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jyndor · 2 years

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I just want to point something out that I noticed some people saying about who is going to live and die in episode 6, and it specifically has to do with Vel and Cinta.

Okay so this is part of the problem with not explicitly coming out and having these characters be clearly queer - yes I know it’s annoying to think that people might have missed the wlw of it all but tbh I watched the episode the first time on my android while I was getting ready for work and I missed Skeen saying they are sharing a blanket. So I literally didn’t realize that it was textual and not just me having sapphic goggles on all the time. When it comes to wlw, people just don’t acknowledge us at all. That’s why the meme of gals being pals rings so true: because we could be fucking our literal wives in our literal beds we share together, as wives, and people would still not get the point.

And then when you’ve got Cassian trying to flirt with Cinta, you’re gonna have people thinking that she’s into it because of her vague reaction (which I think is a reaction that could be interpreted either way - yay bi/pan rep lmfao). And then that brings us to the comments I saw some people make that I just want to not necessarily shout down but more push back on a bit.

The idea is that because both the women can’t live (lmfao what) or because nearly everyone is going to die to mirror Rogue One (which I think is more likely than just killing half the women just cause idk gender equality or something ~~~) Cinta is likely to be the survivor while Vel will die because Cinta is a potential love interest for Cassian.

adjasdhakdh okay. So first off no Vel is very unlikely to die. In the trailers, Vel is seen both talking with Mon Mothma and also on Ferrix, so unless those are flashbacks (which I doubt) Vel will live at least until Cassian ends up back on Ferrix and shit hits the fan there. I don’t think she’s going to die on Aldhani (also she and Cinta might not even be a part of the heist - they were off to do their own shady sapphic sniper rifle shit at the end of the episode).

But that’s not the point. I have been worried about Cinta since I met her because:

she’s a brown woman

she’s not in any footage beyond Aldhani in the trailer iirc (please correct me if im wrong) although that doesn’t mean anything really, trailers lie

she doesn’t do a whole lot of talking

Add into the mix her queerness which is canon (they are sharing a blanket, forget the other subtext and the stuff that could of course just be explained by my desperate need to see wlw on screen) and you get another reason for me to worry about her eating it in the next episode: the bury your gays trope.

Yeah obviously I’m scared for her. Historically characters like her have been seen as expendable. And just to be clear I saw some people on twitter being all “well people saying she’s definitely going to die must see her as expendable” and... no literally I think a lot of people know the history of brown and/or queer people in film and tv (as well as the fact that Gilroy basically said don’t get attached to any of these characters because the show is gonna be a bloodbath) and so we get anxious about characters like Cinta (and Bix and Tamaryn and honestly a lot of them because it’s a very well-cast, diverse show) and how they will be treated.

I saw someone say “well people should trust these writers because they’ve done so well so far” and to that I have to be like... WHAT? First, I’m not in the habit of trusting writers of anything to do that thing right, they need to earn that trust. Especially when we are dealing with a US media conglomerate that has flat-out stolen the stories and cultures of BIPOC and whitewashed them if not making outright colonialist propaganda with them. And forget the rest of Disney: Star Wars itself is built on a foundation of orientalism and cultural appropriation.

Second, I am not going to act like the woman lead Jyn Erso didn’t lose a lot of dialogue and interesting character stuff during the reshoots Gilroy did (while Cassian gained some thank god) that ended up making her seem quiet and more passive than she appeared in the trailers. And although Gilroy and his team have done a fantastic job so far, that this is someone who is known for focusing on the stories of morally grey men (mostly white USAmerican men so kudos for Cassian bro) and very much not on women/femmes, queer people and POC and Latines.

And most importantly, I’m not going to dismiss the fact that for whatever reason, they decided that Cassian couldn’t be from Fest (an ice planet) and had to be from a warmer, rainforest-looking planet like Kenari (if Diego influenced that okay fine I’ll allow it lmfao but otherwise... I’m side-eyeing the shit out of that decision), and that he had to be an indigenous person whose language is not subtitled for whatever reason even though like nearly every other language is translated (I can only think of Shyriiwook and Tusken both not being subtitled soo... I mean yeah there’s something to that criticism I’ve seen). And of course having Cassian be “taught” how to be a revolutionary by people in privilege is... a choice.

So when people say TRUST THE WRITERS TRUST THE GILROYS lol no. I trust that they will tell a compelling, mature and thoughtful story with good commentary on a lot of things but no, I do not trust white writers who focus on the stories of white men with brown queer women.

Having a queer woman in a relationship with another woman survive solely to be the love interest of a man is foul to me, a bisexual woman who wants more bi/pan representation on screen. Having a queer woman lose her partner and then fall for a man is one thing - having it be purely in the service of furthering that man’s story is another.

Especially because of this line in Rogue One: “You're not the only one who lost everything.”

Cassian is going to lose everyone who matters to him - maybe they won’t all die but somehow he will lose them as people in his life. I don’t want to see a queer woman, especially not a queer brown woman, lose her sapphic lover to move on to Cassian, and then to be killed off solely to cut all ties with the people he cares about or be so deeply hurt by him that she has to cut him out of her life.

I’m sorry I just think that’s gross.

People die in war and in revolutions - and having a diverse cast of revolutionaries means characters of color will die. Okay, but how will the show do it? How will the show amplify the stories of revolutionary POC/queer people/women without fridging and playing up marginalized people’s pain for shock value? There’s a fine line to it.

#lgbtqia+#it's not queerbaiting but it's also not enough #meta #andor spoilers #star wars andor #star wars #fandom racism #fandom critical #bury your gays #colonialism #imperialism #cinta kaz #vel sartha

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moandkatelive · 7 years

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I know everyone is thrilled to bits about the way Campwolfe/Berena has resolved itself now that Catherine is on sabbatical gone.

Under the cut are my thoughts. Warning. Not as thrilled to bits. But perhaps something to ponder nonetheless

We all have different reactions to the things that come across our screens and our dashes and everyone has differing viewpoints on what constitutes good representation. I suppose I’ll speak to what is important to me as there are some things troubling and niggling at me about how all this came to be resolved.

Anyone who has followed my blog I’m sure I’ll lose more followers for this it’s ok I can take it obscurity has always been kinda my jam knows that I have been critical of the presentment of the back half of the Berena storyline since Kiev:

-variation of the lesbian death trope

- desexualization of both Bernie and Serena (because of grief)

-almost the entirety of their entire post-Kiev relationship playing out off-screen (tell don’t show)

-the pathologizing of Sererna’s grief and the fact that Holby turned her into a histronic, shouty, abusive ‘crazy lady’

-Serena’s isolationism -the inability of anyone really able to aid her or really make an effort to come to her aid (Including Bernie)

-turning Serena into basically a drunk.

I haven’t watched this show in awhile - and I won’t watch the episode from yesterday (some of that because the Diassac story is too triggering for me and I have to own that and take care of myself) but I did watch the bathroom scene where Bernie shouts “i love you” at Serena and where sober Serena answers her concern with yet more bile and I did watch the roof scene where Serena doesn’t fling herself off the roof and Bernie and Serena finally have a conversation.

Serena didn’t throw herself off the roof. Lesbian death trope averted. Yay. I guess.

But it seems as though for so many this last scene somehow completely negates all that went before it in this rollercoaster of watching Serena Campbell fall apart these last two months. I find that curious. I find it somewhat sad and it worries me how the representation was, in the end, presented. Especially the alcoholism.

Serena and shiraz.

And I guess that’s the rub for me. Perhaps it’s just me but it is very distressing to me that in a world where so many queer young people (and young adults and middle aged people) start drinking early, drink to excess to ease their fears, or to fit in, to deal with internalized homophobia, hell to drive away the pain in their lives that a character that is presented as ‘excellent lesbian representation’ (Holby’s words not mine) finally has an honest and forgiving conversation with a young doctor she has spent the last month abusing- only when she’s drunk. A character who provides “excellent representation” is almost exclusively combative and verbally abusive to her ‘partner’ and I use that term loosely for most of their interactions and when they finally have a much needed heart to heart it’s only when Serena’s loaded. That’s canon. She was drunk.

Am I happy they had the conversation? Sure. I guess. I would have loved to see Serena and Bernie finally have a heart to heart when Serena wasn’t doing it through a shit-ton of shiraz. Hell - I’d have loved it if they hadn’t had Serena drunk on the roof in the middle of shift in order to give us the “she needs a sabbatical line” but that’s entirely another post for another day. I’m saddened by this. I’m so tired. I’m tired of having the lesbian, bi, queer women that are reflected back at me on my screen shoved down this path. If they’re not dying or ‘straightening out’ they’re becoming hysterical, unable to cope, desexualized or that old tired one - alcoholic.

Whether Serena is a full blown alcoholic or not I suppose is up for debate but it’s certainly true that she threw slurred praise at Jasmine (as if that would make up for all the abuse she threw at her in the last month) and she settled in for a rooftop chat about the future of her relationship with Bernie - fairly large topic - while sloshed.

I just wish the bar had been set a bit higher. Is this what we want to emulate I suppose, in the end, is also the question?

Are we happy with hearing Bernie yell “I love you at Serena” - her I love you’s essentially throw-away lines in a larger argument. Tossed out with such ease that either a) Bernie is a completely different character than the Bernie that went to Kiev or b) that so much has happened between Bernie and Serena off-screen that it would be commonplace for Bernie to drop that phrase. And for Serena to crush it like that. Yes, love means you hang with someone - but at what point do you walk away from someone who speaks to you abusively - and save yourself?

No one will convince me that it’s admirable to be the BMAM tough one month after month being pushed away and abused and stand and say ‘pile abuse on me I’m tough I can take it.” At some point this is not admirable. It’s just enabling the other to continue to hurt you. I want more for Bernie. I want better for Bernie, for us as wlw, for representation of us AS wlw.

I would have hoped for a ‘sober’ conversation. Yes I get it’s a soap, it’s high drama, yada yada yada - I’m not naive and I know the drill. And not absolutely EVERYTHING on television is an exact copy of how our own lives should play out.

But isn’t the point of watching it and falling for it is that we really ARE looking for a glimpse of ourselves in these characters? I mean isn’t that what Catherine Russell has been so passionately telling the chat shows - that people relate to Serena as a gay woman, relate to Berena? If so then we HAVE to at least look at the fact that part of what we’re relating to is HOW we’re being represented.

I wish she hadn’t been drunk. I wish that their ‘separation’ and they’re definitely separated for now had been less ambiguous. I wish that Serena could have told Bernie how she felt about her under different circumstances. I wish that I could look to this couple and see myself, or something I wanted to emulate in my own life - god forbid emulate if something tragic happened in my own life.

But I got nothing. It’s not there.

This is MY opinion. I get there are those of you who love it, love every single thing about it, see the romance in it and I’m absolutely NOT here to tell you how to feel or to say you shouldn’t have any old reaction that you want to Serena’s swan song. This is simply how “I” reacted to it. For me it was disheartening and I think in the end did a great disservice to a couple who started off so wonderfully and thrilling and beautifully nuanced and mature. I think this story in many ways betrayed the heart of who Serena Campbell actually is/was.

I have no idea if Serena will be back. That remains to be seen. I do hope if she does come back that perhaps we can find a glimpse of the old Serena. The sassy, Harvard MBA, part-time CEO, compassionate, thoughtful, witty Serena with the skills to self-reflect and to fight for herself and others. Not this shouty, histrionic, walled-off, self-absorbed, boozy, crazy lady that somehow grief and TPTB have made her out to be sitting on the roof getting shittered. Because I honestly think she’s better than that.

#berena #campwolfe #holby city #catheriine russell #jemma redgrave #my long post #yes it's a rant #yep I'm salty #there is so much about these entire arc that has been upsetting and confusing #I keep asking myself what kind of representation is it?#for wlw #for women period #for older women?#does this sometimes happen?#sure?#but there are countless examples of women going through what Serena has just been through that have not devolved into such a strident #awful boozy mess #I'm just so sad that when she finally talked to Bernie she was lit #it seems like it was so important that conversation and she was loaded #it just doesn't feel like the serena I came to know and love #it seems mean to do to bernie #a convo and a canoodle on the roof can't fix the last 3 months for me #it's not enough #i wish we had more to choose from #i wish we had better to choose from #just my rant

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