fics on ao3. you can find destiel merch just about anywhere. after 15x18, destiel trended online over the presidential election. 

a ton of people tuned into the finale just on the hope that cas/misha would return, that they’d been lied to when it was said 15x18 was his last episode. if they had teased a clip of cas coming back - forget that, if they had teased a clip of a kiss? millions of people would have tuned in to see it happen. people who’d never watched the show and never would have watched the finale would have watched. sure, they would have faced some blowback from the conservative fans, but that wouldn’t have mattered after the finale.

and if they had embraced cas and embraced destiel, they could have milked that cash cow for years. they could have marketed to the entire queer community, they could have patted themselves on the back and “proven” they were never queerbaiting at all. they could have grown the fandom instead of shrinking it. the money-making opportunities on cas and destiel are practically limitless.

instead, they fucked over not only cas fans and destiel fans, but dean fans and sam fans; i’m not in w*ncest and bronly circles, but i can’t imagine even they enjoyed this, considering sam just moved on with his life after dean died and they were separated for 50 years. people are utterly furious. there’s a real chance that this fandom is going to completely implode, game of thrones style, and nobody will want to go to cons or buy spn merch anymore. it could have been cool to like spn, now it’s more embarrassing than ever before.

and all that because some dudes out there were like, i hate the idea of two men kissing more than i love piles of money. that’s fucking wild.

#spn #15x20 #destiel #mini mine #homophobia tw

[seasurfacefullofclouds1]

here’s an interesting thread recently posted on twitter “Exposing the hidden truth behind Harry Styles’ fraudulent career stats, numbers and achievements: an educational thread” with all the receipts

https://twitter.com/pvssytalk/status/1375583660389322762?s=21

LOL I love this ... who did this?

[[MORE]]

Text: Exposing the hidden truth behind Harry Styles’ fraudulent career stats, numbers and achievements: an educational thread. Harry Edward Styles is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His musical career began in 2010 as a solo contestant on the British music competition series The X Factor. Following his elimination early on, he was brought back to join the boy band One Direction. Harry’s solo career started after One Direction broke up. His first solo album was released in 2017 with “Sign of the Times” as the lead single. Sign of the Times was a commercial flop, and after its #4 debut it quickly fell down the charts, only charting for 13 weeks. The next singles, “Two Ghosts” and “Kiwi”, both failed to enter the Billboard Hot 100. Harry was flopping now more than ever.

His comeback single, “Lights Up”, debuted at #17 on the Hot 100, largely aided by its music video of Harry “coming out”/queerbaiting. The next week it fell 49 spots to #66, and only charted for 5 weeks. Harry’s constant tanking was getting embarrassing. Then, Harry would release his biggest chart hit to date, “Adore You”. The song reached #6 on the Hot 100, with a radio audience of almost 125M. Adore You would stay in the top 10 of the Radio Songs chart for MONTHS to come, which is the reason the song had so much longevity. When the song reached its peak of #2 on the Radio Songs chart, the song was tanking on all metrics. Only #68 on Spotify, #50 on iTunes, #105 on Apple Music and #43 on Shazam. As you can see by the screenshots, Adore You was heavily carried by radio. In fact, the song is STILL getting over 40M audience impressions at #37 on this weeks radio chart. This is the reason for its chart longevity, as it was doing poorly on all platforms except radio after May.

His next hit, Watermelon Sugar, was doing well on streaming platforms after getting an official video and radio push in the early summer of 2020. The song would later peak at #1 on the Hot 100 in August. What many people don’t know about is the fraudulence behind its peak at #1. In this graphic (via @talkofthecharts), you can see WS had a substantial amount of sales (66K) that powered it to #1. Rockstar had the same radio audience and was outstreaming it by far, but the reason WS had so many sales is quite disturbing and fraudulent.

The week prior to WS reaching #1, it had only 9K sales in comparison to the 66K sales at its peak, meaning it had a 633% increase in sales, seemingly out of nowhere. The week after hitting #1, the song fell 4 positions to #5 with 8.5K sales, down 87% from 66K.

Why the sudden increase in sales? Harry Styles fans (Harries) mass bought the song and even went as far to create gofundme links, saying the donations went to people in poverty and to help Lebanon which had recently faced the Beirut Explosion, but instead used the money to buy WS. In addition to this, the song was not only carried by mass buying, but by radio as well. On the Rolling Stone Chart (a chart that excludes radio) WS placed at #7, even with mass buying impact.

The chart manipulation was blatantly obvious, as the song had been steady in streams and only saw an increase in sales and airplay. Watermelon Sugar was NOT an organic #1, and one of the most fraudulent amongst the other many fraudulent and mass-bought #1’s of 2020.

Last October, an article by the Rolling Stone detailed the use of payola (labels buying radio play) in 2020, after it was banned. In the article, Columbia Records happens to be one of the labels accused of buying airplay, which Harry is signed under.

The next single from Fine Line, Golden, was promoted to US Pop Radio in October 2020 along with a music video. The single tanked and ended up being carried by radio, in fact 64% of the songs points came from radio alone, and the song only pulled 3.2M streams in a week.

In addition to this, Golden’s callouts were bad. The song never managed to crack the top 50 despite its heavy radio play and has since gone recurrent on the Hot 100.

In conclusion, Harry Styles’ success is heavily due to his massive radio play and fanbase comprised of 17 year old Lesbians.

#harry styles #Harry Styles gaming the system #manipulating the market #payola #16 april 2021

[incarnateirony]

Someone dropped this in my submission box instead of ask box, “So I’m trying to genuinely understand what you’re saying is you understand corporate execs at the CW had a hand in the ending of supernatural? I’m not judging not attacking I swear I’m just trying to make sense of it because I had no idea about any of this up till now because I had stayed out of online fandom because well for years it felt big but anyways am I getting this right?”

---

The CW has a hand in everything. Here’s how this generally works.

The authors have ~relative~ freedom on a show. That is to say, the execs really don’t sit there splitting the nuances of the storytelling the fandom is receiving. They generally don’t even identify major markers that any of us would know (see: not even recognizing what the Roadhouse is.) -- we all knew the original ending had TFW at the Roadhouse as framed and spoiled by 15.04 among other details, and the whole “heaven/mental bar” theme from DSOTM, Nihilism, and Last Call all amplified this as an inevitability--but when you ask about “hey, is there a bar in heaven?” and get a “no?” that tells you they don’t even understand *ancient* plot beats like the Roadhouse, much less the ramifications of what it’s supposed to entail. Oh look at that, the roadhouse was just in fucking heaven like we said, but you identified it as a “cabin” because of filming locations and your basic notes.

Corporate has very basic compliance demands. They expect X, Y, and Z. What X Y and Z are across different shows vary depending on their markets. As long as the authors operate within X Y and Z, the corporate face essentially works off of synopsis of pitches and ideas.

This is also why I’ve talked about queer writing history and people being careful what they call queerbait: you don’t know what their X Y and Z are. The WB for example does not really CARE about representation. I’ve blogged about this often. We’re dollar signs. If they can package a new product to market it explicitly as LGBTQ fare, then they’ll turn you into a revenue machine by feeding you that particular fodder. When it comes to legacy shows--which is funny, because when the suit went off in my DM about this, they used the exact same phrasing as me--they’re going to play it safe, especially if they don’t truly understand the returns from the demographics they’re observing.

The space between X Y and Z is where the authors have liberty to push and, the longer and harder they push, the louder the content is allowed to get.

Here! I’ll even quote them directly, somewhat truncated because they ranted for fucking PARAGRAPHS.

“In reference to the media landscape, on a corporate level we do not distinguish fandoms. [...] That said, legacy shows such at Arrow, Supernatural, and even Flash are relics and we never really endeavored to reinvent the wheel on a corporate level, we are more focused on shows that are newer and still in our pipeline to premiere. [...] As for social media like all businesses and brands the engagement itself is key, but the content of the engagement is mostly irrelevant, though every show does have certain keywords that are often used in conjunction with harsher interactions blacklisted.”

The funny part is, they thought they were preaching to me like this was new information, but those of you that have been around my blog will PROBABLY RECOGNIZE this is almost VERBATIM exactly what I have told everybody over the years. Enough I half-suspect some trolls out there will think i wrote it myself and made it up and lob that accusation around. But there’s about 50 people that watched this conversation as it unfolded.

If you guys get mad? You’re still giving them PR. If you engage the content? You’re giving them PR. If you guys get bitchy ENOUGH? They completely blacklist a certain kind of engagement. I have literally been telling you all of this for years.

They don’t care who you are or what you want, just if you’re watching and what they at-best roughly estimate your demographic as desiring. So for example, Supernatural reading as a largely non-urban white demographic in its viewership, especially with a heavier lean in red states than most shows on the network, they presume to cater to what they perceive that demographic wants, rather than individualizing the understanding of the content, because they do not distinguish the shows or fandoms. “Oh, heavier republican white non-urban demographic” is where their understanding ends at, which is why they’re going to be utterly mystified why even my trump-voting republican neighbor from rural Alabama looked at the end result and went “what the fuck?” -- they weren’t expecting a big gay confession, but they were expecting a different sort of final tone.

Of course they’re never going to take that on for themselves and go “wow, we’re giant blazing dumbasses that understand nothing about the show!” -- they’ll, for example, claim they don’t leave network notes, when they’re still the ones passing material along about demographics and expectations etc etc. Their notes are *basic*. They do not leave *extensive* notes. Because extensive notes require extensive understanding of the content.

So for example: Berens spent since S9 slowly gaying up our show. Since they do not pay attention to the fine details of the story contents (lol no bar in heaven lolololol just a cabin lololol), he never got a note to *stop*. But it was not within the original structure plans and didn’t technically fit the demographic notes. The show continued to get aggressively gayed up, and Berens never really signed a note like “hey, I’m gaying it the fuck up” so even fandom reporters were going “THERE’S NO INTENT THERE!!!!!” -- berens operated in his very basic X, Y, Z landmarks to expand content within a story the suits literally do not pay the fuck attention to.

Corporate’s understanding is basic: dudes stabbing monsters and brothers against the world. Play in that box and keep these demographic notes in mind. You’re good.

They’ll NEVER mention blacklisting issues directly beyond what they admitted in the above quote but I DO remind you I have ranted ON AND ON AND ON how much Destiel fandom shot themselves in the goddamn foot with a fucking bazooka with the Chad Kennedy incident years ago. Others like Emily handled it intelligently to inform the *authors*. No, the network will never tell you if they blacklisted Destiel, but I informed you pretty heavily years ago that odds are, yeah, they probably fucking blacklisted Destiel.

Add in paying attention to the things Berens himself liked (if you don’t believe, scroll to Nov 5 on his tl)

Like, listen. berens knows exactly what he did and did the best he could do in the situations that were set up for him. And, frankly, I had been talking about this season as a writer room rebellion all year--just like corporate DID leave them a note in S11 that they couldn’t kill god. But if they couldn’t kill him or cage him, they would find another way. In 17 we said goodbye to Meredith and, in a way, to a MAJOR portion of Dean’s substantial story. In 18, we said goodbye to Bobo, and frankly all the parts that grew into queer Castiel that came with it. 19 and 20 became residual notes of hitting expected plot beats on the head on a rhythm, tying off godforces, and then just sliding into the Dabb subversion of them having learned to grieve, let go, and process emotions-- just the surrounding delivery left the feeling of more ~wanting~ on that front which is understandable.

But these are the kind of things people don’t even ~think~ about. This is WHY I’ve turned myself into a bulletshield protecting Berens’ work for YEARS while people yelled about queerbait not understanding the years of process he used in his unbabysat space to make something unable to dodge.

More posts he liked:

This isn’t a solo story. At the same SDCC he leaned over to my friend and grinned, whispering, “I hope you like what I did this year.” -- he knew. He knew and he fought his ass off but there was an end of the line.

That end of the line having an extra note or two to drop in the finale--never a big gay confirmation, just a “everyone’s there together, assume what you want” --is its own thing. As it is, Jensen even remarked how much of his dialogue got cut in final draft out of 18, and if the brazil dubbing footage leak tells me anything, they got the raw version before it was cut. And before they ADR’ed Dean’s sniffling collapsed against the wall. They had everything right, beyond the fact that there was supposed to be more dialogue from Dean along the lines of, “You can’t go”, or “you can’t leave” (difficult to determine what a ESL person seeing an english draft then yelling in portuguese then translated back to english meant, specifically, but something in that ballpark -- just like “don’t do this” came as “no it’s not” through the translation pipeline), and other similar minor bartering about this. And we’re not even gonna get into Dean’s hilariously loudly ADRed sniffling on the wall. Here, Jensen, breathe IMMEDIATELY into this microphone.

But they’re never going to tell you this. Of course they’re not. 

Summarily, corporate had half a year of having to re-manage scheduling everybody’s flights and planners during covid rewrites to stare directly into the huge gay abyss and fuck things up. 

It’s all about the unmonitored space vs the monitored space. Of COURSE they’re never going to fucking tell you these things. 

FRANKLY I am DYING to see the Portuguese dub of the show to see what the fuck they do with it, all things considered. I’m pretty sure the suit in my inbox that’s trying to vagueblog around things sideways now never accounted for the fact that there’s copies of the raw available in some parts of the world. I’m... pretty sure they thought they were my only leak source in fact. 

Either way--it’s not that corporate micromanages and passes constant notes. It’s that they gloss over vague summaries and plans, drop a few base expectations and performance boxes. It’s up to the authors how to kick up dust inside those boxes. 

[virginwhoredichotomy]

alright here’s the wikihow article i’ve been threatening to write on how to brainwash yourself into not entirely hating 15x20, or: castiel’s absence is a good thing, actually.

disclaimers:

- i do not claim that this is the intended interpretation

- i am watching the show with my destiel/dean coded cas girl goggles stapled on

- i do not enjoy being bitter about things i like and therefore probably jumped through a lot of hoops to arrive at this conclusion

i know there were a LOT of things people hated about the episode and this will not address all of them. my main issues with the finale were 1) the manner of dean’s death, 2) the unresolved dean/cas arc, 3) sam’s extremely emotionally hollow happy ending, and 4) cas’ complete absence. the production quality/editing/pacing was terrible as well but that’s nothing out of the ordinary on supernatural rip

1. the bad guy (spn writers room) won

my correct opinion is that this was, in fact, one of chuck’s endings (though i don’t think they made it bad on purpose). on a meta level it makes a lot of sense for this to have been chuck’s ending since he is the meta stand-in for the writers. as long as they are the ones telling this story, EVERY ending will be a chuck ending.

some supporting evidence:

from 14x20 moriah

chuck loves circular storytelling: sam and dean as cain and abel as michael and lucifer, or dean and jack as sam and john as abraham and isaac. we know that chuck’s ideal ending would have the brothers regress back to their brodependent s1 selves and then have them meet a tragic end (15x04 atomic monsters). and something that really stood out about 15x20 is the way it just... completely erased 15 years of sam and dean’s character development. someone said you could watch the pilot and then the finale and understand everything and that’s completely true and extremely frustrating to any viewer with a brain. it’s also a trademark of chuck’s writing.

if you watch it with that in mind, 15x20 is so reminiscent of season 1 that if you pulled jarpad’s hairline back across his forehead and slapped on a grunge filter it might actually be the walmart version of an alternate s1 ending:

- jenny the vampire returns

- complete absence of any characters that aren’t sam and dean

- motw, specifically working one of john’s unfinished jobs

- sam happily leaving his hunter’s life behind and living a normal picket fence life with his blurry spouse, the way he dreamed in s1 and has repeatedly stated is not what he wants for himself anymore

- dean dying as daddy’s blunt instrument

- i hate to say it but the borderline romantic framing of dean’s death scene also counts as a kripke era callback considering how many romantic tropes sam and dean played into during the earlier seasons. erotically codependet etc etc

- probably more but i watched the finale exactly once and am not planning on doing it ever again in my life

tl;dr the 15x20/s1 parallels aren’t just parallels, it’s sam and dean actually regressing to their past selves because they are once again living chuck’s story (or on a meta level: still living the writers’ story). they don’t notice it and neither does the viewer because the framing of the episode suggests that god is defeated and sam and dean are living life the way they want. and yet their endgames are anything but what they would choose for themselves.

(if you watch the back half of s15 through this lense you can also suddenly excuse dean’s character assassination in 15x17/dean failing to break the cycle and being a bad father to jack just as john was a bad father to dean. running in circles is kind of chuck's Thing. god made them do it is a god tier coping mechanism for everything i’m mad at supernatural about.)

it all comes down to what cas said: freedom is a length of rope and sam and dean hung themselves with it. imo it’s still a dissatisfying ending after fifteen years of character development but it is narratively sound. the reason the story set up all these endgames and then didn’t pull through is that the antagonist won. 15x20 is a depressing tale on the dangers of hubris.

OR IS IT.

2. castiel’s absence is a good thing, actually

alright so this is where i’m probably REALLY going against authorial intent. here’s the thing about cas: he is the only character in the show that possesses true free will, both within the story (”you never did what you were told”, god himself in 15x17 unity) and outside the story (the showrunners kept trying to kill him and he kept coming back, cas falling in love with dean despite writers, actors and network actively trying to prohibit it). so if cas as the representative of free will had been in 15x20 my whole argument would collapse because his presence would mean it either WAS the ending sam and dean chose for themselves, or that cas no longer possessed free will.

but what did cas do instead? he rebuilt heaven for them. heaven is now a paradise of his own making, a place free of chuck’s influence and it’s where sam and dean will finally get to choose their ending. off-screen. post canon. across 50 ao3 pages. dean and cas are shyly linking pinkie fingers as we speak. because the ending the characters choose for themselves is not the writer’s ending to tell.

3. on destiel

i've already talked about my feelings on deancas in dabbnatural/15x20 so i'll just link those posts:

- i think they handled dean and cas’ relationship very well given the circumstances (my post and another very good analysis)

- textual reciprocation or not, destihellers won

- supernatural = queerbait is discussed with like zero nuance on this website and it's annoying as hell

i wrote this at 2 am, i hope i've managed to make my point. again, i'm not saying that this is what the writers were going for. but i do think it's a valid interpretation for the most part and i hope it helped someone feel a little less bitter about the finale!

#like. idk. i'm kinda over it. i think if this is what they were going for it was executed badly but i do like the concept #like i don't even have to fix anything about the finale like this i can simply sleep peacefully knowing that they did break free in the end

[all-chickens-are-trans]

I posted 9.356 times in 2021

900 posts created (10%)

8456 posts reblogged (90%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 9.4 posts.

I added 4.750 tags in 2021

#my posts - 932 posts

#dwh - 683 posts

#fanart - 603 posts

#die wilden hühner - 488 posts

#the terror - 376 posts

#tiktoks - 367 posts

#q - 330 posts

#the gender - 330 posts

#art - 326 posts

#podcasts - 315 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#sein vater ist eigentlich hsv fan und torte weiß bis dahin nicht so wirklich was von fußball und erfärt dass willi und fred st. pauli mögen

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

mutuals can kiss me to trans their gender. it's free it's easy it works 98.9% guaranteed

294 notes • Posted 2021-11-04 20:05:29 GMT

#4

a fun side effect of joining the terror fandom is that, every now and then, i'll see a pretty normal looking guy on my dash who looks vaguely, eerily familiar, but tagged with a show or movie title i don't recognize or a name i've never heard and i'm like. who is that? and then i notice a terror blog put it on my dash and it's like. ah. cold dead boy no. 47. didn't recognize you there without the face-consuming muttonchops and that look of utter despair

311 notes • Posted 2021-08-08 09:50:38 GMT

#3

anytime i see anything about that cruella movie i just think "team starkid's twisted did it better"

1563 notes • Posted 2021-05-28 14:43:48 GMT

#2

I think we should just stop asking ourselves "does good omens queerbait or not?" because it's the wrong question and all it leads to is chaos, vile attacks between various queer people, and disappointment. instead, the question we should maybe ask ourselves is "what do I personally want from this show? what kind of representation am I looking for?"

because that way, both "they should've kissed" AND "i love this nuanced portrayal of a non-sexual relationship" can be true at the same time. both "this show has canon queer and nonbinary characters" and "straight people will be able to deny that crowley and aziraphale are in love and that sucks" can be true. both "i personally wanted more physical intimacy or verbal affirmations of their love" and "i personally loved the ambiguity of their relationship" CAN BE TRUE.

good omens is good representation for some and not for others. it's unsatisfying for some and fulfilling for others. we don't need to shit on each other (or anyone involved in the project, like neil gaiman) to acknowledge that. if good omens doesn't make you happy, if it doesn't give you the representation you want, you can just step away and leave people alone who enjoy it. it's really that simple.

hope this helps

4492 notes • Posted 2021-07-02 10:03:08 GMT

#1

4554 notes • Posted 2021-03-29 14:02:05 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#lol yeah this feels representative #my posts

[lais-a-ramos]

On Lovecraft Country and the way the narrative presents queerness

"No masters or kings when the ritual begins

There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene

Only then I am human

Only then I am clean"

Hozier, Take Me to Church

oh, boy...

i knew some of these deaths could happen in the finale, but i definetely wasn't prepared for any of this, wow.

i guess that, with the events of the finale, including atticus' death, there really is no point in getting the show renewed for a season 2, as as i hoped and wished before, because all of the conflicts that were set up were resolved. i mean, there's always the possibility of using time-travel to do a retcon and bring all the dead characters back, or, at least, two of the protagonists and the villain, but, maybe it would take too many alterations in the narrative, because it seems like the whole thing was planned for a mini-series.

so, now, all we have left is to do a breakdown of what worked and what didn't in lovecraft country's limited series run.

i think that, overall, the message of black ppl taking back the power of ancestry that was stripped from them by white supremacy and structural racism was well-done, and the symbolism was very well-crafted in the final takedown of the season's main villain, which was a representation of how the racism based on indifference born out of white privilege is almost as bad as the racism based on pure hate and despise, which is a valid message, considering the former is a bystander to the abuses and rise to power of the latter.

although i still find the timing was poorly chosen because, well, as of now, all over the world, it's not white ppl who dub themselves "liberal" or "progressive" and claim themselves to not be racist but refuse to act anti-racist that present an actual threat to our human rights, but literal, actual fascists and neo nazis...there are bigger fish to fry now...

but i digress...

on the final score, i guess that when it comes to queer/LGBTQ+ representation, the show fell actually felt real short for a product that crafted so well the race issues, proving that there is still a lot to go before we get to see intersecting identities being portrayed in media the same compex way they exist in the real world.

no, lovecraft country is not guilty of queerbaiting, unlike some of the same ppl in fandom that are the firsts to either erase the half of a couple that is a BIPOC or to deny a canon cis het biracial ship to hype up a fanon white wlw ship and other problematic stuff plenty of times in LGBTQ+ fandom spaces might say.

but that doesn't mean that the treatment of LGBTQ+ issues was satisfying or can be considered good rep, and it actually repeats some of the same tired tropes about queerness and blackness.

while we can say that the show did a relatively good job with montrose as an individual, the same can't be said of the other characters and the final messages.

like, for example, introducing a trans/non-binary indigenous, the Arawak two-spirt Yahima, only to kill them on the next episode was insensitive, to say the least.

while it's true that misha green apologized for the mistake, and said she and the writers tried to make a point that even oppressed groups are capable of oppression, the final score was that a trans/non-binary character was introduced as a plot-device and brutally murdered before having even a chance to properly develop.

in other words, used as a prop.

in a world in which trans ppl are brutally murdered at alarming rates, and most of the victims are BIPOC trans ppl, that is something that we can't let it slide just because the general message of the show was good for cis het black ppl.

the same can be said on the treatment of sammy in the narrative.

while it's true that montrose being aggressive and acting the way he did, pushing ppl he cared about away and shunning every chance of vulnerability due to internalized homophobia, toxic masculinity and misogyny, as this very interesting critique by amani marie hamed of nerdist pointed out, his characterization nonetheless falls into the same old stereotype in american culture of accusing black ppl of falling behind when it comes to queer acceptance and associating black masculinity with homophobia.

also, the author of the article says it better, but, overall, sammy's existence ends up being just another plot device, serving to say to the audience that the producers and writers know that queer ppl existed in the 50's, but, at the same time, repeating some of the same tropes as usual, like associating being queer with being clandestine and deviant instead of showing it as a natural thing that was perceived as deviant at the time, as we can see by that scene of sammy having a sexual encounter in the alley behind his bar.

the author even mentions that queer ppl overall had houses, and most of the encounters actually happened there, and that scene reinforces the idea that queerness is inherently animalistic.

the article also points out how sammy is mostly there just to be shutted out, first by montrose and latter even atticus, and, ends up being another prop to lift montrose to deuteragonist status, being rejected and abused by montrose solely to highlight tic's father journey with his personal issues that apparently he simply wrapped up in a span of 2 episodes.

the fact that sammy was a also a more feminine gay man, even participating in ball culture as a drag queen, and yet most of his appearences involved him being degraded or shut out or overall mistreated by montrose, even tic, and that scene in which atticus forgives montrose after he revealed he never acted on his homosexuality and cheated on tic's mom, even though it's implied she did cheat on him with his brother george, just reinforces the idea it's ok for black and brown men to be gay, as long as they are not THAT GAY™️.

the introduction of thomas in episode 1x09 only to be murdered in the riots is another example of how queerness seem to come with a price in this show if you act on it.

once again, a gay character was introduced in the narrative to further montrose's pain and trauma.

and his introduction was absolutely not necessary, because being a survivor of a massacre like the tulsa riots and a survivor of parental physical abuse is already was already enough for making tic and the audience begin to emphatize with montrose's pain, there was no need to kill another queer character just for that.

not to say we should agree with everything the nerdist article says, of course.

at times, it felt like the author was saying that addressing these issues in the black community is a problem on itself, and that is definetely not the solution.

but, when we consider the setting of a limited series with a plot-driven approach to the scripts, the way the topic is addressed ends up being superficial and rushed, and what could have been a delicate approach to a complicated man discovering his sexuality if the show was an on-going series, ends up being just a narrative built to put montrose in the spotlight in an attempt of getting a few emmy nominations for outstanding performances, and that's about it.

now, what really serves to cement the LGBTQ+/queer representation in lovecrat country as a disservice is the treatment of ruby, christina and their relationship.

i did a few metas explaining christina's and ruby's characterizations, including one i posted before the finale started explaining why ruby was so important to queer black and feminine-aligned nbs being a dark-skinned fat black queer woman discovering her sexuality and figuring out there was more to life than the social roles that were pushed into her, and how the parallels between her and christina, two different women separated by race and class but with the common feeling of being interrupted by social restraints that binded them, were a way for a character like ruby to be treated by the narrative the same way white women get to be treated in fantasy stories, as someone worthy of being courted and romanced as a light-skinned and thin black woman like her sister leti.

but with that finale, and the way the whole thing played out, with not only christina and ruby dead, but also with christina killing ruby, felt, ironically, like the very same trope that's been the norm for queer characters for a long time.

if we consider the tropes of the genre the show and the source material draw inspiration from, pulp fiction magazines, a medium that was very popular until the rise of the cinema and TV in the 50's and 60's that also served as an inspiration for them, then we know that in this medium some of the harmful tropes about queerness that exist until this day were particularly prevalent, including that of the queercoded villains.

to talk about this, i'm going to refer to this amazing article by tricia ennis on the history of queercoding for syfy wire.

first, a definition:

"queer coding, much as the name suggests, refers to a process by which characters in a piece of fictional media seem — or code — queer. this is usually determined by a series of characteristics that are traditionally associated with queerness, such as more effeminate presentations by male characters or more masculine ones from female characters. these characters seem somehow less than straight, and so we associate those characters with queerness — even if their sexual orientation is never a part of their story."

between the hays code in cinema going from 1934 to 1968, the comics code authority in the comics industry from 1954 to the early 21st century (with dc comics and archie comics being the last to break with it in 2011, mind you), the code of practices for television broadcasting from 1952 to 1983 and its predecessor for radio NAB code of ethics, the authors all over mass media couldn't approach the topic of queerness and portray openly and proud queer characters under the risk of being persecuted by the censors, and so, begin to hide queer chracters under the disguise of subtext.

and given the content creators couldn't show any form of positive queer/LGBTQ+ representation under the risk of being punished by the censors, the alternative they found was to portray the queer characters as the villains or antagonists or degenerates, and punish them with death.

the syfy wire article says it better than i ever could:

"even dangerous LGBTQ tropes rose out of this time period, as the depictions of pulp noir femme fatales and other deadly women rose in popularity. these women were usually written as promiscuous and sexually devious, both with men and sometimes with women. they were also evil and usually met their end as a result of their sins. While depictions of LGBTQ characters were frowned upon, depictions of them in this specifically negative light were not. you were not endorsing an “alternative lifestyle” if your gay characters always met an untimely demise. Instead, they were merely paying for their poor choices. this trope would eventually give way to what we now refer to as 'Bury Your Gays.' "

and the thing is, all those censorship laws are over by now, but the tropes/clichés that arised on that era are still prevalent in pop culture 'till this day, consumed by the audiences and reproduced by content creators, in the industry or in fan spaces, whether they are aware of said trope/clichés or not.

now, that is where ruby, christina and their affair on the show enter.

to explain how problematic and harmful the way these characters have been portrayed is, and what kind of message it sends about black queerness, i first have to explain christina's function on the story.

christina, as a character, was basically the texbook pulp noir femme-fatale, checking most of the boxes of the tv tropes description of the trope, from the "red equals evil and sin" imagery to being a wild card, that character who changes sides according to their own desires and individualistic goals.

in her specific case, helping the white supremacists and the black heroes alike in her pursue for unlimited power to protect herself from the oppression that comes with being a white woman, particularly a wealthy one, in which the very same presumption of innocence that gives them privilege over BIPOC is used to infantilize them and strip them from their agency, putting their bodies and choices under the tutelage of cis het white men.

so, her function on the show was basically to manipulate the characters on the two sides alike.

and that is where the problems in queer representation come in, because, to manipulate them, she acts as a sensual seductress.

and what does the script uses to highlight that this is a character willing to go to the most immoral places to achieve her goals? it makes christina a sexually fluid and gender fluid character.

that is basically playing a move straight from the hays code era.

not only does the show plays christina's sexual and gender fluidity as her being "freaky" and a proof of her deviant nature, but it makes her seduction of ruby as a central part of the scheme that positions her as the main villain of the show.

this portrayal of christina as a textbook femme-fatale with a touch of white feminism is already very problematic on its own, especially when we consider her death and how brutal it was, because, yes, while it's true she is privileged because she is white and wealthy, she is still a woman and a queer one at that, and giving her the same traditional treatment for femme-fatales in pulp fiction ends up reinforcing harmful stereotypes about gender and sexuality.

but, when we consider what it means for ruby as a character, it gets WAY worse.

ruby is a character that's been shown to feel very frustrated about the ways in which societal structures of power interfere in her life, not only on a professional level, but even on a personal level as well, making her feel "interrupted".

dealing with the same issues that all black women and feminine-aligned nbs who don't fit into the eurocentric standards of femininity and of beauty do, and not matching the criteria for being hypersexualized by society as the black women considered conventionally pretty -- with thin bodies like the white women or hourglass body frames, being light-skinned and so on --, ruby has her humanity stripped from her because everyone expects her to be stronger than it's humanly possible.

everyone seems to expect something of her at home, her younger sister took advantage of her money for years, and not only all of her goals in the professional realm seem to be frustrated by social structures of oppression, but even her relationship goals as well, given that most of the men that she gets involved with, whether they are black or white, seem to believe they have the right to abandon her and treat her like trash because she doesn't feel a thing and is "strong" enough.

ruby feels frustrated and tired, and she has every single right to do so, because, as what happens to most black women and feminine-aligned nbs, she is disrespected and disregarded by everyone, white and black alike.

so, when christina comes in with an offer of improving ruby's life with magic, of course she takes the opportunity.

and it seemed like the show was willing to deal with the moral complexities of christina's shapeshifting potion and validating ruby's feelings, or at least, sort of validating.

but, by killing her at the end, it just played out as if ruby's feelings meant she was merely a traitor to the race, and not a woman who was tired of feeling frustrated with all of these impossible obstacles society sets for black women and feminine-aligned nbs, especially dark-skinned and fat ones like her, and justified in her anger and frustration.

she did everything right and accomplished nothing, and, when she finally decided to rebel and focus on herself for a change, she met her demise.

but that is just the tip of iceberg, really.

what makes this situation with ruby so frustrating is the fact that, when the show presented christina's queerness as another sign she was "on the wrong side of the tracks" and a villian that should be defeated by the black heroes, which consist in a family, the narrative is implying that a person has to choose between their queerness, on one side, and their blackness and community on the other.

of course, one might argue that the fact montrose was turned into a gay man himself in the adaptation prevents this from happening. but, when we consider montrose was forgiven by tic only after reinforcing he never did cheated on dora and acted on his queerness and lived his gayness, when he really had every single right to do so, especially because it's implied dora slept with his brother george and the three of them knew she was just montrose's beard, then we have the message that it's ok to be queer as long as you don't act on your queerness at all.

there is a part in the review for nerdist that i mentioned above, in which the author says that one of the book's best qualities was that "the source material also illustrates the importance of family and community ties between Black protagonists", and that the TV show ruins it when it "introduces abuse, alcoholism, and family dysfunction, and strips Black characters of their own magic."

that is a part of the article, published in october 14 2020, that now no longer makes sense after the finale, because that message is there.

but, the actual problem is that the ideas of family and community shouldn't be taken for granted bc they are always under political dispute, and are oftenly used to reinforce backward messages when it comes to gender and sexuality, serving as a tool for the control of the bodies and authonomy of ppl of various marginalized groups and intersecctions, including women, BIPOC and queer ppl alike.

while these things are not inherently good or bad, and they are also part of the culture and identity for plenty of BIPOC ethnical identities, the concepts of family and community are usually weaponized by conservatives and used to justify things like queerphobia and the restrictions over reproductive rights.

queer ppl in all walks of life and skin colors all over the world have to deal with plenty of conflicts about coming out because, by deciding to live their own truth, they can never know for sure whether coming out will put them at odds with their families and community until they dare to do so.

so, ruby's dillemma for not knowing what to choose, her family or a life with christina, plays out as the type of experience queer ppl have to deal on a daily basis, and when we consider the intersection with race/ethnicity, it gets even more cruel because our gender identities and sexual/romantic/aesthetic orientations, that are natural parts of us, make us being invisibilized and silenced in our own cultures and feel like we have to give up on our own communities in order to be able to live our queerness.

there are few things more gut-wrenching than that feeling of fear that you might be disowned by your family and relatives and your community -- whether is it a neighbourhood, a village, a small town etc -- because a part of yourself is considered at odds with your heritage.

and when we consider all the christian imagery in the show, the final result is a really troubling one.

while it's true that being christian and believing in god doesn't authomatically makes anyone a bigot (i actually still retain some of the beliefs i was raised into as a catholic latin-american), it's also true that now, more than ever, we can't ignore science, including history.

the entire way in which they referred to magic as a devil's work was very troubling and evocates the same discriminative rethoric that white european colonizers used to justify the destruction of the ancient old religions and beliefs of BIPOC in their own homeland, the ancient culture of our ancestors, and also the oppression of peasant women in europe.

while we can't generalize, given each culture had its own particularities, there's an agreement in the scientific community that, overall, the cultures of the first nations and indigenous folks from the american continent, the african continent, the asian continent and oceania/pacific islands were far more accepting of different manifestations of queerness.

that means that queerphobia was part of the colonial project, once the traditional family values of christianity were used as a tool for the white colonizers to regulate the bodies and sexuality of the colonized and keep them under control.

and that is why the association of these ideals of family and community as inherent to blackness ends up being problematic, because we can't discuss racism without discussing colonization, and we can't discuss colonization without considering the ways in which queerphobia and religion were used as tools of colonial oppression.

the worst part is that, when it comes to ruby, the producers and writers really didn't need to do kill her at all.

and while the show did right in not showing how christina killed ruby, sparing the audience from watching another black body being brutalized, it's also true they didn't have to kill the character to get her out of the way from the final confrontation between christina and tic's family.

they literally went and changed her background from her book counterpart and made the woman a musician, and a blueswoman at that.

all they needed was to have her share a goodbye scene with christina the same way she had with leti, saying that she wanted to be with christina but couldn't fight her family and friends like that, grab a copy from the safe travel negro guide and set off in a bus to travel all over the U.S., singing very sad blues songs about falling in love with a white devil once.

that's all the producers and writers needed, to use the "sent in a bus" trope.

but the choice was to portray ruby as a character facing the consequences of following her desires , which ends up feeling like a punishment for a dark-skinned and fat queer black woman for daring to question the position society has placed her because of who she is.

this is in no way an attempt to "cancel" the producers or the writers, because a) their work is still important as a team of mostly black creators and b) canceling doesn't seem to have significant consequences, and seems to lead only to more social media wars than anything else.

but now that it finally seems diversity is getting more space in media, this type of discussion gets more important.

there is a slow increase on more representation of queer/LGBTQ+ characters in media and more productions involving queer/LGBTQ+ creatives, but, most of the time, the characters and are white, or, when there are biracial couples, the characters of color are just token minorities, and the same happens with the creatives involved in the production.

there is a slow increase in BIPOC characters representation in media and more productions involving BIPOC as creatives, but, most of the time, the characters are cis heterosexual, and the same happens with the creatives involved in the production.

but, for pop culture and media to be truly diverse, there has to be more space for the narratives of ppl that exist and belong to the two groups to raise our voices and be heard, whether is it in the entertainment industry, society at large or even in fandom spaces.

because she shouldn't be forced to pick between one identity over the other.

our existences shouldn't be interrupted just because society doesn't know how to deal with them.

and if that make us sinners, then so be it.

#lovecraft country #ruby baptiste #christina braithwhite #ruby x christina #rubtina #rutina #montrose freeman #lgbtqiap+ #lgbtq representation #queer representation #poc representation #woc representation #moc representation #black women representation #representation in media #representation in fiction #tv representation #it's ok for non-BIPOC queer folks to reblog #and it's ok for non-queer BIPOC folks to reblog

[bluebrine]

it’s still... odd to me that other people had such different experiences growing up with this series than i did. i had such a personal relationship with it... seeing others talk about the sequels, what they liked and disliked for the series- and it’s like, really? we had very different childhoods (...story of my life, ha).

in my elementary school, our library only had one of the books- Dealing With Dragons (the one with this delightfully cheesy cover by Tim Hildebrandt lol).

(also, please note, there is no indication here that this is the first book of a series. just..... keep that in mind.)

haha, what if 🤭 ..... i was beautiful princess, and you were a dangerously charming dragon 😜 ..... and we were both girls? 😳💦 

good god, little me LIVED for this book. i checked it out & reread it over and over again- the librarian must have got sick of me at some point but i didn’t care lol. i stayed up too late reading it with a flashlight under the covers, i read it during class beneath the desk (i was not... particularly stealthy. they kinda just let me think i was getting away with it lmao).

i know every young kid likes books with fantasy and magic to make their boring lives less lame, but the way i buried myself in this one was... 100% pure escapism. (pour one out for all the weird kids who had no friends outside of books, am i right ladies?) 

the story has a theme of just..... running away from it all, cause everyone else apparently knows so much more about what’s Right for you- what interests are Right for you, what clothes are Right for you, what boys are Right for you, everything! everything was chosen for you, no dystopian YA lit required! 

(CAN YOU POSSIBLY GUESS WHERE THIS IS GOING?)

i didn’t know what the concept of a lesbian was or why no one else thought it was weird that you couldn’t have interests that were Not Like Other People (the Right People), but that’s what this book meant to me. the entire core of the story was showing kids that you could pick your own hobbies, your own home, your own family & friends and it wasn’t up to the Right People to decide that for you.

fuck ‘em!!! run off to the mountains! live in exciting domestic bliss with a giant, well-read, protective dragon lady who can breathe fire and loves to eat your cherries jubilee every night (ABSOLUTELY NO METAPHORS HERE NO SIR)! back home your family is freaking out (but kinda relieved)- cause this is crazy, dragons are dangerous and ruin the women they steal away (where have i heard this before?), but also your family doesn’t... really miss you. they don’t actually want you back- as you were, anyway. once the prince sweeps you off your feet and away from the dragon’s evil clutches and properly marries you, oh sure, then you’re welcome back with open arms! (but that will never happen.)

fuck ‘em!!!!! make cool friends with other misfits and live a life full of adventure with the family you found along the way! there’s witches who live in eccentric homes with 50 cats, there’s neighborly old dragon grandpas who love chocolate pudding, there’s other girls who don’t think you’re weird and like to hang out and read magic books in the library too! you can make friends and be happy! it IS possible!

and that meant so much to me as a kid. i never fit in (i wonder why), i never seemed to like the Right stuff (I WONDER WHY), and for the things i did care about, i went about it wrong- according to the Right People, who didn’t much care about what i thought at all.

...anyway Dealing With Dragons is an allegory about the power of lesbian escapism & independence and i love it very much. i still love it, over a decade later. it’s a fun, captivating, whimsical little tale that means more than childhood nostalgia to me. i spent hours daydreaming about the story in elementary school, content with the characters and setting in a way that just... settled something in me. 

but then i read the other books.

because there were... OTHER BOOKS!? WHAT??? (again, i never knew it wasn’t a stand-alone story lol).

when i got to middle school and had a whole new library to consume, i naturally looked for my fav type of books- those with cool fantasy ladies with swords and dragons on the front (that’s a genre, right?). and, lo and behold, there were more parts to my favorite story!!! lads, i lost my goddamn mind. there were THREE MORE? WHAT??? utter batshittery. how had they kept this from me? i had to read them immediately. 

what would the stories be about? i saw Cimorene on the covers, sword-wielding and pants-wearing (’fuck yes’, said little me). what adventures would she get up to with Kazul, now that she was king of dragons? what would life in their new home be like? the new libraries and treasuries and kitchens would be massive- what secrets would they discover? what was living in dragon society like, now that they sat at the top together? what new recipes would Cimorene cook with her friend??? (that one was very important to me lol).

i checked out all of ‘em at once, and channeled deep into the obsessive focus that only a truly lonely middle school girl can attain. I was SO EXCITED for this. 

-- and got my heart ground to dust under Patricia C. Wrede’s heel.

...because, see, i hadn’t known there was an Enchanted Forest Chronicles. i hadn’t thought about what that actually meant. it, as inevitably as the tides, meant the incoming of the one thing that made me truly hate reading sometimes- romance. cause these books weren’t about Cimorene and her friends or Kazul at all. they were about a sudden love interest and the child Cimorene had with him cause of course that’s what fucking happened. what else was i expecting? what else could stories possibly be about? i read through all of the books, feeling a little more like somebody shot my dog with each chapter, and could only feel sick when she got married & pregnant at the end. i was 11 years old and i knew something was wrong but not why.

(aaand looking back now, was that baby’s first taste of queerbaiting? does it count if you do it to yourself?? ah, youth. i don’t let myself get my hopes up anymore.)

for a very long time, i hated the idea of love (...quite the oxymoron, that one). cause it always, always meant that the people i cared about changed in ways that i didn’t understand at all. what, some boy you’ve never met before shows up, and suddenly your important quest and friends and family are... an after thought? why? don’t you care about them? don’t you love them too? why does this always happen? why is there always a boy and love and babies and nothing else? (why, why, why indeed? and yes, i was one of those kids who got fucking mean when their friends started only looking at boys, how’d you know?)

anyways. i hated it. i couldn’t possibly have articulated why back then, but it always made me so mad, despite the fact that the words on the page were telling me that this was the best thing that could ever happen in life. that just made it worse, cause why am i getting so upset over this? it’s a good thing, objectively- they’re in love. they’re happy. why is it making me feel so fucking angry instead?

this series doesn’t really... deserve any of the repressed vitriol it made me feel, though. Cimorene’s love interest that appeared in book two, Mendanbar, is actually a pretty cool guy! he has an innate, natural connection to his magic forest kingdom. he’s sick of fairy-tale tropes, he has a sweet anti-wizard sword, he’s very kind and brave- and i fucking hated his guts (...lmao, sorry dude).

there’s nothing actually wrong with this series’s romances. the couples care about each other and support each other well. i’m glad for all the kids who got to see some happy romances, i truly am. but god, that wasn’t for me, and it probably wasn’t for the other lonely kids who picked up a book about running away from what the Right People wanted for them either. 

for a series about rejecting what society tells you is the Right thing to want, the characters just... end up wanting that exact same thing anyway. oh, the thought of marrying a man and spending your life with him, baring him heirs until you die, sounds unappealing? so distressing, in fact, you’d literally rather get eaten by dragons? WELL DON’T WORRY, this one particular guy is actually good! of course you’ll fall in love with him! you’ll want to be pregnant forever with his horrible frogspawn! you’ll be happy! 

...what do you mean this is what you were running away from?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

i spent... an inordinate amount of time as a child reading Dealing With Dragons. while i cannot possibly blame the author for my individual experience with their work, which WAS written as a series (the finale was written first, actually! way back in 1985), the fact remains that my interactions with them were... soured. 

in a way that was out of the author’s hands, really, but i just don’t know how to think about this series without that bittersweet hurt in my chest. i cried like, twice, writing this stupid, rambling essay thing, and i don’t actually know how to look past that. i suppose the tried-and-true method of just... rereading the first book and pretending everything’s fine always works lol.

i own a few different versions of these books. there’s a full set i was gifted later in middle school -the nice glossy ones, with Peter De Seve’s lovely cover art! -which i have never once reread. they’re in immaculate shape, really.

i also own an absolutely, completely beat-to-shit paperback copy of the same version i must have read a hundred times as a kid. its cover is creased and peeling, there’s a bunch of weird stains and rips and dogears, and i adore it. i picked it up this year at a used book place, and every time i look at it i can see some small, desperate kid who doesn’t even know they’re lonely but still curls up around that book again and again. 

#personal #long post #dealing with dragons #the enchanted forest chronicles #(which. apparently WASN'T an allegory for lesbian escapism #anyway i was robbed but its fine <3) #ok to reblog

[pass-the-bechdel]

The Good Place full series review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

96% (forty-eight of fifty).

What is the average percentage of female characters with names and lines for the full series?

49%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Forty-four.

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 50% female?

Twenty-eight.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

Positive Content Status:

Good - you might even say, strong - in the sense that it’s all there, pretty much all of the big representation bells are ringing, particularly the ones for women and racial diversity. That said, the show is generally content to sit pretty and not push the envelope on inclusivity, so if you’re looking for inspiration in-text instead of just in casting, you might be disappointed. At any rate, it’s a solid feel-good time, and not likely to make you mad (average rating of 3.01).

Which season had the best representation statistics overall?

The numbers stay pretty consistent across the whole series, but if I had to call a winner, it’s season four, which has the highest percentage of female characters and the only above-average positive content rating (though that was awarded somewhat cumulatively, and so doesn’t feel particularly well-earned by that season above the others). 

Which season had the worst representation statistics overall?

It’s such a close call, but season three must be the loser here by virtue of the lowest ratio of female to male characters; it also had one of the series’ two Bechdel fails. Like I said, it’s...a really close call.

Overall Series Quality:

There’s so much about it that is fresh and original and interesting, I wish I could love it more. After a magnificent debut season, the show suffers immensely for a lack of pacing and the absence of coherently-planned plot, and at times the stagnating characterisation and pointless filler caked into the cracks in the storytelling can be frustrating and/or tedious. I’m only as disappointed as I am because the potential for greatness was so strong. That said, even at it’s worst The Good Place is still entertaining, and most of it is better than that. It’s irreverent, it’s fun, it’s surprising, and sometimes it’s even as poignant as it is remarkable. I have my gripes, in droves, but that doesn’t mean this show is not worthy.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Imagine. Imagine a version of this show where the first season is basically the same, and the second season is...somewhat similar to how it is, but with more focus and direction, less time-wasting; a second season where figuring out that some fundamental change to their circumstances is necessary comes early, and instead of faffing about with ethical lessons in the fake neighbourhood again while Michael pretends he can get everyone to the Good Place, we get down to business with going on the run and into the Bad Place to find the judge and petition for help. Imagine this show, but the third season has none of that return to Earth crap, and instead, is the neighbourhood experiment from season four, properly fleshed out. And then season four is all about going to the Good Place and solving the problems there, addressing issues with the concept of utopia and the ineffectual bureaucracy of obsessive niceness (used for comedic effect in the actual show, but c’mon, there’s a whole untapped reservoir about morality there). Each season could have (gasp!) a properly-planned and plotted arc, dealing with a different school of ethical considerations, and I dunno, maybe the characterisation could have trajectory too, and the characters could vitally shape the storytelling, and maybe not get their personalities and experiences erased and rebooted over and over again, nullifying large swathes of the narrative which came before? Ideally, they could be reset zero (0) times, or at least have all their reboot experiences dumped back into them in the first few episodes of season two, so that they could proceed from there as whole people. Rebooting everyone’s personalities is not actually necessary to the plot in any way, and is, actually, incredibly detrimental to storytelling and especially, character development. Imagine this show, but just chilling out and actually telling a coherent story? 

I am all the more annoyed by how things turned out on this show because I know that the four seasons were planned for, rather than being the result of cancellation; the idea that the creators sat down and ‘plotted’ (using that term loosely) to make this mess drives me a little wild. The (attempted) avoidance of the dreaded ‘stagnation’ seems obvious, and it leads to major narrative shortcuts and jumps and instances where the show spends an episode or two on what should have been a half-season’s development, minimum, and yet at other times all momentum grinds to a halt for a bizarre bottle-type episode where the characters just talk about a concept for a while or work on some unimportant romantic subplot. The various ethical concepts that the show heavily incorporated as its bread and butter in the first season start to stick out like sore thumbs in season two, seemingly wedged into one episode or another for no real reason other than just to be there, and the fact that the show lets go of the idea of moral choices in the life mattering at all in the end leaves the backbone of the show in a very strange shape. I said in the season four review that I didn’t expect the show to come up with some One True Answer about how people should live their lives, but that I was baffled by the fact that the show side-stepped that altogether; what I expected them to conclude was something in the line of ‘we recognise that life is complicated, not all situations are created equal, and it can be hard to know how to proceed ethically or even to access ethical options within one’s circumstances. Still, it is important to do your best, not only for yourself but for your community, because the more good you put into the world, the more there will be to go around and come back to you. What matters most is that you are doing your best with what you’ve got’. The fact that the show distracted itself with fixing how the afterlife rewards people within the afterlife means that it suggests no incentive to perform moral actions in life, and frankly...who gives a fuck? The real world is the place we’re all living in, and there’s no point starting a conversation about morality in real life if the conclusion is just ‘guess we’ll straighten out all the fascists and bigots and the other pieces of shit after they die, so don’t worry, everyone gets to Heaven eventually!’

Anyway, if that seems like just a reiteration of what I said in the season four review, well. I’m still baffled by it. The other thing I was going to talk about in the season four review but held for the full series instead was that one big thing that I have railed about all the time since season one, and that’s PACING. For all ye wannabe-writers out there, please understand how important pacing is. Even vital plot or character beats can seem like meaningless filler in a poorly-paced story, because your audience’s mind is hardwired to try and follow narrative cues that are being incomprehensibly muddled. Standard structure can be played with, but if you toss it out in favour of ‘stuff just happens, ok? Except when it doesn’t’, you just end up with a soup of disconnected story ideas, and nothing threading it together. Character interactions and especially developments can help to create the through-line you need to keep the story functioning despite itself, but as variously noted with The Good Place...initial characterisation? Strong, excellent. Development? Not so much, not least because they kept getting deleted and rebooted. Also, time skips kept happening, and that’s a great way to fuck over your narrative coherence even more: remove the recognisable constant we call time! It’ll be fine! As with all things, it is perfectly possible to play around with this stuff, but you have to know what you’re doing and be doing it for a good reason, and that’s not what they had going on here. This was narrative soup, and when you have a soup, the pieces all kinda meld together and lose any individual purpose, meaning, or power they may have had. The result in this case was not bad, but it really could have been so much better, and literally all it needed for that was some attention being paid to the story structure via pacing.

So. The good news is, I think I have pretty well exhausted all of my complaints by now, and that leaves us with the good stuff, of which there was no paltry amount. The show was not a hit by accident (even if I do feel that it’s success had a lot to do with people sticking around after the spectacular first season, and not because it stayed strong throughout), and even if there was a lot of soup going on, what comprised that soup was all really fun and unique, and this made for a wonderful piece of light-hearted television that could be as hilarious as it was insightful. It still had a lot of great takes on things, the commentary was strong (even if it pulled all its punches towards the end), and whether the storytelling was ebbing or flowing, it was always delightful. The show also managed to pull a miraculous finale out of its hat, and that’s a rare thing in television; however the story wobbled over the course, the ending provided enough satisfaction to forgive just about any sins, especially if you don’t happen to have been watching with a deliberately critical eye. Do I wish that Eleanor got to hook up with a chick on-screen some time instead of just making a lot of bi remarks? Yes. Do I consider the show to have queerbaited instead of providing genuine rep? No. Is the underselling of the queer content my most significant representation complaint? Yes, it is, and that's good news considering the world we live in and the dearth of quality representation that the industry has brought us to expect. 

There's an important distinction to be made there, regarding the tokenistic representation that is very common these days in tv trying for brownie points and good publicity, exactly that kind of 'political' inclusivity that conservatives are always bitching about. It should not be surprising that I support that tokenism over the alternative of having no representation at all, but it can still be quite disheartening to feel like your identity or the identities that you value are being referenced as nothing more than an opportunity for some shitty producer to perform wokeness for attention, praise, and the almighty dollar. I bring this up because - even though The Good Place never really worked up much of a boost to its content rating - one thing I felt that it did really, really right was providing representation without it feeling tokenistic at all. Eleanor's bisexuality wasn't as prominent as I might have preferred, and as noted through the course of the show, there were times I feared it was more bait than real rep, but reflecting on it at the end, the way it was included feels organic, it never gets in the way in order to ensure the audience notices and is dutifully impressed. The number of women around and the multicoloured casting plays out even better; I never once felt cynical about the gender balance I was seeing, and I've said it before but I'll say it again: the fact that the show was packed with names from across the world gives me so much life. I'm still a little salty about Chidi's Senegalese origins getting the shaft (and we won't talk about 'Australia'), but the nonchalant diversity of naming goes such a long way to embracing the idea that this is a world for everyone (and an afterlife for everyone, too). And where anything else might fall apart or lose its way, that is an affirming thing. If you want feel-good tv, it’s here. This is the Good Place.

#The Good Place #full series review #Bechdel Test #female representation

[orionsangel86]

dude half the characters on the cw are lgbt..if destiel doesn't become canon it's not orders from above, it comes from everyone involved in the show, and especially dabb and jensen.

The network gave the go to make God bi, which risked to pi*s off several viewers. Them not making DeanCas canon makes zero sense. They probably won't make Eileen and Sam stay together. Why? Berens and a lot of the other cast and crew ppl follow acc like Super*iki. Berens even created a char just for her. He knows she loves under*ge in*est. They won't make DeanCas move out of subtext to make their friends like Super*iki happy. Don't believe me? Look at Jason F who told us all ships are the same.

.....

I have had both of these asks in the past few days and I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry about them. 

Anon no.1 - You seriously blaming Dabb and JENSEN for not making Destiel textual? ppffft bitch please. Jensen has basically admitted Dean’s feelings for Cas live on stage. This perpetual concept that floats around fandom like a bad smell in which Jensen is some anti Destiel homophobe has really got to be VANQUISHED. No matter how much we try to febreeze that bullshit out it still lingers URGH. I’m not sure whether to blame the bronlys or bitter destiellers for it tbh. Right now the lines between both are pretty blurred...

I have spoken about this extensively before. The CW is FINE with LGBTQ+ characters on it’s newer shows, where they are established as queer early on, so the audience is well prepared and willing to accept it from the start. What the execs at the CW might NOT be happy to approve, is taking their 15 year old ancient TV show with a 50/50 split republican/democrat audience, in which half the audience are straight white male republicans with a boner for guns, macho men and action scenes and watch the show purely on a surface level basis, and make the LEAD character who is known to that particular subset of the audience as being THE MOST macho dudebro, a queer character in love with the OTHER lead character who is also an angel.

Do you really not see the difference here? Making God bi? Yeah okay it was controversial, but God at the time was still a minor character in the show and it was a one off line in passing that those dudebro audience members can easily brush off. Making your lead character bi and having an entire story arc where he falls in gay love with his angelic best friend? yeah that’s gonna go down pretty differently. Besides, making Destiel textually canon isn’t gonna be something they can easily remove for the more homophobic overseas Russian and Chinese audiences. Also ask yourself this, since Chuck returned as a recurring character have they mentioned his bisexuality once? At all? Other than the line about him having a creepy obsession with Dean (which is hardly good rep for bisexuals anyway)?!? Seriously can you at least CONSIDER what I am trying to say here and use some critical thinking skills to actually understand this situation.

Anon 2 - See above re God being bi. Your ramblings have zero correlation. You are best summed up by this picture:

In case its not entirely clear, you are the guy on the left. I am the dude on the right. 

FANS DO NOT INFLUENCE THE WRITERS. SUPERWIKI DOES NOT INFLUENCE THE WRITERS.

Also Jason F is a troll who likes to joke around with the fandom. His word also means NOTHING in terms of the writers. The ONLY thing that matters is what we see on the screen, which right now is a pretty intense and heavy emotional plot between Dean and Cas that seems to be building to something pretty epic.

We can also take Jensen’s comments at the latest con into account because he let slip that Dean is into Cas, like literally slipped and confirmed it whilst making a dumb joke because the dude gets awkward when shipping is brought up even though in this case it was about Sastiel not Destiel and Jensen just went and confirmed Destiel, so thanks for that Jensen!

Seriously people just stop already. Your incessant need to come into my ask box and shut down my positivity with your ridiculous nonsensical reasoning is driving me mad. You wanna be mad at Dabb, Bobo and Jensen and scream queerbait from the top of your lungs? BE MY GUEST. I really couldn’t care less what you think. But if you really are going out of your way to put the blame on queer writers, and showrunners who are allies, and JENSEN who is a fucking actor and has no decision making abilities in the grand scheme of things, instead of blaming the corrupt greedy homophobic executives that sit at the top of the powerhouse networks, then you my friends are part of the problem. 

#fandom wank #fandom drama #queerbaiting #destiel and queerbaiting #asks #anon #Anonymous

[kdramafeminist]

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly || the king: eternal monarch 1-4

GOOD!

-OST. Gorgeous, beautiful, will be listening on repeat.

-Directing. Strong Goblin vibes & whilst some similarities miiight be straight copying, the aesthetic was one of the best things about that show so i’ll never complain about seeing more of it.

-Jung Eun Chae. Queen. Goddess. Powerful, cunning Prime Minister & we should all bow down.

-Woo Do Hwan. Aka the duality of man. Still hot. Still got the best smile ever.

-Kim Kyung Nam. First time watching him! Instantly love him & also love his character. Upright & long-suffering with an edge. Gold.

-Kim Go Eun. I don’t always like her projects & (selfishly) wish she’d pick things more up my alley, but I can’t deny that she is one seriously, seriously talented actress. No matter who she plays, they always feel so real even if they don’t make sense. I love her.

BAD :/

-Lee Minho. My guy playing the same character again for the millionth time. Worse it’s one of my least favourite character types. (Literally what are the king’s flaws apart from being arrogant. Anyone?)

-Plot?? It was mostly just... look pretty... things happen... look pretty. Apart from the very beginning of ep.1 and the very end of ep.4 - no plot in sight.

-Nothing feels real. Idk how to explain this very well but I feel like I’m watching a show. As in, I don’t feel invested in these people and their lives and what will happen to them in the future.

-Nobody talks like a real person. It’s obvious & grating.

UGLY -.-

-No f/f relationships :( (Tae Eul & her rich cafe owner friend don’t count when they’ve shared all of like 2 scenes).

-Bitchy PM in power. The narrative’s trying really hard to push the Prime Minister as some terrible schemer we should hate. I can see you trying and I refuse to buy it. 

-Queerbaiting? Boo! Just make Jo Young x Lee Gon lovers instead imagine how much better...

-Jo Young x fangirl romance? Are they trying to make it a thing? Thanks I hate it.

BONUS ROUND: INTRIGUING...

-The villain. Lee Rim is still pretty mysterious even whilst his motives are pretty transparent. Which is to say, I’m interested to see how the political intrigue plays out. Love me some political intrigue.

-Lee Gon’s parallel world, living, not-mum. I think the angst of that meeting will be entertaining.

-Detective Kang Shin Jae. Are they showing how righteous he is early so we’re extra shocked when he flips to the dark side? Ik this is a wild theory I just enjoy it.

----------

I’m a solid 50/50 on this drama so I’ll keep watching for now and hope it tips into the good more than the bad! And also just jettison that entire “ugly” category pls.

#the king: eternal monarch #the king: the eternal monarch #kdrama #lee minho #kim go eun #woo do hwan #jung eun chae #kim kyung nam #sama reviews

[midshipmank]

*I don't know what The Untamed is and at this point I'm too afraid to ask* (would you mind giving me a quick overview/telling me what you like about it?) ((also you doing Howl's Moving Castle with your class is like the best thing since sliced bread))

Oh my gosh, yes! I’m sorry it took me a few days to get to this! I did try to keep this short. (And I’m so flattered you think my lesson plans are cool! Thank you!)

Okay, so in the simplest terms The Untamed* is a Chinese drama based on the novel Mo Dao Zu Shi (MDZS) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu. I’m not that familiar with the novel, but as I understand it, it was originally a web novel, but may now have been traditionally published in China (and possibly censored? I’m really uncertain about this). “Mo Dao Zu Shi” is usually translated as “The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.” The novel and all of its adaptations** are Xianxia, which is a genre of Chinese fantasy that incorporates a lot of elements from Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese mythology, traditional Chinese medicine, etc. 

For the plot, I’m gonna stick to The Untamed since it’s what I know! It’s about two cultivators who meet when they’re teenagers. Wei Wuxian (the titular Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) is the first disciple of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect--he’s considered to be a genius, but he’s also a mischievous troublemaker. He was adopted into the Jiang family as a child and would 1000% die for his siblings and it kills me. Lan Wangji is the Second Young Master (Er-gonzi) of the Gusu Lan Sect, and is known for being one of the “Twin Jades” of the Lan Sect (along with his older brother). He follows all 3000 of the Lan Sect’s rules to the letter and he’s also an excellent cultivator and super repressed (at first!). They meet, fall in love (though, yes, it’s all subtext because of censorship), there’s a war, Wei Wuxian kind of goes to the dark side for Reasons, then dies, and comes back to life 16*** years later. The first two episodes of the show actually take place in the future/present when Wei Wuxian is resurrected, then there’s a 30-episode flashback. The pacing is 100% ridiculous and I 100% love it.  

As for what I like about it....there’s a lot. I’m gonna try to stick to the main things.

1. The romance is so well done. Even though the creators of every single version of MDZS have to contend with censorship, the subtext is there and purposeful, and I am just going to steal this quote from this excellent Vox article because I can’t put it any better: 

“Their bond — which Netflix translates as “lifelong confidantes,” but which alternate translations usually interpret as “soulmates” — becomes transcendent, a chaste but heady yearning holding them together across time and tragedy. Wangji exudes soul-spilling longing, which Wang Yibo conveys primarily through mesmerizing infinitesimal facial adjustments that somehow contain Grand Canyons of emotional depth that will leave you clawing the floor. It’s like watching an inflamed Victorian melodrama, except instead of North and South it’s 50 hours of Wangji pledging eternal love to Wei Wuxian with the smallest curve of his mouth.” 

As someone whose formative years were full of shows that were all queerbaiting, watching a show full of subtext that actually means what it’s implying is some seriously addictive wish fulfillment. 

2. The Untamed absolutely bulldozed me where I’m weakest, and I will never recover--aka, the adopted family content makes me lose my entire mind. For some reason, adopted families (in which I do include found families, but by which I especially mean families that involve adoptive parents and children) are one of those things that get me right under the ribs without trying. The Untamed has so much adopted family content--Wei Wuxian’s relationship with the Jiang family (please don’t touch me) is the largest part of it, but there’s also some quality angst between Lan Wangji and his uncle (who was his primary parental figure), and [SPOILERS] Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji also have a child that they adopt together. Kind of. Almost. Listen, it’s complicated, and I’m going to keel over just thinking about it.

3. The way it tackles themes of morality is astoundingly well done. There is so much complexity, so much grey space, and so much angst--I have seriously never been so delighted to have my heart ripped out of my chest and mashed to pulp. I love complex villains, I especially love anti-heroes. This show delivered in all fronts, and I feel almost spoiled to be honest. As I understand it, the novel is even more brutal in this regard, and that is the biggest temptation to me to read it (it’s currently only available in English through fan translations).

So, those are the top 3 things I love about it! I could go on. I’m not gonna lie, there was a steep learning curve at first, and I would not have made it without the character/sect/Mandarin honorifics guide my twin made for me, but it was so worth it. I have not watched (or read, or listened to) something so escapist and delightful and angsty in years, and it’s definitely my go-to distraction in These Dark Times. 

*It’s Chinese title is Chen Qing Ling, which is why some people call it CQL. As far as I know, Chen Qing Ling does not translate to “The Untamed” at all. 

**There’s also a graphic novel that closely follows the novel + has an official English translation, a donghua/animated show (unfinished) that follows the novel more closely than The Untamed, and an audiodrama that I know very little about. I’m forever fascinated by how many adaptations have been made in such a short period of time. 

***So it could actually be 12-13 years? The timeline of The Untamed is not exactly the same as the timeline of the novel, and seems to collapse almost everything in the past into a single year, whereas in the novel WWX and LWJ knew each other for several years before WWX’s death. It’s much less clear in The Untamed. 

#asks #The Untamed #mdzs

[dalek-in-heels]

Hi hello, I have Feelings about some (not all!) of the ways I’ve seen bisexuality and polyamory discussed in Magicians fandom recently, mainly in the context of how queerness is represented in the show / speculating about what’s next. Queerness and polyam are two things that are near and dear to my own lived experiences, so I want to put my voice out there. This turned into a 2k word jumble, but as always I am open to discussion around any of it! My opinions/experiences, not law, I like hearing other viewpoints, etc etc. <3

tl;dr 1) I think it makes narrative sense why Quentin hasn’t explicitly confessed his love for Eliot to his friends yet.

2) I think it’s canon that Quentin and Eliot are each unique representations of people whose bisexuality/queerness/no-label-sexual-fluidity manifests in different ways.

3) I think it’s canon that there is polyamory in A Life in the Day.

—

First, I want to make clear that, after literally decades in fandoms that queerbait (or not even that), I feel passionately about the writers finally giving us more explicit queer love stories. Like, viscerally anxiously needing some emotional resolution for Queliot. I’m not sure I’ve ever been this invested in a ship before tbh.

That said, I won’t be mad about how Quentin & Eliot’s arc has been represented so far, as long as it does continue to develop going forward. Like, if it’s not explicitly addressed at all the rest of this season? That’s an issue. But if it’s only addressed again, like, tonight or even just in the finale, and leaves open the potential for more development in season five while Eliot is actually not possessed? I can see narrative reasons for why that works better.

In large part because of Quentin’s motivations this season. This is key: They are telling a story about a man who has been suppressing his feelings for the man he loves, who he thinks doesn’t love him back, and who is currently possessed by a monster. Quentin’s cautious. He’s depressed. He’s not going around making declarations, precisely because this is a very different love story than the ones we’ve seen between any of the other couples. Not only because they’re two men, but in large part because one of those men is possessed.

Don’t get me wrong (ha)—I am 100% in the camp of people who want Quentin to make some sort of confession despite all of this, and I definitely daydream about there being some sort of extra footage from their 50 years that we’ve never seen. But also? Story-wise? I get why it hasn’t happened yet: The more things that are out there in the open for the Monster to use against Quentin—and against Eliot’s body—the more damage can be done.

I think that’s one of the things that’s so powerful about that scene in 4x06, when the Monster asks, Why do you care about him so much? and Quentin simply says, Because I do. Yes, we know from Eliot’s memory that it’s because Quentin loves him, but like can you imagine Quentin admitting that to the Monster? What shit the Monster would pull with that knowledge?? It’d be horrible. Quentin knows better. He’s keeping details as close to the chest as possible for a damn reason.

—

Which brings me to Quentin’s bisexuality: I don’t think him not talking openly about his feelings for Eliot erases his bisexuality. Yes, arguably he could have a conversation with Julia or Alice or whomever about it, but what purpose would that serve? Him just feeling even worse admitting out loud that he’s trying to save the person he loves who doesn’t even love him back? Much easier to contain if you don’t say it out loud.

One of the things I’ve really loved about Quentin actually is that his bisexuality is a version that’s relatable to me on a personal level. Quentin is a queer man who has mostly dated women (as far as we can tell in canon). I’m a cis woman who has, largely due to circumstance, mostly dated men, despite coming out as bi 17 years ago. There were also long stretches of time where I didn’t date anyone. None of this has made me less queer/bisexual. My sexuality is an undeniable aspect of me, but also, I pass as straight. A lot. Which is frustrating because I never want to pass as straight in straight spaces or queer spaces, but it’s a super common experience for a lot of us. I’ve known so many women who pass, many of us because we date men, and therefore people don’t see our sexuality as valid since it’s ~ not in practice. It is a part of us; it doesn’t matter what we practice or not.

Quentin is bisexual—or whatever label we as fans want to put on it, but he is not straight. He has had queer experiences and expressed queer feelings. That is canon. Honestly, one of the reasons why I’m drawn to him as a queer character is because he hasn’t put a label on it in canon. They are telling the story of a character whose sexuality is not heterosexual, and it is not the most important thing about him. That is valid. That is the underrepresented experience of many of us, and it is satisfying to see someone represented on television who has experiences with people of different and similar genders, and that is not the core of the relationship conflict. He knows who he is. As Jason has put it before, it’s the one thing Quentin isn’t anxious about. I feel that.

But okay, back to trusting if the writers will represent Queliot or not going forward? I think it’s important to remember that this show has always been pretty fluid sexually, so the writers driving down this route with two of their male leads is, while new ground, not an absurd expectation. On a less queer show, I’d be less trusting of how they’ll handle it, but I feel like out of any writers I’ve loved, these might be the ones who get it on some level? Yes, there are still majority heteronormative things going on, but this is not the first queer relationship we’ve seen on the show: We’ve seen Eliot with randos, we’ve seen Eliot with Mike, with Idri—and with Quentin.

Which, while we’re on that—Eliot’s queerness? Should also not be erased. He is not gay. He is somewhere on a fluid queer spectrum. That’s literally canon, so any hand-waving away of that is erasing it. Sexuality is just so much more complex than that, and I think it’s simplistic to say otherwise. There are people who see themselves in Eliot’s version of queerness (mostly men, sometimes women), just the same way so many people see themselves in Quentin’s version of queerness (mostly women, sometimes men). We deserve more explicit text of their past relationship and Quentin’s current feelings, eventually, but tbh I still think how it’s being portrayed is valid and has made sense within the larger narrative so far.

—

Okay, now I really need to talk about how polyamory is portrayed on the show.

I’m not sure how many people active in this fandom are polyamorous or not (please feel free to give me a shout if you are? I’d love to make more polyam friends here), so extremely bare bones crash course here, since it is an often misunderstood, underrepresented, and stigmatized relationship model:

Polyamory is a relationship model that can take many forms (not necessarily marriage, not necessarily hierarchical), and is always rooted in consent, open communication, and building trust between all partners and metamours (your partner’s partners) in a polycule. All polyamorous arrangements and other versions of non-monogamy are consensual—if they’re not, then quite frankly it’s not polyamory; it’s cheating or, at the very least, pretty dang toxic.

For many of us, polyamory tends to be an alternative to the monogamous “relationship escalator”—instead of every relationship we form having the expectation that it’ll lead to marriage (and/or moving in together, having kids, etc), we choose to explore all the different types of relationships that can form organically in our lives: maybe a long-term partner or two, more partners who are casual but no less cared for and respected, etc. Or there’s solo polyamory, where your primary commitment is to yourself, but you have open consensual relationships with multiple other people, short-term or long-term. There are literally endless other possibilities.

As for how this relates to Quentin & Eliot’s time at the Mosaic: I’ve seen the argument that it couldn’t have been a happy polyamorous thing if only Quentin had two partners. I don’t buy that. Sure, it’s common for there to be relationships where two people each have another partner or multiple partners, but that is not the one right way that polyamory is done or that people who practice it can be happy with.

I personally have been practicing polyamory for several years, and there have been long stretches of time where I simply haven’t wanted to be with anyone else besides my primary partner, even when he has had other partners, and vice versa, and I have still lived my damn life with love. Yes there has been jealousy and insecurity to varying degrees, but there is a lot of support to identify their roots and actively work through them, and face fears. “Love isn’t zero sum” is a phrase thrown around a lot in polyamory literature, but it’s true: The partner who’s only with one person isn’t somehow getting less love. They have their partnership, they have a rich, full life outside of any romantic/sexual relationships, and they have the freedom to be open to other relationships should the opportunities come along.

So, anyway, back to the Magicians: Do I care if the writers intended to show a version of polyamory on the screen in 3x05? Not really. Because what happened anyway, is they did.

I don’t think the writers would or even could get away with representing an explicitly polyamorous relationship, mainly because that is still pretty damn stigmatized and rarely out in mainstream culture. But I do think that they did what they could to make Quentin and Eliot be able to build a family together, which I think was a key part of their narrative. How else would they have shown Quentin and Eliot having a kid in that context? In the space of a highlights montage? I’m not saying Arielle was a fully formed character either, or that she wasn’t a pawn of some sort, but I don’t think she was a pawn to somehow prove Quentin and Eliot had any less real of a relationship. I think if she was a pawn, it was so that they could raise a kid together and have a family. (Which isn’t great, but that’s a whole other issue, not a queer erasure issue.)

My personal headcanon for the 3x05 timeline is that Quentin, Eliot, and Arielle had a polycule that was basically Quentin/Arielle and Quentin/Eliot, with Eliot and Arielle as metamours, who also have some level of romance and maybe the occasional sexual relationship. In my headcanon, they were all happy together, raising a kid together, growing up and out of the insecurities and fears that Quentin & Eliot had back in the present-day timeline. Like, I can’t picture a 25 year old having the exact same hang-ups as a 35 to 75 year old, you know? People grow up. They settle into themselves.

I think that kind of happiness is inherent in how Quentin and Eliot talk about it when they come back: it was sort of beautiful, we worked, who gets that kind of proof of concept. So why would Eliot turn down Quentin when they get back, if that life was so good? I think it’s because wow that is a lot to live up to, when he knows they are not the same people now as who they’d turned into in that timeline. They have those memories and some of that wisdom, sure, but also they are the same people they were back in the future. Eliot doesn’t trust Quentin would choose him in this context, so he runs from things he’s afraid of fucking up or not living up to.

Whatever they are or will become now, I really think that the polyamory in that other timeline was real though. Even though nobody was boning or making out, there was a family of people raising a child together. There were people spending their lives together. It’s not as much representation as we (queer people, polyamorous people) deserve, but it’s not erased either. We focus a lot on the fact that Eliot, upon return, brought up You had a wife. But quickly following that was And we had a family. That’s not nothing.

I think I’ll just end on that note. This is already so long. Let’s see what happens tonight!! [screams into the void]

#polyamory #bisexuality #queer representation #queliot #the magicians #magicians meta #quentin coldwater #eliot waugh #arielle #oh god i've never posted meta this long i hope i don't die

[queerbloodyangel]

Hi! I haven’t seen the magicians and probably won’t but I’m interested in the drama/what’s going on?

oof sorry this has taken me so long anon, i havent been home much today and am just now getting time to sit down! i hope you don’t mind that i’m writing out a long thing, because quite a few people have asked me about it and tbh i just want to get it all down :)

so, little bit of backstory here: quentin coldwater is the main character of the magicians. the first episode of the show has him being released from a mental facility after he had checked himself in because he was “getting bad again”. after the doctor expressed concern for his well-being and said she wasnt sure he should be checking himself out so soon. he told her the only way she could stop him was if he said he had any plans of hurting others or himself, which, he didnt.

throughout the course of the show, the writers did an amazing job of showing quentin actually dealing with and talking about his depression. we saw him at his highs, and we saw him at his lows, and for a lot of people who have never seen depression depicted in such a real and non-romanticized way onscreen, it was revolutionary. i mean, it still is, some of the discussions he had with his friends about it were so fucking real that they had me in tears because yeah thats it.

anyway, along with that, quentin also was proven to be sexually fluid first in season 1 by having a threesome with two of his best friends margo and eliot. he also dated a woman (alice) for a while, though that relationship went up in spectacular flames lmao

in season 3, quentin and eliot get stuck in an alternate timeline together for 50 years. during that time quentin met a woman and had a child with her, but shortly after she died, and quentin and eliot raised the kid together, and stayed together until eliot died. time got reversed then, but because Magic, they both remembered what happened shortly after, in a quiet scene with just the two of them, because the taste of ‘peaches and plums’ reminded them, because they had lived near a peach and plum orchard in the alternate timeline. nothing more was said about it after that, though quentin and eliot remained extremely affectionate with each other.

at the end of season 3, and going into season 4, eliot gets possessed by a monster thats more powerful than any of the gods on the show, and completely unkillable. the monster also has an incredibly childlike mentality, so at one point quentin asks it if eliot’s still alive, and the monster says no. since up until that point the monster has been truthful to a fault, quentin believes it. 

episode 5 happens, and quentin and his ex, alice, are figuring out a way to kill the monster. during this period of time, quentin makes it very clear to alice that he has absolutely no desire to get back together with her, and with all of the shit going on with the monster/eliot, he doesnt even have the space to even think about them. meanwhile, eliots trapped inside his own mind, going through all of his worst memories trying to figure out a way to get out long enough to tell his friends that he is alive, and needs help. he goes through a ton of bad memories, including ones about his childhood growing up in a homophobic small town in indiana, ones involving betraying his friends, and basically anything else he can come up with. 

he realizes eventually what his worst memory is, and we go back to the scene from season 3 where he and quentin remember the alternate timeline. quentin asks eliot if they can give them a shot, because ‘we work. 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?’ and memory!eliot turns him down. the real eliot apologizes to memory!quentin, kisses him, and he’s able to take control of his body long enough to tell quentin (eliot: 50 years, who gets proof of concept like that?

quentin: what?

eliot: peaches and plums, motherfucker, i’m alive in here)

quentin then jumps in front of eliot so alice’s attempt to kill his body misses, and the monster comes back. 

from that point on, quentin’s sole focus is getting eliot back. he sleeps once on screen, for a total of 15 minutes. he’s jumpy, on edge, exhausted, and clearly spiraling as it becomes more and more apparent there might not be a way for him to save eliot. up until episode 10, not a scene goes by without quentin reiterating that they have to save eliot, no matter what.

episodes 11 & 12 happen, and (if memory serves me correctly) quentin says eliots name once, maybe twice. he gets back with alice, and suddenly, is no longer spiraling (????) its as if eliot doesnt even exist.

episode 13 happens, they manage to get the monster out of eliot, and quentin doesn’t even spare a glance towards eliot, who’s lying on the ground bleeding out and need to be rushed to the hospital. quentin and alice have found a way to trap the monster in a rip in the universe, and take off to do that. things happen that make 0 sense, and winds up jumping into this rip in the universe along with the monster, and dies.

after his death, he winds up in the underworld, talking to someone, where he asks, “did i do that to save my friends, or did i finally find a way to kill myself?”

the person takes him back to earth, so quentin can watch his friends mourn him. instead of letting his friends actually talk about him, the writers had them sing a song as they threw their mementos of quentin into a fire, and that?? somehow shows quentin that his death was okay.

the writers (sera gamble and john mcnamara) are acting like they deserve an award or something because they killed off the ‘white male lead’, which, apparently is progressive or something. as if tv show writers haven’t been killing off mentally ill, queer characters for decades already. 

the writers didn’t tell the rest of the cast what was happening, until two days before the finale aired. the actor who played quentin (jason ralph) was under a gag order for a year, and they filmed a dummy scene at the end that had the gang realizing there was a way for quentin to be saved.

the actor who played eliot (hale appleman), an openly queer man, spent the last several weeks reassuring fans over and over that quentin and eliot’s story wasn’t over, to have faith, only to find out that he’d unwillingly been a part in this whole fiasco.

they killed off the character that honestly, probably 90% of the fanbase saw themselves in, and had latched onto with their whole hearts because of that. for a lot of us, it felt like watching a bit of ourselves die, and along with it, a love story that deserved to be told, that a lot of us believed would be told. i, personally have watched so many shows where the writers absolutely refused to make the ‘popular gay ship’ canon, and have even been part of fanbases that have been mocked for it. but this just. this shit is on a different level and i dont know what to even call it except for some bizarre take on queerbaiting that’s somehow 10000000x worse than that word can even describe.

again, i’m sorry this is so godawful long but i’m truly devastated over losing quentin coldwater. queer people deserve better, mentally ill people deserve better, and god fucking damn it so do i.

#THIS IS SO LONG IM REALLY #ALSDJALSDJKF #GOD #the magicians #quentin coldwater #ask #anon

[incarnateirony]

I read what you said to that anon about why those people are complaining about the fact that we’re unhappy with the ending and it made so much sense, I couldn’t put it into words before but you’re totally right. They know that finale sucked as much as we do, they know it didn’t make any sense and that’s exactly why they’re getting so defensive, otherwise they wouldn’t care so much.

(Regarding this anon x)

They literally spend like 12 years hating on a show, watched this entire season bitching up a storm and even speculating on the destielness of it along the way in a panic, then get some very obviously gutted piece of trash that doesn’t even actually feel like the old episodes it’s supposed to or like they’re acting like it does just because they want to self-fluff, when they’re still miserable about it but they’re still stuck in stan-war-itis where they want to “win.”

Man if we got queerbaited by having 18-19 episodes of a season dedicated to us and a canon romance, imagine watching a show for over a decade hating every single moment of it to get an episode that was 50% montage, a pie joke, cheap vampires in stupid masks, and an entire pile of things the show itself said was stupid. KSDJFKSDJFSKJ like LITERALLY 

Ah yes you just watched 200 hours of television you hate through to its core due to obsession, have the most cringe-ass finale we have literally pre-emptively called stupid ever. *pats on the head, hands a juice box* Now go watch this other show we turned it into a promo for since you’re the most likely demographic to stalk this particular actor over there. *hands a box of animal crackers*

They KNOW the network is using them, why do you think they’re denying the obvious so hard? If they bite the marketing instead of rejecting it, then they have to deal with it if they acknowledge it.