#i guess i like dawn of dc so much bc a lot of it does include like. new characters with their own lore and orgin

[marybatson]

very odd how dc comics’s huge problem is accessibility of their comics and yet every attempt at making it easier for newcomers to join makes it much more difficult and muddier than it was before. like what is the answer here atp

#i guess i like dawn of dc so much bc a lot of it does include like. new characters with their own lore and orgin #but reboot/year one book exhaustion is real...to ME #OMG the answer actually is just make an updated secret origins book woooo

[botslayer]

Birds of pray: Fuck these designs.

I haven’t seen this movie yet, don’t intend to because I’ve heard some bad shit and DC has established to me they can’t make movies for turkey gizzards. But something I can say as an outsider looking in is these costumes SUCK. I can’t tell who three of these characters are at a glance or like at all based on this image. Spoilers (kind of) ahead. Also, a nerd ranting about how ugly some suits in a movie are, so if that ain’t your speed, am-scray.  Harley, dead center, is obvious, but I will say: I always hated her “Pig tails” look and her being decked out in that much gold is just kind of an eyesore. Points for the daimonds though. Speaking of gold, however, the lady on the far right there? That’s Black Canary. BLACK. CANARY. The only thing they got right was the golden belt, otherwise, where are the fishnets? Why does she have a big honkin’ gold shirt instead of the distinct black-on-black that has basically become her thing? Okay, there are a couple of screencaps with her in the coat but the gold top throws the entire aesthetic of Black Canary out the window. 

You wanna add some color to BC? Try what Injustice did. I take one look at this woman and I can say confidently that I’m looking at Black Canary. Her general aesthetic is still the black with yellow as highlights, yeah they got rid of the belt, but they achieve the belt’s point (Accent colors) with their own splashes of yellow on her Jacket and top. Plus they still kept the fishnets, which they wouldn’t have necessarily needed to. It’s just a nice visual touch that really helps sell the idea of Black Canary.  Getting off of Dinah, Who’s that girl between them in that first picture? Cassandra Cain. Casandra is okay because as I understand it, the context of the movie is she’s not a hero yet. This is her before any of that happens. The problem is that I wouldn’t be able to tell that was Cassandra if I didn’t spoil myself rotten. Cassandra in modern comics is called “Orphan” and she used to be a Batgirl. How is there NO Black on her (Save for her hair)? That thing that is prevalent in both her superhero personas? Why is there no visible yellow or Bronze? Subtle colors would help in movies like this. The only thing that might help people figure it out is her jacket having a hood, not that the damn thing is up all that much from what I’ve seen.  And to Harley’s left, we have Huntress... HUNTRESS. Her top is Purple... In the right light, at least. In a lot of pictures, it looks black. This is again, a character I would not be able to tell is who she’s supposed to be because she lacks Huntress’s vibes. The only time I know this is huntress is when I see her holding a fucking Crossbow. They got rid of the purple mask for some reason. It may not go with her new look but her new look is just so gob smashingly dull I’d have taken a smaller purple mask or more like the Huntress from Deadby Daylight, I think that might work, still being big and stuff but still at least a beat realistic.  And lastly, to the left of Huntress, we have Renee Montoya. She may not have the Question’s trademark No-face, but I could tell at least tell this confident and experienced if plain-ish looking woman with a gun was supposed to be Renee, so points for her I guess. She is the only character (Aside from Harley) that I could tell was who she was. Everyone else looks pretty much nothing like the iconic comic book characters they’re supposed to be, which is a godsdamned failure in my book. At least I knew who I was looking at for the most part in Suicide Squad, Dawn of Justice, Aquaman, Michael Bay’s TMNT, Any given Marvel movie, Thundercats Roar. FUCKING ROAR. Does better than this. I know how’s who at a glance, much as I hate that show.

#Birds of Prey #What are these designs #rant #Nerdy #Harley Quin #Dinah Lance #Cassandra Caine #Black Canary #Huntress #Helena Bertinelli #renee montoya #the question #DC #Comic Books

[kadywicker]

like. okay. okay. im gonna go on a rant here bear with me.

for literal centuries the only way gay people could tell their stories were through “close, intimate friendships” wherein they were in love in all but name. a GREAT example of this is the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde, who was very much Gay. in the book basil is clearly obviously smitten with dorian, a young wealthy man. he paints him to capture his beauty and spends the rest of the book pining over him and feeling rejected because dorian drifts away with him and into more worldly pleasures. theres some very telling lines and oscar wilde was even put on trial because the book was so goddamn gay. HOWEVER by today’s standards? basil and dorian aren’t even in the ballpark of “canon” or a textual gay relationship. but it’s widely accepted that the book is a work of gay lit as the author had literally no other way to express this underlying relationship than a close, “platonic” male love. 

now like i know this sounds like an exaggeration but i have a whole post with sources backing this one up but let’s go with the literal start of fandom: star trek. kirk and spock were the main characters and to everyone were a “close platonic male friendship”. however, they were quite literally meant to be in love and in a gay, romantic relationship. by the creator, gene roddenberry, by the actors, by guest writers, by pretty much everyone involved with the show except for dc fontana who i’m not gonna talk about bc she was a bit of an asshole about it. and women and gay people picked up on that and started fandom specifically to be like “hey i see this does anyone else see it?” it was never put into words so much (there are some great examples of what they did get by with in the post i linked) but it was there, it was real, but even to this day fans of kirk/spock are accused of fetishizing gay relationships despite most of the fans being gay themselves and the relationship literally being canon.

this continued on for decades. even movies like “my own private idaho” which is literally about men having gay sex, use the close platonic male relationships to make it more palatable to the straight audience and never resolve the tension between the main characters, making it angsty and one-sided and all about the “close platonic male relationship”. it still didnt work and according to my mom who was a teenager at the time “if you went to see that movie you were basically waving your gay flag and so no one really went to see it or else they would’ve gotten bullied”. 

for centuries the only stories we HAD were “close platonic friendships” that were MEANT to be more but never could be due to homophobia. sure, we got some throughout the years (but i’m a cheerleader, brokeback mountain, queer as folk, glee, that one character on buffy i guess, a few side characters sometimes) but it’s been a battle in blood to get to anywhere NEAR the level of gay representation we have on tv today. and it’s still pretty shitty. most gay characters are written with their only personality trait being “they’re gay”. most of them are not main characters and their love interests are only there to be gay rep points and not really do anything except be in love with the recurring gay character. gay characters die all the time. gay characters are written for tragedy porn (i’m looking at you, euphoria). gay characters are written solely for “woke” points by straight writers and we’re told fuck you, that’s all you’re getting and if you complain you’re just asking for too much. 

(and we do get some gay rep that’s actually really good, i’ll admit. moonlight, adventure time, pose, etc. but it’s still nowhere near the amount of straight relationships in media and DEFINITELY nowhere near the amount of “close platonic relationships” that’s found in literally every movie since the dawn of time. name one movie where there’s 0 friends. one. i dare you to find a single movie where no character has a friend or friends).

and to top it all off. to TOP IT ALL OFF. when we ask for more gay representation or we see one of those “close relationships” that for centuries were our only outlet and we still relate to more deeply than “gay character played by joe russo with 2 lines” we’re told that we’re “fetishizing gay relationships” or “making men/women feel unsafe being friends” when we’ve literally never said they can’t be friends or taken that away from people. 

a lot of us discovered our sexualities through these narratives (who here was on tumblr and saying they DEFINITELY weren’t gay just because they had gay ships hahaha no way) that helped us normalize the way we felt and view these relationships as desirable and okay. a lot of us cling to those narratives of “close platonic relationships” because there’s always been so much more underlying them throughout history and maybe we relate to that feeling of not being able to tell the person that we love how we feel because of society.

people are free to interpret media however they want and gay people relating to characters and situations that we’ve been in/empathize with has never been and never will be “fetishization”. 

#james.txt #long post #discourse #PHEW #this got LONG but im livid and i needed to get my feelings out about this matter bc im just #mmmm #ok to rb btw please do i need validation