i love bunny bc theyre two kids that dont feel seen or heard getting together to see and hear each other. i saw a post from someone saying that kenny would only hang out with butters because he pitties him and its been sitting with my soul for so long.
expanding on that idea, what if kenny would one day realize that he’s treating butters the same way everyone else does because he doesn’t truly care about what leo has to say, even though they hang out often. so to fix that, one day he’ll just decide to tune in on one of his rambles. and he sees a twinkle in leo’s eyes when he talks about what he loves, and kenny just gravitates towards that joy.
so he decides to chime in with the things that he loves, and leo listens with no judgement. nascar, halloween, they even get into a lengthy conversation about playboy and kenny’ll show off his collection. leo will be impressed and enamored, and soon they’ll spend an entire afternoon looking at boobies.
then they’ll grow up, doing the same thing they always have: rambling about their interests to each other and listening to what they have to say.
one day, kenny’ll have a breakdown at school over his curse and how nobody will believe that he’s immortal, and butters’ll comfort him, saying that this whole time he’s known. just not in this world, in this universe. he’d have dreams where kenny would die in the most gruesome ways, and they would petrify him. so he understands. he understands the pain he’s going through, and he cries with kenny because kenny is so hurt. he’s in so much pain, and he cant make it disappear at the snap of his fingers. all he can do is be present, which he is. at this moment, with leo nurturing him, making him feel like a kid being protected by a competent adult, a feeling he’s never gotten the pleasure of having much growing up, he falls in love.
but leo doesn’t. he still sees ken as a confidante, a pal, a broken soul to heal, but never a partner. he sees other people, looks at other people, because he’s finally earned the confidence to be such a social butterfly. he’s blossomed, everybody loves him, especially the boys.
kenny is pissed, even getting overly protective at times, because he and leo are supposed to be together. doesnt leo love him? he would’ve walked away when kenny barked for him to on the day of his breakdown if he didnt, right?
still, he cant help but be happy for his lil buddy, because he’s finally becoming the “leopold” that “butters” never was. he has so many friends, and stephen and linda are out of the picture now. he’s free. sure, kenny’s still stuck in hell on earth, with only karen and leo (and he supposes stan and the guys) to keep him completely sane. but he doesn’t care. his heart is being fed by leo’s happiness. if leo wasn’t happy, he’d feel so empty. his heart would be so hungry.
leo would come around after a night at a party with viciously spiked punch. kenny would hold his hair back as he vomited on the stevens’ sidewalk, his vision blurred and his body shaking. kenny would lead him all the way home, and beg for miss nellie and her brand new husband to not ground butters, because he’s had enough groundings in his life. leo overhears the encounter, kenny politely yet frantically asking that they take it easy on the trashed blond and offering to take him back to his bedroom to tuck him in, and it clicks
no one else was ever going to treat him this way. no one was going to be this good to him or treat him like something other than a failure. he knows kenny will protect him the same way he wants to protect kenny, which is a key aspect in a relationship that his parents never seemed to have. he confesses his newly aquired infatuation once he and kenny are upstairs, still a bit buzzed off of the alcohol, and kenny immediately accepts and reciprocates, perhaps being a little tipsy off of the punch himself.
of course, they would build their “going steady relationship first before the big “i love you,” which they shared at leo’s last cheerleading compotition as a sophomore, the juniors and seniors going wild that their little sunshine blond flyer has finally found his perfect match
(YALL I WANNA WRITE THIS FIC SO BAD BUT I JUST…I CANY. I. I HAVE BIG FEELINGS RN. I AM CRYING AS IM TYPING THIS.)
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I came across a few posts noting that Ed should not have told Stede not to kill Ned Low, which got me thinking...
I don't really agree with that. That entire scene, both Ed's decision and Stede's decision, is complicated with a lot of different things, but none of them quite so much as the shared knowledge, and pain, of both men. (Yeah, I'm not capable of not writing an essay.)
Stede is the only one who knows about Ed's father. Ed tells himself-as-Hornigold that he never told anyone about killing his father, and Hornigold reminds him: "But you did, though, didn't you? And he left you." Stede is also the only one who knows Ed really doesn't kill - that he, by his own admission, outsources the killing to others. The murder of his father is the center of Ed's self-loathing, and is the thing that he relates, in his conversation with Hornigold, most directly to Stede leaving him.
Low's insults don't affect Ed much; he's heard them before, he knows what's behind them. But Stede has been watching Low hurt people and things he loves - Ed, the crew, the ship itself - without being able to do anything about it. He successfully uses his "people positive management style" to get Low's crew to turn on him, but the problem of Low himself remains and cannot be eliminated in the same way.
Low calling Ed a "lowborn dirtbag" is what finally makes Stede snap, and one could argue that his response is more or less automatic. It's certainly emotional. There's nothing he could say to Low to put him in his place, as he did with the aristocrats in "Dressing Well." It wouldn't work; he cannot meet Low on a level playing field and use the same weapons against him, because Low's whole thing is being a bully and Stede is not a bully. Everyone, including Ed, is surprised when Stede actually draws his sword. But by the time he's done it, there's no going back.
Low obviously reads people quite well, and like many bullies he can suss out the places that will hurt others the most - he knows that torturing Stede will hurt Ed more than torturing Ed. He knows that insulting Ed will hurt Stede more than anything he could say to Stede himself. And he hits on Stede's fears about his masculinity and especially Ed's feelings about him. Low is another in a long line of bullies (Nigel, Chauncey, his father) from Stede's class, and he manages to hit exactly the sore spot, the fear that Ed only loves Stede because of his "bumbling amateur status."
Stede absolutely believes the things that others say about him. In the moment, Stede reads Ed's statement not to kill Low in exactly the way that Low wants him to - as a desire to keep him docile, pure, a pet. Not a real pirate, not a real man. He struggles with it - having gone so far as to hold Low at swordpoint and to force him onto the plank, it's hard to back down. His crew egg him on - Low does indeed deserve to die for what he's done. But when Stede kills Low, to the cheers of the crew, no one but the audience can see his face - the horror and shock at what he's done, as the memories of his childhood shoot across his mind.
As soon as Stede's actually committed the murder, he realizes the true meaning behind Ed's words, and it's this, combined with the shock of having truly, directly, and deliberately killed a man, that sends him running back to his cabin. Stede sees himself as a child, the boy who just wanted to pick flowers, splattered with blood from "men's work." He cannot go back now; he's made a choice, and he murdered a man. He does exactly what he's done each time his own shame has become too much for him, and hides himself.
But when Ed comes to his room, he directly relates it to his own trauma - "I was a wreck after my first kill as well. Well, it was my dad..." He's there not to shame Stede either for his violence or for his self-perceived weakness, but to be present for him.
That traumatic past is part of what unites them. Stede was forced to witness death and was told it was what men do; Ed committed murder, and has been haunted by it ever since. Ed sees the potential of the same thing happening to Stede - being so overcome with guilt and shame at actively committing murder that he suppresses and remakes his self to avoid coping with the horror of what he has done. It doesn't matter that Stede is a grown man and Ed was a child; Ed knows how badly it can warp someone, and Ed knows better than anyone how the abused child becomes the traumatized man. He tries to warn Stede first, recalling their past, and then he shows up for Stede in a way that no one did, or could, for him - not until Stede himself extended his hand and said, "I'm your friend." Ed is there at the door within minutes, asking if Stede is OK, offering his support, not letting him hide alone if he needs someone to hold him.
I've said a lot about the progress from the moment Ed appears at the door to the moment Stede closes the curtain here, but again I don't think it should be read as Stede proving his masculinity or Ed feeling sorry for him. Sex is not being treated frivolously here, either by the show or by the characters. It is an outpouring of pain and grief and deep, intense love between two men who understand each other's suffering at a fundamental level, who have shared things with each other that no one else knows, and who see all of each other, the darkness as well as the light.
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Of fandom, age, and David Tennant being our own personal Time Lord
I read the fantastic post that @davidtennantgenderenvy wrote about David Tennant and aging (if you haven’t yet read it, go for it!) and, as a fan who is closer to DT's age range than to what seems to be the rest of the fan base's age (yeah, being well over 40 is A THING), I had an interesting mix of ideas and emotions. I was going to just reblog her post with some of these musings, but when this started getting longer (and I started searching for bibliography, ha), I decided that I was not going to hijack her post, but rather cite it (and reblog it on its own right, really, read it). I should say that this is a long essay, and it comes peppered with references to one of my preferred fields of study (but I make it light and fun, promise).
Becoming an “old geek”
The first time I came into the idea was when I found a thirst TikTok with that very nice audio that goes “I think I need someone older…” and clearly, the thirst was there, but also… David is 8 years older than me, and when you are 45, thirsting over someone who is 53 doesn’t feel as “edgy” (and thinking about “needing someone older” starts verging on thirsting over people well over 65, which is absolutely fine, but a very different category over all for the rest of TikTok). So yeah, it was weird. You see someone who you feel is "in your range" and everyone is calling them "old"… And you start thinking about aging, inevitably.
Of course, I "don't feel old", but most of my friends are younger than me, and I'm the oldest person in many of my "fun activities". Take, for example, my lightsaber combat team, where every sponsorship is pitched to people under 30, and you should be training at least twice a week and following a strict diet to reach the expected “competitive or exhibition” level (enter the “old lady” who is taking this training just for fun, who needs to take care of her joints and who is not going to be invested in becoming Jedi Master General or anything of the sorts in the near future). Or we can talk about the expectation about fandom in general being a “teenage phase”, and thinking about everyone who still is into it actively after certain age as “immature” or “quirky” at best (hi, mom! Hi, work colleagues! Hi, students!).
Society, aging and social constructs
Of course, this has a lot to do with societal expectations. For almost 80 years, popular culture has been built around "youth" and "young people": before rock & roll, most things (music, clothes, movies, art in general) were targeted to “adults”, and you were expected to be “a functional adult” since a younger age. There was a seismic shift in the way popular culture was built when consumer culture decided to see and cater young people: trends became shorter, being “hip” was desirable, staying younger for a longer period was a nice aspiration (a good, light reading to get a deeper view around this is “Hit Makers” by Derek Thompson. It is written for marketers, but that makes it an easy historic overview and I like that). This has a lot to do with the change of our view about old people, too: while being old 100 years ago (yup, 1924 still fits the bill) made you “a respected elder” and you were expected to be wise, to know best, to be the voice of reason and an expert, nowadays not even us older people like being seen as “old” or “older”.
Frequently, culture becomes entrenched in binary oppositions. The binary opposition between “young” and “old” is… well, old! And while the opposition is sustained, the meanings around it change over time (that’s what the past paragraph was about, really). If in the 1940’s being old meant “mature, respectable, wise, responsible” and being young meant “inexperienced, immature, foolish”, after the 1950’s those meanings shifted a lot: being young became “fun, interesting, in the now and in the know, attractive”, while being old was about being “boring, dusty, passé, uninteresting, dull”.
In reality, being young can be a mix of all of these things (inexperienced and fun and foolish and attractive), and being old can be, at the same time, being responsible and wise and a little dusty and dull, because that’s life *shrugs*, and the wonder of lived experience is that, even if we simplify it, it is complex and rich and sometimes contradictory in itself: we can be old and foolish and interesting and boring, or young and dull and inexperienced and attractive. But, as we need to make “social sense” of things, simplifying them is… easier. That’s why we build stereotypes, and why we use them! We need to have a “base” of signifiers to build upon, so we usually take what we have on our environment and run with it. If you find this idea interesting, welcome to the world of cultural semiotics! *takes her Iuri Lotman picture out of her pocket and puts it on the desk*
(Iuri Lotman, people. He is my "patron saint").
Pop culture versus “real culture”
Another cultural opposition that piques my interest in this area is the notion of “pop culture”, of course. It is opposed to “real, serious culture”, the sort of thing that everyone expects "older, mature people" to enjoy. In the sixties and seventies, there were a lot of studies and writing about "high brow" and "low brow" culture, trying to keep this distinction between "things that make you familiar with the now, but have no intrinsic value" and "eternal things that cultivate your mind, soul and spirit".
Evidently, if you ask me, this is a whole load of horse manure: probably useful to fertilize other things, but with little intrinsic value on its own. My main point is not dolphins, but the idea of culture: historically, it has used to mean a lot of things; from the notion of (exactly) fertilizing something and making it grow to make it come to fruition, to the hodgepodge of practices that a social group creates when they are together and are trying to make common sense of things.
I like the latter better (that is the one I’d ascribe to if this was The Academia TM, but this is tumblr!), but another popular definition, which comes from the Illustration and has been quite prevalent, is the notion of culture as the set of cultural practices that make you a better, more intelligent, far more educated person. For example: if you want to have real culture, you have to read Shakespeare and know what a iambic pentameter is, rather than watching “10 Things I Hate About You”. You must read real books, not listen to audiobooks, and “real books” should be written by “serious authors” like (insert old white Western European or American cis men, preferably born before 1960).
Here comes the notion of “cultural canon”, grinning widely. Yup, that set of practices becomes an expectation of what and how you should experience any area of the human experience, and they become a sort of “nucleus” of the whole experience, with people playing “defense” around them and culture shifting all around and sometimes across them. This is not exclusive to “high culture”: Have you ever heard about “gatekeeping”? Yeah, same fenomenomenon (Shadwell, of course). Whenever something gets this “shape”, it becomes a “norm”, the “common” thing, the “rule” if you participate in that set of cultural practices.
As every cultural set of practices tends to generate its own “canon”, they also have a lot of practices surrounding it, which are ever changing, shifting, learning from new and old practices, and redefining what everything means in their common/shared space. For example: Neil Gaiman, my beloved, was part of the “comics” frontier when Sandman first appeared, but as he and Alan Moore (yeah, I know he did it first, but Gaiman is my study focus right now, so let me be) and other very talented and interesting people started creating fascinating stuff that hadn’t been done, and they found people who loved it, they not only redefined the world of comics, but became part of the new canon themselves. And then, Neil’s presence in the world of literature and fantasy became widespread and recognized and then revered… And then he is doing it again by adapting his own work to a streaming platform in a serialized way… I hope this explains why I’m growing an obsession with studying Neil Gaiman as an author who crosses through different media: a transmedial auteur, an anomaly in his own right. But that is not an essay for tumblr, but a thesis, one that I don’t know if I’d ever have the time or mental resources to write (being a runaway ex academic with ADHD who works on their own is hard, people). Besides, this was about aging and David Tennant, so let’s cut this tangent short and start talking about our Time Lord and Savior: David Tennant, the king of frontiers.
David Tennant as a Frontier Lord
David Tennant is another fascinating case in this sense, mostly because he is an actor who has been able to build a whole very impressive career through crossing symbolic frontiers. Through his massive filmography (161 roles just for screens, as registered in IMDb) and his stage career (I love this gifset for this exact reason), he has acted his way through almost everything, from classical Shakespeare to improvisational comedy, from procedural police drama to wacky fantasy sci-fi. This has a lot to do with his personality (he loves acting, he decided to pursue acting as a career thanks to his love for Doctor Who, but he is also smart and inquisitive) but, as it happens with a lot of “frontier figures”, it also has a lot to do with “unpredictable” circumstances: less of a strategy, more of an instinct.
David has talked many times about how his impostor syndrome made him feel, for the longest time, that he had to keep accepting roles, because you never know if there is going to be another one after. He is talented and open and curious (this is quite a good interview about his perspective), but this… anxiety? meant that he had also lower quandaries about saying “yes” to roles and projects that were “less consistent” with a typecast (which has been, for the longest time, one of the main strategies to build an acting career). Yeah, he has some defining characteristics that make a role “tennantish” (I’m not starting that tirade here, but yeah, you know that almost fixed set of quirks and bits), but he has also worked his way through many different genres, budgets, styles and complexities. And he has usually been as committed and as professional in a big budget-high stakes-great script sort of situation, as he has been in a highly chaotic-let’s see what sticks-small scale project.
That can be correlated by the way he talks about “acting advice”. “Be on time, learn your lines, treat everyone the same, never skip the lunch queue”… Acting is a job, and he treats it as such. Yeah, he looks for interesting projects anytime he can, but the “down to earth” attitude about it is, once again, not-usual, not-common: pure frontier. Then, when David talks about his own self (specially at a young age), he is pretty clear about his “outsider” or “uncool” status (this interview is fantastic), and how strangely disruptive it was to become not only recognizable, but cool and sexy and… everything else, thanks to Doctor Who. He went from living in the frontier to being put in the canon, but he is still, at heart, a person who is more comfortable not defining himself by that “expected” set of rules.
Him being a very private person, who insists on having a family life that seems, form this distance, stable, loving and absolutely un-showbiz just makes the deal (and the parasocial love and respect) easier to sustain; as does his openness to talk about social and political issues that interest him (passionately, again; against the norm for “well liked celebrity”, again). His colleagues also talk wonders about him, mostly because he is this sort of down-to-earth but also passionate about his craft and easy to work with. Again: not the “norm”, not the “rule” of being such a celebrity.
Many of his fans (should I say that I’m one? Or is it obvious at this point?) find this not only endearing, but comforting: he is a massive star, who has acted in a lot of terrific roles in huge productions… But he feels, at heart, as “one of us”. But he is, also, a well-respected thespian, a Shakespearian powerhouse, an international talent. He lives in a very authentic, but very unstereotipical frontier. And he seems happy about that and has made a career from it. Extensive kudos and all the parasocial love and the amateur-actress mad respect for that.
I should mention, just in passing, that a “natural” archetype for this characters that traverse frontiers… are tricksters. Think again about the “tennantish” characteristics. Here goes another essay I’m not writing right now.
Aging: The Next Frontier
This takes me to the original post that inspired the essay: living in a culture where the “norm” is “being young and famous is a desirable aspiration”, we have a fantastic actor, at peak of his craft, who is in the heart of middle age (past 50, nearing 55). Not only that, but he is an actor with whom at least a couple of generations have grown older: from the ones who feel him as “our contemporary” to the ones who grew up looking at him (like Ncuti Gatwa!).
David, being the frontier person he is, has been navigating this transition in a very “unconventional” way: he came back to the role that made him iconic (The Doctor, now with more trauma!), is starring in another fantasy series about middle-aged looking ethereal beings that at times is an adventure thriller, at times is a comedy of errors and at times is a romcom (having another beautiful trickster of a man as his co-star… There goes another tangent that is an essay); he is playing one of the quintessential Shakespeare roles for middle-aged men (Macbeth), and is, seemingly, having a lot of fun doing a lot of voice acting for animation roles (if you haven’t watched Duck Tales, you’re missing a whole lot of fun, really).
Traditionally, middle aged actors navigate that period of their career trying to reinforce their “still young, thus a celebrity” status (for example, doing a lot of action-packed movies and keep doing their own stunts while seducing women 20-30 years younger than them), or strengthening their “prestige thespian, so now a real culture person” position (fighting for more serious roles, going from comedy to drama, or working their way into The Classics©). Sometimes, they face the internalized societal expectation by also becoming a shipwreck in their personal life (yeah… the stereotype of “getting divorced, having an affair with someone half their age, getting another red convertible, getting in trouble…”) because we don’t have a good “map for aging responsibly” yet as a society. We have been so focused on youth, that we have forgotten how to age.
Again, switching to the personal experience. I was raised as a female-shaped person (yeah, being queer is fun), so part of the experience of growing (and then growing old) has been closely related with that concept from the female point of view. I decided, pretty early on (but not so much, probably 25 years ago), that I wasn’t going to conform to the norm… And that included aging naturally. When I found my first white hair, it was a shock (I was 21 or 22), but I had already seen my father fighting his own hair being white since forever. I decided it was a loss of time, money and effort… And the judgement from people in my generation and in the one that preceded me (my mother, my aunts) was stern and strict: “it will age you, and it will date us. You shouldn’t do that”. Men could do it, given the right age (being over 50) but women must not. Same with wrinkles and sagging and gaining weight and getting “pudgy”. But when men grew older, they needed to make a “show off” of their ability to seduce, to “still be a man”. Aging, then, was undesirable by any standard.
As me and my peers have grown older, and my hair has gotten increasingly silver, there have been women that come to me saying that “I look great” and “they wish they were as brave as me”. I would like to state in front of this jury of my peers (hi, tumblr!) that the only bravery it took was deciding, somewhere between my twenties and my thirties, that I wanted to be as myself as I possibly could, so no bravery at all, just the same lack of understanding of social rules that took me to become interested in… you guessed it, cultural semiotics. We’ve come full circle with this. Now, let’s finish talking about what it means for an aging fan to have an aging star to look up to, shall we?
David Tennant as a cultural Time Lord
I am pretty sure that he wouldn’t have chosen this role for himself (as he wouldn’t have chosen being a massive star just by playing his favorite character and being so talented and charming), but he is, as Loki would say, burdened by glorious purpose. Being “the actor of his generation”, and him crossing so many frontiers with such ease and grace, without even thinking about it too hard, just because he is a hard worker and likes to try new things and is just so good at what he does put him in the exact cultural crossroad for it.
He is not in a sudden need to “resignify himself” as anything: he has already shown his very flexible acting muscles through his very long career. He is not bounded to “keep his public image relevant”: he likes to have his personal life clearly separated from the spotlight, and being married to the brilliant and funny Georgia, who herself grew up with a famous father, so she is no stranger to staying sane and in control in the eye of media, and who manages their social media presence with a good mix of humor and well-set boundaries.
Therefore, he is in a moment where he can (and probably will) chose to do whatever he likes. And he has the public support to do so: he is prestigious and respected, but likes to make fun of himself and is not self-important; he has a lot of awards, but he is also a very likable person with whom most people in the industry enjoy working. And he is up to do a lot of things: heroes, villains, morally grey characters; romance, drama, thriller, fantasy, sci-fi, procedurals, historical fiction, classic plays, silly parts, voice acting… We are going to see him aging on screen and stage, with no playbook: the playbooks were written for people that certainly are not him. And I have some evidence to prove it.
He is starring in a groundbreaking series (yeah, Good Omens) where the protagonists are two middle-aged looking entities, full of queer relationships, written by another trickster. This series, in an on itself, is a showcase for characters that are rule breaking in many ways: in the narrative, by being hereditary enemies who are inevitably linked to one another by a loving bond that may or may not be romantic, but that has been in the making for 6,000 years; in representation, by having the protagonists being represented by a couple of middle aged actors who are “not serious” and “not action” coded, in a role where they are delivering romance, banter, intrigue, joy and a whole other range of emotions that are “not your stereotypical” middle-aged male-lead coded.
He also delivered the baton on a relay race with Doctor Who: he came back after almost 20 years, to bring back the generation who grew up watching him in the role, and deliver us into the arms of Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor, with the promise of taking a rest and working on getting better from all the trauma The Doctor has endured in 20 years Earth-time (which, as any Doctor Who fan knows, account for centuries of trauma in Doctor’s time). Not your usual Doctor Who Anniversary cameo, but one built to deliver some zeitgeisty emotional health promises that made the specials feel… healing. At least, for some of us.
Even when it wasn’t the hit series it deserved to be, his Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days” is also a great delivery of an unconventional middle-aged protagonist, who goes from meek and scared and too worried about societal norms, to a lovely, tender, slightly awkward and daring person, with friends half his age who look at him but are also his peers (another kind of relationship that is not very frequent in media).
And, with all fearlessness, he has played a lively old duck in Duck Tales! Scrooge McDuck has never been a middle-aged character: he is, quite openly, an old gentleman. An adventurer, quirky, with a lot of spunk… but also quite clearly an elder to Huey, Dewey and Louie, and obviously older than Donald Duck (who is also not a young adult himself!). When you watch that series, and if you have the opportunity to catch any glimpse of him behind the scenes while recording the part, you can feel the joy he got from playing the part (and he has said time and again that he IS Scrooge McDuck, so it will become his “recurring bit” for the future).
Hopefully, David (and some other actors and actresses, for sure) will dare to build that new “aging publicly without making an arse of myself” playbook, and I (and I can imagine, many other fans in our middle age, but also fans that are right now leaving behind the “young adult” stage and becoming “adults” fair and square, and others who will arrive to this place at a future time in their lives, so I hope) will be there to bear witness, support, cheer… and learn from the model. Because that’s what fandom is about, but also because that’s how culture itself gets shaped and changes, continuously. And that is exciting and a little scary, and that’s why it is better if we do this together.
And I'd love to imagine diverse (in the full sense of the word) role models for this process and this playbook, too!!!
If you read all the way through this, I'm very grateful, take a cookie, have a gold star and suggest names for our aging interestingly role models on the "non-white-male" side of things!
Class dismissed!!
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