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minmin-pal · 9 months

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ahh aighto, so following the guide list and watching part 1 n 2 in close succession, 3 then 4 then rohan ova, then 5 and 6. on the liveaction one, ngl i wouldn't really have much complaints about the fact it's not art, always fun to experience a fandom in its entirety like all the cool different mediums and stuff like that, especially for how long jjba's been going on for, there's so much to explore :D

okay not gonna lie, i may have desperately needed that warning about no characters being safe lol i get way too invested and attached to them so the head's up is appreciated ;; (/gen) i don't know why i'm kind of very curious about that though now, i haven't seen any author ever just straight up kill of characters (well i have but ya know?) especially main ones? got me on the edge of my seat now ngl. i'm also wondering whether i should just stave off the manga for now till after i finish the anime and that jazz, dunno to be able to binge the manga and feel it properly tbh

and ohh alright, i was reading another guide just now and it linked the "Stone Ocean OP / Opening" from yt and i see what you mean by cgi, i dunno how they do that so i'll assume it's like 3d models, the way the 3d bits fit the 2d animation style looked so cool and aaa the expressions are just so uniquely styled and all from what i've seen of a 1 minute clip lol but glad u were still able to enjoy the season tho tbh (/pos)

and oh!! there's tarot connections? aa i'm so excited to see how they do that, it's always super fun to see those small little references and u can giggle since your like "yay i got that ref :D" (/lh/hj) might have to grab some kind of bingo to see how many refs i catch haha (/j) but alrighty, noted, no research on kira will be committed, i mean aside from me searching for his design yesterday lol (/lh)

i don't know if it classifies as spoilers much but from the guide i read it said that around part 3 they switched to entities called strands with random powers? that was basically the gist of what i got before i stopped reading so is that one of the differences that separate part 1/2? but oh wait what? why would they say to skip :(? isn't it just more fun in general to start from the very, very start? and oh! joseph! i believe you've mentioned him before but i never heard of jonathan before, his hair looks super cool tho omg and no cause fr :( the uniqueness is part of the appeal isn't it? jjba already has the reputation of being: funky, unique and just being so alive, i don't get how someone would start watching an anime with a rep like that and not watch the first 2 seasons just cause ;; (/lh) awh help i'm getting attached to joseph now, he sounds so sweet tbh (/pos)

and yooo i get why you said "they really did that just cause they could" now" tbh that's a tad more impressive as opposed to just doing the special effects to big scenes, kinda feels like a flex about the artistic control they got over the season tbh (ya know, since like- creators don't really often get that much artistic autonomy with their shows anymore?) i really like that bit now actually ill be honest (/gen)

and yes rohan is for real representing all side-characters doomed to only appearing for like 5 minutes or having no voice lines lol (/joke/lh) but ahh i'm actually interested in his character development now, the sillyness of him being the only one that could publish manwha properly whilst everyone else couldn't has piqued my interest xD (/lh) oh wait no, your point does actually make a lot of sense though if people demand utter copies from canon then it wouldn't really be as fun tho i dunno, creative liberties are very cool and ngl i could see it somewhat bombing if they did make it irl anime type ya know? idk but seems like the kind of thing twt would poke fun at :') (/lh) i'm glad about how it seemed to turn out though, poster looks super cool too

and oHH you like aot? yay :D! i haven't watched in a while but unfortunately, i may have spoiled myself- kind of? i've seen the designs and new art style but the lore lost me even before i last watched a couple of years ago, have you caught up with the manga? what's your thoughts on the story and just general stuff like that if you don't mind me asking? feel free to not censor spoilers for this one, my brain's already pieced together bits of lore whenever aot would go trending on social media lol (/lh/nf) but yay hope you had fun with your brother while you watched it! (/gen)

i dunno why i always imagined that motion to be like a croak-type 'laugh' lol, but yeah denji's character definitely seems very funny haha tho course there's the serious story bits, not sure why but he actually somewhat reminds me of mineta? albeit of course denji's a lot more fleshed out and established (i'm not really caught up with the bnha manga so i dunno how mineta is currently, though tbh the similarities kind of end with their primary motivations centering women? (i dunno if i phrased that right, i hope the idea got thru tho ;; /lh)

wait oh noo, i've seen the anime already but this clip compilation is actually so sweet omg ;; i love yor but for some reason the first few episodes of loid being practically a single dad has my heart in a vice grip lol, they really did do the family dynamic between them so well (/gen) and ohh what are your thoughts on uhm- what's his name? yuri briar? yeah that's his name, the uncle and niece dynamic between him and anya was adorable to see lol

i finally found an proper working site with the english trans for the comic lol, i myt finish it in abt a day so i can ask some indepth questions about that when i do :D (if you don't mind ofc!) ngl being able to relate to a character however flawed really shows how well the writing was done (/pos) and wait that frame actually looks so pretty omg?? the artstyle is to be adored tbf, there's so many details and you can almost tell the emotions even without the text woah. and ohh! wait his been your layouts? i saw the holding knife banner but i didn't recognize the artstyle till you pointed it out (/lh)

help naur, disliking sm that you don't remember his name is very cool lmao(/hj/lh) but oof, i already don't like him from this one frame i see, ah- i'm kind of excited to see this dude that comes before him now lol. and yeah the 'brown haired boy' archetype is definitely a hit or miss, have you ever watched 'a silent voice' by any chance? i can see your fond of found family/slice of life and genres like 'killer in love' (assuming you read from the genre /lh, eng is failing me rn im srry) what are your feelings or thoughts on other genres? maybe like- time travel/romance/reincarntion (is that just isekai actually?)/comedy/action maybe? i heard shield hero was pretty popular, do you like that?

honestly, i get how you feel about one piece ngl:') i've watched a ton of analysis videos on that but it's always a whiplash to see the diversity in the male characters then see the female characters, coming from a vid i watched they said "It's like there's no middle ground, your either made into the standard body type (the girls in the images:') ya attached ) or your made 'grotesque' (the video cues a photo of big mama)" tbf i don't actually know big mama's character and there isn't really anything wrong with being that weight but i do get the gist of the idea the vid was talking about (artstyle side ofc),

and oh, i''m gonna be honest i've never actually understood the whole highlight thing, i always assumed they were all sweating when i saw the shine if that makes sense (/hj/lh) but yeah, i can get how it's p much a redflag or at least can makes someone uncomfy (/gen)

and yay, ty for clarifying on that, i don't realize how much the text piles up till i send the ask ngl, and oh wait- i never really noticed the ideas might have felt disconnected tbh, flowed p fine for me though i may just not have noticed it /lh)

and oh, i don't really mind it lmao, feel free to call me mikey or custard (it actually sounds silly in a /lh way lmao haha /pos/lh) feel free to choose whichever, i don't really mind tbh

last bit- omg min (r you alright with me calling u that btw?/nf) did jjba s1 outro make the "we'll be right back" meme sound?? i'm questioning everything i know rn (/j/lh)

happy morning (very long response)

(also poorly formatted. every line break is answering its corresponding one in ur ask) (in most cases im so sorry :sob:) mhm!! theres a whole lot of extra stuff to read aswell-- like after part 4 araki didnt just make the rohan ova, he also made "dead man's questions" which you probably should also read (not watch as theres no anime version) after part 4-- it follows a character who dies in part 4 which is why i wont say ANYTHING about it. i heeaaavily advise you to not even search it up- like at all its mc is a MAJOR character spoiler like not until youve finished part 4 okay

also, despite no character being safe, i wholeheartedly push you to still love and care about every character your heart Will. shatter atleast once, but thats the fun in it really? i started jjba after watching the original naruto, so the first time a main character, like a *main* died i was just shellshocked the entire time i was waiting for them to bring the person back cause it was like You can't be serious? i REALLY dont wanna gas it up but the ending to part 1 was genuinely wild aswell W series

for the stone ocean cgi i didnt really mean the into but in animation itself for some scenes they used like 3d models and such for the powers and effects, and it sometimes might not be noticable, but when you see it. you see it and its like theyre really doing that and its genuinely so cool

the tarot connections are mainly part 3's thing- the way they names most abilities at least my favorite being death (13) mainly because the episode had me SO intrigued- honestly my favorite jojo episode other than this episode in part 4 (will not disclose [spoilers] but its the "bites the dust" episode- youll know it when you get there) hearing the ability names; it was always great to go "hey i know that band!" but i must say if youre watching the anime with subtitles, or in dub, what you read is not the stands name (or hear if dub) the stand name in most cases, will not be the same as it was originally, as well, copyright purposes really, so in western versions the name the person says (for sub) will not line up with the subtitles man in the mirror for example in the subtitles is reffered to as "mirror man" , so if you get to the part with stands, just know you might not be able to like get some references unless you listen to the japanese name not that it matters it just popped into head lol

and yes thats the big change really, the reason people say to fully skip part 1 and 2 the lack of stands which is so childish.. like really? you dont like the main fundamental parts of the series cuz they dont have big punchy monster powers? i assume youve met johnathan by now, judging byyour comment on the ending music YOU WILL (PROBABLY) LOVE HIM hes just a sweetheart like a mary sue mc but in a not mary sue way

yayaya :DD the team behind jojo REALLY can take the liberties they want and thats probably because the manga/araki is weird as hell like think. uh. spy family you just couldnt do the stuff you do in jojo there, not even story wise but art wise everything is so "polished" and set? like i dont wanna say polished, because jojo is *very* sleek looking but like you get what i mean

where was i.... honestly, jojo side characters (unless theyre like minor antags that get beat in one episode) are really prevalent as the seasons go on and one thing i can REALLY applaud araki (as if i havent been applauding him for EVERYTHING) is that he doesnt forget characters if you meet a side character that isnt evil, you Will. meet them again at least once something i like in part 4 (can you tell its my favorite part?) is that all the characters sort of have their own episode (even the sidest of side characters) when you watch it itll make more sense, but like the side characters arent just plot devices i guess youll see them roaming the street and the characters'll walk past the same bg characters multiple times, and that bg character genuinely wont matter i think it goes hand in hand with the whole everyone knows everyone small town theme but it's still super cool and yes!!! i get so dissapointed when i see irl anime reboots and they are literally just cosplaying the characters nooooo!! the point is that its in real life!!! make the story your own!!! yeah i loved aot :D its not a favorite of mine but its top on my lest i should do like a tier list or something of all the mangas/animes i can remember ive watched ive watched a whole lot actually theres not a lot else to do when youre a shut-in :sob: im all caught up with the aot manga the ending. had me shellshocked genuinely had me blinking like.. thats not okay where was my happy ending??? my overall overall thoughts are is that.. well.. i really love when mangakas just through your expectations out the window and thenh grabs them back and spits on them and throws them out another window just to mess with you so i loved aot; the lore behind the titans and everything? confusing but once i got it they had me rolling over in my bed sorry if ive been getting off topic alot by the way . _ .

croak type laugh is what i meant thanks for giving me a solid term :pray: and !! what i like about csm is actually something i saw in a rant on reddit and i have this issue where i repeat what ive read or heard verbatim solike. what im saying next is not only my thoughts but csm isnt really.... about the lore it isnt about the backgrounds and the world building its about denji and his personal growth and!! the growth of the people around him too https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/comments/103xnqk/rant_i_hate_how_people_misunderstand_the_point_of/ ^says it much better than i ever can also... i think the biggest difference between mineta and denji is that denji knows what consent is also that denji is a person, whilst mineta is sorta just his character trait (one was made to be disliked, one made to be liked aswell) i am So glad youve seen sxf its just so charming honestly like,... i love happy slice of lifes sm nichijou, lucky star, shows like that and spy is just such a good show, its heartwarming whilst also definitely being about a spy trying to safe the country by adopting a kid and getting married the family dynamic is just c: -- i dont really love or hate yuri him and anya are cute together but... ive never really liked the obsessive brother trope and that Is yuri's entire character mainly so idrk how to feel about him hes not a bad character though i will say

and yES!! when u finish it i'd love to hear your thoughts and questions :pray: and!! being able to like characters that r super bad people is such a major sign of good writing and having bad characters that causes your reader physical pain is also a sign of good writing

i genuinely love this artstyle it feels full of color. and is in black and white :kneel:

nameless white haired guy is just really insufferable from what i remember hes just gassed up too much by the people that surround him so his ego is the size of the lotte world tower the dude that comes before him comes into the manga EARLY like EARLY- chapter three i think theres another person just like him, more like him than the guy i was referencing, "arata" hes bad too but not.. as bad. the guy i was referencing assuming youve read to atleast chap 3 is the hooded weird guy with black hair I can't remember his name either. :grin: i love him though his name is just not said other than one time i think; (sorry this is so..... discombobulated- m reading ur ask then directly responding here. i need to start using transitional phrases) i have watched + read a silence voice, i loved it but i watched and read it in like the same 2 days so i cant tell you small stuff i liked its like cramming studies before a test. you absorb it for a day but afterwards youre only left with how you felt- in this case i remember crying at the end- and the ending but i dont remember specifics or like the traits i loved minus.. nijimiya? i think? was a sweetheart. genuinely adorable i loved her and her little sister as well as shoto (i think is his names) character development. kids are assholes; he was an asshole kid and he grew up and was Not an asshole kid whats not to love for other types of genres... i like horror but i dont like horror mangas/animes that are 'scare' horror idk how to describe scare horror but like.. if stuff r creepy just to be creepy its just not enthralling i love psychological horrors though things like oyasumi punpun or junji ito's stuff (notably uzumaki) i like dramas aswell but like. neon genesis type i think you could sum up my taste as things that are depressing at their core... minus slice of lifes. and like every other romance

i think those would fall into the isekai category for comedy and action though i dont mind it honestly all depends on the thing itself-- i dont like sports mangas but i watched blue lock since it looked cool to me and i didnt hate it not a favorite, but its not under like c tier i havent heard of shield hero honestly-- but i did check it out the designs are nice but i dont think ill watch it

the ONE reason i wont watch one piece is the femals character designs i know its like a 1000+ chapter manga, made by a male mangaka which is a bad sign because to make manga, you must like manga people who like manga enough to write it probably do not see people of the preferred sex at all, so like yeah hes never met a woman other than his mother so he cant draw them but come one you mentioned her so i have to bring her up

come on man. is this really it? just like you said, its either they fit the mangakas beauty standard for women or they are grotesque theres no in between at all and the men designs are so different and unique and vibrant!! he could make more unique female designs he just doesnt :sob:

for the highlights on skin type thing. i have exactly one example in mind- now as a preface peni parker (the girl) is fifteen miles morales (boy) is seventeen im not insinuating anything being illegal here, and if you think that it wouldnt be my point, so ihave to make a point here that that is not what my problem is as a second preface, miles morales looks like this

i sound silly as hell right now. "of course miles looks like that- whats your point? arent we talking about art highlights??" (art is not mine. of course it isnt its.,... look at it...)

I'm not going to comment on the bulge. I won't comment on his lips. I won't even comment on the fact that this is ship fanart, for a ship that... if you've watched itsv or atsv just feels wrong the one thing i immediately picked up on was how they highlighted that line on peni's thighs theres alot of stuff you can just tell by an artstyle the person who drew that i can honestly say is not a good person even if they didnt draw miles like... that... i wouldnt trust them around children highlights alone my point originally wasnt that i didnt like how they look, it was more that you can tell alot about people by the way thy draw just like how you can tell a bit about someone based of their vocabulary the person who drew that Is a pedophile i can just feel it things like that

I DONT MIND THE TEXT PILING UP :pray: IT MAKESME RLLY HAPPY TOI RECIEVE THESE I AM DELIGHTED THE FLOW IS ALSO FINE!! :thumbsup: u can call me whatever (min, minjae, minmin, minpal, 8, 8pal, palpal... i dont think theres any other names associated with this acc)

and last but not least the end IS the meme i had the same realization youre not alone

#min-pal.asks #mikey 🍮

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dendrite-blues · 1 year

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Hi! This is not to pressure you at all (and feel free to ignore this if you like), but are you continuing your reparations verse? It’s been kinda quiet here, but I read reparations this summer and I just wanted to say I would read the heck out of permutations if you ever wrote more, and if you don’t I’m so grateful for reparations! I’ve reread it so many times lol (and I’m off to read it again)

Oh goodness, I don't know when this was sent but I'm so glad you enjoyed the story!

Reparations is never over, not really. Many authors have that one story that they come back to forever and ever even though they could have ended it at any point. That's what Rep is for me.

So why am I not writing it? Good question.

(Humor me while I get reflective and self-important for a minute.)

Reparations, like any story, was a product of the time that it occupied in my life. I wrote it as therapy after a really turbulent period that robbed me of any kind of joy or excitement for the future.

I wrote it as therapy, and the act of writing it helped me get better, but as I got better I found that I didn't relate to the story the same way anymore. It stopped being a diary and started to become a photo album.

From the beginning, Reparations was a story about imagining a better future for myself through Tony and Loki. Therefore, I want Permutations to be the realization of that future. I want it to be a reflection of a couple post-crisis who aren't perfect but are a lot closer to it. A couple who are happy and going on with their lives.

I couldn't have written that story in 2019. I was still too close to the pain. The early chapters are some of the best I've ever written, but they're raw. They're super fucking grim, and I really wanted that entry in the series to feel lighter.

I wanted to show the darkness that will always be inside Loki and Tony, but to also show them choosing to focus on the light in spite of that, and I just could not do that yet, on a personal level. I was reopening old wounds instead of tattooing over them.

So I put it aside and dedicated myself to finishing up other stories in the meantime. That turned out to be super draining, and then 2020 happened.

It took a long time for me to feel the urge to write again, and I think that's because I was processing 2020. I was one of those white people for whom that year was an overdue wake up call, and I had a lot of things to come to terms with.

I think I'm being called by Final Fantasy VII now (despite it being an absolutely ancient fandom that never interested me before) because it's a world and a band of characters that speak strongly to the themes and questions I've been grappling with:

What is morality under capitalism?

How much responsibility do we place on individuals when individual behavior is so influenced by society?

Do we accept violence as a tactic for change, and if we do then where do we draw the line?

Can you remake the world without destroying it?

These are all central themes to that game series, and so it's natural for me to want to write in that universe at the moment.

Long term, I think that I will return to Permutations, but it won't be in the next six months. Emotionally, I am finally healed enough to make that story what I always wanted it to be, and I have the desire to do so. However, my soul is also carrying a heavy weight from the last two years that hurts in a totally different way, and I need to remove that tumor first.

I'm sorry I can't just say an enthusiastic, "Yes! Absolutely! I'm typing it up right now," because I definitely wish I could. But the truth is that the time isn't right for me, and I don't when it will be.

Thank you so much for making space for Reparations in your heart. It gives my life so much meaning to know that I've created something people care about.

I'll never abandon it permanently, but that does mean that there will be long periods of waiting. Thank you so much for being patient, and I hope you're doing as well as you possibly can be.

Best,

Den

#asks #writer talk #reparations verse #future plans #Tony/Loki #Frostiron #Ironfrost #loki/tony

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takaraphoenix · 3 years

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Ship game!! What about Nico and Will?? It’s pretty popular, but I don’t think I’ve seen you write much of it…

That's an interesting one in that I have vocalized my reasons for disliking it way back when it first became popular but instead of just linking that, it has been years so I think it's time for an updated version.

Firstly: This post is gonna be properly tagged and not crosstagged so if any shipper comes across it and feels the need to bitch about it, just don't; your lack of curating your own tumblr experience is not my problem! ;D

Now, there are three key factors that play into my dislike of this ship: How it was written, what it represents, how the fandom around it acts.

1. It’s rushed and uncomfortable

In BoO, it was incredibly rushed. They had literally five sentences of interactions before they walked into the literal sunset together. Five. It was just entirely born from Riordan's Noah's Ark Complex, where he just can't let people be single. The series was ending and he needed Nico to have an endgame so he rushed into some random romance with zero build-up.

The way their interactions went down was also severely uncomfortable for me. Will was acting so offended by Nico not wanting to go to camp and be friends in an entitled way that he had no right to be, he downright guilt-tripped Nico about how he had wanted to be friends. Nico has been just so severely traumatized at such a young age and his coping mechanism, as unhealthy as it was, was to run away and hide. Will acted like Nico not wanting to form attachments to people who could potentially leave him again was somehow just an Edgy Emo Decision and not a direct reaction to his trauma. His entire approach to Nico was basically all these hippie posts of "Don't have depression!! Just go out into the sun and stop being depressed!", which is already a bad take with non-medical people but he's supposed to be a doctor (and let's not get into the shadiness of him technically being Nico's doctor).

There is also an inherent "I can fix him" angle to this ship and to me, only few ship dynamics are more uncomfortable than that. If you want to fundamentally change a person's behavior and personality, you... don't actually want to be with this person.

Now, here's where my points overlap, because the following parts of their writing that bothers me also stand for what this ship fundamentally represents.

2. Solangelo is a queer ship written by and for straights

I'm a queer woman and as a queer woman, I want queer wish-fulfillment, not what straights want out of queerness. I'm kind of tired of that, I've been sitting through it for enough decades now. That's, of course, not to say that no straight writer can give proper queer representation, but far too often do straight writers - even the most well-meaning ones - project straight desires of queerness into their queer representation.

Let me explain that closer through this ship.

Nico's been in love with Percy for years and I'm going to do my best to not hijack this post with some Percico agenda; that's not what this his about, this isn't some "my ship is better than your ship" ship-war nonsense. It's simply a canonical fact that Nico has had romantic feelings for another character for years.

A character who, in this medium, is heterosexual. And if you're queer, you've been there. In love with your straight best friend. It's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.

We have also all been well-meaningly rejected by said straight friend.

And here's the straight desires for you: The queer person who was in love with a straight person just immediately stops having those feelings and will then as quickly as possible fall in love with the next queer person they meet to be happy and no longer uncomfortably in love with a straight person, because that thought makes the straights uncomfortable.

Queer wish-fulfillment would be for Percy to return those feelings, for the queer character to get his first love, to not be rejected. That thing queer teens always dreamed about for themselves.

Aside from the wish-fulfillment angle, the pacing is another problem. Let me repeat, Nico was in love for years. But a five sentence conversation with Will once causes a crush on Will and we see him physically turn away from Percy and toward Will just immediately to rebound and actually fall out of love with Percy and in love with Will. Anyone who's ever been unlucky in love will attest to just how unrealistic and ridiculous the pacing here is.

It's also straight queerness in another respect; Nico has been the first ever queer character we meet in that world. He loves a straight guy - and to get over that, we introduce the second queer character. Because heaven forbid there are multiple queers to pick from. No, in straight-written queer romances, there is always that one main queer and then they introduce a second one and the two just immediately hit it off and develop a romance like all a queer person needs to form attraction to someone is the confirmation that the other person shares your sexuality.

Also the notable gay guy on gay guy ship here, whereas the more queer-wish-fulfillment option would have also included more nuance to the queer experience, because Percy doesn't have to be heterosexual just because he has only been with girls so far. It's a very old-fashioned - think 90s and early 2000s - kind of straight-written queerness that there are only exactly two homosexuals and that those two homosexuals then pair up.

And, listen, I'm not immune to these outdated straight-written queers entirely, I have many such ships that I grew up with that I am still fond of because they were groundbreaking at that time and they weren't outdated yet back when they happened in said 90s and early 2000s. I am however a grown woman now and just like I have grown, so has queer rep so I am not as easily baited into falling onto my knees in gratitude for canon rep. You have to go with the times. And this ship, by all that is given to us, is just entirely outdated straight-written rep.

Which, I mention earlier that even straight-written rep can be good. If the author tries. Riordan doesn't really try though; he does the bare minimum when he writes any of his rep - and there have been many, many more qualified voices being very vocal about his depiction of people of color and, as a woman, I've been vocal about his depiction of women. I don't want to derail this post with all of that, but I do think that it bears mentioning that Riordan doing rep but only doing a bare minimum and not putting in the necessary work to deepen the representation he wants to give is a repeating pattern that has been pointed out many times by now.

(I’d also like to point out that no, it is not just the ship and not just the listed instances that make it straight-written rep for straights. It’s Nico’s entire queer arc, starting with his forced coming out. A severely traumatizing event that is completely brushed over because the straight author doesn’t understand the impact this has on queer people. Not to mention the framework; Nico’s coming out isn’t Nico’s story, it happens in Jason’s POV, it is given to us through the POV of the straight bystander who gets to be Best Ally by assuring Nico that being gay is okay. This kind of coming out is not a queer wish-fulfillment, it’s a straight wish-fulfillment of getting to be the straight savior, the ally to show the gay the light of acceptance. And, additional to the ridiculous pacing of how fast Nico gets over his love for Percy, Nico also gets over years of internalized homophobia just because of, I don’t know, Jason’s few encouraging words and the fact that Will paid attention to him? For a gay kid who was in the closet all his life, the nonchalant way in which he publicly confessed his crush to Percy at the end made absolutely no sense and was written as basically a joke, finished off with Nico literally high-fiving Percy’s girlfriend despite those two never having seen eye to eye before but this is straight wish-fulfillment so all straights are Super Allies, because that’s the way straights want to see themselves, even though Annabeth has shown before just how jealous she can be and she most definitely wouldn’t go around high-fiving people who confess to her boyfriend. Nothing about Nico’s queer arc in HoO felt natural or queer or satisfying.)

Sure, Solangelo on a surface level is big because it's a canon queer couple in a YA book-series and kudos for that and yay for the kids who get to grow up seeing queers in YA books, but I actually do think that kids growing up with books written in the 2010s shouldn't grow up with 1990s levels of representation, because the 2010s overall are actually at a far more nuanced and better level of representation when it comes to queerness. And I do reserve the right to quit on too straight-written and too outdated queer rep in a landscape where I can get more satisfying representation elsewhere; we don’t live in times anymore where you necessarily have to love every bit of rep because it’s the only one you get.

Now that we've gone through my first two gripes, let's wrap this up with the final point, because it also directly ties into this.

3. The new wave of antis hiding behind this ship

A huge part of the fandom is so busy kissing Riordan's ass solely for giving them queer rep at all they think that both the author and the ship are beyond flawless and that kind of attitude is not good. Just because an author includes rep doesn't make either perfect. Absolutely no one is beyond critique - especially not when said critique comes from the very people the author is representing. And even beyond any "valid" critique on the ship, quite frankly, someone should also be allowed to just not like it, without any reasons given at all.

But there is a certain... protective obsessiveness about this ship that doesn't allow a not liking. Very similar to how PJO bore this mindset around Perc/abeth already. It's okay to have OTPs, even OTPs that you have a blindspot for and just don't want to see any flaws in. It is however not okay to then go around attacking people who don't like the thing and mind their own business.

Solangelo's bred a new generation of antis in this fandom. And, particularly with the fact that this post too receives an "anti" tag, I feel like there needs to be a clarification (because tumblr likes to forget what actually makes an anti). Not liking something doesn't make you an anti, venting in properly tagged posts doesn't either; it's the people who harass others, who seek out the content they dislike to then complain that it even exists and who actively try to make others stop creating for it - those are antis.

And with Solangelo's popularity, there was a high rise in Percico antis, who sought it out, were unnecessarily nasty about it, harrassed creators and tried to enforce some kind of "Solangelo supremacy" that won't allow other ships for the characters.

I've been in fandom long enough to be perfectly aware that not all Solangelo shippers count into this category and that there are completely normal and nice Solangelo shippers, but this is a Venn diagram where the overlap between Solangelo shippers and antis is too large to not widely associate the nasty people with the ship itself. (I've been there myself, shipping the very ship behind which a fandom's antis all hid. The second-hand embarrassment of having these people give the ship a bad name is horrendous and I do feel bad for all the normal Solangelo shippers.)

The more often I encountered these people, who made Percico bad (sometimes in wildly ridiculous manners that bent and deliberately misinterpreted canon) and who in the same breath praised Solangelo high, the more tired I grew of that ship. It's a simple game of association, really. You see that linked to the gross and nasty behavior and you start associating the ship itself with that gross and nasty behavior - and with all the things I said before that already weighed into my dislike of the ship, this just was the final tipping point, really.

And that's it. That sums up why I dislike Solangelo. It was hastily rushed, uncomfortable in its execution, it is outdated rep that very much feels as straight-written as it factually is and it does not feel aimed at me as a queer person but rather at the straight audience and it has gathered a cult following of quite uncomfortable people who on their own would be reason enough to avoid it so you can avoid them.

Send me a ship and I will explain why I do or don't ship it

#Anti Solangelo #PJOverse #Riordan Critical #Shipping #Ship Ask Game #send me asks #it IS both a positive AND negative game #and I gotta admit #it is nice to put these things #into proper words #every once in a while

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whendidyou-leaveheaven · 3 years

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on the idea of exploiting your own sexuality...

I feel the the terrible need to unpack the whole Anthony Mackie comment and the way I see people treating it.

This is why I wish people would stop asking actors about fandom’s response. I don’t care what the actors think of gay people shipping them, and the actors shouldn’t really have to be presented with loaded questions about that anyway, because they are always going to be damned if they agree and damned if they don’t. And it’s different when you have someone who is creating the content they put out directly like say, Neil Gaiman, who is great about open conversation with fans, he makes a thing and someone messages him and asks what he thinks about the sexuality of a character in said thing and he can fully, with authority, tell people his take on it or tell them it is up to them to see it however they want.

Actors don’t write their characters. They interpret them and play them the way they are usually directed to, and yes sometimes they have more say in the development of characters than other times. Do I think Castiel would have dropped that “I love you” if not for Misha Collins? Absolutely not. Do I think the directors would have let Jensen say it back if he wanted to? Absolutely not.

Anthony Mackie is what I sort of consider old school good natured, like he means well and obviously isn’t trying to tear down queer people but he also hasn’t analyzed things a million times over like everyone online in fandom has.

He has a point which I have considered myself, about the juxtaposition of two things: erasing toxic masculinity and allowing men to have feelings, and providing gay representation...

Can the two coexist? In some ways it does seem like a potentially bad thing when people try very hard to make a ship happen, because supposedly that would reinforce the toxic masculine idea that any sensitivity or vulnerability between men is GAY. And gay is weak and bad. And therefor when we call every male friendship gay we are propping up toxic masculinity and the idea that men cannot be too close or else.

Wow. What a fucked up dynamic right? How can you be gay and reinforce toxic masculinity at the same time?

So here’s why I don’t fully agree with this perspective though. Because,

So what!! So what if your friendship is gay? It’s actually toxic masculinity that is telling you it can’t be! And if it were fine, then it wouldn't matter. Because over half the world still believes these characters are straight and will always be straight. Hell, even I think they are straight (kinda) I just like shipping some people because it’s satisfying to me but I would never in hell go and ask uh, say Henry Cavill what he thinks of this fanfic I wrote. You know?

Male friendship has always been portrayed in media forever and even though it hasn’t been as soft and open as it is now, it exists. Whereas women in media are always pitted against one another as jealous rivals, we are moving away from that idea but historically it has been a thing that women cannot be friends because then they might challenge the status quo together basically, and then start fighting for themselves instead of over a man.

We have some gay representation now in the media but so far I don’t think that any of the canon gay rep involves characters that are all that interesting (ironically that’s not the case with f/f ships, we have a few really good ones right now) or vibe with us on the level that these other characters we love do. So of course those are the ones we end up shipping.

I’m already getting long winded so to wrap this up, my point is: yes Anthony is correct, and yes he is also wrong. He’s a good captain america and I don’t think this is some excuse to say “steve is the real one cuz anthony said we shouldn’t ship it.”

Is projecting gay iconology onto too many close male friendships actually hurting gay people and keeping them from having their own representation?

Eeeeehhh,

we have been doing that since Achilles and Patroclus existed and even then you had people on both sides of the story still saying there was no way they could be lovers when it was explicitly stated. If it were female characters we were discussing would we say the same thing- oh wait, we can’t because we have already sexualized women together in literally any scenario (just look at any fashion magazine before 2010, why are these women in a perfume ad naked together??). The world is changing, we do have more diverse representation than ever before, and toxic masculinity (I am referring specifically to the Hollywood-centric production part of the world, not necessarily on a global scale) is dissolving at it’s root, however slowly. It is no more homophobic to say two male friends might love each other in a gay way than it is to say two male friends love each other in a platonic way. The two are not mutually exclusive.They are gay and they aren’t gay are actually two concepts that can exist at once without hurting anyone.

#marvel #mcu #anthony mackie #stucky #sambucky #fandom rant #captain america #tfatws

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m143ui · 4 years

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A MESSAGE TO THE PJO FANDOM

so hello friends on the other side

I understand some of the major concerns regarding characters like piper and the feather and hazels description but when you bring Leo and Reyna into the fucking conversation I have lost all respect.

ANYONE CAN BE ABUSED, ETHNICITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

LATINO CHARACTERS

Reyna is not a negative stereotype, she isn't defined by being latina and neither is Leo, he isn't a stereotype simply because he’s latino and was abused. also him being called an elf was because he was short, which had nothing to do with him being latino. also the mamacita comment like y'all hide under the label “progressive” but ignore that mamacita has been a thing in Latin American communities for a fucking while. its not an insult dammit. its something that happens in our communities!!! its like saying muchacho y'all don't see men bitching about that.

also shocker I read the mamacita comment and I can proudly say I didn't go

“RICK YOU RACIST BITCH”

things that actually happen in communities aren't racist

and before any of y'all come at me with the usual you’re white excuse, hello friends im Peruvian and Paraguayan.

I don't think he’s perfect but bitching about characters like Leo which gave many of my Latin American friends hope for similar characters destroys your “listening to minorities” argument

also the lol “hes Mexican taco bad” argument like I live in Mexico we eat tacos like every fucking day. its literally a fact. and Leo isn't just defined as taco man.

believe it or not us latinos respect rick because he gave us role models and characters like us. we don't define a character by one line and instantly call discrimination. like yes a asian character can be snobby it has nothing to do with ethnicity. y'all are making this about ethnicity. an asian character can be anything, just like a white character or a black character or a gay character. people are not simply defined by their labels like ya’ll think. y'all are just a bunch of easily triggered snowflakes that can't live with that. they can be influenced but in the end labels are labels we are all human and should be treated as such.

LGBT REPRESENTATION

another thing Reyna was never officially a lesbian that was YOUR interpretation not riordans. IF HE DIDNT STATE IT , SORRY HONEY IT ISN’T CANON! I don't care about how she was “lesbian coded” if he didn't state it it isn't canon.

I am so sick, as a lesbian, to see people use ALL QUEER DEATHS as a bury your gay tropes, what happened to seeing us as humans? why can't we be treated like any other character? if we die we die, it isn't always “haha gay evil boom death”. sometimes fully fledged characters have to die friends.

Nico isn't a bad gay character, he’s just a normal character who happens to be gay and has suffered major trauma. HIS TRAUMA WAS CAUSED BY HIS UPBRINGING, Nico isn't a 2000′s character, he’s from the 30′s, so obviously he woudn’t be perfect with his sexuality for gods sake it was the 30′s. the exact same thing happens with hazel, she isn't a modern black woman, she's a 30′s black woman. Nico’s coming out isn't him as a 21st century teen its from the time when the GOVERNMENT KILLED YOU FOR BEING GAY

also saying there are no lesbian characters? like wow look emmie and jo don't exist. Lavinia doesn't exist. poison doesn't exist. thanks fam you really make yourselves look smart here. simply because rick never said the word gay doesn't mean the gay characters don't exist friends. they are just labeled as what gay characters should be labeled as.... human.

LESBOPHOBIA & RACISM

im not educated in muslim or black culture so I won't mention characters like sam and hazel and piper because I respect and I am highly critical of what rick put in his books to describe these specific minorities.

HOWEVER saying rick is a lesbophobe, a homophobe, a racist a sexist cis guy is like do y’all wanna be taken seriously? use arguments don't hide behind words.

rick isn't a perfect writer but y'all really don't know how to criticise, y'all just hide behind big boy words and back it up with no evidence, just opinions.

rick doesn’t have the best minority rep out there but he is damn well trying and I respect that unlike all you fucking idiots.

SHIPS

now onto ships.... yay

frazel: im not gonna censor it like you pussies, believe it or not 13&16 year old relationships exist. they might not always be healthy but they exist. to deny this is to be stupid

solangelo: another ship that is censored..the main argument I've seen is that it isn't developed and will isn't even a character... he was in last olympian and lost hero not my fault y'all have fish brains. I don't care if you dislike it but don't be like “ANYONE WHO SHIPS THIS IS AN ABUSIVE WHORE” like wow you always preach about accepting all ships and then throw this? also if you hate solangelo because of the “abuse” but ship percico like hi friends Nico is 4 years younger than Percy.. if y'all hate frazel because of the 3 year age difference y'all should hate this too.

CONCLUSIONS AND SHIT

not every character minority or otherwise is gonna be the way you want them to be, believe it or not any character can be anything, black characters can be loud, white characters can be loud. if they're only loud because “haha black” then THATS an issue not the simple existence of a loud black woman who has a loud personality.

y'all be here bitching about drew and I've never heard the asian perspective of this? just a bunch of black and white people telling asians they should be offended. was that just an uno reverse?

also last point stereotypes aren't always a negative thing and y'all need to get that in your heads.

anyway stay mad hoes <3

from a sane Peruvian <3

EDIT

I saw this beauty and had to comment on it

“having LGBT characters experience abuse and violence. nicos forceful outing rubs me the wrong way, especially because hes called a coward for being in the closet. its violent and kind of disturbing to make your gay character come out of the closet by force. maybe write better. additionally, alex's abusive father and subsequent homelessness because of her being trans is badly written.”

oh noooo gay characters can't deal with homophobia anymore ! like I can tell you have never been punched for being gay. is it bad to showcase how trans and gay ppl are 40% of homeless youth? or is even mentioning that discrimination? believe it or not some of us live in countries where people try to kill us. you have an advantage and it shows. about the coward thing...

was FUCKING CUPID A GOOD CHARACTER? NO? I REST MY CASE. CUPID IS NOT SEEN AS A GOOD PERSON THEREFORE HE IS NOT A GOOD PERSON GET THAT IN YOUR THICK SKULLS.

YOU HEARD IT HERE FOLKS LGBT FOLKS DONT GET FORCED OUT OF THE CLOSET

#NEVER HAPPENS IN REALITY.

JUST BECAUSE YOU WERENT FORCED OUT OF THE CLOSET DOESNT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE HAVE THAT SAME LUXURY.

maybe stop spewing bullshit <3

(so I get that this scene can remind people of being outed and it can hurt them however this scene was never intended to be a good thing it literally says Nico is scared of facing his emotions)

EDIT NUMBER 2

oh boy rick really pissed off the snowflakes that I share a fandom with

“give Nico to the gays” no? he would be a femboy and they would yeet his trauma like ssrsly?

also hate rick? bitch no one is forcing you to read his tweets.

death of the author is such a toxic thing like the mans is alive boo he aint going nowhere..like What the fuck

EDIT NUMBER 3

anyway final thoughts on this :

nico insn’t Uwu gay and its an insult to his character

Reyna is not a lesbian canonically (neither is Thalia)

Leo and Reyna are not racist

none of ricks characters are written as insults to their communities

and if I see one more “but ....phobia/ ...ism I will do very illegal things

peace lol

RICK RIORDAN UPDATE:

congratulations rick antis! you have successfully harassed a 56 year old man into leaving social media! wow so progressive!!!! this totally won't backfire or anything!!!

all jokes aside all of you who harassed rick to the point of someone else taking over his social media should feel ashamed

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skybird13 · 4 years

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*sigh* Okay...

I’ve been debating on whether or not to make this post. Not because it doesn’t need to be made, but because I’m not sure I’m emotionally up for it. But at the end of the day, staying quiet is exactly what got us into this mess, and curling into a sad little ball isn’t going to change what happened, and this particular shit needs to be called out and acknowledged.

I was asked to address something posted by Eddy Rivas, one of the writers of RWBY, on Reddit yesterday. It was a shortlived post because apparently he or someone who read it realized what a monumentally bad idea it was, but sadly for him, my fellow cockroach gays are pissed as hell and we have screenshot capabilities. I don’t care that he removed/edited the post. This was still his instinctive response to the absolute pain caused by him and the rest of CRWBY as a result of volume 7 episode 12:

I am so damn tired and so hurt. But I am going to do my best to address this in a civil and reasonable way.

The Problem With Judgment Calls

First of all, to an extent, I understand the predicament Eddy describes. I really do. I get that being on the creative end of a popular web series is very different from being on the fandom end, and conventional wisdom dictates that creators should do their best to make sure the two don’t mix past a certain point. That necessary separation probably does make these kinds of judgment calls difficult.

The problem is that several members of CRWBY (including writers, animators both former and current, social media managers, and the marketing team specifically) violated that boundary more than once long before episode 12 aired. There were so many things that factored into Fair Game gaining traction as quickly as it did, and many of those things came from the deliberate way that many members of CRWBY interacted with the fandom outside of the show itself. From the official RWBY Twitter account to the suggestive tweets made by a former animator, to the Twitter and Tumblr posts made by a current animator, this ship was heavily and unambiguously encouraged and leaned on multiple times over the course of this volume.

Sure, you can make the claim that you can’t control the animators (especially if they no longer work for you), or that the creators and the marketing team are two separate entities and that the actions of one do not necessarily reflect the intentions of the other (both things also stated by Eddy Rivas in a series of Tweets). And perhaps some of that is accurate. It points towards a fundamental lack of oversight and cohesiveness in the organization that is Rooster Teeth, and that should absolutely be addressed moving forward, but quite frankly, in this case, it doesn’t even matter.

The fact of the matter, Mr. Rivas, is that the boundary was violated. Multiple times. On your end. These types of judgment calls are not a one size fits all, and the moment active members of CRWBY took action to encourage something you knew was going to cause pain, it should have been addressed. I’m not putting that on you personally, because as a writer I realize you probably don’t have that type of authority, but someone there should have put a stop to it. There is the matter of the personal responsibility shirked by the two animators who contributed to this mess, and frankly, they should have known better, but this does not excuse CRWBY’s collective silence.

The fact of the matter is that due to the actions taken by CRWBY both in and outside of the show (including the things you could and could not control) you absolutely reached a point where that boundary should have been purposefully crossed in order to mitigate damage. It doesn’t matter what got you or us there. It doesn’t matter whether or not it was intentionally done (it was, let’s not kid ourselves). Things built up, hopes were raised as a direct result of your actions, and you all reached a point where you were morally obligated to say something. Do I suggest a single individual should have taken this on? No. I understand the legal ramifications of that. But CRWBY as a whole and RT as the production studio absolutely should have stepped forward. Would that have fully removed the pain and the disappointment? No. But you wouldn’t be facing the backlash you are right now if you had.

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All

Closely related to the previous point is the fact that you, Mr. Rivas, seem to be under the impression that a single judgment call policy should and can apply to all situations equally. That’s not the case. We’re not talking about other ships here, hypothetical, canonical, realistic, unrealistic, or otherwise. We’re talking about this ship.

The Fair Game ship was the first and only indication we had in seven volumes of RWBY that a prominent mlm relationship might be coming in to play. You have no other relationships of this nature in the show. You don’t even have other male characters who might be able to qualify as gay or bisexual who play major roles. Add on to that the fact that you planned to have one of these characters die in the most brutal and graphic death scene we have gotten to date in RWBY, and no. I’m sorry. That flimsy defense doesn’t stand. This ship was unique, it appealed to a very underserved segment of your fandom, and it should have been treated with the levity it deserved.

You make the argument that saying something about this ship but not others wasn’t plausible. The issue with that, sir, is one of trust. Up to this point, I and a lot of people I know trusted you, which means you can get away with building up relationships without ever coming out to confirm or deny them offscreen. As long as you understand the narrative promises you’re making as a storyteller to your audience, and understand the importance of fulfilling them through narrative payoff at some point in the story, we’re usually pretty willing to follow you and watch it unfold. This is how writing works. You have to be aware of the promises you’re making and you have to be able to follow through on them in satisfying ways. This goes double if you plan to fulfill them in unexpected ways (note the word fulfilled still applies). If you don’t do that, trust is broken and you have a problem.

Fair Game is unique in that you knew from the beginning that trust was going to not only be violated but brutally so. CRWBY made promises with Clover and Qrow that they never intended to keep, and that is one of the core issues here. If you want to cling to the excuse that it was all unintentional (again, one I do not buy), that only means you absolutely should have said something to that effect long before we ever got to this point. It would have given nothing about the plot away to let us know that wasn’t the intended direction and it would have calmed down the excitement that built up so quickly around the ship. It certainly would have prevented a lot of people from being emotionally and psychologically damaged as a result of having that trust destroyed.

Not saying something about relationships that may or may not happen is VERY different from not saying something about a ship that you know is not going to happen because you plan to brutalize and murder one of the characters on screen in spite of the narrative promises made. Particularly when the ship in question would have offered rep to people who thus far in the show ( when we’re over halfway through the series) still have none.

No rep to be found here...

I’m not sure I should even have to address this but apparently, it needs to be said. It will be short because it’s a pretty damn simple answer.

You want to know “how well [saying no rep to be found here would] have gone over?” A hell of a lot better than the queerbaiting fest you have victimized us all to for the last three months. Would you still have had disappointed fans on your hands? Absolutely. But the psychological and emotional damage you all caused in episode 12 could have been so easily avoided, and that should have taken precedence over whatever tension you wanted to maintain between these characters in the show.

This should not have been a difficult decision, and quite frankly, the fact that you don’t understand this is a little alarming.

We Are Not a Shopping Montage

Alright. Here is where my civility is going to deteriorate noticeably, so fair warning.

You had the audacity to compare the emotional trauma of hundreds of LGBTQ fans to the disappointment of not getting a fucking shopping montage??? You even acknowledge that on an emotional level these two things are nowhere near being the same thing, and you still tried to justify your actions and the actions of CRWBY with it? That emotional fallout is the thing that matters here.

But there’s even more to it than that.

The hopes for a shopping montage came from a single Tweet from the official RWBY Twitter (if I remember right) about a montage scene being in volume 7. That was it. That was all fans had to go off of. This absolutely was a case of imaginations running wild and people hoping for a scene that, quite frankly, in light of the show’s trajectory since volume 3, wasn’t a reasonable expectation to begin with. CRWBY was in no way complicit in or responsible for this expectation that I know of, and even if you were.... It. Was. A. Shopping. Montage.

And you dare to compare that with the intentional queer coding of Qrow and Clover’s relationship in the writing, the animation choices, the character design for Clover, and the behavior of CRWBY on social media, only for Clover to die horrifically and for Qrow to be absolutely destroyed emotionally and mentally on-screen??? You dare to relate the disappointment of people who didn’t get a pointless shopping scene with the trauma of watching a loved character’s murder and another loved character’s emotional/mental destruction??? Really? That seemed like an appropriate thing to say?

I don’t even know what else to say to this except absolute world-shattering shame on you, sir. How dare you?

And then to top all of this off, instead of apologizing, instead of showing some contrition, you tried to delete this post and pretend you never said it. Did you hope we wouldn’t notice? That we wouldn’t react if you tried to take it down? Were you even the one who realized what you said or did you need it pointed out to you?

You should not be a writer, sir. You sure as hell should not be a creator of content that engages with people on an emotional level because you clearly have no respect for it and no understanding of the responsibility you bear because of it.

What is wrong with you?

Tagging @fairgame-is-endgame who asked me to say something on this absolute bullshit.

#fair game #crwby #wtf crwby #rwby #rwby7 #rwby7 spoilers #rwby spoilers #qrow branwen #clover ebi #eddy rivas

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colorisbyshe · 3 years

Note

Talking about fandom entitlement, what do you think about the concept of qu**rcoding?

Coding characters as gay and “queerbaiting” (or I just call it gaybaiting because we need to be frank, it is same gender attraction that is being baited, not transness) are two different things.

Coding, accidental subtext, and baiting are all three very different things.

I like two and... sometimes can appreciate the third semi-ironically.

Coding is what happens when a creator is being censored in some form (explicitly or implicitly) and is trying to provide vague representation and they’re great for trying. I am less into coding when I have reason to believe there is no external force keeping them in coding because that veers on bait territory.

90% of things accused of “queerbaiting” or gaybaiting are... accidental subtext. I happen to think a lot of the best “bait” fall into this category. It is enjoyable. Of course, gay content by gay people often (not always) beats this by a fucking mile but of the “Straight people made this” content, this is the best.

Often, it sours when the straight creator catches on to what they did and the following they have created and makes it bait.

This is where we breach the tough precipice of “Everyone Sucks Here” as they say on Am I the Asshole. The authors suck for baiting if they don’t intend on paying off (even if it can be fun in the moment, see: Sk8 the anime appeals to me as bait) and the fans suck if they then go rabid and turn to harassment to get what they want.

Of course, the basis of bait is coding, just with a bit of a greedier spin of dragging people in for no pay off. But how can we know the intentions? Is it bait because the creators literally cannot create this content and can only heavily pander? Where is the line? What is the reason they can’t do it? Is it just a fear of a loss of profit? Cause then that’s shitty. “I will make your content until it loses me money” is shit.

And then... are fans bad for wanting it if it was deliberately implied that it’s possible? If LGBT fans lash out for being used to bring in profits until it’s too risky... at what point do they go too far?

It really, really gets context specific. Fans going rabid on accidental subtext (like.. Sasuke and Naruto) is bad if they’re like... threatening people but fans.... expressing hurt at what could have been is fine.

So long as they aren’t creating conspiracy theories or hurting people.

And the lines get blurry here. What one person may see is deliberate coding may seem like obvious bait which may all... just be by accident.

For me, personally, it’s a “I know it when I see it” things and it’s also a “I will enjoy it unless I don’t enjoy it...t hen it’s bad” type thing.

I was prepared to watch and love YOI as a bait anime until it actually became gay and then was no longer bait. I enjoy accidental homoerotic tension in lots of ships. I have enjoyed bait knowing the creators were intentionally creating it AND saying no homo to my face, spiting them all the way for it.

I’ll criticize people for baiting or for problematic coding but... unless it’s some evil shit (like baiting pedophilic content, which is done... more often than it should be) I won’t harass peopel over it.

It’s a weird space of fandom behaviour.

And one I will be a BIT more sympathetic to because mainstream LGBT content *by actual LGBT people* is harder to find. And, because a lot of LGBT content by LGBT creators comes from less regulated spaces (ie self publishing), a lot of it can be sketchy in other ways or harder to find gems in.

So, of course, I would endeavor everyone to just... look for actual gay content by actual LGBT people... but I get how sometimes it’s easier to just go “I wish this was gay!” instead of scrolling through “Read this EXTREMELY random assortment of gay books I found that includes cishet ace leads as gay rep, is half YA/half adult fiction and no I won’t tell you which is which, contains every genre known to man, half of which read like fanfiction with the names changed, and also I will not put descriptions for any of them besides vague fanfic terms like “Sports AU Lesbians in SPACE!””

Which is shit people need to stop doing like please just give me a two sentence description of the book and tell me if it’s for and about adults please god

#q slur cw #ask #anonymous

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ronweasleyisourking · 4 years

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Why I Don’t Find Jokes That Claim “Actually, X wrote Harry Potter” Funny

In the wake of Joanne Rowling yet again being openly transphobic on Twitter, a common joke is going around, and the layout of the joke is basically just “[Insert name] wrote Harry Potter,” and the names have varied from Nobody to Luna Lovegood to Daniel Radcliffe, etcetera, etcetera. But what a lot of people making these jokes don’t seem to understand is that this bigotry is not new, that Rowling’s bigotry is all throughout her books, and that saying someone else wrote these books means you believe they have these bigoted views too. And I don’t really find that funny.

I understand that you might be wondering, “What bigoted views played a part in the Harry Potter books? I don’t remember anything wrong.” That’s okay! I’ll be happy to outline some of the issues of the books. So, that’s what I’ll be talking about in this post:

Firstly, anti-semetism

English folklore has always been rooted in anti-semetism, their descriptions being based off Jewish stereotypes, and this does not stop with Harry Potter where the goblins are cast as the overprotective bankers of Gringotts, following the stereotype that Jewish people (and Goblins, being based off them) are greedy. This trend also does not stop in the books or original series. Ron Perlman (a Jewish actor) play a half-goblin in the Jewish mafia in the first Fantastic Beasts movie, continuing the questionable and problematic connection between Jewish people and goblins in Harry Potter.

“But the entire series is supposed to be a parallel to the Holocaust, and the muggleborns (who step into the role of Jewish people in this parallel) are the good guys, how can she be anti-semetic?” Let’s turn again to the Fantastic Beasts movies, that she wrote the screenplays of, specifically to the character of Queenie Goldstein. In December of 2014, Joanne revealed that Anthony Goldstein was a Jewish wizard at Hogwarts and from that we can can reasonably conclude that Tina and Queenie were also Jewish. Which wouldn’t have been a questionable decision if not for the fact that a canon Jewish women (Queenie) ended up joining the side of Gellert Grindelwald (who is supposed to be a parallel to Hitler). What the fuck is up with that?

There’s also an issue with house elves and racism but that is a much bigger issue that would require a lot more of my time and research before I would feel comfortable writing about it, plus it deserves a post of it’s own.

Secondly, “canon” gay characters

I don’t mind that there weren’t any gay characters in the books, I really don’t. What I do mind is JK Rowling going in after the fact to say that there were gay characters. It’s unnecesary and honestly, she chooses the worst rep. First of all, she revealed Albus Dumbledore as gay in 2007, a character that manipulates things and people to his own benefit throughout the series and leaves a child in an abusive home, despite undoubtingly having the power to protect him. The second character she reveals as gay though is Gellert Grindelwald, who, as I said before is supposed to parallel Hitler, who was the face of the Holocaust and led to the deaths of hundreds of gay and effeminate men during that time. And the fact that she continues to refuses to show it in canon, despite having a whole new movie series about the rivalry between the two only makes it worse.

Another thing that has gone around in the Harry Potter fandom is the fact (or rumor) that Joanne once said in an interview that she considered making Dean and Seamus gay but that it would “take attention” away from the trio but one, I cannot find this interview anywhere, and two, believing that a background gay couple would have taken attention away from the main characters is not great.

If she wanted gay characters, she should have included them in the texts. Otherwise, I think she needs to stop trying to get brownie points for representation that she didn’t write.

Thirdly, werewolves

Joanne Rowling released an ebook in September of 2016 where she wrote that werewolves in the books, like Remus, were a metaphor for illnesses that carry a stigma, listing HIV/Aids as an example. This again was a questionable choice, seeing as HIV/Aids is a common problem in the LGBTQ+ community and the other main werewolf in the books, Fenrir Greyback, targeted children which follows the stereotype that gay men are predators.

And finally, these characters

Nagini. While I know that many people believe that this wasn’t actually planned as Joanne said it was, the etymology of her name does trace back to the Naag or Naagin, semi-divine half-human, half-snake creatures from mythology in South Asian cultures, meaning it might have actually been planned. But the problem is not whether it was planned or not, the problem is that Nagini is a woman of color (who is Korean, meaning she is East Asian not South Asian) cursed to live as an animal who spends the last years of her life as the servant of a white man who is equated with Nazis and whose eventual fate is tied to his.

Rita Skeeter. Rita is described as having a heavy jaw, thick fingers, and large and masculine hands, and with Joanne being openly transphobic, it’s not hard to make the connection of where she might have gotten the inspiration for this character from, and the fact that she transforms her body to spy on children brings to mind a certain tweet that Rowling liked a while ago that described trans women as “foxes pretending to be hens to get in the hen house.” The idea that trans people are predators who spy on others is a harmful stereotype and this description and characterization of Rita Skeeter does not help.

Cho Chang. Cho Chang is a Chinese character who has two surnames for a name, meaning there was little thought put into her chracter’s name. Honestly, it’s not that hard to find out whether or not “Cho” is a first name, it’s just one quick search away from not being in the wrong. That and the fact that Cho, along with Sue Li and Padma Patil (some of the only Asian characters in the books), were all placed in Ravenclaw, or “the smart house” just shows how little thought that Rowling gave her canonically poc characters.

Seamus Finnigan. I only recently realized the issues of this character, and it’s likely that most people wouldn’t know why this was a problem, but consider why an English women in the nineties (at the height of The Troubles and the English/Irish conflict) would write the one known Irish character in the books as untrusting of the English (of all of Harry’s friend, Seamus was the one who didn’t believe Harry in book five). Not only that, but in the films (which she was largely involved in) characterized Seamus as clumsy and explosive and a bit of a pyro, which are sterotypical Irish traits, and she didn’t question it at all?

Conclusion

These are just a few of the issues seen in the Harry Potter books and movies and I didn’t even talk about the issues that are less bigotry and more simply problematic, like Viktor Krum’s character, or the theme of forgiving abusive people in your life, or the constant issue of love potions and consent.

There is so much wrong in the books and we can’t just ignore them or transfer them to another person. Joanne Rowling wrote these books and her bigoted beliefs are abundantly clear in them and we all need to accept that. We can love the worldbuilding and the characters and yes, even the story, but we must recongnize the issues in them and we must realize that a bigoted person wrote it. There is no escaping that.

And yes, as everyone who I have expressed this two has brought up, the story does belong to the fans. And we can do whatever we wish with it, but we should never forget where the story began and we shouldn’t try and pretend that it had a different origin. Death of the author, or the idea that anybody's interpretation of the text is a valid interpretation, and that the author's interpretation is not the only one that counts, does not mean that the author is literally removed from the text. They still wrote it. And their bias (opinions) are still a huge part of the text. And we can try with all our might to remove their bias from our fanworks but it is still there in the original text. So, yes, the story belongs to fans. But the bias in it belongs to the author and will always be present.

The author of the Harry Potter series is JK Rowling, no matter how bigoted she and her beliefs are. We should never forget that.

#jk rowling critical

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tobiasbotte · 4 years

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Okay, I've got a weird itch, and I'm wondering if my dear netizens can help me scratch it. This is a fic rec request post. Also kind of a praise post? Skip to the end to see the request, because I go off on a bit of a tangent.

I've been…really getting into The Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfics lately? Like, seriously, been doing a deep dive every since I finished the live action drama because holy shit that was something beautiful. And I gotta say, my favorite kinds of fics right now in this fandom are the full blown, novel length, ensemble cast ones. You know, the ones where all the right ones live, or even our favorite bad guys get redemption arcs, and almost everyone is paired off by the end. I'm a sucker for that shit. It's beautiful.

This does not negate the fact that the show (I'm working up the courage to read the actual novel that started this all - I've started, now I just need to take the plunge) is beautiful in its own right. I adore that WWX and LWJ got their happy ending. I also adore these fics.

I digress.

When I first dove into the fandom, I loved LWJ/WWX & LSZ interactions as a family. Then I fell down the WWX & JC reconciliation hell hole and I have not climbed back out, nor do I wish to! It’s amazing. But now, I've noticed that the fics that have Meng Yao|Gin Guangyao as the fulcrum are the most fascinating. Everything revolves around him, most of the time, and while I adore WWX as my favorite tortured soul and his epic pining romance with LWJ and his family dynamic with LSZ and JC, these giant fics with JGY at the center are like. Epic odysseys. It's amazing.

And, you know, off topic of this post - which is supposed to be a cry for recs, please help - it really makes me want to write one, but first off, I know next to nothing about wuxia/xianxia style stories (though with the amount of media I've been consuming, and the cultural rabbit holes I've fallen down in on Google this past month alone, I daresay I could definitely make a good run at it), and second, just the whole psychological aspect of it for all of those characters - I pride myself on being able to read a room, especially with what I do for a living, but holy shit do these fics do a deep dive.

By the way, I speak of two specific fic authors who write the most epic JGY-fulcrum fics that I've seen so far: @mercyandmagic and @hamliet. If either of you guys see this, my respect to you as writers is through the roof. Seriously, it's mind boggling. The dissection of JGY's character, his desire for acceptance, his desperate will to live no matter what - it's beautiful. Not to mention the viewpoints of literally every other character in their fics?! And the head-hopping is amazing - not something I usually see. (Apparently this is common in Chinese fic writing, or so I’ve read somewhere? But it’s not disconcerting at all, at least not how these two do it. I kind of want to try that style...)

Lord, I don't even remember where I'm going with this. If any of my readers follow me on here, you know I'm mostly a Yu Yu Hakusho writer (let's forget the other secret account I had back in high school; I burned that, I believe). I write novella length stuff at best (of fan fiction. My original works are…massive, to say the least, which I'm proud of.). But I've never been in a fandom (and I'm in a lot of fandoms; my bookmark count on AO3 can attest to that holy shit I have a problem) that has produced such epic works that it has moved me to sway from my usual fic writing habits of safety, of topics that I'm familiar with. Seriously, I "know" wuxia/xianxia stuff now (I've been going back to my nerd roots lately and tearing through K- and C-dramas - with my mother, no less! - and absorbing a lot of cool shit. It's so fun.), but I don't know it, you know what I mean? I can explain to my mother the significance of joss sticks, paper money being burned for the dead, wedding red and mourning white, the wedding games people have to play to retrieve their spouses, cultivation culture, etc., but I'd never try to write about it because - let's face it! I'm scared. Which is funny. I'm not Japanese (I’m black/Filipino/white), but I actually grew up being fascinated by the culture thanks to my dad - our family's original weeb - and so I'm not too terrified to write fics about animes because, you know, I'm kind of familiar with it.

Chinese-based fics though? Alien to me. And it's not that I'm scared of offending anyone - I'm glad that the majority of fan culture that I have personally interacted with is nice. It's a shame that a lot of the nasty stuff gets the spotlight, gives fandom culture a bad rep, but I know that most of you guys - I'm speak of you readers/writers - are chill people who wanna vibe with the fandoms in peace.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I guess I'm just making excuses to not write MDZS fics by claiming that I don't want to contribute because I don't want to do the genre its in any injustice. The real reason I don't want to write it is because I don't think I'd be able to have a good grasp on the mental aspect of any of the characters! Weird. Writing fanfiction has never scared me before. I know it's because I'm comparing myself to these other awesome writers, not just the two I've listed, but all the writers of the amazing MDZS fics I've been reading, but who doesn’t compare themselves to someone else? It’s destructive. At least I’m aware of what I’m doing-

Holy shit this post is long I need to stop what was the point.

The point...

The point was - a request! So far, those are the only two writers I've come across who do those epic ensemble/fulcrum/happy ending for all/everyone is paired off fics in this fandom. Obviously I've barely made a dent in all the material that's out there, but I figured I'd save myself some time and ask if anyone in the MDZS fandom could recommend any other fics that do this.

Bonus points if it includes Qin Su/Wen Ning or Su She/Jin Zixun (like, seriously, I would have never in a million years expected to have liked the latter pairing, but when I've seen it logically laid out on how to rectify them, it fucking works?!). If not that, then my second favorite type of fics are the WWX & JC brotherly reconciliation fics with lots of gross sobbing. I adore the relationship between these two and I just want them to be a family again, please. There's a lot more of these works than the former, and I'm slowly working my way through them, but if you find some that I should absolutely read right now, lemme know.

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thedeaditeslayer · 4 years

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The Cool Side of My Pillow Interview: A Trip Inside the Mind of Bruce Campbell.

When you mention the name Bruce Campbell, the first thing that readily springs to most people’s minds is the boomstick toting, chainsaw-wielding final guy of the Evil Dead franchise, Ash Williams. However, for some of his fans, he will be forever linked with the Harvard educated, resourceful bounty hunter, Brisco County, Jr. Then, of course, there will be those devotees of Burn Notice that will be quick to let you know that Sam Axe, the ex-Navy Seal with a love of Mojitos and Tommy Bahama shirts is their guy because we all know, “Chuck Finley is forever.” For those of you that have never had the pleasure of watching the inventive spy show, Chuck was Sam’s alias that he would use as a cover on certain operations. The mere fact that Bruce Campbell is a part of three vastly different fandoms says quite a bit about his ability as an actor as well as his likeability quotient.

A headliner on the convention circuit for years, the minute he is announced as a guest, tickets go flying out the door and venues sell out. Campbell understands what the people want and he is more than willing to give it to them which is why most promoters clamor to book him. His Q & A sessions are legendary and audiences love the way he sarcastically banters with them. In addition to being an accomplished actor, director and producer, Bruce is also a New York Times bestselling author with four books under his belt. If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B-Movie Actor, Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way and his soon to be released, The Cool Side of My Pillow.

His latest book is a collection of essays or as he would say, “rants.” This venture is unlike any of the previous mentioned titles and perhaps his most personal effort to date. In a sense, you get to take a trip inside Campbell’s mind. He expresses his feelings and opinions on a variety of topics from current events and social media to his code of ethics. I was fortunate enough to chat with Bruce about The Cool Side of My Pillow, and his future projects. After reading his book, you come away with the knowledge of how genuine and thoughtful he is which is refreshing in this day and age.

Diabolique: What I like so much about The Cool Side of My Pillow is your honesty. Your writing style makes the reader feel as if they are having an intimate conversation with you. You don’t hold anything back. There are certain aspects in the book which made me feel a tad uncomfortable because you shared some information that was deeply personal, in my mind. I don’t know if I would have included some of the things that you did.

BC: Oh, sure. You always have to decide where you stop. Where is the line? For me, it depends on the type of book. It depends on the type of subject matter. Every project is different.

Diabolique: Were some of the subjects you tackled cathartic for you?

BC: I don’t normally do that sort of stuff. I’m happy to share if I feel something is useful. In the chapter, “What Are You On?” I’m not ragging on people who have habits. I have habits that was the point. There are very few people that just go through their daily life without jacking themselves up, knocking themselves down, knocking themselves out, you know? So, its kind of amazing. The human condition fascinates me.

Diabolique: “A Little Effort Goes a Long Way” is one of my favorite segments. A tale of hard work, ingenuity and perseverance. Which is key to succeeding in the entertainment industry. Where does your drive come from? Some people can pinpoint it to relatives, a mentor…

BC: I do attribute some of it to the Detroit metro area. A lot of my buddies worked on the line, they worked in the factories, it was a great summer job that paid really good money. In Detroit, it was weird. There weren’t a lot of discussions about hopes and dreams. But I could see things happen incrementally that encouraged us. My grandfather worked for ALCOA Aluminum for over 40 years. Would he want to do that job? Was it his favorite job? He wouldn’t even know; it was his only job. He had that job for his whole adult life. My dad wanted to be a painter. I call him a “go betweener” because he didn’t do exactly what he wanted to do but he didn’t do what he didn’t want to do. He got into advertising because it was sort of creative but it wasn’t creative enough so he got into community theater which was more creative. That filled a very strong niche for him and so he kind of straddled the line and then I came along. He allowed me to pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted to do in whatever industry I wanted. He was the first investor in Evil Dead. So, I benefited from the transition of ONLY having drive. Meaning, you just go to work, it doesn’t matter what the job is. The next generation is, “Well, the job kinda matters.” My generation is, “The job matters a hundred percent,” because it determines what you’ve decided to do with your life. So, I am grateful for having enough drive but grateful for being injected with enough freedom of thought to then do my own thing. Partly the drive is the Midwest because you put a tie on, put your sport coat on and you go to work. Get your briefcase, shine your shoes and off you go.

Diabolique: Do you think it is important if you want to be in the arts to have a benefactor? Not necessarily monetarily but someone who encourages you like your dad?

BC: Well, my mom did sort of amateur writing so she was sympathetic at least to that side of the arts. She liked that creative side. My dad was way more interested in acting. So, I saw him in plays and stuff. I definitely benefitted because I had a sensibility that was similar to my dad. My two older brothers could give a shit about acting. They never touched it. I think my dad saw, “Hey, the young guy likes acting just like me.” That was probably an advantage.

Diabolique: Another thing about that particular section that is fascinating to note is your resourcefulness. The anecdote that you recount about having to come up with a way to deliver newspapers in a horrendous snowstorm and the lengths that you went to just to do your job is inspiring. I feel like that isn’t something that would be done by the younger generation, these days.

BC: We were pre-slackers and again, this isn’t to sound like a crabby, old guy on a hill shouting down about the great old days, at that time there were no other options. Our boss dropped off these papers at the top of a hill. That was as far as his van could go. He dumped the whole thing on me and my brother. We delivered them together (the resolution involved Bruce donning hockey skates and a toboggan). So, we thought okay. There was no option of saying, “Dude, I can’t do it. They’re just not going to get their papers today.” That would be the current response. You would wait until the roads were plowed, like that night, and then you would get your damn paper the next day and you’d end up getting two papers. It wasn’t an option. There was nothing in my upbringing that said, you can tell your boss, no. Now, if I thought it would have been very dangerous or life threatening, I probably would have said, no but short of that, there was a slightly different mentality in the air. You did what you were fucking told, for the most part which is a little bit different now.

Diabolique: “The Princess Di Factor” was a thought-provoking chapter because you talk about the click-baiting, disinformation and too much information that occurs on social media. Some of your peers have their PR reps handle their feeds but you are very present in yours. Do you think someone who is interested in getting into show business has to obtain “influencer” status?

BC: I think there is certainly pressure to do it. The old actors when they were doing a film could get away with telling the local studio, “By the way, I don’t do social media.” They say, “I’ve never done it. I don’t have a Twitter feed. I’m not starting now.” They can get away with it. But a younger thespian has a website and at least two or three social media platforms. I think its important to get a distinction of what are using them for? Facebook is all mercenary. Whenever I post, its just for a link to get tickets. I just do that to keep the account warm but I won’t add to it. That one is really inflammatory. They are finally starting to take the misinformation down. It should just be illegal. The stats are mind boggling. Something like 65% of the people who refuse to do social distancing and stuff like that get their information from YouTube. Its not news sources. Its like the Wild West. I think it needs to be settled. I would introduce journalistic standards and practices where by if you tell a little white lie, you get yanked and if you get fact checked and the facts say you’re wrong, that gets yanked.

Diabolique: At the beginning of your book, you discuss the toll of COVID-19 isolation and changes to the convention and motion picture industries. After presenting the Ashland Independent Film Festival awards virtually, do you think conventions might go that route in the future? San Diego Comic Con has gone entirely online which is surprising. Galaxy Con is another.

BC: If we don’t straighten this out, yeah. Sports are going to be weird for a while. Large venues are just going to be strange. How are you going to figure out the San Diego Comic Con? How are they going to make people feel comfortable jamming 125,000 people over a four-day period into that convention center which is already elbow to elbow and unhealthy? I don’t know. I’ve talked to promoters about a bunch of different things. I’m doing a Drive-In tour. Also, some theaters have opened up again so I am going to encourage and reward that so I have added five theater dates for later this summer: Austin, Dallas, Houston, Oklahoma City and San Antonio. I’m getting back out on the road. This is not a tour year at all but when I heard that drive-ins were making a comeback, I thought let me be part of that. Some of them are struggling to open and I want to help. I’m tired of being on the sidelines. I want to get back into it. Drive-ins are perfect. You’ve got your distance. I can go up to cars and hassle them and there’s no problem. I can shine my flashlight in the cars, see if people are having sex, there’s a lot of fun stuff we can do. I want to be the first guy they meet when they come into the place to park. I want to be the guy that parks everybody. It’s time. Everyone wants to feel normal again. Eat the meatloaf sandwich. Going to the drive-in is the oldest meatloaf sandwich you could ever eat. Bring the hooch. Hide it under the seat. Bring a cooler, bring your reefer…

Diabolique: In The Cool Side of My Pillow, you mentioned that you were going to attend San Diego Comic Con, New York Comic Con and the 2020 Electronics Expo which were all canceled due to the pandemic. Were you going to promote the Evil Dead game?

BC: That’s what I was going to do. That’s what I was going to those conventions for.

Diabolique: What’s the status on it?

BC: I have been looking at and approving a bunch of new stuff. They are full-fledged, full bore into it. I think they are talking 2021 for an actual release. Its rolling along, looking great. It got delayed because of the nightmare of video games. Platforms change and evolve. You look at somebody else’s games and go, “Shit! We have to change everything now.” We have to stay current. I have to finish doing the voice work.

Diabolique: I know you are aware of all the rumors surrounding potential work in the future. You even mentioned in your book that you had a few offers. Is there a possibility that you might show up in Doctor Strange 2 and Mall Rats 2?

BC: The Kevin Smith thing could happen if it all winds up together but we haven’t had serious conversations about it. For Dr. Strange, everyone is at the mercy of what Marvel is going to do and this backlog of movies they’re going to do now. So, I think it won’t be until 2021. Marvel has to figure this all out. They have to figure out what movies they are going to do next, what movies they are going to delay, what movies they are going to shit can, what movies they are going to advance and speed up…the marketplace is ever fluid.

Diabolique: Do you have a release date in mind for The Cool Side of My Pillow?

BC: I have to say summer. We’re blasting away. We’re finishing graphics and photos and all that. We’re doing some legal crap. I’m starting a publishing company too. Tartan Media is going to release it. It will be my Campbell clan logo. It will be just to put things out. Movies, TV shows, whatever. That’s the new shingle.

Diabolique: Is there anything else on the horizon?

BC: Because the book isn’t going through Simon & Schuster, they’ll kind of have to find it where they find it. I’ll tweet about it. It will hopefully be available later this summer through Audible. I am going to do the audio book myself within the next two weeks because I want the e-book and the audiobook to come out at the same time. That way it gives you a choice. I want this to be a summer read.

Diabolique: Any updates on Bruce vs Frankenstein?

BC: With Bruce vs Frankenstein, I talked with Mike Richardson, who is my partner on this and we’re going to start with a graphic novel. So, I am going to adapt the screenplay. We’re going to put that out first so people in the industry can get a better sense of it. Mike has been selling a lot of projects to Netflix and he said that’s kind of the way to go with his material and fantasy stuff so he suggested we do that first. We’ll get a great artist, sell it in comic book form, people can totally see it and as a director, its kind of like doing storyboards. It’s a tremendous amount of extra prep that I can do just by going through it because I actually have to think about pages, panels and descriptions. It’s a format that’s not my normal format. Screenplay format, I can fart, I got that down. This is different with the way it looks on the page so it will be a very interesting translation process.

Diabolique: Are you doing any projects outside of Tartan Media?

BC: There’s this movie, 18 ½. It’s directed by Dan Mirvish. He’s with Slamdance. The story is about the missing minutes of the Nixon tapes and what happened to those minutes. Originally, I got hired to play a character in the movie and I couldn’t do it for a number of reasons and then the guy came back and asked if I would play Nixon.

Diabolique: So, the audience will just hear you?

BC: Yes. Apparently, it’s this 18-minute-long fight scene where you will hear Nixon in the background. Ted Raimi comes into play Alexander Haig and Jon Cryer is playing Haldeman. We did all these sessions over Zoom and we each recorded them separately (saying this in Nixon’s voice) having our conversations. They will put it all together and put it in the background.

Diabolique: Anything new to report on Evil Dead?

BC: The official name is Evil Dead Rise. We’re getting a new draft in. I don’t think anything will happen until 2021. Full bore ahead, we’re very excited about it. A whole, new ballgame. No more cabin in the woods.

#Bruce Campbell #The Cool Side of my Pillow

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akechicrimes · 4 years

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yeah alright

i’m reading the book called “the dark fantastic” written by a Fandom Old who later became a professor and academic scholar, talking about the ways that fandom outrage over the death of black female characters is a form of protest for justice in our literature. and how people get so fucking mad over these things because, you know, we deserve more. we deserve better rep.

and like, i was thinking today, you know, there’s a strong argument that yosuke was emotionally too raw to go into a relationship after losing saki (that’s a real fucking thing that a good friend explained to me as the reason why his date route was cancelled), and that yosuke wasn’t comfortable to come out as bi just then at that point in his life. which is fucking rich, considering that persona 4 is all about accepting one’s true self, and the way that argument goes, it lines up yosuke as someone who ultimately never did accept his true self.

and i was also thinking today like, akechi’s s link and plotline in royal is so plot dependent that it’s difficult to have a point where you can choose to date him. his rank 9 and 10 are spent in the engine room. before then, he’s got his hands tied with shido, and any relationship he entered into at that point would have been dishonest. so from then on there’s really no good available spots to select to date him.

but then i was also thinking about the intimacy of the cafe scene, where he purposefully requests to be alone with you and you’re talking about something so difficult, and it’s like. that would have been the obvious choice. there’s a reason why there’s 1000 fanfics already with the scenario of shuake first kiss on the last night they’ll have together. plus royal’s entire theme was about the sadness of loss and the embrace of freedom even if it’s painful, and i was like. literally it would have taken you three more lines of dialogue.

akechi’s like, well if there’s nothing left, i’ll be going. akira asks him to stay. akechi says don’t be ridiculous. akira has the little thought bubble of “i better choose my words carefully.” akira has the choice to either let him go or propose for akechi to stay a little while longer. akechi tells him if he knows what he’s getting in to, if he’s prepared his heart for this sort of decision. akira says he has. fade to black “you spent a long time with akechi.”

boom. it’s right there.

i’ve been thinking a lot about how to some extent, i enjoy relationships that are queercoded or even queerbait MORE than i enjoy relationships that are explicitly queer, because i find that relationships that are written to be queercoded tend to embrace the full humanity of both characters. i find that more often than not, literature that’s made for the purpose of being queer ends up with “love simon” syndrome, where everything about the character winds up revolving around them being gay. which isn’t what i want. i want characters who are full human beings with real character arcs about them finding their way in the world as a complex individual, and they are gay. and for that reason, yosuke hanamura was a fucking gift, because he was written to be a complex character with a character arc revolving around his cynicism and difficulties with other people, a character you can befriend and grow closer to, and also he’s bi. and i like akechi for a lot of the same reasons.

but i was also thinking, you know, if i like queercoded and queerbaited relationships more than explicitly queer relationships because of the full humanity it affords queercoded characters, WHY CAN’T I JUST HAVE NARRATIVES WHERE I HAVE EXPLICITLY QUEER CHARACTERS THAT ARE GIVEN THEIR FULL HUMANITY.

WHY’S IT GOT TO BE EITHER OR.

IT COULD BE BOTH AND.

in some better world i could play a fun JRPG with a wild conceit about people’s cognitions warping in jungian fashion and summoning parts of their souls to fight demons and have it contain explicitly queer characters. in some better i don’t have to choose the fun JRPG or milquetoast bullshit like love simon. and in some better world i don’t have to buckle down so hard on death of the author just to extract decent representation from a liberatory queer reading of the source text, and i don’t have to pretend i’m not fucking salty about shuake being so heavily implied and then never made explicit.

because it was!!!! it is!!!!! people saying that it wasn’t implied are fucking blind!!!! and for that matter, akira can canonically date his own TEACHER for WAY flimsier narrative reasons!!!!!! you can basically date every single woman in that game except for your narrative-locked lawyer and the twelve-year-old girls!!!!!!

shuake was written as a romance, a seduction in which both sides attempt to sway the other to their own, and then it was never paid off as one. it’s the fucking textbook definition of queerbait in its original definition, in which queerbait is a narrative plotline that’s intentionally loaded with homoerotic tension for a queer audience to read into and get invested in, only for that plotline to never pan out to appease straight audiences. it’s not revolutionary on atlus’s part to have implied shuake so heavily and then pulled out. it’s what people have been doing since modern media began.

there was literally no good goddamn reason for it to not have been paid off except to appease straight audiences--you don’t even need to heavily restructure the plot--the cafe scene is right fucking there.

im going to stop being bitter in like, two seconds. i promise. (except also i’ve been fucking bitter about yosuke hanamura, and also everyone who tried to tell me that phoenix/miles was not a thing in ace attorney, literally ever since i was fifteen. to have your entire forum gang up on you and tell you that you’re “reading too much into it” and just have “shipper goggles” when yosuke being undateable was a fucking crime to his narrative plot and self-actualization? when you’re fifteen and queer and not sure if you’re queer and every single person you trust tells you that you’re being stupid? FUCK that shit. and i cannot believe it’s happening again. it makes me want to fucking spit.)

ok.

i’m going to stop being bitter.

but i had to get that off my chest.

#negativity #mine #rant about queerbaiting and akechi and also yosuke

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missorgana · 4 years

Text

that’s how you get the girl (more or less)

pairing: han solo/leia organa

fandom: star wars (original trilogy)

rating: teen and up

word count: 4881

warning: swearing

summary: Han's kind, and he's an idiot. What a combination. (newspaper reporters!au inspired by nickie’s gorgeous aesthetic. happy very belated birthday @ladyeowyn ♥ really hope you enjoy this love!!)

read on ao3

Han Solo might possibly be the stupidest person on the face of the earth.

There are many things in this world Leia can’t be certain of, but this one, she just knows.

And she definitely didn’t expect to meet him at her job, of all places.

About five years ago, Leia got an intern spot at Cloud City Times, along with her lovable, strangely connected twin brother, Luke.

She didn’t even know he applied til they got their acceptance emails.

Regardless, they did everything together, so Leia didn’t complain.

Their mother always had a fond look in her eyes when checking on them after their bedtime, in their younger years, scolding them with no real irritation when she found them reading Lord of The Rings, flashlight in hand, hidden in a fort of blankets.

She could never really get angry with them, no matter how much trouble they managed to get into.

So, of course, she was over the moon when the twins told her the news.

On their first, they were reminded by her to work together, and not get into their ‘usual squabbles’, a comment that made Leia scrunch up her nose.

She still kissed them goodbye, though.

And Leia worked hard to impress their boss, she really did, and she can’t really speak on Luke’s behalf, but she’s sure he did too.

She knows him too well to think anything else, her brother doesn’t do anything half-assed. They are Skywalkers, after all, as their father always said.

The internship eventually earned them both an actual, stable job, and six months ago, the boss appointed Leia as managing editor.

And she held a lot of pride in that, you know?

This essentially means she was put in charge of hiring and promoting, or in worse cases, firing staff.

Luke teased her for being his boss, he was proud of her, but also loved pushing her buttons every once in a while.

And if Leia didn’t know better, it might look like her brother is doing just that to her now.

Yesterday, Luke asked her to take this guy in for an interview, someone he apparently met in his weird board game club or whatever.

He insisted that this new friend of his needed a job, insisted he had some good ideas, too, and Leia decided to put her faith in him.

Oh boy, was she wrong to do so.

Because in front of her, he’s sitting, Han Solo, the man her brother said was practically born to have this job.

If Leia has to be completely honest with herself, cause her mother always valued honesty, her first thought when she saw him made her rather flustered.

But can you blame her, really?

He was polite and shook her hand, his own wearing rings on every finger, and showcasing a smile that could almost cross the line to being a smirk,

This guy proceeded to shower her with compliments, rambling about how he’s a huge fan of hers, highlighting the pro-abortion piece she published a couple of months prior, and even saying her office was comfortable, not crammy and dull like those in the movies.

Him being insanely attractive doesn’t help Leia’s professional and social ability, either.

She never thought herself as one to swoon over someone she just met, yet here she is.

Leia had always liked her partners tall, her ex-girlfriend Amilyn was more than a head taller than herself, and so is this Han, and he still has some sort of sparkle in his eyes she doesn’t really know what to do with.

All polite greetings and various compliments aside, Leia has to retain some level of authority, so she starts the interview, the usual questions of past experience, ambitions, strengths and weaknesses, you know the drill.

And, well, the conversation turns out interesting, to say the least.

“So, Han, you got any past experience in the field?”

He blinks at her, pulls a lock of hair behind his ear before he replies, “Ah, well, not exactly.”

Leia waits expectantly but the man in front of her seems done with his sentence.

Man of few words, huh. This is going to be a long interview, then.

“Would you care to elaborate?” she asks, already impatient. His good looks are one thing, but not a basis for employment.

He smiles again. Dammit, Leia, pull yourself together.

“You talk just like in your writing, I’m impressed,” he tells her, reaching out to presumably take a closer look at the framed picture of her parents on her desk, “I, uh, how much did Luke tell you about me?”

Before Leia can answer, a shattering sounds, and Han’s face in a state of shock.

He fumbles his fingers where he dropped the photo.

“Jesus, that, uh- wauw. It’s real glass?”

She just has to do a double a take. Leia’s not surprised as much as confused, switching her gaze to the photograph and shards of glass now inhabiting the industrial Ikea rug.

Han looks embarrassed.

He still tries a smile, this one most likely one he uses to charm himself out of possible incidents, she bets, or accidents, as in this case.

Leia just huffs. She can’t help but give him a smile back and a simple shrug.

He’s an idiot.

With this realisation, Leia relaxes in her seat once again, while Han runs a hand through his hair anxiously, “Oh f- I mean, damn. I’m so sorry. I’ll get you a new frame, I really thought I had this, of course my dumb luck-”

“Don’t.”

She puts her hand up to further get her point across.

“It’s a frame, Han. The photo’s still intact. Don’t worry about it.”

Still, he picks up the photograph and hands it to her, appearing to hold further apologies back, and she nods a thanks.

“Look, uh, to answer your question - I got experience a couple years back. Thing is, well, I exposed… some stuff. My rep ain’t the best cause of that.”

His hand gestures are large, vivid, quick, and Leia wishes he would catch his breath.

“He deserved it, though! And Luke’s trying to help me out, honestly, he’s the nicest, ever. Please believe me.” he finally finishes, adjusts his wristwatch and just… looks at her.

It’s silent for a while, because Leia doesn’t really know what to answer, and she wishes she could go against her gut feeling.

This kind of charm sucks her in and she scolds herself mentally. Will never admit to it. At least she’ll have someone pretty to look at.

“Luke believes in you.” she tells him simply, “And I trust my brother. If you got a portfolio, I’ll look it over. Just, please, stop looking like you’re terrified of me.”

And Han releases a breath, nods decidedly, “Hell yeah I got one. Okay, you won’t regret this. Seriously.”

Leia gives him a smile, exceptionally warm for someone she’s only known for about thirty minutes. Don’t even think of judging her right now.

“I’ll hold you on that.”

…

Two weeks pass by since Leia hired Han, and she has to admit, she’s positively surprised.

Han’s an exceptional writer, she thinks, after having three published pieces so far, and she feels a sense of pride, almost.

Thing is, well, he needs a metaphorical kick or two when it comes to work.

Not actually working, it’s not like he’s lazy, but let’s say Leia wonders if his definition of a deadline is something different than hers.

Every piece so far, the first draft comes into her hands at least two days after she told him to. And his charm aside, it’s getting on her nerves.

She doesn’t want to act over powerful, but warnings are given where warnings are due, and he always apologises profusely, trying to lighten the mood with one of his bad jokes.

Oh, the cluelessness of him.

The way Han has that smile permanently plastered on her face, it’s a weird combination of someone having the looks of a cocky bastard that makes every swoon, and the personality of a clumsy high school dropout who somehow always ends up saving the day.

And he definitely doesn’t have a problem making friends.

Han’s way too nice.

Everyone’s nice here, don’t get her wrong, but Leia finds it strange, almost.

It’s come to a point where he tells her of his adventure to another department when their own printer broke down, and he casually mentions someone named Boba, Leia ultimately hiding her confused unknowing of who he’s talking about.

How does he even have the time to meet so many people?

But Leia can’t lie about the fact that she enjoys this weird dynamic they’ve started.

He teases her, in a professional manner that is, always guessing, and always somehow hitting it spot on, what her newest piece is about.

He also knocks on her office door more than anyone else, untimely or not. When she tells him she’s in the middle of something he takes the cue, thankfully, but she suspects he’s waited outside for whatever call she had to end.

Three weeks pass by and it’s like Han’s living in her mind.

She’d suspect of him being a mind reader, if she believed that sort of stuff, and if Han wasn’t so impulsive and strangely dim in certain areas.

Basically, she’s seeing, and hearing, a lot more of him than she expected to.

And whether this is a curse or a blessing, well, Leia is troubled.

Because more than anything, Han is turning out so incredibly annoying.

She hates that thought, because what she finds annoying is not, per say, annoying, not in a traditional sense.

He’s late to everything, yes, but he’s extremely genuine.

Discussions with him is always something Leia looks forward to, and his feedback to her is honestly excellent. It’s almost like he changes personality when he’s deeply concentrated in work, always has to the right constructive criticism, always the missing word you’re looking for.

He works most nights late, he casually told her of that fact, and if she shows even a hint of annoyance towards him, he leaves whatever the case is be and greets her the next morning with coffee.

How’s he learned how she takes her coffee so quickly, anyway?

What shifted their dynamic even more was that Leia and Han both started working late at the office.

First happened on a Friday, where she went to the coffee machine and spotted him still staring at his screen.

This evening encounter ended up as a routine, and eventually, Han more or less moved into her office, until they were both done with whatever task at hand.

And, after five weeks, Leia has now found the most annoying thing about Han Solo.

She likes him.

Leia supposes this is a natural progression, after the weird first job interview, finding he possesses charm in spades, and where she definitely couldn’t deny that he is, in fact, attractive.

Actually, he fits her type completely. And that can’t be happening.

Leia keeps trying to look for signs that he’s actually a douche, but, tragically, not the case.

Han cares about this job, minor flaws aside, and if his interactions with Luke is any indication, he cares about people, too.

He’s kind, and he’s an idiot. What a combination.

Tuesday morning, Han knocks on her door as usual, which is why Leia just yells for him to come in, zero surprise in her tone.

“General,” he greets her, a nickname he came up with on his first day and never explained, and it makes Leia roll her eyes, “You eat breakfast yet?”

Well, that was new.

Leia looks up, Han holding a brown paper bag in his arms, along with the carefully balanced coffee cups, as per usual.

She leans back, trying to hold a smile back but probably failing, “No, now that you ask. Tell me, what would’ve you done if I had?”

Han laugh and sits down, clearly already at home, and starts presenting her with the meal, “We could’ve eaten it for lunch, of course. Multipurpose, right?”

Leia scoffs back at him, but grabs the coffee with a nod as a thank you.

“I do have to take a phone call, though. You wanted to discuss your piece for next week?”

He smirks at her again, “You must be a mind reader, General. But yes, it can wait though. You’re a busy woman, I’ll just take my half of our splendid meal and leave you be.”

Han works a fake cry of despair into his words, and walks out the door, the sulky look way too dramatic for anyone to believe it, but there’s no point in telling him that.

“That’s appreciated.” she tells him, shaking her head fondly at his act, “Remember the deadline this time, now would you?!”

“Of course. It’s me.”

His look of disbelief is given no more than a raise of Leia’s eyebrows.

This man will be the death of her.

…

Out of the many discoveries Leia’s made about Han, her latest is that he’s, in fact, a clingy person.

Very clingy.

This is not something bad in her mind, maybe because he’s so likable.

She’s had to remind him and Luke of their duties a few times, when they were too occupied looking at photos of Han’s dog - Chewie, another thing she has no idea what means - on his flip phone.

Han’s simultaneously the first and last person she expected to still have a flip phone.

And, turns out, Lando and Han dated back in high school. Not that that’s something to think about too much. Leia doesn’t overthink.

Regardless, Han tends to hang around other people for as long as humanly possible.

To begin with, she didn’t have the heart to say something, maybe, possibly, because of her crush, but not really.

Stupid crushes. Leia shouldn’t have crushes.

Now that they’re comfortable with each other, Han clings even more, believe it or not, only difference is Leia is not afraid to tell him to back off when she’s going to a meeting.

And she did figure she’ll have to, well, keep her distance and let whatever she’s feeling go away.

Dating a coworker would be extremely unprofessional, at least in Leia’s mind.

She doesn’t know really if there’s any rules about it. Might be some restrictions, she figures.

And dating Han would require some more patience than what she’s capable of, she thinks, and also that the feeling was mutual.

Han Solo is incredibly hard to read.

During their late night work sessions, they’ve had some, what can you say, heartfelt moments. Honest, raw perhaps?

It surprised her when they happened.

Here, Han’s smirk disappeared, and a relaxed smile took its place. His smirk seemed, sometimes, as something forced, but this, Leia somehow knew was genuine.

He seems more thoughtful about his words, it seems, when they’re one on one.

It’s weird. Not that it means anything.

To begin with he told mostly of Chewie and his car, and he then keeps on telling her on a semi-daily basis how she definitely has to see it, maybe go for a drive because he assures her it has the best motor and perfect glossed paintwork and other car stuff she pretends she cares about.

One conversation went to his high school girlfriend, Qi’ra, and eventually of his more or less absent parents.

Han’s been fending for himself since the age of sixteen, and honestly, that doesn’t surprise Leia at all.

He’s clumsy, an idiot, yes, but he seems like someone who can feel at home anywhere, or with anyone.

She might be imagining that maybe, possibly, he could feel at home with her, but when the thought crosses her it’s stupid. Just because they’re more comfortable than someone should be with their boss doesn’t mean anything.

And well, about these unexplainable feelings of hers towards this dummy, Leia suspects he might be interested in someone else.

Someone else being her twin brother. Now listen, Leia’s not jealous, okay? She hates thinking that way.

Because Han takes a liking to everyone, but especially to Luke.

They’re seeming, at least, to get into a lot more trouble lately - not anything major, just with her, because a common interest is teasing her, apparently.

And Han hangs around Luke’s desk a whole lot, no matter how many times Leia points it out with a raised eyebrow.

He does go when she’s told them a third time, sending a salute her way.

Come to think of it, they’re practically attached by the hip by now.

Luke’s board game club meets twice a week, so Leia can only wonder how much time the two spend together, outside of work.

And her brother always mentions some anecdote or movie or weird fact Han’s told him, excited as always, and as much as Leia gets a pit in her stomach, it’s adorable.

“Have you seen Han’s car?” and when she shakes her head, he looks bewildered, “Leia! You need to see it! He’s like, customized almost everything. It’s some old classic car, can’t remember the company, wait, let me look it up...”

Her brother’s tales of him frame him as close to the standard of a greek god, or something, and it’s hilarious, to be honest.

Like, Leia can tell his idolisation of Han’s clouding his judgement. He’s definitely not as wise as he’s making her brother think, at least.

Similarly, Han talks of how Luke constantly beats him in everything, despite his fine tuned skills he otherwise loves to brag about.

“I let the kid win in chess, though, like, that’s my homefield, you know?” he tells her with a wink, and Leia just laughs, because she’s pretty sure Han isn’t protecting her brother’s dignity with this one.

And Leia has to, finally, admit to herself that she needs to do something.

She has to get over this crush of hers, because she doesn’t have a chance. And she values her brother’s happiness higher than her own.

Leia figures Luke has more patience for Han’s shenanigans than herself, and maybe just a more similar personality, really.

She’s a lot more organized, she thinks, maybe she’s a bit uptight, okay, but that isn’t bad, is it? Why’s Han Solo making her doubt herself so much?

The irony, twins falling for the same guy. Ridiculous.

Anyway, Leia decides to text Han, asks him if they can talk the next morning. Before working on her own heartbreak, she’s gotta make sure he knows she’s got her brother’s back.

And yes, she’s got his phone number, she’s got all the staff members’ numbers, though. Don’t you dare get into that right now.

And Han, like the weird, dreamy guy he is, answers with the usual “‘Course, General”, followed by a winky face. Dear God.

The sooner this is out of the world, the better.

…

Before Leia knows it, the following morning comes and she’s finishing an email when the usual knock sounds.

Han doesn’t even wait for an answer this time, just appears and fumbles with the door handle, trying his hardest not to spill their coffee.

She simply gives him a look and the “You know, usually, regular human beings wait for an answer after knocking.” question.

He raises one eyebrow.

“I’m not even close to regular, General. How could you underestimate me like that!” he cries out with a laugh. “And you did say you wanted to discuss something.”

Leia sighs, yeah, she can’t cover it up with a joke, in the end. Han settles in the seat opposite her desk, giving her a suspicious look.

“I’m not in trouble, am I?” She sips the coffee, way too hot, fuck. Her burnt tongue’s halting her words, but she speaks up again regardless, “Not exactly, no.”

His brows furrow. She can’t really tell if he’s confused or worried or disbelieving, he’s always doing that frown whenever something bothers him, though.

“I know I got my piece to you late last week, I- again. I’m learning that, uh, time thing, you know. Just, please don’t fire me. I really need this job and-”

“Han!” she has to outburst, because he’s rambling.

He visibly has to catch his breath, puts on a semi good smirk on again, Jesus, and straightens his back a little.

“Sorry. I’m all ears.”

As much as she’s gotten to know him, she still wonders how many of his mannerisms are put on and how many are genuine.

He certainly flails with his arms a lot whenever he tries to explain something. That can’t be faked, right?

It’s the amount of charm that, well, sometimes seems plastered on.

Not that it’s not working, because boy, it sure does, but if Leia’s being honest, she’d much rather have their solemn, relaxed late conversations.

There, she feels like he’s being more himself, whatever that may be, because she actually doesn’t know this man very well.

She wants to. Maybe. Yeah, no, she does, is that embarrassing? Sue her.

He’s not even the mysterious kind of guy she saw in those stupid shows when she was fourteen, he’s just the right amount of off, compared to her current social circle.

Leia could spend ages trying to describe him, still wouldn’t justify her feelings for him to herself, whatever.

“I didn’t want to see you because of something work-related.” she finally tells him, and the frown reappears on his face, but Leia continues, “I just want to make sure we understand each other.”

Han rustles a bit in his jeans pocket but pulls nothing out, slicks his hair back like he does way too many times than someone should, probably.

He tries an unsure smile again, “I’m not sure I know where you’re going with this, General.”

And he turns a couple of rings on his fingers, presumably because he’s still nervous about where this is going, so Leia has to cut the chase, already, dammit.

“Okay, well, you and Luke hang out a lot. Seems like you like each other.”

Now Han’s mannerisms seems to slow down, he gives her, once more, a slightly lifted eyebrow, replying, “I mean, yeah? Luke’s great. You wanna talk about Luke?”

Leia nods. “I know this is weird, but honestly, since I don’t, really, know you outside of here I might as well get it done here.”

She leans back in her seat, searching for any clues that he wants to say something, but he keeps quiet.

“I love my brother, and I can tell you’re making him happy, but just because I like your work, and well, I like you as a person as well, doesn’t mean that I’ll give you any mercy if you even think about hurting him.” Leia nods to herself, thinking she got that out alright - right? Han, however, seems even more confused than before.

He tilts his head a bit and looks at her for a while.

She doesn’t really know what to do, then, leaning forward again and resting her arms on the table. “You understand where I’m going with this?”

“I think so, General.”

“Good.”

“Tell me, you think I’m flirting with your brother?”

Leia blinks at him, “I- I do. That’s what you’re doing. I hope this isn’t too personal, you really are a friend to me, but as I said-”

“No, no, no. Leia.” he says, and she has to admit she’s taken back by that, because when’s the last time he’s not called her by a nickname? First time they met, probably.

“Fuck.” Han suddenly exclaims, and his face quickly changes, “F- I mean, excuse my language. Anyway. Damn, I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?”

And honestly, Leia now has zero idea what he’s saying. It’s like they’re speaking two different languages, because she’s never been this dumbfounded, she thinks.

“Bad at what?”

Han shakes his head, scratches his neck, almost in despair, “Seriously, I didn’t think this would happen. Shit, this is my fault. I’m so sorry for the confusion, but Luke’s just my friend.”

She fights not to narrow her eyes at him, half suspecting his statement to be a lie, out of embarrassment.

“Han, I know you tell me I’m intimidating sometimes, but I’m serious.”

“But I’m serious, General.”

Leia’s almost getting frustrated, and throws up her in despair, because what? What’s he trying to say, or run from, maybe? This man’s impossible.

“Leia- I’m sorry. You know what, I’ll go, okay? Sorry. I just- Luke’s advice didn’t work, but please don’t blame him-”

“Advice?” she’s afraid she snaps at him at that, but he seems unfazed, half out of his chair and stopping his movement.

What on earth is he talking about, now?

“I, well. I asked him about you, and tried to spend more time with you, because he said you’re not that big on, you know, elaborate wooing, or whatever. And coffee!” Now, excuse Leia’s language, but what the fuck.

“What?”

Han sits down again, ruffling his hair, looking at her with what seems like a million thoughts running through his head, and honestly, that’s exactly how Leia’s head is right now.

“You like coffee, right? Or did I mistake that, Jesus. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so forward with coming into your office, I-”

“Han, are you telling me you asked my brother for advice on how to… woo me?”

And the man in front of her nods, a few too many times, looks down and up at her and around the room and out of the window, and fuck, Han’s a mess.

Leia leans back. This cannot be happening.

Well, she’s not complaining. No, not at all.

She didn’t expect this for the life of her, though, and that’s why she’s at a loss for words at the moment.

By some unknown force in her life pulling this idiot into her life, making him so goddamn likable, making her have a crush after being comfortably single for a while, he’s been spending time with her brother because he wants to know her?

She almost wants to laugh, it’s ridiculous, laughable, if she wasn’t so lost for him. And there’s nothing wrong with that, she’ll have to get her brain to stop fighting her.

“Are you angry at me? Please don’t be! I, okay, Luke’s so great and like, dammit, I feel bad- If you’re offended I understand, believe me.” he says, finally settles his eyes on her again. “I know it’s unprofessional to flirt with your boss, anyway, so-”

“Did you ask Luke to hype you up?”

Han looks embarrassed. “Well, uh, maybe. A little bit?”

Leia nods, and now, she has to smile. Genuinely, getting continuously warmer, “You know I’m not that into cars, right?” and damn, she’s never seen him look so beat.

She almost, immediately, regrets those words, but continues regardless, because surely this situation can only benefit them, now. Screw whatever dating policies that may or may not be existing, she’ll look them up after this whole mess is cleared.

“I’m into you, though. Like, you didn’t have to enlist my brother to help you, but I appreciate the effort.” she tells him with a laugh.

And Han morphs into a look of shock. It’s almost like he’s going through every state of emotion at the same time.

“Are you serious?”

“Why else would I say it, Han?”

“Well- good point General.” he fumbles with this rings again, looks at her in that pondering way again, like he’s expecting this to be some sort of practical joke.

She finds his utter confusion adorable, almost, and scoffs at herself.

It’s stupid, this way he thought of wooing her, in his own words, but she gets it, somehow. This is unprofessional.

She’s stupid, because she shouldn’t be swooned by him so quickly, but also she’s not stupid, because this dumbass likes her and she likes him, and this one time, Leia decides not to argue with her own head.

Why would she do that, anyway, when Han’s admitted he tried to flirt with her, and they shared most of their life stories with each other, and seriously, they could, well, get on with other activities?

Not here, though. Obviously not.

Leia’s still a professional, mind that. She doesn’t have to be that after work, though, right?

She wants to shake her head at Luke for agreeing to Han’s schemes, but that can wait. That can for sure wait.

Screw her idea of professionality, then.

“I don’t know anything about the company’s policies on… this. You mind if I come back to you on that?” she asks him, still smiling, and the way he’s smiling back to her, now, he’s turning on all his charm, but also, probably, realizing that he doesn’t really have to.

He’s almost acting like an excited puppy, God, Leia’s not sure how complicated this will be, but she’s prepared to take that fight.

Han’s to the point of almost dancing in his seat.

Her patience is practically bulletproof by now, anyway.

“Not at all.”

“And- well, are you doing anything after work?”

Han shakes his profusely.

Leia bites her lip, nods certainly in her confidence.

“You got something we can do? Like, I guess, a date? Other than car talk?”

“Oh, you bet.”

20 notes · View notes

kob131 · 4 years

Text

https://melonishus.tumblr.com/post/190368286718/theres-something-really-weird-and-about-the

Well anon, the issue is a lot more complicated than that.

It’s really how the narrative treats the traumas of the characters that upsets people. Salem was traumatized and mistreated by her father and the gods, but we’re supposed to side against her because of her reaction to it.

She wasn’t mistreated by the gods: they literally treated her like everyone else. She was demanding special treatment.

And her reaction was ‘ruin innumerable lives’. That kind of removes any justification.

In another sense, it’s also the main reason why I rag on Taiyang so much and am more defensive/neutral about Raven. It’s about how they’re treated. Taiyang shut down on his kids, but according to his defenders, “It’s okay if he shut down, because he’s trying!” Opposed to Raven who would likely have to go through the “Redemption Equals Death” trope to get people to forgive her.

Taiyang shut down once and made amends and made a joke Yang laughed at.,

Raven abandoned her daughter and left her with emotional scarring, watched her but never helped her aside from once, ditched her again, used her brother/Yang’s uncle to say ‘I don’t love you, fuck off’, never tried talking to her daughter about her depression or severed arm despite having an instant teleport to her AND you people insisting she’s always around, tried manipulating her in their first encounter, tried gaslighting her into joining her, insulted her family, threatened her life, used her as bait, dared to call Yang out on the issues SHE caused and then left her for the THIRD TIME.

The narrative treats these differently because they are different situations. You treat them different because sexism.

It’s all about the narrative in this situation. Yang’s trauma is met with “She needs to get over it!” while Tai’s was met with “He lost people closest to him! Cut him some slack!”

Taiyang already got over his drama.

Saying the same thing would be redundant.

As for the whole “shipping” thing, it’s primarily the way the writers framed it. They promised same-sex couples and a lot of LGBT+ Representation. So when the writers shoveled hetero couples at a mile a minute, it’s understandable that people would be a little miffed that they were baited into watching when the first rep that was gotten was a bitter lesbian that was ready and willing to drag Blake back to her abuser and was complicit in the attempted murder of her parents, that they would only want to focus on positive and healthy same-sex couples. With Emerald x Cinder being more like a “Harley and Joker” vibe (Admittedly, it’s a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine).

Except that Illa was also a victim, saved them all and you have directly called out people for calling her a psycho lesbian.

As for the whole “Men are trash” thing… Well, look at the track record. Ironwood’s army was hijacked into attacking Vale, Ozpin has been throwing bodies at an immortal opponent with no real plan of how to stop Salem, the gods started Salem’s start of darkness with their insensitivity, and Adam is Adam. Pyrrha’s character revolved around Jaune until her death, and there are a lot more scenarios that II could bring up that highlights the double standards that the narrative is willing to let slide that the fndm is less willing to (Example: Yang charges in on her emotions ad gets belittlement and a lost arm, Jaune does the same thing for far more selfish reasons and gets to unlock his semblance).

Meanwhile we have: bitchy teacher (Glynda), Mass Murderer (Raven), Terrorist (CInder) and Attempting Mass Genocide (Salem).

Yep, looks like the woman are worse. Kind of what happens when you focus a show on one gender.

TL;DR: It’s because the narrative won’t give them any slack when the other characters have been given every bit of it.

Hold on you misspelled somethings

TL;DR: It’s because the narrative won’t give them any slack even though they do far more harm with either no regret or meaningless regret than their male counterparts who try to right their wrongs and regret their actions because I’m sexist.

Fixed it for you.

You know what anon …no

Time to prove my point.

Salem’s story starts with being locked in a tower, is saved for like five minutes and then loses her savior before she tries to get him back and is punished FAR more severely than what was warranted

She directly tricked and lied to gods, the show literally said they had a life together and she still kept doing it.

Ozpin had some semblance of a life, he had his large chunks of freedom through several lifetimes as he threw bodies at the wife he was all too eager to betray. Oh no ! He’s sad for a few lifetimes ? Did he get cursed to become an immortal monster because he got too mouthy for the gods liking ? No ? Fuck Ozpin

Same semblance of a life as Salem since they SHARED that life, Ozpin literally hesitated to betray Salem and had kids with her during that time, they were all willing participants as Jinn said and Ozpin was tricked into this scenario whereas Salem knew she was gonna get punished because she kept doing the same shit. Funny how context changes things huh?

The male characters are given an annoying amount of leeway from the fandom, to the point where people could see someone like Sun, stalk Blake across the world in a creeper cloak, and not see why a girl would have an issue with being stalked. But god forbid a girl show the slightest amount of emotion in the face of trusted authority figures throwing them into harms way for no reason at all

Except the majority of the fanbase criticized them and no one calls any of the female character’s angst ‘womanpain.’

And please excuse me if I’m not up for the “My het ship is abused by the fandom “ spiel again. Ya’ll are doing fine. You’ve all been perfectly content with shipping Jaune with every woman that breathes, or pushing Ruby X OzpinJr or still clinging desperately to Blacksun while simultaneously harassing Bumbleby shippers and trying to deny any connection between the two characters past friendship

Meanwhile you and Dudeblade will make DIRECT THREATS to the creators and spread slander about them due to being born the wrong gender.

This fandom spots a male character and latches onto it from the second they’re introduced, desperate to support or idenitfy with any male character, even if they have to cling to winners like Adam or Mercury. And the second they do, they can never do any wrong. Then when they decide to turn their attention to lets say…Yang, they see her yelling at Ozpin, and deciding she’s being abusive to Oscar, because of course she is

Or Ozpin killing his kids, killing every single human on the planet and planning to it again. Or Taiyang destroying entire villages for his own selfish desires while repeatedly abusing his kids.

Oh wait, that’s Salem and Raven, the people you both defended. Who we know wouldn’t get away with it if they had dicks.

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incarnateirony · 5 years

Text

Thoughts.

So I finally watched Good Omens. First of all I know some people were waiting for me to like, do breakdowns on the use of lore, sigils and whatnot -- I’m sure I’ll poke at it eventually, but so much of it reads of typicality, alongside strong artistic liberty, that when it comes to actual sigils there’s very few and I’ll need a good screen of them.

But that isn’t about that. This is actually about Good Omens and the audience response to queer content and queer coded content. I’m going to warn you, some of this shit is going to incense the fuck out of woke tumblr. It’s going to be a lot of hard pills to swallow, mostly in regards to parts of the LGBT community -- of which I’m a part -- moving around our own goal posts, inconsistencies in the placements of our goalposts, and the impacts of het culture. If you come into my mentions screaming away at me expect an ignore or a block.

No, this isn’t anti-Azri/Crow. It’s very pro Azri/Crow. And yes, I’m going to drag other fandoms I’m in, into it. But I’m also gonna drag general discussion into it.

First I’m going to source a link to a recent set of tweets someone made that I consider very insightful (x) and then highlight a bulk of it.

“When we call something queerbaiting, we're essentially saying: "source material X doesn't count as real or valid queer representation." Here is a thread on why we need to be cognizant about which real-life queer people & stories we're erasing when we expand our use of that term. First: actual queerbaiting, in which art-creators hint at queer representation in order to attract viewers and then insist their art was 100% hetero all along, sucks a lot. I am not advocating getting rid of the term. Nor am I saying it's not valid to feel jerked around when a show uses the promise of a specific queer relationship on their publicity circuit, and then doesn't follow through on it in the actual source. (Or follows through only to write out a character, a la #TheMagicians) However: when we narrow our definition of "real and valid queer representation" until the ONLY thing that counts as queer rep is on-screen queer *romance* or on-screen queer *sex*, we are telling a significant portion of the real-life queer community that they don't count. When we use the "queerbaiting" label to describe a millennia-long, loving asexual same-gender relationship (aka #GoodOmens) we are telling asexuals in loving life-long relationships that they don't count as queer. We are also telling sexual queers whose primary, life-organizing relationships are queerplatonic (me, this is me) that their queerness is defined only by who they fuck, not by who they choose to build a life with. I want a space where ALL kinds of queer stories get told: romances yes, but also stories of queer friendship; queer mentorship; queer animosity; queer competition and cooperation; queer found family; queer provocation and queer mistakes. None of that happens if we tell everyone whose queer content doesn't fit into the narrow box "Lead A & Lead B kiss and/or fuck onscreen" (even if A&B make a life together; even if A&B kiss & fuck other same-sex people) that their art is exploitative & doesn't count as queer rep. “

Why am I choosing to highlight this while implicatively mentioning my adjacent fandoms? Well, because blogs I follow that either haphazardly dismiss, say, Destiel as valid until (personally met goalpost, generally when arguing with the hetnorm or anti community wanting a kiss) are all on the Azriphale-Crowley bandwagon.

And let me say, I adore the Azriphale-Crowley bandwagon. I’m ON that bandwagon. Holy shit am I on that wagon, but we need to inspect our dialogue for people who are on one but not the other.

We can say, for example, “Well, Neil Gaiman and the actors have been supportive! So THAT’S why it’s fine!” I mean -- aren’t people always banging on about post-affirmation not being enough, or just vague support being enough, or this-or-that not being enough? Like people don’t flame Rowling over that? I mean, even if we handwave away that Neil Gaiman had literally uncontested authorship instead of 203492 hands in the author and ownership pot top-to-bottom which the average show doesn’t have -- which gives the liberty to say whatever the fuck he wants because it is wholly his product and under his contract and design -- do you notice that it’s actually a very, very small audience crowing about that? And rarely if ever the same ones that do about other pairings that could be considered similar? Like we haven’t gotten those moments from authors in other shows (Robbie Thompson “Destiel isn’t canon?” comes to mind) that we yell queerbait at then and decide isn’t enough. Because someone else moved a goalpost out.

Ah-- but they’re... confirmed asexual and agender and immortal! Okay... and... so is, for example, if we’re going to tilt this way, Castiel. And ace people can have queer relationships with bi or yes, even straight people. Mindblowing, I know, but that’s it, that’s reality.

So why on gods green earth am I seeing this disparity between blogs about the same content, banging on at different volumes of what we expect?

It’s something I’ve written about before, the loudest example being my Problem With DreamHunter post. Before any DreamHunter fans pick up the pitchforks, don’t worry. It, also, is in support of DreamHunter, but simply addresses the cultural problem in there not being a problem with DreamHunter. The blend of intersectional issue disparity between MLM and WLW, and also the simple fact that the fandom wasn’t positioned to have antis or rival ships screaming at it: het culture and shipping culture.

I’ve banged on about this before: in our race for representation, we often trample over content that’s perfectly good and valid and great in many ways, because we want to be able to win an argument against an asshole, we want to be able to bludgeon the gay so inarguably into somebody’s brain that they yield to the might of it, or at least, we imagine it reaches that point. Anti-shipping culture can be so loud that even slow burn het pairings that kiss will have antis explaining their way around it (eg, Mulder and Scully, off the top of my head). Anti queer culture will talk down men or women even making out on screen as experimentation. This cycle will continue.

So again, let me state: Good Omens is a masterpiece. I am utterly enthralled by it, but it does leave me sitting flummoxed about the uneven bars we put out there as marker posts based on trying to race to the finish of arguments.

I’m sure some hack job that doesn’t know how to rub brain cells together beyond “it’s straight” and, beneath the surface, “I don’t like it so I’m going to piss and moan about more expansive methods of thought than hard niching the complexity of human relations” is going to roll in here, thinking yelling “Jensen Ackles thinks it’s straight!” in supreme reductionism of things like authorship, be it intent OR death of the author, or whatever else is out there in this medium -- I’m sure they’ll show up, make the same repetitive ass of themselves as always, and roll on, completely missing the point that I’m not obligated to your arbitrary bullshit, and that nobody is.

I don’t HAVE to point out every single time a dickhat on a loop yells that, that Jensen Ackles himself spoke of the intangibility of the deepness of their connection with Castiel as an angel, and that a cishet dude from texas probably doesn’t understand the finest details of LGBT identity complexity despite being an ally while fumbling over talking about the difficulty of putting a label on it. I don’t have to explain that the actor doesn’t actually get to determine that. Viewership or author, take your pick. I don’t have to explain the “it’s never happening and wasn’t intended” never came from the authors every time some bumblefuck says it -- that it came from one account with a blurb that said he doesn’t speak for that writing room whatsoever. I don’t have to review the times that Jensen Ackles has almost verbatim mirrored the Good Omens creatives about the beauty of it being you being able to make your own interpretation even if it wasn’t his, and encouraging that. I don’t fucking have to, you entitled sniveling shits.

And no, it’s by no means about, say, Dean and Cas. It’s just about the dialogues I’m tired of seeing tilt unevenly even between typically well grounded and centered people.

So anyway Azriphale and Crowley are EternityMates and that’s the fucking tea. Call it queerplat or call it queerromantic I can see either, even if I do tilt towards the former. Destiel is queerromantic and you can fight me. Come at me. Except nobody really will over Good Omens, just Supernatural, because like magic, Good Omens isn’t geared for a fuckton of other bloated ships or antis who hate either of them by structure alone. And that, itself, is a point to be made, too.

And before some doodlefuck trolls along, no, there’s no such thing as incestromantic. Spare us the time and block me now if your knee jerk counter-troll is going to be subtextually along those lines, because I promise you’ll just get blocked when you try to roll into town with it. Since the Supernatural fandom seems to house corners of douchebags that don’t know how to control their primitive douchebag impulses and they do come into address in this post.

Moral of the story: Stop listening to homophobes, antis, or people with agendas. Listen to the content and what has actually been said. On all sides.

If you consider, for example,

the Ineffible Husbands canon with no admission of anything beyond friendship, with the hets loudly banging one scene over with “well the others are ace or whatever” as your reason (fair), a few lunches, basic dedication and a few well placed songs, and a few supportive notes from the general creatives,

But the Hunter Husbands not canon with talked-around love yous and need yous, intentional deletion of Castiel’s agender ace aspects, in spite of there being no evident banging or kissing in the show that hasn’t been a highlight of a problem since like season what six?; talk arounds of their meals together, infinite longer and classic romantic crafted dedication, innumerable well placed songs and yes, a few supportive notes from the creatives that are buried by yourself or others beneath intentionally obfuscated arguments and spun context,

You are, whether you want to gullet it or not, part of the moving goalpost problem. Whether it’s you running to meet a phobe or an anti, or just being coded into it by the screaming around you, there is no world in which one is representation and the other is not. It’s just fuckin’ not.

It’s not.

I don’t care what you yell and scream because it’s popular in your circles. It’s fuckin’ not.

It’s not.

Either both are rep or neither are rep. Personally, I adore both of them, and anyone that has a problem with that can eat me.

Good Omens is not a goddamn motherfucking breakthrough in representation. It’s the same very valid very real form of queer coding half this site screams at because someone got loud enough to scream about it early on, generally inspired by antis riding their ass, just it’s the first and second lead instead of second and third lead, and there’s no ‘rival’ in first and second leads as being intentionally dragged into vaguery. It’s. Fucking. Not. It’s literally. The same. Fucking. Level.

Now, I HAVE been banging on that it’s the level our content SHOULD be acceptable at (well, almost; frankly I’d consider Destiel better, as the show’s overall intimacy threshold is far lower while Good Omens has parallel overtness to the coupling in the actual canon, meaning Good Omens’ playing field, for fair treatment, would be indebted to matching volume -- not saying sex since ace but louder admissions and engagements that are just as clear.)

Unpopular? Good, I don’t care. I’m tired of people screaming about completely conflicting crap.

It’s where we SHOULD be taking ownership of our content. So if there’s any breakthrough, it’s the LGBT community themselves having some sort of spark of awareness that they can and should be able to own content at that volume, largely because the fandom isn’t swamped by asshats on the other side all yelling for their own crappy agendas clogging up your heads. There’s a few queerbait shouters. And you laugh them off, by and large, and accept it as canon and rep. Funny how that works without antis up your ass.

Sincerely,

A tired queer and newborn Crowley stan.

#not spn #but kinda spn #definitely good omens #but more lgbt commentary

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