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takaraphoenix · 4 years

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Have you seen Love Victor? If not, do you plan to?

I just finished binging it! So I’ll use this to talk about it. Which means: Spoilers ahead! ;)

Overall, I liked it. I really liked the characters, I liked that they all got their own depth and problems. I liked the family and their dynamic (though kid brother came very short, but it was only 10 episodes so there’s that).

I was skeptical at first, naturally so - I mean, a spin-off show from Love, Simon but with zero of the characters from the movie? That’s... odd. What’s the point of that then? Just make it its own thing? Especially considering I had heard from book-readers that one of the girls was bisexual, so I was a bit put-out that they do a spin-off, but not about that - which would have been a rather natural way to go.

I think it worked very well though. I really loved the way in which it did tie into Love, Simon. Having Simon as his mentor like that, building up their friendship - I was very happy to see both Bram and Simon again! That was a surprise, I didn’t expect them to show up at all, to be honest.

There were things they didn’t handle very well, in my opinion. Namely the cheating. One kiss, in the heat of the moment, still confused and trying to figure him out? I’ll give him that. But the second kiss and then ultimately the third, which Mia saw? That went too far.

And making Mia see it was just such a bad move. I like their dynamic, I think Mia and Victor could have a great friendship, but I don’t... see them coming back from that, because that was humiliating. On the dance that Mia was looking forward to? Having to see it?

I wish they hadn’t forced that to be so unnecessarily dramatic, instead of just giving Victor the chance to come out on his own terms - seriously, it was my biggest upset with Love, Simon already, the forced outing. So that Victor now had Andrew overhear things and Mia witness things... I just hope they don’t turn Andrew into a total jackass who does out Victor to the school, but even on the small two person scale, it was already... too much, for me. Especially with Mia.

Had Victor gotten the chance to tell her on her own, that could have been so great. But this cliche of “and then someone walks in and something More Dramatic happens so the person puts it off and they put it off so far that the secret gets out on its own oopsie” is so cringey and so overused.

When the end came around with his parents and he turned to go to bed, I got very mad there for a moment because seriously, they pull it twice? I’m glad he came out on his own. I still don’t really like the how, because seriously he wanted to tell his parents something and instead of listening to them, they’re like “please sit down and let us go first and tell you that we’re separating”. No, don’t make it about you when your kid declares they have something to say to you?

That cliffhanger leaves me very anxious about how his parents will take it. If they do another beat by beat of the movie and have the dad be cute and awkward and apologize for his previous behavior, which would be better but is also a bit of a let down for they just repeating themselves again, or if they do have him double down on the homophobia, which wouldn’t be very stellar considering the fact that the white boy protagonist from the movie got his happily accepting family so making the POC protagonist of the show actually have a hard-set homophobic dad... would be disappointing.

I kind of wish Victor would have confided in Pilar independently, on the way back home - especially since they walked there, that’d have been peaceful and enough time for him to tell her. I really want to explore their dynamic more next season and see her be a supportive sister, see them grow closer.

I gotta say, I wasn’t big on that Felix/Lake thing. It was such a cliche of “nice nerd pining for the hot girl but never being noticed until guy she likes treats her bad and She Notices Him”... Very tiresome straight nonsense that one.

There was one small thing that bothered me and I don’t know if that is a cultural thing and I am just not actually familiar enough with American terminologies - but when Bram was Victor’s guide into all things gays and he kept using femme and butch for gay men, that... really bothered me as a lesbian. Those are women exclusive terms, aren’t they? I can see the femme being used for feminine gay men, but I have never in my life heard a dude be referred to as “butch”. Especially since “butch” has certain visual connotations to it - but those guys were simply regular gay men, who shocked Victor because they “don’t look gay! :O”. But male jocks aren’t... butch...?

I just think that a show that is supposed to be about discoving yourself and discovering the community... should be a way of introduction for the audience too so the baby gays watching it can learn from it. So I do think that such things should be... used properly, because these “coming of age”-stories do owe the viewer something introductory because the target audience are kids who are in that age and they should be able to look at these things for at least some guidance into figuring themselves out.

And, on that topic, I do wish they had paid more focus to the “figuring out” section. That was an under one minute montage of internet pages with big labels of bisexuality, pansexuality and... foot fetishes. That was it and it was kind of discarded after. This would have been a great opportunity to actually have Victor explore those identities, read up on them, try them out on himself, see if any of them fit - bisexuality or pansexuality or heck after he tried to have sex with Mia but it didn’t click he could have also come to explore asexuality. It was such a quickly discarded moment and while I can read that as him internally already knowing his truth, knowing he is gay and doesn’t really need to explore, I still think that in the overall story, at least one episode of focus on identities and how confusing figuring labels out can be... would have been great.

I also do hope that season 2 will add... more diversity on its LGBT representation. We have two Gay Boys on the show that is a tie-in to a movie around two other Gay Boys. Give me a bisexual, a pansexual, a lesbian, a trans character - just something else than the gay guy that’s been domineering the franchise so far. I think a TV show has the opportunity and time to focus on that in side-plots and not be suffocatingly straight outside of the gay main couple.

So, that’s where I hope they take season 2. His parents coming around on it, him and Mia mending things somehow, more on the sibling dynamic and hopefully some queer friends for Victor to up the rep and variety of queer storylines a bit more.

#Love Victor #Love Victor Spoilers #Love Victor Review #Anonymous

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lay4decolonisation-blog · 5 years

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She-Ra: Princesses of Power (2018) and the Representation that I Want

**CONTENT WARNING: ABUSE, VIOLENCE**

When I heard She-Ra was back and GAY, I had to jump straight or not so straight into it. The amazing characterisation and themes of the show fit the modern audience perfectly. She-Ra: Princesses of Power (SPOP) did what Voltron: Legendary Defender wish it did. RIP.

The SPOP series was written by Noelle Stevenson, and produced by Dreamworks. Season 1 aired on the 13th November 2018 via Netflix.

There’s two things I want to discuss, so I’ll split this up into sections: visual character design & complex characterisation.

Visual Character Design

80’s She-Ra

2018 She-Ra

She-Ra is the hero alter ego of Princess Adora, who transforms when she calls forth “For the Honour of Grayskull!” with The Sword of Protection.

When I saw the visuals for the series and the new outfit for She-Ra I nearly screamed. It was perfect. I will always prefer Marvel cinematic movie adaptations on the basis that women wear full body armour, and not a skirt. So it was natural for me to fall in love with the shorts, flowy skirt, useful boots and 80’s influenced shoulder flares on She-Ra’s new threads.

She looked PRACTICAL, and totally badass. I see no male gaze in the update. She-Ra isn’t wearing heels, or red lipstick, her dress doesn’t look like it’s about to give her a nip slip, and her hair still flows like golden threads in the wind!

Notice how I just used the ‘Male Gaze’. The Male Gaze is essentially a patriarchal control of representation of women and/or other genders in media, and can be applicable to historical documentation (Mulvey 1989). Ponterotto (2016) describes it expands on the media’s control of feminine bodies as:

“The invisibility of women has been accompanied in an extraordinarily inversely proportionate manner by the visual display of her physical appearance, of her body as material object, to be observed, judged, valued, appreciated, rejected, modified and essentially commodified, for socially-constructed purposes. From a feminist point of view, this purpose can be claimed to be essentially male pleasure, concomitant social benchmarking and commercial profit.” (134)

From the ‘controversy’ from predominantly male audiences on the release of She-Ra’s costume it’s obvious that it’s doing its job (Lenton 2018); with men reacting with things like:

“The character designs for this show are god awful. She-Ra looks too much like a man.” MECCA_Studios @ twitter

“if you're trying to make your girls look like boys for your show then you are not actually fighting for equality you're proving that men is the superior gender and taken more seriously than a beautiful women, you're only helping sexism not fighting it” - iamconsumer @ twitter

I wanna acknowledge this was mainly white, cishet males reacting to a show that is predominantly AIMED AT YOUNG GIRLS. SPOP’s visual design of She-Ra was so key in getting this show right. She is a woman icon for young girls growing up and seeing her on screen wearing a non-sexual costume whilst being feminine, strong and beautiful will mean something for them growing up. Women/Feminine peoples can look at the screen and say “I’m She-Ra!” and not have to feel like they have to look good for male gaze to do that.

People Of Colour (POC) Representation

Bow, Mermista, Frosta, Netossa and Catra’s - along with ethnically ambiguous characters - redesign was kind of glossed over with the amount of objections about the Queer and Feminist arguments going around.

So here’s some of my babies:

Bow 80s

Bow 2018

Mermista 80s

Mermista 2018

Catra 80s

Catra 2018

Frosta 80s

Frosta 2018

Bow stood out to me alot because I empathize alot for my dark skinned brother’s who don’t have any or many examples of good representation on screen that explores queer identity, gender performativity, body image and positive masculinity that is casual and fun. (I speak of course from an Indigenous background, but a lot of my community look at the African-American community on TV for dark bodies representation.) Imagine a young dark skinned boy watching Bow being fun loving, supportive, gentle, obsessed with crop tops, hanging out with girls and embodying positive masculinity, then using as a mold to treat their sisters, mums and cousins. Incredible.

SPOP centers ethnic looking characters amazingly with their characterisation. Having POC on screens breaks out of normalizing whiteness, and de-centers it as the default way of being (Scharrer & Ramasubramanian 2015). People might argue that fantasy worlds don’t overlap with real worlds because race mightn’t exist in the fantasy world, but when you’re a ethnic kid growing up watching/ reading white bodies being superheroes and warriors and People of Colour don’t exist you have no representation, or worse POC are negatively stereotyped. Representation is IMPORTANT. Representation is the ability to control the way the world perceives a group of people, or yourself - white people often struggle understanding this because whiteness as an identity is invisible by normalization (hooks 1992, Dyer 1997). It can be compared to men as ungendered compared to women, or non-cis and queer people with heteronormativity. So it can only be visible when colour is involved, and depending on whether it’s good or bad POC representation it can create racial stereotypes (Brigham 1971, Nosek 2007).

LGBTQIA+ Visual Representation

I feel like you can find a lot of this, but not any by me!

I will start with Scorpia cause she’s such a dear.

JUST LOOK AT HER.

Everyone is screaming ‘butch lesbian’ little to know that she is a total femme (anyone can fight me on this). Her open attraction towards Catra was loud, unapologetic and was super ultra normal. Despite her giant crab claws, I just want her to hold me gently. I think it’s another good example of different body types. Like it’s not just an exterior what makes a woman a woman or a good person a good person. Before I die of thirst, let’s move on to my Bow’s dads.

OH MY GAWD. Bow resembles Lance and George so much. Like the perfect little mix between their two personalities UGH. Both very different individuals who share a common obsession with history. Two gay Black dudes just be out here owning the biggest collection of ancient artifacts, studying the classics and raising 13 kids like wojefdikewajfaij

Lance out here rocking dreads and the glasses with sandals *bathump* and George with his little moustache and fancy hair. They go on like a normal couple picking on one another and knowing each other’s personalities, caring about their son and reflecting on their parenting when they realize they messed up instead of blaming their kid for not understanding them okmfoerngfa

Sorry, my heart nearly went into cardiac arrest thinking about them.

I won’t miss the exceptional drop of them telling Bow their disappointed that he had to hide a part of himself because he was afraid of what they’d think of him or do. I remember that feeling….*glances at my physical wooden closet*

SPINNERELLA AND NETOSSA.

Netossa is the only character (I’m pretty sure) who was originally dark skinned in the 80s She Ra - she also had no powers.

Now rocking up with powers and gf, she is out here living her best life. Look at them. Just look at my babies. They swapped chokers, like wow, what a lesbian power move. Plus sized, buff queer women rocking their femininity being loyal and totally badass. Their actual appearances on screen are limited but impactful as they are seen as people seem to question more what the heck they do in the Rebellion rather than their queer relationship.

Complex Characterisation

Let’s start with Shadow Weaver’s relationship with Catra and Adora.

Starting off at Mystacor as Light Spinner, she a teacher and getting one of her students, Micah, to perform a spell that conjured evil magic - The Spell of Obtainment - ultimately decided her path as Shadow Weaver. She became an abusive, manipulative and self righteous authoritative figure to Catra and Adora.

Shadow Weaver is an abuser. Abuse works differently in each situation but is defined by White Ribbon Australia in categories of: Physical, Financial, Emotional, Verbal, Social, Sexual, Stalking, Spiritual, Image based, Dowry and Elderly Abuse.

The emotional, verbal, social and I’m going to add economical (instead for Financial) abuse she inflicted on Adora and Catra made them stick together as companions through the hardships. Adora upon realizing the Horde’s actions and motives rejects and calls out Shadow Weaver’s abuse. Catra, on the other hand, looks for something like approval from Shadow Weaver. Catra grew up neglected and constantly compared to Adora in her duties to the Horde by Shadow Weaver, so when Adora left a shift happened in Catra. Adora was her main source of comfort and sense of safety in Shadow Weaver’s irract attitude towards her. Adora was her constant feeling of affection and comfort, when she went against the very codes that kept them together their entire lives - Catra was betrayed. Finally, maybe she could get the parental approval she was seeking from Shadow Weaver she never got when Adora was around. Also looking for validation of her moral that has been cause her actions other than rage and sadness that Adora had left her alone. Catra sort out her Abuser’s approval because that’s the only way she knew how to get validity and self assurance of her identity as a member of the Horde - all she ever knew.

Catra feels alone and like she can’t depend on anyone, and because she knows how that feels she was also able to emotionally manipulate Entrapta into join the Horde. It’s a consistent cycle of isolation that stemmed from one person’s influence.

The thing that differs Adora and Catra, was more Adora being given opportunities to lead and step up where Catra was always on the side. Adora gained leadership skills and an emotional capacity where she was able to trust others and trust herself. This ultimately allowed her to do the right thing and join the Rebellion. Catra on the other hand had to quickly use her head and be more aware of things other than herself which made her falter in the leadership role of Shadow Weaver, but that is her coping mechanism of isolating herself and having to immerse herself with other people and the world to take action.

Adora’s culture shock between the way the Princesses live and the way it was in the Horde only shows how she’s been manipulated through learning the knowledge and behaviours that were enforced on her in the Horde. Princesses aren’t evil. The Horde is evil.

Adora’s role of She Ra has put a lot of pressure on her, and she is fighting her own self.

What happened with Adora was she was specifically chosen because she’s had the experiences she’s had. She knows what it's like in the Horde. How their systems work. What type of people and kids are there. She knows all of that to use to win the war. She’s not gonna break into it, but out of it.

When Adora breaks out of the Horde’s learning, and the truth telling begins the walls will crumble and there will be internal upset. There’s a good and evil battle going on inside of each character. Adora wants to protect her friends and do the right thing, but sometimes those two things aren’t the same thing.

Another character I wanna bring up is Glimmer. Glimmer has been fighting to fight. She’s having to fight a struggle in her internal kingdoms. She’s been trying to tell the truth to the other Kingdoms and unite the Kingdoms so they can beat the Horde and save everything they love. She needed to stand up to her mother, the other Princesses, and herself. She is so damn strong and I love her so much omg.

When Bow went to the ball with Perfuma and she was upset, this was because she was afraid Bow would leave her. She’s been isolated also by her mother into doing Princess things that don’t actually have a big impact, but Bow has been consistent in her life and training to be a leader. When he left her side, she was scared that she was going to be isolated again. She knew it was irrational, but that kind of stuff just happens. Sometimes our feelings don’t always make sense to us at first, and we have to look somewhere else to understand what we’re feeling right then and there. But the besties will prevail.

The other thing I didn’t touch on earlier, but will now is age. The Princesses age from around 11-18 (?). The thing about having young people saving the world is really where we’re at. Kids are rioting in the streets trying to get big corporations led by greedy bastards who want resources and exploit people to stop, and save their entire world - yeah, you know I’m talking about situations like the climate strike. We will learn from our elders mistakes and do it right.

We shouldn’t give up because our parents did. We will be the ones to win, just like Glimmer, Adora, Bow and the gang.

Representation isn’t a debate - it’s a necessity.

Thanks for reading babes.

Reference List

Dyer, Richard. (1997) ‘The Matter of Whiteness’ in White, London: Routledge.

Brigham, John C. "Ethnic stereotypes." Psychological bulletin76.1 (1971): 15.

Nosek, Brian A., et al. "Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes." European Review of Social Psychology 18.1 (2007): 36-88.

Bell, Hooks. "The oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992): 115-131.

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Visual and other pleasures (pp. 14-26). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Ponterotto, D. (2016). Resisting the male gaze: feminist responses to the" normatization" of the female body in Western culture. Journal of International Women's Studies, 17(1), 133-151.

Scharrer, E., & Ramasubramanian, S. (2015). Intervening in the media's influence on stereotypes of race and ethnicity: The role of media literacy education. Journal of Social Issues, 71(1), 171-185.

https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understand-domestic-violence/types-of-abuse/

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nightcoremoon · 7 years

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I have a pet peeve. op and second person: bullying is rooted in social bigotry including classism, xenophobia, ableism, and cisheteronormativity third person: and society hates fat people society doesn't hate fat people nearly as much as it does poor people, poc, mentally ill and disabled people, and everyone even remotely queer. I'm not saying it isn't a problem too but can you not tack yourselves onto pre-existing stuff and, I don't know, make new posts instead of latching into existing stuff that already got some semblance of popularity? being fat isn't like being black, homeless, crippled, autistic, gay, trans, anything like that. it can go away without extreme psychological repercussions. you can't just turn white, become upper middle class, regrow healthy legs, become neurotypical or straight or cis or any of that shit. the only thing that can even remotely be changed is the money issue, and that takes a LOT of hard work and luck. losing weight is doable. yes it's hard. and yes body image issues are tough to deal with and yes kids are dickheads to fat kids, but you've got it so much easier. fat acceptance is a lot easier to swallow because a lot of bigots are also fat. there are so many people who are able and willing to fight against fat shaming but side with the fundie pundits and white supremacy and misogynists and ableism, and I really don't appreciate it when things like what are depicted above happen. men have some actual hurdles in society. that's about it. people don't take abuse seriously if a man is the victim. people give a lot of shit to single dads of little girls whether they try to do feminine things for their daughters or not. men aren't allowed to cry or show affection or dress effeminately if they wanted to unless it was as a joke or something, and they are some of the biggest victims of body shaming. so maybe my inclusion of misogyny as an added example is not the best to include because whites and cishets and neurotypicals and rich people and non-immigrants and christians (or ambiguous atheists) don't have any shit they have to deal with based solely on the listed demographics. however, skinny shaming is a problem: that's the difference with fat shaming. if there's people being dickheads on both sides of the street, the problem isn't because you're fat, it's because your body doesn't match what society wants you to. and yeah, I get that there are a lot of health risks with being obese, and there aren't any health risks with being fat (wait a minute), and words can hurt you. but kids with learning disabilities, and black kids, and muslim kids, and queer kids, and poor kids, and disabled kids all hurt a lot more than neurotypical straight white christian kids who are fat. being fat makes it a lot harder for people of the demographics that have bigger problems (fat black people are often stereotyped, fat homeless people aren't taken as seriously because "hey it looks like you get enough to eat", fat gay people have a niche but it's not exactly a pleasant one, fat women are simultaneously oversexualised and treated like shit for not fitting society's ideas of being sex objects, fat trans people are accused of leading hedonistic lifestyles, but these aren't because they're people who are fat, it's because they're fat people who are those demographics) but honestly, america and other mostly white cultures eat so much more and exercise so much less than other cultures, and there's so many chemicals in what food we do eat, and there's so much more of it. corporations have definitely had their hands in this, but it's quite possible to engage in programs to alleviate weight. every ten seconds on tv there's a commercial for some weight loss pill or dieting program or exercise bikes, pretty much every single tv show has a fat character (and sure there are fat jokes at their expense but there are academically challenged neurotypical who have jokes at their expense and nobody's crying that there's stupidphobia rooted in our society too). there's representation and tools and group and all sorts of shit that you have access to. but if you're any of what the OP listed, you don't have that stuff. it's not that bad. sure it's still bad but make your own posts. yeah it should be said that clothing is a problem, and I totally agree that clothes need to have more work done for them, but until we're a full socialist government you're gonna have to pay more money for more fabric being used because that's just common sense. and god knows fat people's body image issues are nothing compared to trans people's body image issues, let alone how black & other poc are always being put down because of the attributes that make them beautiful in ways that western standards don't agree with, and also let alone poor people not having access to these tools because they're poor. it's not. that. bad. social inequality is due to race, class, ability, gender, orientation, religion, ethnicity, and mental state. not how much mass you take up. yeah I probably sound like an asshole but I have zero patience for people who compare their problems to people who have it exponentially worse off than them here in good old 'murrica. and doubly especially because I'm struggling with weight related body image issues myself. just make your own posts. I did. it isn't hard.

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