#i can't rec it enough even with those two caveats

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

FILM RECOMMENDATION FOR HEARTSTOPPER FANS!

HELLO, FELLOW LGBT+ NERDS!

So, did you also just finish binging Heartstopper on Netflix and are drooling rainbows and your cheeks are aching from how much you smiled? Are you in a bit of a hangover with a ravenous hunger for more content like it?

I got good news for you!

First, you can read the original comic (written by the same person who penned the show’s script!) for free and legally here!

And second, I have just the exact content to recommend to you now!

The Way He Looks (original title ‘Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho’ - loosely translated as ‘Today/Tonight I Want To Return Alone’) is a Brazilian 2014 teen coming of age wholesome story about a blossoming romance between two adorable boys, one of them blind!

It is rated 7.9 on IMDb and 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and won two awards at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, the FIPRESCI Prize for best feature film in the Panorama section, and the Teddy Award for best LGBT-themed feature.

It’s a 96 minute quick watch that I assure you it’s going to hit pretty much all the soft spots Heartstopper did.

You can stream it on Netflix right now! ✨ 🌈

#heartstopper #the way he looks #hoje eu quero voltar sozinho #cinema #lgbt #brazil #culture #arts #netflix #mod nise da silveira #i admit it feels a bit weird to publish a pop-culture related non-necessarily-politics posts so soon after doing another one #but i need to surf of the heartstopper hype to rec this film because #i was like 'omg this show reminds me so much of The Way He Looks' when binging it yesterday #which was obviously only after i posted the Your Fave Is Brazilian photoset HAHAHA #and well Speed Of Internet etc etc etc #also tbh i need to admit the film is a bit way whiter than brazil actually is #and the actor who plays the protagonist isn't blind himself #but either way #i can't rec it enough even with those two caveats #either way enough geeking out #watch heartstopper and the way he looks if you haven't already #now back to depressing politics

[irisbleufic]

You don't have to answer if talking about this has been stressful, but I can't stop thinking about how illogical it was for the Gotham troll to do what they did. Trying to use Ao3 stats against you, like the 30something people who defended you pointed out, was petty and illogical and spoke to deeper underlying irrational hate in the perp. I keep trying to isolate what it could be if not jealousy, because I've seen this happen to other people. Do you have any thoughts on this form of bullying?

First of all, anon, don’t worry about upsetting me.  I’m not that easily rattled, so no apology is necessary.  I find your question a fascinating one; I had to sit on this for a couple of days to gather my thoughts on the subject, because it turns out that I do have some notions about possible motives that stem from, oddly enough, some much older fandom attitudes and trends that I’ve recently seen return in a new guise.  I frame this with the usual YMMV caveat; this is my perception of the situation, but it might not be what’s really going on at all.  I’m going to do my best to explain this.  If anyone needs background on the troll situation to which anon is referring, those posts are here.

When I first got into fandom as a young teenager in the early-to-mid ‘90s, a significant number of the people whose stories I was reading (and who were my mentors) were very much part of that first wave whose writing and zine efforts had to remain hidden because the mainstream contingents, in the overwhelming majority, hated slash.  However, I noticed a common-thread attitude between some of the slash community and the larger part of the mainstream community, which was this: Canon Is God.  Even if you’re writing stories about romantic or otherwise nontraditional relationships between various characters (or even just writing gen stories, for that matter), you accept that what you’re doing should never be held in the same reverence as canon.  You are a pale shadow, and you must be self-deprecating.  You must allow that the creators know best and that what you do is, at best, wishful thinking.  Do whatever you like, but revere the creators and do not believe that you or any other fan-creator may be capable of making a wiser decision.

In a community as essentially as subversive as fandom, this attitude puzzled me.  My experience of the media with which I was beginning to engage and about which I was beginning to write was this: the creators did not, in fact, always know better, at least not what was better for me personally.  In some respects, I developed a reputation for being a civil, yet stubborn contrarian early on.  Even more than that, my writing gestures began to hit a register that sometimes made my mentors nervous: for the first time, I learned what it meant for someone to like you only up till the point you start to turn heads and develop friendships with like-minded people outside the circles that inducted you.  What I mean to say, mostly, is that my writing approach has almost always been along the lines of this narrative is broken, it hurt me and it hurt some other people, and I think I might know how to fix it; I want to write an alternative that will carry an equivalency of canon’s essential captivating qualities, but will alter the narrative such that it no longer damages me or the other people I know who have been similarly hurt.  And I learned very fast that thinking on that scale of ambition was something of a taboo to those who had grown up with the idea that Canon Is God (You Should Not Even In the Slightest Believe You Might Know An Equally Viable Approach).

Still, I never stopped writing that way.  I never stopped hoping I could offer an alternative canon-equivalent for myself and for anyone else who wanted something like what I was reasonably confident I could produce.  Scale this across twenty years, and I’m in a position where I’ve absolutely written a significant handful of what are considered some of the foundational fic-series for the fandoms in which I wrote them.  I prefer to make narrative gestures on sweeping scales, because that’s what storytelling is.  We fall in love with the media we fall in love with, usually, because they tell compelling stories across multiple novels, across multiple seasons, across multiple films, etc.  How can I hope to alter a story for readers who desperately want the alteration if I don’t try to do it on a scale commensurate with the scope of canon?  One-shots are a thing, and an admirable one, too, but I’m one of those creators with an insatiable heart.  I don’t like to stop until the story gives me the sense it’s time to stop.  And I’m at a point in my fandom career where I know I have readers counting on me if they get invested in a project, so I’m going to do my damnedest to see nearly everything I start to completion.  I know I’m not the only fanwriter who thinks and works like this, anon, and the fact that you’ve seen similar bullying happen to others is about to become relevant.

Let’s back up a second to the concept of Canon Is God.  For the most part, I’ve seen fandom as it exists now give canon the finger and never look back.  I think that’s glorious.  However, I’ve also seen movements within several of the fandoms I’ve been part of, in just the last ten years, argue that dissent against canon, even civil dissent against canon, counts as negativity.  I don’t necessarily want to talk about the fact that canon dissenters and canon supporters alike often go at each others’ throats as rudely and cruelly as you please; jerks are just jerks, and nobody with either philosophy should be behaving like that.  However, maybe you can see what I mean about Canon Is God appearing in its latest form.  Some feel that you can write what you want, but that it’s wrong to even politely dissent with the events of canon on your blog and in your fan-works.  The mere existence of dissent, even civil dissent, is offensive.  There’s an idea that the only way to participate positively in your fandom of choice is to accept that canon is canon and that you should like it, or, if you don’t like it, you should at least make an effort at pretending you do (in spite of what you may be writing or drawing).  

The trouble, of course, is that some of us aren’t adept at pretending.  Write or otherwise create with ambition—with conviction, with no intention to hide the fact that you’re discontent with canon—to the point that you effectively serve an existing like-minded readership and even sway enough other people (into feeling that your vision is indeed one way things literally could have or should have gone), and, in the eyes of some, you become this: a dangerous heretic and a narrative terrorist.  Your challenge to canon is perceived as effective, and a threat, because of the number of folks who latch onto it.

I’ve run into people before who don’t like the level of influence that they perceive I have over my readers’ perceptions of the characters at hand, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if the person who attempted to attack me is thinking along similar lines—but realized they’d have to disguise it as something supposedly more logical or community-minded.  I find this an incredibly sad outlook, though, because you can’t stop writers from writing what they want to write.  You can’t stop readers from reading what they want to read.  You can’t stop readers from commenting on, leaving kudos for, or reccing what becomes dear to them.  Fandom is a fucking free-for-all.  There will also always be some writers whose works get more exposure than others, and the patterns governing those levels of exposure are about as difficult to parse as any other trend.  In some cases, it’s the level of scale and conviction I’m discussing; in others, it’s because they’ve brought a fanbase with them from RL or a number of previous fandoms.  Sometimes it’s a combination of the two; sometimes it’s neither.  Sometimes it’s just that they, as a human, embody a bunch of differences that someone hates.  Heaven knows I embody enough of those.

This might be a more complicated answer than you were looking for, but, if we’re looking at me as the case-study writer that drew some mystifying and laughable abuse by just writing and existing, I have to take into account that high emotions (and even insecurities) usually drive the sorts of decisions that bullies make.  I have enough years’ worth of data to suggest that my stories are intensely meaningful to the readers they attract and, yes, even sometimes sway or convert, if it’s useful to keep using that language.  And this is the juncture at which I want to revisit the idea of writing with ambition and conviction, because that’s an approach I hold dear for a specific reason.

If we don’t transform our beloved narratives here at the fringes, narratives in the mainstream will never change.  Although it feels like mainstream trends aren’t changing rapidly enough in the face of our efforts, speed is not what matters.  It’s that we understand that the shifts we model and effect may not come in our lifetime—and persist.  I will not placidly accept what hurts me.  And if you fear the level of conviction and brand of vision with which I transform it, get out of my way.  Hell yes, I’m out to take the chance that I might sway hearts in addition to serving like-minded fans, because maybe, one day, I’ll sway the right ones.  You never know who’s watching; you never know who’s reading.  Maybe it’s no one, or maybe it’s someone with the power to make a different choice about how a mainstream narrative will turn out.  One day, some of us will have that power.  Some of us already do.  Changing the face of stories from the outside can, in a way, mean doing it from the inside.

(Besides, every broken narrative is a puzzle, and I love puzzles.  I just have to figure out where the useful pieces actually go, patch the gaps accordingly, and then rewrite the ending.  If you don’t like the way I do it, then find another way instead of coming at me with something as time-wasting as abuse.)

#fanfiction #fandom history #trolling #st scully the fuckless #writing advice