#most of the straights I talked to did not see the homoerotic nature of their relationship until it was brought up in detail

[spirit-meets-the-b0ne]

In the middle of my HotD rewatch

The gyroscope of interpretation on this show has been at the forefront of my rewatch along with now having read some of the script and read/watched cast interviews.

This one inference made by Olivia Cooke (via Sarah Hess) has plagued me for the first few episodes.

Now, now I know these waters are really muddy what with a few obvious conceptual things: "isn't this queer baiting" "if it wasn't it wouldn't be good sapphic representation anyway" "this is an actors interpretation" blah blah blah. I'm not arguing any of that.

Just that Olivia's head canon held against this scene hits SO MUCH HARDER

Because I gotta say MY GOD imagine how that strikes Alicent if at some point her mother caught them together. Before they even really knew what they were doing (objectively to the tune of they were 13/14 not fully clear on platonic/romantic love) her mother impressed upon them it was wrong. When they denied and in some way or another Alicent/Rhaenyra saying "she never touched me." Only for Alicent to hear it echoed back to her years later like this... Knowing that even in her naïveté she would recognize the truth. That Alicent’s mother, naturally, kept this contained. Which honestly plays more to truly making Alicent more complex by the way she saw what “scandal” her mother covered up for her only for her to act out some perversion of this with Aegon when she’s a mother. A learned behavior twisted in the worst way, because that's what she knew.

Listen I fully understand that this show is NOT taking this angle even though there seems to be a huge division between what some writers and actors are playing to and the editors at HBO imaginably being like "what's all this gay shit?" BUT

I think it's part of what this show missed about TRAGEDY and I mean come on you want drama???? These girlies were ready to hand it to you on a silver plater! In this context I needed:

Rhaenyra being devastated by the news that Alicent was going to be marrying her father. The sheer heartbreak of “this can’t be happening” and knowing she would have lost Alicent to a husband but not THIS. Show her with Syrax, confiding in her dragon because now she has no other friend to talk to - I’m just saying if they were going with the context of “Fire & Blood itself is an unreliable narrator and only shows certain people’s views” - then a scene like this disrupts nothing. Tell me how when they prayed together and Alicent told her to "kneel with me" that part of Rhaenyra prayed for that world where they flew off on dragon back and ate cake.

Alicent being devastated - having her heart torn in two, crying behind every closed door knowing she was going to break the heart of her best friend. The deleted scene does give a peak of that being the case - but again it could/should have been included. Show me Alicent begging Rhaenyra to forgive her and desperately saying she loves her. I think one of the things that Team Green argues the most could have been explored by this avenue, Alicent is a victim of her marriage - it would be inherently more compelling if in the process she is also losing the closest thing to a "first love" she had. Show me Alicent at her desk writing letters to Rhae once a week and then ceremoniously burning them in the braziers. Alicent leaning more into religion as a means of getting out from under her repressed desires and past actions.

Show me both women struggling in their adulthood to even remember why they held "such childhood affections" for each other. Knock the fucking wind out of me with a line like, "the worst part of it all was that they only ever wanted to love each other."

To me one of the worst parts of this production (of which there's a few) has got to be this was the apex of completely missed opportunities to explore. In the premise of "going by unreliable sources" their queerness would be suppressed information. I even think it plays into the dynamic between Rhae-Alicent-Criston in a kind of "Jennifer's Body" way where Rhae was really only interested in him as the object of Alicent's desires which I believe is made a little clearer in the books. A kind of "see this could have been us if you didn't marry my bag-of-bones father" for Rhaenyra who clearly had no aversion to consorts.

I'm sorry to go on this rant, and yes I KNOW - the counter arguments for many of these points. I would even argue some of them further such as the sapphic representation not being invalidated simply because both women do end up with men in the source material. If this was the case then why was "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" received so well? This at the very least to say if they made Alicent and Rhaenyra explicitly queer it would still be less controversial than what the queer men on that show got … Still its not even to say "it's a better way" to explore more of Rhaenyra and Alicent's characters but its at least A WAY to do it. More than we got. Surely both sides could agree on that.

Sorry, now I'm just being pedantic. As a queer woman naturally I have a bias but I still think this was objectively a missed opportunity to explore. Both girl's back stories could have been enriched and tbh a lot of HOTD fans I know also had the same complaint that the time skip came in too early. I think it also makes things less likely to be so divisive between TG and TB when you look at the central pillars of this conflict. You can truly grieve for Alicent and Rhaenyra and what they lost already while on the verge of losing it all. Anyway, I gotta go cry about my divorced lesbian war wives.

#HOTD #rhaenicent #rhaenyra targaryen #alicent hightower #queer theory #Sarah hess #olivia cooke #SARAH EMILY OLIVIA EMMA AND MILLY WERE SERVED LEMONS BUT THEY MADE LEMONADE AND DAMN AM I PARCHED!!! #antis do not interact #I am all for the subversive but if more of this was brought to the surface things would just hit different #most of the straights I talked to did not see the homoerotic nature of their relationship until it was brought up in detail

[magicalmelancholy-blog1]

A Quick Overview Of Why You Should Vote For TsubaKuro

@homoerotic-shonen-rival-showdown

Look I know CatAdora is going to sweep because they're fucking CatAdora. But why not consider a ship you've never heard of instead?

At the very least, read this if you've never seen She-Ra, because if you're going to vote based on second-hand knowledge, you should at least vote based on second-hand knowledge about both sets of characters.

And by secondhand knowledge, I mean I'm going to post dialogue straight off of the wiki. I'll try my best to include context, but it'll be short since I wanna focus on the stars of this poll.

The most important context is that Len'en is a bullet hell game, and thus for most of the on-screen time, people are going to be fighting.

Reason 1: Kuroji is always going on about being inferior to Tsubakura.

(Note: The Tsubakura here is a fake Tsubakura. Still, Kuroji hadn't realized it at this point so their response is genuine.)

Tell me there's a heterosexual explanation for this. I mean, you're allowed to interpret Tsubakura and Kuroji's genders in a way that would make them straight, but even if they're straight, that still doesn't make them straight.

(Note: Yabusame is a mutual friend of theirs and works with Tsubakura at the shrine you'll see talked about in these dialogues.)

(Note: Saragimaru is someone Kuroji blackmailed into doing their bidding because they're an asshole. This is a section of the game where KuroSara and YabuTsuba fought because the game creator didn't have enough slots to fill in all 6 stages otherwise, and a bullet hell game's gotta have 6 stages right? This isn't a critique I love all the duo attacks, themes, and character interactions that came out of this arrangement.)

(Note: Shion is a newborn youkai made up out of many souls that got entrusted to YabuTsuba after the third game.)

Reason 2: Kuroji vagues Tsubakura even when they're not around.

(Note: "black" here is used because Kuroji has kinda black hair and Tsubakura wears mostly black. I assume it's more natural in Japanese.)

(Note: Shou and Lumen are boss enemies in the second game.)

Reason 3: Witty banter

(Note: "The dumb one" is Yabusame.)

(Note: This is after Tsubakura said that Kuroji is actually a good person sometimes. You'll see that bit of dialogue later.)

Reason 4: Tsubakura has praise for Kuroji too!

(Note: This is YabuTsuba's bad ending for the third game. I actually forgot to include this in my submission! Anyway, the joke is that Tsubakura died but got brought back to life by a magic flower, and everyone is acting like they're still dead for the bit.)

(Note: Jinbei is the familiar of the shrine YabuTsuba work at. They help out with various duties.)

Reason 5: This Conversation

This time I'm going to give the context beforehand, since this conversation is a bit long. Some dialogue for the upcoming Len'en game was released a year ago, to give us a teaser. This dialogue consists of two characters, NiLU and Tom, going over the dialogue for the first game for the sake of information gathering.

Mainly it's just an excuse to have the dialogue from previous games in there at all (since it's a mobile game that the creator plans on using as an entry point for people that are interested in his series).

You remember from before when Kuroji said something like "You always, always surpass me"? This is the reaction to that.

Reason 6: I dunno where to put these two interview questions so they're going here:

Some Fanfic Recommendations:

This is mostly so you can experience the same thing that the runner of the poll did when I sent them a submission. Remember, these are not a reflection of canon. They are, however, fics I like (yes I know one of them is mine, that's because I'm proud of it).

Typhoon Commute by Nobelium

The Next Step by Nobelium

I Kept It Warm For You by FatalYeet

Only A Fool by MagicalMelancholy

#len'en #len'en project #tsubakura enraku #kuroji shitodo #tsubakuro #kurotsuba #poll propaganda

[funkyfatbabe]

Hi! I've become curious after seeing you reblog stuff about bruce springsteen, particularly him kissing other men on stage and I just wanted to know is he actually bi? are all your posts like he's actually lgbt while everyone lords him as a masc het icon?

before i get into it i just wanna say i dont actually care what Bruce's sexuality is, not really any of my business and i find the appeal isnt in the want for him himself to be gay.

and all his public relationships have been with women, however on his compilation album 'tracks' there is an unreleased song called 'my lover man' about the reconciliation of a past failed relationship between two men (a lot of people argue it's written from the perspective of a woman but you can only come to that conclusion by viewing it through the heteromative lense like there's nothing else that could hint to that)

most of what these posts are getting at is that throughout his body of work there is a lot of homoerotic or suggestive content which is then almost doubled down by his performances which regularly incorporate.. idk what else to say but gay behaviour, like you said, kissing his bandmates on the lips. his friendships with his band, particularly Clarence, all seemed tinged with romance whether they were romantic in nature or not

a lot of his earlier music also contained gay characters as well as those who did not stick to the gender binary. it is pretty agreed upon that the song mary queen of arkansas is about a man trying to understand his feelings and attraction towards a transgender woman (also people seem to really not like this song idgi i particularly like the demo version from tracks). the themes of being an outsider and down in life and trying to escape to a better place are also pretty common experiences in the lgbt community

plus the way he dressed was masculine to the point it came off as performative, a costume almost. this is especially true of his 80s garb which looked like the idealised version of masculinity in the gay community labelled as the 'castro clone' look. prior to him getting buff he dressed in a way that was softer and could be described as having a subtle femininity to it which - also a bit gay.

because of all of this Bruce has a gay appeal, but i would say more so to lesbians than anyone. while he is masculine - hypermasculine - and a heterosexual icon to lots of people, he is also sensitive and doesnt shy away from talking about his emotions, pain, shame, longing and the alienation he felt growing up being different and 'soft'. this sensitivity isnt visible in most acts of masculinity by straight men and i much more associate it with butch lesbians, many butches themselves looking to him as a source of inspiration (my gf included)

i have to go to work soon but i feel like there could be so many essays written about the gay appeal of Bruce Springsteen and his music but this probably disjointed ask will have to do lol i hope that sort of answered your question

#anon #ask #i feel like ive said too much but also not enough lol #but also besides his gay appeal his music is also very good pls listen to it #bruce springsteen

[cooloddball]

PLEASE. Why don't people freak out about the cockles gay selfie more?That is not how you take a selfie with your bro. Icome from a huge Italian family and I have 5 brothers. All of them are cis het. They also have a lot of other male friends. I have seen them play gay chicken with each other like the way Jared is with both Misha and Jensen. Never have I ever seen the take such a selfie and even if I did it would be in good fun. They would never post iton social media.

That selfie is a lot tbh.

The smug look on Jensen's face and the little smirk on Misha's. It's Ummm...hmm... It reminds me of this other selfie from an actual married gay couple. Even then, the couple is not as close as Jensen and Misha.

The way Jensen is leaning back he must be straining his back really badly because his chest is fused into Misha's yet his face is leaning all the back in an awkward angle.

Jensen had the audacity to post that and it seemed normal to people? The fact that it was smack in the middle of other random photos with friends. I mean 👀 sus AF!

I agree with you about guys playing gay chicken and as you said, Jarpad is a perfect example of that. He plays gay chicken with almost every male member of the cast including Rich and even Rob.

However, I'll give an example of a perfect gay chicken scenario of guys being guys of someone close to Jensen other than Jarpad.

Let's talk about Max. He is one of Jensen's friends and often Jensen leaves some thirsty/flirty comments on his posts. He also likes a lot of gay chicken posts that Max posts but that is a topic for another day.

Here are two posts that Max made sometime back. To me, these are playful gay chicken posts between friends.

Of course Jensen liked it.

Here is an eggplant emoji comment from the guy tagged

I believe that's how straight men act.

I can see Jarpad leaving such a comment on someone's post.

But I CANNOT even imagine Jensen 'performing masculinity the epitome of macho men everywhere' Ackles leaving an eggplant emoji under another man's post. And before anyone says anything like but Jensen is a Texan, so is Max.

Here is Max wishing another guy a happy birthday. This is how guys are, I may not have brothers but I have a few male friends and they do this kind of stuff among other things.

There's a lot I could say about this selfie but it has been analyzed to filth and I doubt that there is anything more I can add rather than reiterate that it's freaking G A Y!!

Anyone who tries to explain it as 'guys just being dudes' is just either wearing the most het goggles to ever exist or is just downright lying about not seeing the homoerotic nature of cockles' relationship.

#asks #anon #cockles #cockles jib selfie #jib10 selfie #jib10 #so much has been said love i don't know what else to add #max #performing masculinity #gay chicken

[thehmn]

I used to watch my brother play the Metal Gear Solid games and it’s actually really interesting to look at Hideo Kojima’s games in the context of how homosexuality is viewed in Japan.

I’m not going to speculate on Kojima’s own sexuality, I’ll leave that to himself, but his games are famous for being very horny, homoerotic and having a ridiculously high number of bisexual male characters. People will point out that they’re all villains, but that’s just the explicitly bisexual characters. His two main characters, Snake from Metal Gear Solid and Sam from Death Stranding, are also implied to not be straight.

This is where Japanese culture and the extensive lore of Kojima’s works comes in.

Homosexuality is taboo in the west and Japan for different reasons. In the west it’s seen as sinful, but in Japan it’s seen as disruptive. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t call attention to yourself in any way. Don’t mess with the status quo. Most queer people choose not to come out to their families for this reason. And to make matters worse, even if a small majority of Japanese people are in favor of queer people having rights the government is very conservative and it’s even illegal to depict homosexuality positively in some parts of Japan.

So what does Kojima do to appease his government and the culture of his people? He does what people did in Hollywood in the 30’s and make the explicitly bisexual characters villains and make his heroes covertly bisexual.

Kojima always had an interest in sexuality and gender. In high school he wrote a story where all women succumbed to an illness, leaving the men unsure of how to continue. Remember, at the time the majority of women in Japan quit their jobs when they got married and took care of their husband and children. So who was supposed to take care of the house and their sons? Could men just stop craving intimacy or would they have to turn to each other? And how would they make more babies? I’ll get back to that.

One of the most famous scenes in Metal Gear happens when Snake disguise himself as Ivan, the lover of Volgin. Volgin walks up to what he assumed to be his lover and grabs his crotch, looks confused, grabs him again and asks “Who are you? I know the major better than anyone else” Volgin and Ivan are undoubtedly villains, but their love for each other is surprisingly the most human thing about them. If Snake puts on Ivan’s mask during his bossbattle with Volgin, Volgin will hesitate at first, then double his attacks in anger, but also cry because he’s trying to kill a man with his boyfriend’s face.

Snake/Otacon is the most heavily implied relationship in the whole series that hasn’t been confirmed. In the first game Snake could end up with Otacon at the end, and since then they’ve moved in together, raised a child together, talked at length about how they taught each other to love, teased each other about their libido, and the list goes on. They also notably get call-backs to two other canon romantic couples; Raiden and Rosemary when Otacon tells Snake that he won’t be let back inside before he takes a shower (Rosemary wouldn’t let Raiden back in because he got pee on him), and Volgin and Ivan when Otacon says he knows Snake better than anyone else. My point being, Snake and Otacon are very heavily implied to be a bisexual couple.

Then there’s Death Stranding. The game is definitely written by a more mature Kojima who has been hanging out with a lot of Americans. His view of sex and love is more nuanced and he understands that there’s a difference between sexual and romantic orientation. We still got Higgs, a flamboyant villain who acts very predatory and is heavily implied to be bisexual, though never confirmed, and Sam who’s implied to be asexual (he has an Ace of Spades sticker on his bike) and biromantic, and we get our first confirmed good bisexual character, Die-Hardman.

Kojima never got to play around with gender much in Metal Gear Solid, but he made up for that in Death Standing. Remember that story he wrote in high school? We see a lot of inspiration from that here. The solution the men came up with for having healthy babies in the story was to have men carry pods around on their stomachs where the fetus could grow in the most natural way possible.

There’s still women in Death Stranding but there’s a lot of men carrying babies around on their stomachs, men forming family unions, and the main character Sam acts more like a stereotypical mother than father. There’s literally a scene where Deadman puts a hand on Sam’s pod like it’s a pregnant belly and basically asks him “The three of us are a family, aren’t we?”

Sam later tries to give the baby to a woman, Fragile, but she only sees it as babysitting and gives it back, so Sam gives it to Deadman who declares it “our little one”.

By the end of the game the three of them are seen together, depicted as two parents holding their child. Throughout the game people are constantly trying to hug and touch Sam but in the end the only person who gets a hug is Deadman.

It’s also worth noting that in the universe of Death Stranding Sam and Deadman are believed to be a couple before they actually are. Deadman made sure of that so no one would question why they spend so much time together.

There will no doubt be more bisexual men in Kojima’s next game, and I’m curious to see if there’ll be any development in how openly he depictes queer characters. He’s a middle aged man so no matter what his own sexuality might be I don’t expect him to easily shake the expectations of Japanese society off, but he has started hanging out with a lot of Danes, most notably Nicolas Winding Refn who despite making extremely violent movies is very open minded and has, when asked, been very honest about his own sexuality (to spare you the pain of digging though Danish interviews, he’s a straight, slightly bi-curious man with an interest in BDSM, but who’s also satisfied leaving a lot of his fantasies to his imagination because his movies gives him an outlet for a lot of it).

You can see a lot of Scandinavian/Nordic influences in Death Stranding and I’d be surprised if Nicolas didn’t expose Kojima, intentionally or unintentionally, to the Scandinavian view of homosexuality. I can best describe it with a news report I once saw on national television. Parents were worried about a dangerous road that their children had to cross every day to get to school but the government wasn’t doing anything about it. The parents they interviewed were a gay couple but they were treated exactly like any other worried parents. No fuss, no spectacle. Please think of the safety of these parents’ children.

I can imagine that approach would go over very well with a middle aged Japanese man who clearly wants queer people to be able to live happy, fulfilling lives with families and children but doesn’t seem to want to upset his society.

Other people have pointed out that Kojima and Nicolas seem to inspire each other a lot and have taken an interest in each other’s cultures, and Nicolas was the first person to announce publicly that he’d be in Kojima’s next game, so I’m really interested in seeing what that will do, if anything, to how comfortable Kojima is with depicting his queer characters. Something certainly happened once he started socializing with a lot of Americans.

I am of course not saying Kojima is a saint who’s doing everything right, but he is an interesting guy to follow.

#hideo kojima #metal gear solid #death stranding #long post

[no-gays-in-russia]

Someone Has To Die: Review

TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of suicide, murder, homophobia.

SPOILER ALERT: major spoilers for all three episodes of Someone Has To Die.

Introduction: Someone Has To Die (”Alguien Tiene Que Morir”) is a Spanish/Mexican miniseries of three 50 minutes long episodes set in the 50s which follows the story of Gabino, a young man who has just come back to Spain after living in Mexico with his mother’s family for 10 years. With him he brings his friend Lazaro, a Mexican ballet dancer. Soon, rumours start spreading that Lazaro and Gabino are in a relationship, fueled by Lazaro’s profession (everyone believes that a male ballet dancer must necessarily be gay) and by the intimacy between the two of them. However, Lazaro is straight and actually attracted to Gabino’s mom, Mina (spoiler: it’s mutual), while Gabino is in fact gay and has feelings of romantic nature towards Lazaro, despite them not being reciprocated. Although they are fake, those rumours keep growing, with the help of Cayetana, the girl that Gabino is supposed to marry and sister of Alonso. Alonso is an old friend of Gabino and it’s made clear throughout the show that before the latter left for Mexico something of homoerotic nature happened between the two of them, although it is never specified exactly what; long story short, Gabino is the only one to know that Alonso is also gay and let me tell you, homeboy has a shit ton of internalised homophobia. When the rumours reach their maximum height, Mina tries to help Lazaro and Gabino run away to Paris, but Gabino’s father, who works at a prison, finds out and, advised by his mother, gets Gabino arrested, while Lazaro is able to escape. Mina and Lazaro are then found having sex in the woods and that’s when chaos ensues- Gabino’s father wants to kill Mina and Lazaro, he tells Gabino to do so, Gabino refuses and points his shotgun at his father, his father points his gun at Gabino, then Alonso kills Gabino’s father, Gabino’s grandma kills Alonso and then Lazaro and finally Gabino kills his grandma. And that’s how the show ends. Another important element of the plot is that, while everyone believes Gabino’s grandpa died in a hunting accident, he was actually murdered by Gabino’s grandma, and young Gabino witnessed it (this is a big part of the reason why he was sent to Mexico shortly after); there’s also a subplot involving the family’s maid, quite significant because it leads to Gabino’s dad finding out the truth about his father’s death, but I don’t want to go into too much detail so I’ll stop here.

General opinion: after watching the masterpiece that is Young Royals (I will make a post on it soon), this struck me as a pretty average show; not bad, but not exceptional either (there are some great elements, but they are an exception). The acting is realistic but stiff, the characters are mostly unidimensional and sometimes unlikeable when they shouldn’t be, and the ending sort of leaves you thinking: what’s the point? The show as a whole is not meaningless at all (quite thoughtful and sensible at times, actually), but that’s what the ending feels like- everybody’s dead, now what? What does that mean? How was that significant to the plot? I liked Alonso killing Gabino’s father, because it shows that after all he cared for Gabino and was willing to help him, and I also liked Gabino killing his grandma, showing his strength and proving everyone who described him as fragile wrong, but I feel like Alonso and/or Lazaro should have been kept alive.

The characters: now, the characters are the most important thing in a tv show for me; if everything’s good but I hate the characters I cannot keep watching it, if everything’s horrible but I hate the characters I will keep watching it. The fact that I got through the entire show proves that they are not terrible, but I didn’t love them either. I will now analyse all of the main characters one by one, starting from Gabino. About Gabino, I noticed a discrepancy between the way he is described by other characters and the way he appears through his own actions and words. The adjectives that are most used to describe Gabino in the show are “dreamer” and “fragile”. Now, I’m not saying Gabino is not a dreamer, but since the other characters stress this aspect so much I would have expected his behaviour and words to demonstrate that much more than they actually did. And speaking of fragile, to me Gabino seemed the absolute opposite- I actually perceived him as an incredibly strong character. Throughout the entirety of the show he went through Hell so many times (got rejected by the man he loves, got beat up by Alonso, got put into jail by his own father, witnessed half of his family and closest friends dying in front of him) and he never gave up. He always responded with strength, murdering his grandma, not committing suicide when Alonso advised him to. However, this discrepancy might be caused by the fact that it had been 10 years since any of the other characters had last seen Gabino (although if I’m not mistaken Lazaro too describes him as a dreamer), so they might describe what they remember him as without realizing how much he’s changed throughout the years. But I still felt like in his case the show did too much telling and not enough showing. But now, let’s move onto the other character involved in the rumours: Lazaro. With Lazaro, I have a different issue: I felt as though he was supposed to be a likeable character, but I ended up really disliking him. At first we see him as a bit naive, a very good friend to Gabino, extremely passionate about dancing, a dreamer more so than Gabino (he repeatedly voices his fantasies about visiting Paris and getting to dance at the Opèra); but in the end, he proves himself as being selfish and unfaithful, as he literally has sex with Mina while Gabino is in prison. Your best friend has just been arrested and your first thought is to fuck his mom? And let’s not forget that Lazaro knew that Gabino loved him, so he knew this would hurt him even more. And when Cayetana pretends to offer to him to leave for Paris with her, he agrees- again, proving how little he cares about Gabino being in prison. He has some very good moments as well, including one of my two favourite scenes in the show, but my overall opinion on him is not positive. Now let’s talk about the three characters that we were actually supposed to perceive as negative: Cayetana, Gabino’s grandma Ampara and Gabino’s dad Gregorio. Cayetana’s sole personality trait is that of being evil- there doesn’t even seem to be a motivation behind her actions, she just does it because she is an a-hole. That’s pretty much the same with Ampara, with the small exception that she justifies her actions by saying it’s all for her family (hard to say whether she actually believes her own words or not). But in the end, both characters fail at being fascinating, meaningful villains: they’re plain and unidimensional. The case is a bit different for Gregorio: he’s overall a despicable character, but further traits are added so that he is not just a plain villain- he is a bad person, and that makes a big difference. In particular, I love that they make him a conflicted character, portraying the contrast between the pain he causes Gabino and the pain he himself feels realising how much he’s hurting his son. However, in my opinion, the best, most interesting and most lovable characters in the show are Alonso and Mina. Alonso may be interpreted as a negative character himself, but he sort of redeems himself towards the end. He does some very good things (killing Gregorio to protect Gabino, Mina and Lazaro), some very bad things (kidnapping Gabino and Lazaro, hurting Lazaro’s leg, beating Gabino almost to death) and some things that weren’t exactly good but which he did with good intentions (repeatedly advising Gabino to leave Spain forever, bringing him a gun while he’s in prison and advising him to kill himself). I think the only mistake they did was making him hurt Gabino and Lazaro in such a way, because they wanted him to be a redeemable and likeable character but honestly that was almost unforgivable. But at the same time I can see that Alonso’s violence on Gabino was the result of him taking his feelings towards Gabino (probably some feelings of romantic nature and jealousy towards his supposed relationship with Lazaro) and transforming them into something that he felt to be more acceptable and more manageable, and on top of that it was the manifestation of his disgust, fear, anger, frustration for his own homosexuality. All in all, Alonso is a very complex and conflicted character, sometimes submissive and others extremely corageous, good and bad, selfless and selfish. But if perfection was almost reached with Alonso, we move even closer to the perfect character with Mina- I want to slap her and hug her at the same time, and that’s what I love. Even more than Alonso, she is an incredibly complex character. I think she’s the main character more so than Gabino- so many interesting clues about her personality and her personal history are continously thrown around and you just want to know more and more about her. From her clearly feeling inadequate and different because she’s Mexican and leaving in Spain to her love story with Lazaro (who is Mexican like her- something to note), to the contrast between her desire to help others and her fragility which often makes it impossible, Mina is a well explored, multi-dimentional, lovable and despicable character.

My favourite scenes: finally, I want to discuss two scenes that I thought to be absolutely brilliant (if the entire show had been like those two scenes I would have considered it a masterpiece). The first takes place when Gabino and Lazaro are back home after Alonso’s attack; Lazaro is mending Gabino’s wounds, when the latter stops him and tells him he’s sorry for getting him involved. Lazaro replies he’s not done anything wrong, but Gabino states: <<I love you, and that’s the problem.>> Lazaro says: <<I love you too.>> and Gabino: <<But not in the same way.>> And that’s when Lazaro says the most beautiful line in the show: <<But I love you still, and that could never be wrong.>> That line equates platonic and romantic love, stating that despite them being two different kinds of love they are still exactly the same thing: love. So just like no one would ever say Lazaro is wrong for loving Gabino platonically, at the same time Lazaro states that no one could ever say Gabino is wrong for loving him romantically, because that’s exactly the same thing: love. And love is never wrong. The second scene takes place after Mina and Lazaro have been found together in the woods close to the club and Gregorio gets Gabino out of prison to take him there with him. Gabino is alone in his father’s car, Alonso sees him and goes to sit in the car with him. Alonso tells Gabino about how terrible he feels having to lie every day about who he really is, and then asks him to describe what it is like having sex with a man. Gabino tries to resist, but after Alonso begs him he gives in and recounts the first time he had sex with a man. Alonso is profoundly moved by his story and visibly tries to contain his emotions, but he fails, as tears start streaming down his face; then, once Gabino is done talking, he grabs the gun he’d given him in prison and tries to shoot himself. Gabino is able to stop him and Alonso breaks down crying, hugging Gabino while the latter promises him that they’re always going to be there for one another. Such a touching moment.

#gay #tvshow #netflix #review #i love gay shit #give me the gay shit

[joanofarchetype]

A Connecticut Yankee...a kid...that's all well and good but we really don't talk enough about the werewolf in King Arthur's court

This is not a shitpost — in Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory makes mention of "Sir Marrok, the good knight that was betrayed with his wyf, for she made hym seven yere a wer-wolf". Of course, Malory lifted the tale of the werewolf knight straight outta "Bisclavret," which is one of the Twelve Lais of Marie de France. And it is...wild. There's also "Melion," an anonymous Breton lai which along with "Biclarel" is believed to have evolved from the same source as "Bisclavret". In this post we're gonna refer to the protagonist as the "knight" or the "wolf-knight" and tell a somewhat composite tale.

(A note: this takes place well before commonly established werewolf lore, which crystallized thanks to Universal's The Wolf Man. Curt Siodmak wrote all that stuff about the full moon and silver bullets in 1941 so well that our common imagination accepted it as ancient fact.)

So anyway our guy is a knight who disappears for a couple nights a week and his wife is like ?????? dude ??????? where ??? do you ???? go ??????

And my dude is like "babe I love you but I can't tell you because you won't look at me the same" and she's like "I am your wIFE you better tell me right quick or otherwise have a good nose for almonds in your oatmeal" (jk she doesn't say that because if she did he might've gotten a little foreshadowing of her treachery, but alas, our man was a sucker)

So the knight tells her he's a werewolf, and on the nights he disappears he's wolfing around the countryside and his wife is like !!!!!!!!!! on the inside but makes sure her face is only 🤔 on the outside

(Mind you, Marie de France goes into how the wife is grossed out because she shared her marriage bed with a beast, which has some interesting implications but we'll get to those later)

She starts digging about his transformation until he explains how in order to return to his human shape, he *needs* to put his human clothes back on or else he'll be stuck as a wolf, at which point wifey is 👀👀👀👀

Wifey's like, "but if ur in wolf form, how do u remember where u put ur clothes lol" and the knight's like, "no no, I retain my human mind even in wolf form and besides, I always put them under this one rock outside this cave"

now bear in mind he's never been able to talk about this to anyone so he's pouring his heart out about his deepest secret which he kept even from his wife & I know we're all pretty used to medieval repression but imagine how it must have felt to share this secret at long last 😥

So to recap:

knight: 🤵🏻🛡🐾🌕🐺🤫😅😍♥️💐 wifey: 👰🏼💭🤢🤔👀🧐💡💡👔💍🔪🔪🔪

Our knight is like "yeah so I was born this way and it's just a part of who I am and whew it's kind of a relief to finally be talking about it with someone"

Wifey nods along 🤔🤔🤔 because she's had a💡moment and is 🍳 up a plan...

so the knight has unleashed (pun intended) his secret for the first time in this life and is feeling just dandy, but what he doesn't know is his wife is already plotting his downfall with her...LOVER (dun dun dunnn)

wifey & her secret lover steal the knight's clothes when he's transformed, essentially trapping him in wolf form, get him declared dead in absentia, marry each other & take over his lands

and the royal court goes for this because at this point the whole kingdom knows about the knight's habit of disappearing for days at a time (because medieval nobles are messy gossipy bitches who live for that drama) so they just assume he abandoned her

*~*ONE YEAR LATER*~* (or if you're Malory, *~*SEVEN YEARS LATER*~*)

the king & hunting party corner the wolf-knight in the woods. knight is overwhelmed at the sight of his monarch & runs up to what for all he knows might be his oblivion to kiss king's feet at which point king's like, "THAT'S NO ORDINARY WOLF. HE SHALL JOIN MY COURT IMMEDIATELY."

the wolf-knight goes to live at court where he's basically regarded as a knight (so the takeaway from this part of the lai is that a literal wild animal had a better chance of becoming a knight in ye olden days than a peasant or a woman but I digress)

anyway so there's a celebration at court and who comes to the party but the ex-wifey's new husband, now a baron. understandably, the wolf-knight does NOT react well and attacks him, and the reaction of everyone at court at this near-mauling isn't to say "whoa whoa maybe bringing a wolf to court was a bad idea" but rather "huh, this wolf has never been hostile towards a human before so obviously this guy must've personally wronged him." which is...progressive.

so the new husband/baron/co-conspirator is all "wtf keep it away from me" and the king is like "idk man, what were you wearing? maybe you smelled like royal beef jerky at the time. seems like you were asking for it"

king & the other barons take wolf-knight to the new baron's property. they just need to figure out what's going on because they're not ready to take sir wolf to his final veterinary visit, u feel? they're attached. now get ready for this next part because it's a doozy.

ex-wifey hears about the king's visit so she's waiting with gifts & cakes & shit. the wolf-knight sees her & immediately BITES OFF HER NOSE & he bites it so good her progeny can feel it & henceforth all her descendants are — I SHIT YOU NOT — born noseless. talk about losing face.

under questioning (*cough cough* torture *cough*) the wife admits to her crimes & yields the stolen clothing, which they put in front of the wolf & he just stares at them until they realize "wow yeah sorry dude our bad" and leave the room to give him privacy

when they see the wolf-knight again he's in his human form and in Marie de France's "Bisclavret" it's expressly written that the king embraces him in the bedchamber and gives him "many kisses" (hashtag heterosexual friends doing heterosexual things)

the king restores the wolf-knight's lands and ex-wifey has to live with her ex-baron in exile, forever marked for her betrayal. some real Mark of Cain shit. (obviously this lai has a lot to say about spousal dissatisfaction but that’s another day’s dissertation)

the wolf-knight (Bisclavret, or Melion, or Marrok, or Sir Wolf or whatever you fancy calling him) not only regains his good name, but also the support of a court which now knows his secret dual nature.

something to be hated or feared, only understood and accepted. no one at court shuns him once the secret's out & no one tries to change or "heal" him of his lycanthropy.

remember when I said we'd come back to the wife's reaction? in "Bisclavret" Marie de France specifically states that upon finding out his secret, the wife no longer wishes to "lie beside him." let's unpack that a bit by exploring similar themes across folklore.

the marriage bed serves as a common motif in tales of animal transformation. ex: in "Beauty and the Beast," the protagonist has to overcome her revulsion towards her suitor's ostensible monstrosity before she can accept his marriage proposal. traditionally these stories with mysterious, beastly husbands who are secretly a true catch serve as an allegory for arranged marriage, designed to help young women process their anxieties about being passed from their father's house to that of a strange new husband.

(we should differentiate these tales from those of an ostensibly appropriate groom who turns out to be a monster in disguise such as "Bluebeard," "Mr. Fox," and "The Robber-Bridegroom," as those deserve a detailed thread of their own but also provide good thematic contrast here)

more often the Beast is kind, patient & gives Beauty the time she needs to the detriment of his own freedom from the curse. once the protagonist gets over her anxiety, she ceases to perceive her groom as just a hulking hairy beast and he can take the shape of a prince at last.

circling back to wolves! in most lore both ancient and modern, werewolves represent something uncontrollable; an animalistic second nature which threatens to literally tear through our well-mannered social façade. "Bisclavret" and its various incarnations don't do that.

if you read "Bisclavret" under a queer critical lens, you can interpret the knight as bisexual; a husband has a secret duality to his nature which he is unable to express in their current social order. significantly, he is born with his lycanthropy rather than being afflicted by the sudden, violent means through which most fictional werewolves are afflicted. it's a part of who he is, and it requires no further explanation or cure.

the wolf-knight finds freedom rather than shame in his lycanthropy, and as a result maintains both honor and control while in wolf form. unlike other famous werewolves, he doesn't function as an expression of tension between the id and the superego.

considering how often wolves are used to imply sexual violence (see also: "Little Red Riding Hood" or its medieval predecessor, "The Grandmother's Tale") this would be a fairly positive portrayal of a bisexual man.

however, his wife doesn't see it that way and is repulsed at the thought of sleeping with him again, so she commits adultery and conspires against him. so really, the crimes in "Bisclavret" have a lot to do with sex, just not sexual violence.

the king's attachment to the wolf & the way he embraces the knight can easily be read as homoerotic. there's absolutely an argument to be made about the normalization of homosocial behavior & male kinship across eras but...two things can be true. either interpretation is valid.

so what we have is a werewolf protagonist — not a villain or tortured anti-hero but an honorable man who isn't made to shed his lycanthropy at the end of the tale (tail). rather, he is accepted by his contemporaries and given a place in society to live as he truly is/ROLL CREDITS

#bisclavret #marie de france #medieval literature #queer theory #queer critical theory #medieval lgbtq #werewolves #werewolf literature #i originally posted this to fb & then twitter so u can find these there #my twitter handle is also @joanofarchetype #(it's my pinned tweet) #long post #gif warning

[olderthannetfic]

It’s International Fanworks Day and also the 30th and final post in this series. If you follow my tumblr, you know that my true fandom isn’t buddy cops or Highlander or any of those things. No, my true fandom is...

WANK

No matter which bitchy piece of fujo-course nonsense you’re looking at on tumblr, no matter which debate about WNGWJLEO or women in slash or fanfiction vs. media you're reblogging, your grandma was having that fight in a zine somewhere in 1985 and at Escapade in the 90s.

Here’s a vid review from 2002:

"History Repeating," [...] was an Amanda vid. In-fucking-credible. Who knew? Who knew I could like Amanda? Who knew there were fresh HL clips I hadn't seen a thousand times before in HL vids? (Of course, as someone pointed out, she had her own spin-off.) This rocked--sharp, fast cutting and pretty, pretty shots, with a hot bisexy vibe running through it. And, you know, people like to say that there's all this self-hating misogyny in fans--you know, that women hate shows about women, hate women characters breaking up the OTP, etc. But when you see a femme-centric vid like this bring down the house, you really have to wonder. Is it misogyny, really, or is just that we usually see a bunch of crap representations of women in media and resist them?

So on the theme of There Is Nothing New Under The Sun, here is a selection of past Escapade panels on gender, representation, and problematicness:

1993 - Anti-Feminism in Slash Fandom (Or, how 'it was never this good with a woman' syndrome... where are the women, and why do we care?)

1995 - Why Lesbians Read Slash - (What's the attraction? Why do they care? Why do they write it?)

1996 - Character Bisexuality: Convenient fiction or character trait? (Is this a good compromise between "We're not gay, we just love each other" and "I was gay all along and just faking it with women"? Or is this too easy? Special mention for the stereotypical bisexual villian who's evil, sexy, and can come on to everyone.)

1996 - Female Heroes: Female Empowerment, or male power in women's bodies? (Give a woman a gun and make her really tough. Wow, cool! yes, or no? Are we celebrating women, or are we merely putting breasts on male action heroes? Heroines under discussion may include (but not be limited to) Sara Connor, Ripley, Vasquez, Thelma & Louise.)

1997 - Gender Astigmatism (The Gender Continuum: in what we read, in what we write, and what we are, there is always a connection with a point on the gender continuum. How do our definitions of "feminine" and "masculine" influence our creativity? Where do bisexual characters fit in? (besides there, you dirty-minded person!)

1998 - Xena: Does Girl-Slash Get Us Going? (Xena is the first show with a feminine couple to be really popular. What kind of slash fans are interested? Does gender orientation matter? Or do slash fans love slashy couples regardless of their gender? Can m/m fans be 'converted' to f/f fans?)

1998 - Bastards & the Women Who Love Them (When Methos says, "you live to serve me," any normal '90s woman says, "I don't think so!... or does she? A happy contemplation on the virtues of handsome thugs.)

1998 - Slash: a Continuation of Women's Writing, led by Constance Penley (In case you didn't know, in her recent book NASA/TREK (yes, the slash is intentional), she addressed slash as a continuum of women's writing, combining women's romance, and the male quest romance. Join her for a discussion of slash -- where it was, where it is, where it might be going.)

1998 - The Trauma of Slash Fans in Het Fandoms (Or, what to do when find women doing all that cool, tough-guy stuff you love.)

1999 - Male Slash Fans - Welcome Voice, or Infringement? (Slash is written by women for women — or is it? The Internet has attracted new fans, including the "male slash fan". Who is he? What does he think of what "we" do? Do we care?)

2002 - Femslash (General discussion on female/female slash fiction. If Buffy wanted something cold and hard between her legs, why didn't she just choose silicon?)

2003 - Slash: Feminist political act or really good porn?

2005 - Where have all the lesbians gone? (When some slash lists explicitly state m/m only, where do you go for femslash? Are there any hot femslash couples? Pimp your femslash fandom here, or bemoan the lack of strung female characters in the current conservative social climate.)

2007 - Femslash: The Other Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name (Femslash. It's a work that makes some of our hearts leap for joy and inspires complete and total disinterset—or even dislike and disdain—in others. Where can we find the good stuff? What makes it good? And what's up with the haters?)

2007 - SGA: The Women of Atlantis (What do we like about how the women of SGA are written and portrayed, and what makes us wince? What do we think about how their issues are being woven into the show's narrative?)

2008 - Gay is Not Slash (...even though slash is sometimes gay. The current argument about m/m romances by women as taking recognition *away* from male gay writers, depends on m/m writing being intended as gay lit. And slash, for one, isn't, even if there can be overlap. What overlaps? What doesn't? What examples do fans like?

2009 - Female Character Stories: Halfamoon, Full Moon or Just Moony (F/f slash, and other stories centered on female characters, are gaining visibility in fandom. Are there things fens will write about women that we won't about men? (Given MPreg, *are* there?) Should f/f be like m/m, or is it unavoidably different?)

2011 - My ***** is Not Ideologically Driven, But is it Homophobic (Slash fandom often sees itself as a mostly liberal community. IDIC, right? But recently there's been a slash backlash: it's anti-feminist, a 'symptom' of internalized misogyny. We're 'erasing' the women characters after all. Is slash homophobic? Does slash fandom appropriate gay culture? Is it awesome and ennobling as it makes us happy in our panties, or is all that self-hatred bubbling just beneath the surface of our porn?)

2012 - Natural Woman (We've lamented the lack of strong, believable female characters (who dress appropriately). But now we have them: Gemma Teller and Audrey Parker; Salt and Haywire; we've got Bechdel-passing women who look like they can throw a punch. Still, most of them are in the sci-fi or action genre, so are we really seeing progress? And what are we doing with them, as fans?)

2012 - Don't Call It a Bromance (It's Just Canon) (TPTB are increasingly aware of slash, and bromance is regular fare on TV canon these days. Does overt bromance make the fic and art hotter or just vanilla? Is there an anti-slash backlash in our shows? Is the emphasis on men's relationships making women disappear? Inquiring minds want to know. If you have answers, theories, or just want to squee, join in the fun!)

2014 - (The End of?) Ladybashing in Slashfic (Slashfic used to regularly feature bashing of female characters. Now, blatant bashing seems less fashionable. If you recognize this trend, let's talk! Were most ladybashing fics ones for juggernaut pairings in megafandoms, or were they everywhere? What's causing the change: more women in leading roles/ensemble casts, fic writers being more conscious to avoid bashing ladies even if they're not their favorites, more willingness to blame show writers' bad writing (instead of the character being just bad/evil/stupid) for bad female characters, or something else entirely?)

2015 - Fifty Shades of Fandom (Fifty Shades of Grey has become the representation of fan fiction in mainstream culture. It’s bad fan fiction, and it’s being used to ridicule women while making millions off women readers and viewers. Can we connect with these women: proto-fans who would love to read, and maybe write, great fan fiction if they found it? Can we use the FSoG phenomenon to expand our community? Does keeping our doors closed and our mouths shut perpetuate both monetization of our fan culture and misogynist scorn?)

2016 - Who Are We? (How do we define ourselves in this age of so many OT3s and team orgy pairings? Does m/m/f count as "slash"? Is slash-only space slipping away? (And would that be bad?) Do m/m and f/f belong together more than they do with m/f? Is "Media Fandom" a valid term any longer? Who are we if we start shipping het?)

2016 - Ladies Loving Ladies. (There would seem to be enough queer women in fandom to write/want more f/f. Do lesbians write f/f, m/m? Both? Do straight women? Or are we still missing the iconic female characters and relationships that create a great slash fandom? Did they figure out the answer to this question at TGIF/F and if so, what is it?)

2016 - By Us For Us (Fic, even kinky slash, is practically mainstream these days. The ebook revolution puts publishing within reach of almost anyone. Sundance hits have been filmed on iPhones. So why aren't fangirls making more media? Or is it happening right under our noses? Is this a place where our women's gift economy does our community a disservice? Discuss what's out there, what we'd like to see, and what's holding us back.)

2017 - LGBTQIA+ in Slash Fandom (Queer fans have always been here. In a subculture often defined as "for" straight women, what do we as fans have to say about non-straight, non-cis, and non-conventional sexuality and gender in fanfiction, in fandom, and in the larger culture?)

2018 - Confronting the Tensions Between Slash and Queer Representation (Slash fandom thrives on homoerotic subtext. Many queer fans are unwilling to settle for this quasi-representation. Part of every slash fandom seems loudly invested in their ship becoming canon. Some are queer fans who want actual textual representation in their favorite shows, and some are fans using queer politics to fight ship wars. Then the “slash is not activism” posts make the rounds. Is slash activism? Is advocating for slash ships in canon the same thing as advocating for queer representation?)

2018 - Representing Slashers (What does "representation" in the media mean to us? We know what more gay or POC representation means, but what about slash fandom, which is largely female and focused on bodies that don't resemble our own? Would better female characters in media better represent us? Or male characters written for a female audience? Come talk about the intersection of slash, personal identity, and media representation.)

2018 - Anonymity in Slash Fandom: Choosing to Hide (Why do the majority of slash fans hide their hobby? Is it fear of blackmail? Embarrassment? Fear of losing employment? How does this affect your happiness? How does this affect your security? What would an ideal world look like? Who would/have you told about your interest in slash? Who would you never, ever, tell?)

2019 - Fandom Post-Slash? (In an era of "ships" and #pairing #tags on Tumblr and AO3, has the "slash" label lost its meaning? Same-gender pairings are as popular as ever and fans still ID pairings with a virgule between the names, but how many fans still call m/m and f/f slash or femslash? How many fans identify as "slashers?" Het and slash were opposing binaries which few fans crossed. Are these barriers breaking down? What purpose has the term "slash" served? Has fandom moved

past it and, if so, what does that mean?)

#escapade 2020 #escapade con #fandom meta #fandom history

[gascon-en-exil]

Lords and their Knights: When FE Chivalry Goes Gay

@mwritesink prompted me to write about my favorite tropes in FE and how they evolved over the course of the series. I already crossed a few others off in an earlier post, but this one is a particular favorite of mine where M/M romance in this series is concerned and one I felt had enough examples to constitute a piece of its own. Let it not be said that this is merely the gay variation on the well-worn heterosexual romance trope of a lady and her knight (ex. Eirika/Seth), because negotiating the fundamental power imbalance in this type of relationship takes on different dimensions when both parties are male. I draw a closer comparison to courtly love, which in the traditional sense is also socially transgressive (being adulterous) and not consummated via marriage or other public means...which in FE terms means an S support and possibly a eugenics baby. A vassal in love with his lord rather than his lord’s wife is not only cutting the female intermediary out of what can already be a very homoromatic scenario, but it’s directly tangling together a kind of martial romantic love and ideas about what knighthood/vassalage even is or ought to be - two topics FE loves to explore. I’ve therefore compiled a few of the most notable examples of this trope across the series to talk about in more detail, because if one is willing to be liberal with subtext there’s surprisingly quite a few to pick from.

(And yeah, this is also in part because I like hot rich men who take orders, and this series already has plenty of gay or otherwise ambiguously non-straight mages, thieves, archers, and their ilk without my help.)

The Sad Gay Knight: Quan/Finn

This one I’ve talked about before in a fair amount of depth, from my hopes for how a Genealogy remake will treat Finn to speculation on just what Quan got out of this relationship besides a devoted retainer and (we may assume) a nice piece of ass. The summary here is that Finn’s love for Quan supersedes anything he’s shown to feel for any of the various women he can hook up with and quite frankly astonishes in its ramifications for the future of Leonster and Thracia as a whole. It’s poignant, adulterous (but Ethlyn’s probably ok with it?), and messy as all hell once you factor in whatever’s up with Glade and whatever Lachesis wasn’t feeling about the whole situation. It is also, naturally, very sad; Finn loses his lord when he’s only around eighteen, and with their kingdom collapsing around him and the entire continent consumed by war he dedicates the next twenty years of his life to raising Quan’s son to be the king Quan himself had wanted to be. And for all his labor he apparently derives no lasting satisfaction, spending his epilogue wandering around the Yied desert and at last returning only to (possibly) pen the history he’s helped to make. 

Finn is the embodiment of knighthood loyal unto and beyond death, and that paired with all the romantic and erotic subtext surrounding the two of them - Finn as Quan’s treasured favorite, his catatonia after Yied, the obsessive polishing of the brave lance that Quan gave to him, his inability to satisfy women in some vague way - makes them the defining example of this trope in Fire Emblem. I look forward to seeing how remakes will handle them; Finn’s presentation in Heroes is definitely cause for hope there. As for the issue of yet another story in media of gay men beset by tragedy and death, I did draw up a long headcanon on the technically crack pairing of Diarmuid/Tristan that specifically plays into the lord and knight trope while also allowing Finn a chance to pass his experiences on to a later, happier generation. IS is free to take notes, just saying.

Pretty Blond Twinks and the Men Who Love Them: Perceval/Elffin and their lasting influence

Moving on from Jugdral, I’ve got to say that I’ve really been sleeping on the original gay Elibean duo. Before Raven and Lucius (but chronologically after, because these games are out of order) there was another feminine young man with long blond hair beloved of a severe-looking warrior. Binding Blade gives us the bard Elffin, who in another life was Etruria’s Prince Mildain and Perceval’s liege. The Knight General takes Mildain’s alleged accidental death about as well as Finn takes the death of his lord and lady; he turns grim and humorless, and without a dying dream to guide him he follows the command of the corrupt revolutionary faction of Etruria with little protest. It takes learning that Mildain is alive and in Roy’s army for Perceval to drop the halfhearted Camus routine and switch sides, and the strength of his fealty not to his nation or even to his king but to the prince he’d thought dead is absolutely touching in the moment not to mention incredibly useful since the guy is one of FE6′s best units. 

Binding Blade doesn’t give anyone but Roy and his harem paired endings, but there’s still a fair bit to be gleaned from their support lines, both what is in them and what isn’t. Perceval and Elffin each have supports with women, but nothing remotely romantic - Perceval’s support with Larum is particularly amusing since he clarifies that her, ahem, dancing does nothing for him. Also worth noting is that neither of them can support with Clarine, even though one would think they’d make fine romantic choices for her given their statuses and physical resemblances to her beloved brother. Their own support line is quietly intimate. Elffin has changed since his near-death experience, and Perceval is still struggling to accept that their relationship can’t be as it was, that in fact for the time being they can’t now be a knight and his prince. Perceval also frets over Elffin’s refusal to see his father the king, and he later extracts a promise from Elffin to come home to Etruria after he’s done traveling the world as a bard, in one of the series’s several instances of writing what sounds like a marriage proposal in ambiguous terms. Per Elffin’s ending, he’s only gone for a few months after the war, so their promised reunion isn’t long delayed. I’m interested to see what a remake would add to their relationship, because as it stands Perceval/Elffin has an established romance arc that deserves a paired ending or at the very least more suggestive epilogues.

Further compounding their underrated signficance, it’s not too difficult to trace a line from Perceval/Elffin to a number of other M/M pairings in the two later GBA games and in Tellius that present some variation on this theme:

As mentioned above, Raven/Lucius is physically similar and performs a nearly identical gameplay function, with the pretty blond waif again responsible for recruiting his surly but protective boyfriend from the ranks of the enemy. 

Gerik/Joshua meanwhile borrows the character of the end of their support line and turns it into a genuine paired ending, with a prince incognito recruiting a swordsman to come work for him. They being who they are however, it’s all handled a bit rougher, with Gerik being impressed by Joshua’s “swagger.” Take that as you will.

Ike/Soren may be the defining seme/uke dynamic in Tellius’s overflowing fount of queer subtext, but Tibarn/Reyson smashes that trope together with this one and FE’s power couple unit archetype plus a dash of whatever the avian equivalent of furries is for wholly unique results. Although both of them are technically royalty, only Reyson is a prince by heredity whereas Tibarn presumably became king of Phoenicis by beating the crap out of any rival contenders as most laguz prefer to do. One can therefore read shades of a courtly relationship in Tibarn’s decision to zealously take up the cause of justice for the Serenes massacre in Reyson’s place. Combine this with Reyson’s characteristic edge that even Tibarn is forced to rein in at times and their relationship comes off as surprisingly more egalitarian than the sum of its parts. Oh yeah, and blond waif dancer + premade OP unit with ludicrous physical stats and movement again.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the conflict of the Tellius games Zelgius -> Sephiran explores what would happen if a gay Camus archetype chose instead to dedicate himself to an antagonistic lord. Sure, you can still recruit Sephiran via a convoluted and unintuitive process, but Zelgius is doomed no matter what.   

They Can Say It, But They Can’t Do It: Awakening and Fates

Ugh. If I must....

I’ve made no secret of my ambivalence toward FE13 dragging the series into open acknowledgement that same-sex attraction is a thing that exists, handled as it was with a lot of explicit homoerotic denial and an assortment of cheap gay panic jokes and...whatever the hell Victor and Vincent are supposed to be. Chrom/Frederick, hot though it may potentially be in fanon, is one of those jokes, making a parody out of a knight enamored of his lord and leaving it to mean absolutely nothing since Awakening’s relationship endgame is invariably S supports for time traveling eugenics babies. FE has taken cracks at the overly dedicated knight before - see just about everything involving Kieran from Tellius, up to and including his overzealous devotion to his superior officer - but Awakening plumbs the depths of Frederick expecting Chrom’s nude image to raise the army’s morale. Just..what do you even say to that, apart from the awkward sputtering that comprises most of their support line?

FE14, for all its stumbling steps toward something less completely offensive, fares little better in this particular regard. Leo/Niles is a deeply troubled albeit thought-provoking callback to the subtextual lord/knight relationship, one where it’s hard to imagine them finding a healthy way to navigate the power differential. Then there’s Ryoma/Saizo. It’s nothing special in localization, but the never-localized festival DLC involves Saizo’s ardent desire to warm Ryoma’s clothing in his cleavage. That sounds like absolutely normal behavior for a servant and not a rehash of Frederick’s shenanigans, uh huh. Fates may indeed be said to be slightly better about playing palpable homoerotic tension for drama rather than comedy...but only slightly.

Paving the Way for an OT3: The Deliverance

This is, incidentally, yet another reason to appreciate Echoes for doing so much to redeem the 3DS games in the realm of (male) queer content. Yes, there’s a large and unaddressed divide between the openly gay and very modern Leon and the heavily subtextual faux-historical queerness of the Deliverance, but taken independently the two presentations work for what they’re each separately aiming to be. Among Clive’s gay entourage are not one but two men who’d dearly love to be the knight to his lord, and Forsyth’s strong desire to put Clive on a pedestal evokes the earlier spoofs of this kind of relationship precisely because Forsyth is that kind of vassal, the kind that would read Ribald Tales of the Faith War and cry like a heavily erect virgin bottom getting his first taste of dick at the brief interludes of tender manly love between Quan and Finn. He’s played for comedy just as much as Kieran or Frederick are, and yet Echoes comes across as less down on the concept as a whole for several reasons, being that

1) Python’s snark over Forsyth’s attraction to both Clive and Lukas is genuinely funny, much more so than when it’s the object of these affections quietly groaning his way through them,

2) Lukas is also there, and his desire to be Clive’s beloved knight is not played for comedy at all but is allowed to be unrealistic and unsatisfying because Clive will never get it,

3) everyone wants to screw Clive for some reason, not just his subordinates but also his sister and the estranged BFF who dies in his arms...and the guy is shown to be unworthy of all of them, and

4) all the characters involved are allowed other avenues for romantic attraction outside of a lord who’s just not that into them. Forsyth has Python, Lukas has both of them as friends and possibly more later, Clair has Gray (...at least he’s not her brother?), and Fernand has a bad rebound that goes to hell in the manner of Zelgius and Sephiran but at least ends with him getting to reconcile with his former friend before he dies. 

The setup for the Deliverance’s overarching queerness is a bit strange as it rests on all these characters somehow finding Clive attractive, but nonetheless it makes for an unexpected and refreshing critique of the lord and knight trope, given a situation where the lord just isn’t that into it and in fact doesn’t seem to realize that he can be into it. It’s a good reminder that this isn’t a particularly good dynamic for a stable and lasting relationship, and that as hot as it can be it takes more than impassioned one-way devotion to make it work in the long term.

The good news if you’re into this kind of relationship like I am is that it’s a trope with some life in it yet. Echoes came at it strong, and prerelease information on Three Houses suggests a few possibilities for this dynamic in that game. I’m especially keeping my eye on Dimitri and Dedue, whose relationship appears to contain echoes of the original duo of Quan and Finn. I highly doubt there will be anything on the level of S supports acknowledging this type of attraction, but I’ll settle for some suggestive A supports.

#Fire Emblem

[theliterarywolf]

So, Let’s Talk ‘Love Death and Robots (Episodes 10-18)

Hey guys, I finally decided to finish off my write-up on Netflix's Love Death and Robots, even though I hope that anyone who wanted to give the show a chance has by now. If you need a bit more coaxing, I covered the first 9 episodes here (you can also find my rating system explained there) and I go over the last 9 episodes here.

Oh, also... I know that there's the whole 'Netflix arranges to episode order based on your sexual orientation' thing going on. Even though I think that's kind of bunk because I don't recall Netflix sending me an email to ask 'Hey, so... can we know if you're straight or not?'

I’m going by the episodic order on my first and second viewings.

Let's get started.

Episode 10 – Shape-Shifters

I know people have been making the jokes of 'Lol, who was the closeted gay Republican furry who wrote this short~?” But, God, can... Can we please get more domestic supernatural pieces like this?

Homoerotic subtext or not, watching this story reminded me of one of my grievances whenever I try to wade through the muck and the mire that is the Kindle Store: that being, in regards to MLM writing, you're either a cowboy or a werewolf.

And no one does anything unique with writing gay cowboys or gay werewolves. It's always 'I'm a closeted, homophobic son of a bitch who needs my heart melted by the northern newcomer and their high-falutin' ways' or 'we're werewolves so we have to live by A/B/O-Omegaverse rules, I guess???'

The execution of this story, the melding of fantasy and the real world is something that I like to see in media but, more than often, is shat out into a mess of awkward writing and characters. I'm looking at you, Bright.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

No, this is more of a fantasy, horror, military-drama combo that does wonders.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

I mean, with Teen Wolf gone and Supernatural on its way out, I think a fully-developed series leading up to the short that we get here, talking about the main two characters growing up as werewolves and how the world treats them would have a great place in prime-time.

Episode 11 – Helping Hand

127 Hours, eat your fucking heart out! I felt more from this one short about suffering and sacrificing for the sheer essence of surviving the insurmountable than I did with the whole of 127 Hours. Which is kind of bad considering how the latter is based on an actual true story.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

The main reason the main character has to do what she does is because she's doing maintenance on a space-station.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

I think this stands better on its own as is.

Episode 12 – Fish Night

(No Gif for this one. Pity...)

Allow me a second.

…

Okay.

If you've ever watched something like Disney's Fantasia or James Cameron's Avatar (Disclaimer – If anyone tries to insinuate that I would ever put Avatar on the same level as any Disney film in terms of quality/re-watchability, I will slap you), you get the sentiments of: 'this exists to be a very, fancy, elegant tech-demo. I know I shouldn't think about story, but I am, and all I see is a very fancy tech-demo'.

That's the notion one gets with Fish Night. Another 2D addition to LDaR, the story of two business men stranded in a desert and the beauty of the natural world of past and present is visually stunning but, as soon as that night falls, you're going to know exactly what is happening for the rest of the story.

But it sure is pretty, though!

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Nope. It was just really pretty.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Nope. It's just really pretty.

Episode 13 – Lucky 13

The second of the stories in LDaR that has a 'last-stand' tilt, even though it doesn't kick in until the end. However, before that, I really enjoy what is another story with a legitimately strong female character, who also happens to be a woman of color, who comes up from the adversity of being a novice pilot and being given an airship with the most unfortunate of reputations to manage.

The relationship between the main character and the ship 'Lucky 13' is really what makes this story stand out.

Which... is ultimately bad for the story that rounds out the collection. But, that will come later.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

The characters are essentially space-marines and they drive around in airships, what more do you need?

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Maybe a feature film. But it would have to devote every minute of a film's run-time to developing the universe and personalities of the human characters.

Episode 14 – Zima Blue

Admittedly, this one managed to keep me in suspense until the focus of the story first made himself visible. After that, we're taken on a minute trip through the phenomena of true talent, existentialism, and the concept of joy and self.

And... that's all I will say on that one.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Ooh, does this one have a robot...

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

You know, this one is a bit tricky. Maybe not a feature-length film but not pulled out into a TV series either. A thirty-minute short film, perhaps, would let the setting and artwork shine more.

Episode 15 – Blindspot

(No Gif again...)

You know, I keep forgetting that this one exists. It's not even that it was bad, it just...

Okay, so I watch a review channel on YouTube from time to time called “Double Toasted” and, even though I don't agree with about 75% of their stance on LDaR, what they said about this one was pretty spot on.

It's reminiscent of the classic Saturday Morning Cartoons of the 80s... Just with more swearing and death.

Because, yeah, this story follows a team of multi-colored androids driving EXTREME! vehicles while trying to steal a secret computer-chip from a carrier convoy. And all of the androids represent a common character trope seen in those sorts of cartoons: the Cool Dude leader, the brawny idiot, the smart-talking girl, and the green-behind-the-ears junior character.

I actually liked the animation to this one but story-wise it really is just your EXTREME! Saturday Morning cartoon with cursing and violence.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Yeah, the entire cast.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Maybe a TV series... Ooh, especially if it was done by someone like Christy Karacas (Superjail! and BallMasterz: 9009)

Episode 16 – Ice Age

(I should probably come to the conclusion that no one on this site cared enough about these last few shorts...)

Okay, this one I feel cheated in order to be included in here because it honestly feels so out of place. You get to follow a new, quirky couple moving into their first place together and, whoa-oh! They find an old freezer and decide to look inside to decide whether or not they should keep it!

… And, inside, is a micro-ecosystem that shows the entire past, present, and future of the human-race before blazing out in a fluorescent heat-death in front of their eyes.

All while said quirky couple makes commentary on what they're seeing.

I still don't know what animation was used for a good portion of the freezer-scenes. Was it CG combined with scaled-down camera or what?

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

Tech... nically...

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Oh, honey, no... A feature-length film of this would be on the same level of all of those ironic romcoms we got in that painful period of the early 2000s and a TV series of this would be canceled after three episodes.

Episode 17 – Alternate Histories

Look, I get where people come from with Alternate Histories: 'this one was goofy', 'it ran a bit too long', 'fake news'. And, honestly, when the title first showed up on my screen, I was cringing because I was sure they were going to spend 8 or 10 minutes of talking about a certain annoying pumpkin man.

However, I actually had fun with this one. Yeah, it seems like the flow and writing seems more like it would be at home on something like Robot Chicken at times, but I still liked it.

Besides, we get to watch a little Cartoon Hitler being killed over and over and over. What's not to like?

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

The Alternate History software in of itself is reminiscent to your 'what-if' tropes in science fiction. Just condensed and split apart into a few different scenarios.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

I couldn't see a full film or series of this working but maybe, like I said, if an entire episode of something like Robot Chicken was just dedicated to making up a dozen different ways to kill Hitler, that would be pretty interesting to watch.

Episode 18 – The Secret War

This, I feel, is the true casualty of LDaR. Not because it's bad on a technical level, it's actually visually stunning. Not because it's bad on a story-telling level, the writing is actually solid.

No, the main fault of The Secret War... Is that it is the last story in LDaR.

That it's the THIRD 'Last-Stand' story we've seen in an anthology of 18 different stories. I can understand the team behind LDaR wanting to have something like this be its finisher because, as I said, the art direction and writing behind it are really worthy of some fine cinema.

But it would have been better for everyone involved if they had swapped this one's position with something like Zima Blue or Lucky 13. By this point in watching the series, you're kind of reflecting on the darker stories but appreciating the lighter ones as well. So you'd want something with a little bit of hope to finish things off with.

And, trust me: those who know me know that I'm a proponent of 'more dark stories in media/not everything needs a happy ending'. This one just needed to be earlier in the anthology because, oof, I just was not able to get invested in the characters and their struggle. You know that it's not going to end well, you're just watching characters march towards their deaths.

And, again, this would have been fine... Had it been episode 6 or 8. But, no, this is how we decide to end off this cavalcade of high-concept art.

Think back to Night on Bald Mountain from the Original Fantasia. Yes, the initial orgy of horror and fright from Chernabog and his minions is a decadent display but a lot of its weight and impact would have been lost if the film just ended with that. That's why having the brief ending of the Ave Maria segment works: to keep things balanced so that everything in Fantasia can be appreciated in checks and balances.

LDaR unfortunately didn't have that foresight. So, what should have been a feast feels more like a push to get through.

Did it Have a Robot – Yes? Or No?

No, this was one of the fantasy/horror pieces.

Could this Stand Its Own as a Feature Film/TV Series?

Honestly, I'm not sure. Maybe a feature-length film just so that the universe and characters can present themselves on their own, rather than having to bear the weight of being the big finisher to the impact of 17 other stories. But it would still be a risk.

So, those are my thoughts on Love Death and Robots. Personally, I would LOVE for there to be a season 2 of this with more writers involved so we can get an overall more distinct portfolio of writing approaches (as well as maybe serve as a springboard for up-and-coming writers, hm..?)

I do acknowledge the risk of making something like this a yearly thing (many critics of Black Mirror insist that the series' recent low-points are due to the writers having to constantly come back and try to one-up their poignancy), but I think the risks would be dealt with if, again, more writers were allow to join in.

Oh well, feel free to tell me how you felt and what your personal favorites were. Thanks for reading and have a good one!

#Wolf Watches #love death and robots

[tessatechaitea]

Teen Titans Spotlight #5: Jericho

Princess of Gemworld

How will he not know when he finds his fingers have been Crazy Glued to his cock?

With Jericho's powers, I don't know why he needs Garfield's fingerprints. Why not just possess Steve Dayton himself, knock him out so he can't scream for help, and just walk in to grab the promethium? Or hire his dad to get the shit! He could probably guilt Deathstork into doing loads of illegal stuff for him.

Why would Steve Dayton allow Garfield Logan access to his promethium?! Yeah, I fucking know Logan's his son. It still doesn't fucking make sense!

Jericho takes the promethium back to Arthur Lord so he can trade it to the Quraci government and save his daughter's life. But it's only after Lord leaves Addie's place with the promethium that she says to Jericho, "I think we just got scammed!"

Jericho responds, "I think you're a loser."

Sure enough, Penny and Arthur were just using Joey and his mom to get their hands on the most destructive non-Lobo thing in the DC Universe. Penny is all, "That dupe actually thought I loved him! But we didn't even fuck! I just held a tin of microwaved potato salad between my legs and let him fuck that." That's what sex feels like, right? Fucking warm potato salad? I mean, I totally know that's what it's like. I hope! I mean, I don't hope it feels like that in that I love the feeling of fucking warm potato salad! I hope that's what it feels like so people who have fucked don't think I haven't fucked because I described it poorly. We all have different experiences anyway! You can't invalidate my description of what it felt like when I totally had sex all those times! Joseph, being the biggest dupe of them all, didn't replace the promethium tablets with Sugar Mamas like I would have expected him to do. So now he and his mother have to break into Arthur Lord's secret laboratory and resteal the promethium tablets! If only they had consulted Nightwing, they could have been done with this adventure already. He would have been all, "Man, Joey, you smell like potato salad ! Did you fall for the fake lover with the potato salad between her legs trick? You better not trust her, buddy!" Oh, I was wrong! They don't break into Lord's place at all! They think their smartest move is to break into Qurac and kidnap Curt, Penny's husband! I guess they can use him as leverage. Although couldn't Joey have lifted Penny's fingerprints off of his prostate to gain access to the secret lab? If Joey had the ability to sneak into Qurac to rescue Penny without risking the entire world by giving Qurac promethium, why the fuck wasn't that the plan from the beginning?! I'm starting to sense that maybe Marv Wolfman was on Quaaludes when he wrote this script.

That would be Joey's crotch.

There's an advert for NBC's Saturday morning line-up in this issue and it just makes me wonder: if modern conservatives are so pissed off about everything in our culture that they see as emasculating the kind of man they think every guy should be, where the fuck were they in 1986 while I was watching Kissyfur, The Gummi Bears, Smurfs, Punky Brewster, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Foofur, and Kidd Video?! The most manly cartoon in that list is Alvin and the Chipmunks and they wore dresses! Stop doing the math and trying to point out that I was fourteen or fifteen in 1986! Gummi Bears had one of the best cartoon theme songs (right after Ducktales)! I'm going to go listen to it right now! Joey and Adeline take Curt to Tokyo where they finally begin interrogating him. Even though he spent multiple days being tortured by the Quraci government, he wouldn't tell them a thing. He spends two minutes alone with Adeline and Joseph and he begins spilling the beans. The only threat they used was that Joey was going to put himself inside hi...oh. I see what he's afraid of! Dude, it's nothing to be frightened of! Just relax, man! Joseph's a sensitive poet. He'll definitely provide a reach-around. Joseph infiltrates Lord's secret base and discovers he's resurrecting H.I.V.E. (which stands for Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination which is fucking stupid. Just spitballing for a few seconds and I already came up with a better one: Higher Institute of Violent Extremism!). Joseph's movements are described as catlike which is why he's noticed freaking the fuck out, bouncing off walls, and yowling at the top of his voice. Arthur Lord, leader of an organization full of soldiers who are only in the organization because they killed a bunch of other master fighters, decides to fight Joseph himself. His mighty warriors (the best of the best!) just stand around in robes watching.

What good is your invaluable edge if you're not going to use it?! Kill the little creep, you idiot!

Arthur Lord tackles Joseph straight through a wall where they both disappear from view. Then he emerges and he's all, "He's dead! And since Joseph can't control the host's talking, I must be myself and telling the truth! Ha ha ha!" But I know better! Remember how I already saw there's another issue in this stupid story arc? Joseph is totally still alive! And probably possessing Arthur! And probably able to speak because Arthur was knocked unconscious! Pshaw! Marv Wolfman, you need better twists! Arthur and H.I.V.E. take off from their secret base to go take over the world. And they won't need the base anymore for some reason, so they just blow up the island on the way out. Ugh, he's the worst kind of tenant. Teen Titans Spotlight #5: Jericho Rating: B-. So much betrayal! So many twists and turns! Not much fucking though. Which makes it a mediocre Teen Titans story. And yes, the B- factors in the fact that this whole conflict is, once again, somehow driven by family.

#Teen Titans Spotlight #Jericho #Teen Titans #DC Comics #DC

[braindamageforbeginners]

Male Fragility and Male Pattern Baldness

14 months, two weeks, one day post-dx

This week, in addition to The Donald, the big news has been... Gillette shaving products. You might know this company for the various shaving-based products they make, or the catchy slogan, “The best a man can get.” Which sounds a little weird and unintentionally homoerotic, but I dislike bleeding when shaving, and, for travel purposes, they have the market for disposable razors.

In the wake of Brett Kavanaugh being confirmed and Cadet Bonespurs still not being called for using the word “pussy” on a live mic (okay, so, even if we want to accept the idea that men talk to each other in the locker room - we don’t, it is the most uncomfortable and awkward environment imaginable - you don’t repeat it in polite company, and YOU DO NOT REPEAT IT IN A TAPED INTERVIEW), it has come to light that America has a problem with massive, throbbing male egos that go unchecked until they inevitably screw up and alienate so many of their victims that Americans vote in loads of sensible, moderate people (previously known as “women,” but that was also when we voted based on gender and class lines instead of a person’s public record). Gillette then changed its slogan to “The best a man can be,” which, I have to admit, is almost as good as “The Most Interesting Man in the World” for aspirational marketing aimed at men. The goal of all this was, presumably, to start a discussion on toxic masculinity and gender roles. Now, I may have some misgivings about this conversation being helmed and instigated by a company with a definite financial and cultural stake in the (patriarchal) status quo, but it’s still a talk we need to have in society. My reaction of vague misgivings and semi-apathy was nothing, however, compared to white men on the Internet. They used all caps to rain impotent fury down upon this perceived slight, that, maybe, we should have a discussion about how framing masculinity only as it brutalizes and disenfranchises others isn’t such a good idea. As someone who’s had his country club privileges revoked but still gets passing privilege, I’d think it’s a discussion worth having, especially if you’re under the rather idiotic impression that your good health and luck will last forever. Now, even though I still stand by the idea that Rousseau was right, and that most of us are mostly-good; at the same time, when you’re forced into a position of vulnerability, people you thought you knew well can reveal themselves to be utter assholes. Yes, pain, torture, and crippling may reveal my inner nature to some extent, but how you treat me in this period is a much more revealing test of your character, dear reader. So, I’m fully prepared to discuss this whole “how you treat the least among you” idea, with the acknowledgment that, as the least among you (sort of), I am fully in favor of toppling the patriarchy and rebuilding it with something less creepy and predatory.

Then I got Rogaine. Full disclosure, Mother Dearest actually got it for me, because I still wear my hair in a rather severe mohawk to cover up the weird, radioactive/thin patches that were scalded off by the nuclear fire (undergoing cancer treatments is like puberty - you change pretty dramatically, physically, and you’re left looking almost, but not quite, like you used to, which is disconcerting to see in a mirror). Normally, the word “regrowth” is not a good one for a brain cancer patient, but, since everything else in my life has been completely upended and vivisected, I figured, “Why not?” In a weird way, even though I’m not in a position I’d wish upon someone I despised (well..), I don’t feel terribly emasculated. After all, how many rounds of chemo and radiation have you gone through? I know I can take a severe beating and get up afterward; even if that beating comes in the form of neurosurgery, radiation, and chemo (I realize my framing of that in terms of violence is probably typical of the problem, but we’re working our way toward other, more humorous topics).

If ever there was a physical embodiment of the sort of mindset that would fee attacked by Gillette’s rather flaccid suggestion we sort of talk about problems with traditional masculinity; it’s Rogaine. First of all, it comes with all these warning labels on it - I am not making this up - saying things like “Not intended for women” or “Not for use by women” (that last one is verbatim). It doesn’t actually go full-blown Alex Jones manthrocyte (or whatever male virility cure he’s hocking this week), nor do the words “male jelly” or “He-Man Woman Haters Club” appear on the box, but it’s amazingly close. What’s especially delightful - to me, anyway - is that a female friend of the family (who has issues with hair stress-related hair loss) is the one who recommended it. However, I am trying to be somewhat more sensible about what I put in myself these days, so I did some quick Internet research (that’s enough to make me an expert on the subject, I figure), and it’s a vasodilator - it’ll open your blood vessels (I still haven’t pieced together how that leads to increased hair growth, but I’m willing to take some things on faith). Apparently, you’re not supposed to take it orally. Which opened up a whole new set of questions, like, 1. What was the study where they found out someone was dumb enough to drink hair tonic? and, 2. If you do drink it, is that some sort of suicide warning? Bearing in mind that this is just the packaging - which, again, I get it’s targeting insecure middle-aged men and/or those of use who want our youthful appearance back while we’re still actually youthful; both of which are vulnerable to suggestion and hesitancy, and maybe they’d turn back at the thought that maybe someone would think less of them for using feminine hygiene products (supposedly, army medics have used tampons to seal wounds in combat, so even the most-feminine of feminine hygiene products is helpful to all genders under the right circumstance), let’s go on to what’s inside the box. Which is a series of bland-looking bottles that are perfect for not indicating someone is insecure about baldness. And an applicator. Let’s hold for a moment. In most medical products - even the CBD/THC oils I take (orally, but maybe I should try them on my hair) the “applicator” is either a glorified eye-dropper or more-glorified Q-tip (side-note: you don’t see Q-tips exclusively marketed to women, even though their most  common use is as a mascara applicator)(this is true; you’ve probably been sticking them in the wrong orifice for years). Not so with Rogaine. This comes with - depending on how you look at it - either a miniature turkey baster (perfect for basting Cornish hens), or a Cyclopean eye-dropper. In other words, there’s virtually no way you could screw up where you stick this thing and apply it nasally (again, I’m sure it’s been tried, and they rewrote the warnings and repackaged it). It is, in short, not only catered to male insecurity, it’s designed to completely idiot-proof (I guess they got that one right, most intelligent people wouldn’t be fooled into thinking that fancy, medically-worded hair tonic works)(normally, neither would I, but the woman who recommended it is smarter than me, so I’m willing to try it). It’s the perfect product for Homer J. Simpson.

After drizzling this stuff onto your radioactive-seared flesh, you’ll notice a slight tingling sensation. Either that or just the sensation of something liquid-y runnning over your scalp, I have a lot of scars, so it’s hard to tell. Then... nothing. Admittedly, I’ve only been using it for a few days, Apparently, you have to use it for a month or two before seeing results, at which point you’re either supposed to discontinue use, or, for the truly brave, drink it. Again, I just went 12 months straight with chemo, it’s not like something as minor as not seeing results will be a major deterrent.

For those of you wondering how I do it - go the full 12 rounds of chemo, radiation, and surgery, knowing I will eventually have to repeat it, and eventually lose - that’s how. You have to be able to look at every miniscule step on the path (and not much further ahead) and chuckle at how extraordinarily weird and fucked up it all is. And realize you want to be around to chuckle at the next weird, fucked up moment, even if you have weird, striated baldness on one side.

[thedogsled]

I'm interested in hearing about the Merlin queerbaiting thing because I seem to remember someone saying that this homoerotic subtext was upped after the producers or writers or whoever had been asked whether the queer subtext was intentional or something like that.

tbh the likelihood is you probably heard this from me, but who knows. I think it’s clear to a lot of people in Merlin fandom either way, although maybe not everyone feels that way. I’m going to go riiiight back to the beginning, though, to the very first episode where I was coming off my last fandom (Harry Potter) and had nowhere else to go, and there was this awesome show on TV…

First of all I’m going to drop this here:

So this was my experience, back in 2008, when I got to go to MCM London. The show had been on maybe a few weeks at the time, and not much had been developed back then, but there was no doubt that they were writing the pair of them very well as a strong male/male friendship. Now the subtext was glorious, because as you can hear right here it wasn’t the intention of the writers to put any of it in there, and it came off so naturally as a strong set of bonds forming between two guys. Nobody was aware of it, and then bam there’s all this fanfiction being written. This was the first ever question these guys had been asked on a panel ever. We’re not talking like the pussyfooting into asking those kinds of questions like you see with SPN panels, these guys were fresh and green and had no idea what they were getting into, and the unequivocal downplay from the writer ‘No, this is a story about friendship’, well it should have stopped there. But as you hear the writer go on to say, as they laugh about the idea of people shipping Merthur at all, these sorts of heroes journeys do have a homoerotic subtext. He acknowledges that, but he’s also forthright in saying ‘no, that’s not what this is, end of story’.

So for me, that should have been what it is, i.e. it’s not queerbaiting because there’s absolutely no intention of going there, and they’ve made it clear. Unfortunately that’s not what happened, and the consequence is that it wasn’t made clear to the audience. Sure, that crowd at comic con of a few hundred people, but not the audience (also I’m disappointed there wasn’t more to that clip, because the writers (there was at least one other person, a woman there, backed and forthed briefly on the topic, “is that a thing?” or something like that, but it was ten years ago so I’m afraid I can’t remember exactly. By this time next year people were cosplaying Merlin, it had played in the USA and everything was really taking off, but that first season was in the can at this point, and consequently precious and innocent. The friendship between Arthur and Merlin was as untarnished as you could get, because the writers had no idea what they were doing, and the actors had no idea of what was coming across in those intimate moments, so that was perfect too. Seriously, that first season of Merlin is superb.

But now everyone is self conscious. They know they have this audience and they’ve been exposed to how loud it is, how superbly influential. The feeling of watching Merlin season 2 was therefore entirely different to watching season 1. Bradley and Colin carry themselves differently. The wording choices in the scenes become deliberately nudge nudge wink wink. The scenes themselves are more homoerotic because of this conglomeration of ideas and acting choices. Merlin talks about how he ‘feels’ about Arthur and there’s shitloads more shirtless scenes and long silences and held glances between Merlin and Arthur than Arthur and anyone else. 

I’m saying this as someone who didn’t fall for the queerbaiting, because I knew from that unequivocal “this is a profound friendship” declaration that they were never, ever going there, that Arthur was destined to get with Guinevere (that was the societal wall i.e. class, that he had to jump over) and they weren’t ever going to do anything but straight and hetereosexual on Saturday night on BBC1 (an opinion I changed for Sherlock but very quickly changed back when I saw the same tone and delivery grabbing for and successfully pulling in the audience who so desperately wanted to see what they were being teased at. Merlin and Sherlock really coincided at the sweet spot of queerbaiting (which incidentally is when Cas joins SPN, and coincides with the most queerbaiting seasons of SPN as well.) But I was at ground zero for Merlin, before shipping Merthur was cool, and you can betcha that the writer declaring that there were only straights here put a dead end to that before it could begin. Just imagine a writer saying something like that now. We track all the panels, we record everything. We’d tear them to pieces in a second flat.

The mood in S2 just changes. Here’s a bunch of clips from S2. I’ve stuck it on a late timestamp, but that’s only because that particular scene is a standout example: gay 4 comedy. By the middle of S3 filming, everyone is well briefed on the interest in the ship. The baiting gets really hard and comedic by season 4. I’ve jumped to some of the worst offending moments in this series of clips here. And remember Sherlock’s first season aired just before this, thus my accusations of a queerbaiting heyday. It was all getting into stride about this time, carte blanche to suck in queer viewers with no intention of following through and use ‘they might be gay’ both as an endless mockery, as in these Merlin clips, and as a way to add seriousness to some scenes. My memory of feeling mocked and ridiculed by Merlin is just so strong, and reviewing some of the episodes really nails that down for me. Having known where the writers come from, knowing the sentiment behind their approach to their queer audience…it drives me up the wall even right now.

So season 5 they pull it all together, and - spoilers - Arthur dies in Merlin’s arms, and there’s an unspoken I love you, and Merlin waits for centuries for the return of the Once and Future King. And this, coming back to the strongest part of the story in order to deliver the final emotional punch, the part that carried it through (the relationship which could be misconstrued between the main characters) and offering a flimsy not quite there delivery of yet more subtext (because you have to be in on the queer reading to see it), was a final spit in the eye. It’s why you’ll see a bunch of people in fandoms who are disgusted by the idea of a kiss in the last scene, they die together, or a subtextual drive off into the sunset ending, because it’s such a familiar and heart wrenching and aggravating cop out. It’s not even Thelma and Louise, you know? Because over years and years, you’ve been driven by this show, by what you’re seeing on screen, and your reward is a lacklustre nod in the last few seconds; what you’re there for you never get, and yet at the end of the day you’re supposed to be delighted they gave you even 50% certainty that your ship would end up together. Fuck you.

Merlin could easily have been read as not queerbaiting. That’s the thing. Some people will outright tell you that Sherlock is easily read as not queerbaiting too. Those people will also say ‘why is it that two guys can’t have a relationship without people thinking it’s romantic.’ Well, they can. They can. But I point you to the word ‘bromance’. These shows deliberately either take romantic storylines and apply them to those characters, or play up the gay for laughs. Especially at this sort of 2008-1016 sweet spot, pre The 100 drama, they absolutely did. They didn’t see the harm, and what they got back in return from fandom involvement and viewership and repeat viewing was absolute justification for those choices. Merlin benefits from it’s queer audience, but it also benefits from a storytelling perspective as having been intended as a heterosexual friends only story in the first place, and the first season (and season 3 largely, idk why) play out like that. That’s what lets it off the hook when people are looking for queerbaiting in the show, because it’s absolutely not from the get go. Like with Destiel it establishes naturally, both as a result of the story and because of the vibe the two main actors have with each other. 

Compare to Sherlock, which went for it right out of the gate “Is this a date?” and never backed down, applying the queerbaiting consistently until they were done as though I think to legitimatize the writing choice. “See, it wasn’t queer, that’s just how we wrote it, you’ve all got dirty minds.” That same show will be defended with ‘why can’t guys just be friends’, and implications that any suggestion of physical intimacy doesn’t make it gay and is harmful to guys in general. There may be some truth in that, but there is also truth in the use and manipulation of queer audiences, and there are plenty of touchy feely male/male relationships which aren’t queerbaiting; look at most buddy cop shows (I exclude due South from this), JD and Turk, McGee and DeNozzo, Esposito and Ryan. Well written brotherhood and friendship is out there which does not rely on one character waiting for another to come back from the dead for centuries, or casually delivering that Cas ∴ Cas

I’ve been going on for a while, but I’m going to just make one last swing for it before I conclude. Take in mind that original quote, then. Look at this article. The quotes here are notorious in Merlin fandom, of course, but even from an outsider they leave a bad taste in my mouth. 

“Murphy points to the moment where Arthur finally dies as what the entire series has been building towards. At the “just hold me,” Murphy justifies to a shocked McGrath that, “well, he’s dying, the man he loves is dying, so he’s holding him.””

Maybe it wasn’t queerbaiting to start with, but Merlin knew what it was doing. S1: “Merlin is about a friendship between Merlin and Arthur, and they do care about each other hugely, but um it’s not necessarily, you know, it isn’t a gay love story, no.” vs. S5: “I think you maybe just confirmed what a lot of people thought, and I’m glad that Julian could do it, because he’s probably the only one who could have gotten away with that commentary.”

I don’t know where Merlin fandom stands on this. I know there’s an undercurrent - because I’ve read it - that some people like the ending as it is because they don’t think that all love has to be shown in smooches. But that would be fine if it wasn’t raising a strawman to argue against (I see it a lot in these conversations). Nobody is even talking about kissing. A relationship of any shade which is confirmed and genuine is fine. But queerbaiting specifically is this kind of stringing people along by dancing around the suggestion of something, and then coming back to state that it was there all along, or worse still just go “Maybe~ If that’s the way you see it~”. Nobody is saying they have to bang it out in a clearing in order for it to be legitimized, but that’s a whole other level from ridiculing people who see it that way, playing it as a joke, or stringing those people along right to the very last gasp.

For sure, if you don’t think it was queerbaiting then that’s great, and I’m actually glad for you! I’m sure people disagree with me on a handful of things I’ve said here, but Merlin was a huge disappointment for me as a creative. I wanted to play in that universe, but the seed was planted that every hint of homoerotic subtext was targeting me, or making a mockery of me, and it poisoned that well from the get go. That I’m still harboring those feelings a decade later probably shapes the way I interact with canons now, but it also is an indication of how strongly I feel about Destiel that I can get over it; once burned twice shy usually applies; it harmed my viewing experience of Merlin, Sherlock, and Hannibal, and I won’t deny it affects me when I watch SPN (and some other shows) too. It’s part of why I think this show has such an opportunity to do something different. But there’s still that tugging part of me that insists that because this is a show nurtured in that sweet spot, I have no reason to believe it should do anything outside the norm. Perhaps the situation with The 100 doesn’t affect it, or maybe it will have learned from it? Some things, like the queer hires to the writers room, fill me with hope. But who knows? That’s unfortunately the state of the uneasy relationship I have with it, particularly as a queer person who wants to see those stories on TV. To tell the truth, this uncertainty and unease is the damage that queerbaiting causes in the long term, and we deserve better stories.

This got super duper long, so thanks for sticking with it.

#long post for ts #destiel #i'm not tagging this for the ship it really is #because despite having watched the whole show as it aired i was never in the fandom #and i don't want to fight about something i wasn't deeply involved in ifkwim #queerbaiting for ts #tangential spn #despite having my own perspective on this subject obviously #i still feel as though i'm not qualified to discuss it cause i wasn't in the slash fandom #and that's sort of sad #but i would be interested in hearing that perspective myself #especially from someone who didn't feel baited and just rolled with all of the fun of it #cause i'm sure you had a WAY better time in this fandom than i had being salty about it #dosgled replies

[i-sveikata]

Gabby liveblogs the new teen wolf ep

i mean technically it’s not liveblogging since I’m in australia and the delay obvs but here we go guys prepare for death:

-lololololololo the fuck they always gotta start it at the school cause they cant afford another set anymore

-whut scott is the assistant coach???!!!!!

-omg hayden left?????? why do they literally just remove all of their female characters with nonsense explanations??? hello kira???? havent seen her in a while. do females not exist in beacon hills?? apparently even being a love interest isn’t a good enough reason to keep the gals around anymore dear god.

-’you want my whistle? who gave you a whistle???’ omfg coach finstock is the best

-the fuck was that supposed to be a wolf on the field or a coyote??? or malia???? legit can’t even tell, oh nvmind scott and liam followed it into the woods found a pack of dead wolves with weird bugs that are crawling out of their eyes, naturally.

-malia heading out to paris and not wanting to help anyone with the problem is goals. but you know there are other ways to write female characters without making their only interest being climbing dick you know, we can have depth.

-liam and scott bonding, lol, they cute and feels, scotty all worried he’s losing control, making him repeat the werewolf mantra dear god this is dorky. giving it instrumental impressive music wont change that friends.

-lol, ‘i got ducktape’ this is me.

-oh goody more mental asylum stuff and weird frozen mummified rock shit, is this a throwback to pompeii or what?

-yeah touch the petrified ashy human corpse thing, that’s a great idea obvs like what is even happening right now.

-of course some dude exploded out of it, why are we even surprised people? oh that’s right we’re not. wait who the fuck is that? no wait, i can guess, it’s another mediocre white guy.

-’i like latin’ liam you dork, oh poor kid ‘this has been a really hard year for me’ ‘if you want to talk about your girlfriend guidance hours are posted’ damn girl that’s brutal.

-interesting that all the youngins are getting a senior registration and applying to colleges scenes talking about their futures at school but for the veteran characters we barely got a sentence about it.

-’you can see me right’ omg lol corey are you having some visibility issues.

-who wants to guess this new college guidance lady is probably not human- lol the music just changed and went all sinister like bruh we already got this, literally every new character we meet ends up being evil like cmon.

-who the fuck is this nolan kid- yet another mediocre white boy!!!!!- are they going for the olympics in white boys what is this shit- oh god she wants to talk about the animal attack on the field.

-lol him being like ‘that was no animal’ jesus fucking christ honestly am i in deja vu land are we just repeating tired drama from the first season now.

-liam how do you not know what a scarab is????? have you not seen the mummy what kind of kid are you??

-haha that girl screaming ‘why does this keep happening to our school’ when all the rats show up is the real shit.

-mediocre other mummy white boy appears in the classroom, stares a bit and tries to look interesting and then leaves. wow lifechanging moment.

-naturally liam and mason end up in the pipes again, because where else would teen wolf film things that happen.

-lydia making a bestiary yeah girl. Her mama isn’t being very smart saying no to that- who’s guess is it she dies almost immediately??? yeah girl leave that paperwork in mamas desk. 

-scott trying out his weird electrocution kink with his mum, i am uncomfortable, but also teaching her the ways of electrocution is vaguely sweet.

-mama mccall gonna cover all the werewolf shit when scott is gone i love it. family bonding stuff yeaaaaaahh. oh shit she electrocuted him whilst hugging. family fun times.

-’i held the button, didn’t I?’ ‘you held the buttton’ BEST

-rat king ew is that what they said. gross. lol malia making liam smell the gross dead rat.

-REROUTED. malia is determined to get on a plane to get that french dick apparently.

-how the fuck did mummy white guy end up in the sheriff station???? do the deputies no longer exist?? wheres papa stilinski???

-parrish on the creepy white dude, all is well apparently.

-liam and mason bringing mama mccall a nice dead rat. bring her dinner you sick bastards.

-the fuck??? hallways in flames, parrish meeting another possible hellhound??? what is trying to be said here, fucked if i know.

-weird white guy has some kind of blood kink, sniffing all the injured people in the hospital because of reasons.

-idiot dudes punched liam in the face and he lost his shit. some mantra kid. use the werewolf force. freaky white mummy guy looming in the hallway behind him, cue demon suspense music while he chases for liam now in a closing elevator.

-ANDDDDDD the door closes before mummy white dude can get to him. shocker. i am on the edge of my seat with surprise and  anguish obvs

-lydia showing up to get scott? i thought in the last ep stiles said hed be driving down to campus with lydia together???? does that mean she did and came back for some reason?? or stiles miraculously teleported there on his own. wow i love continuity. good thing im watching teen wolf huh.

-all the lights go out, because its lydia this is teen wolf and EVERYTHING MUST BE DARK AND HARD TO SEE AT ALL TIMES.

-phones ringing are always the most suspenseful thing to happen to me as well, love hearing that dialtone and having a wind machine suddenly blowing hair out of my face before appearing back in... wow you guessed it- the school!!!

-ohhhhhh spideyweb time. love it. gotta touched those creepy webs because otherwise what else could lydias banshee powers possibly do. lots of screaming. love that. was that gunfire? idk here this is stupid. 

-ah yes, lydia miraculously finds the perfect bit of web to touch because of unexplainable reasons.’ YOU LET IT OUT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO RIDE WITH THE HUNT FOREVER’ k thanks im hanging up the web now byeeeeeee.

-how does nobody lock the fucking school doors at this point. parrish and mummy white dude just walked straight in.

-’what are you?’ ‘you know what i am im the same as you’ lololololololololl this is gonna be some weird hellhound pissing contest.

-’something you let out, something that needs to be stopped’ oh goody something new an differernt for us. so innovative.

-ah yes, the pissing contest begins. or fire contest i guess? idk?/ and oh hey the guidance counsellor lady was not as she seemed!!! wow, i never would have seen that coming in my life. thanks

-hey guys when you take away the fire, it’s just two shirtless dudes homoerotically wrestling with each other.

-oh well time for parrish to sleep it off,

-’if the wild hunt couldn’t keep you nothing can’ this is literally sounds like the fucked up adage ‘if i cant have you no one can’ and i am uncomfortable.

-oh boy white mummy guy isn’t after liam- i could never have guess that would happen.

-’it must be stopped nothing else matters’ wow, no, because here I was thinking just let the monster run free and kill people and pile up bodies and stuff. isnt that what teen wolf is about.

-OMG SCOTT GOT INTO THE JEEP  AND FOUND A ‘BE GENTLE’ LETTER FROM STILES THIS IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE EP I SWEAR

-what the fuck lydia, popping your ass up in the middle of the headlights like some kind of ghost haunting, ‘we cantt leave’ bruh you need to chill. 

-of course they need some scene with mason giving liam a pep talk like hes the most important character in this show, yeah id totally believe that. hey heres an idea instead of making it about comforting him for losing his girlfriend, how bout you dont write his girlfriend out, there i fixed it.

-malia’s flight no longer delayed!!! haha that squeal of excitement, omg she yelled ‘Oui Oui’ i gotchu girl leave this hellhole while you can.

-opp and heres scott and lydia out to ruin her fun. ofc.

-”no, no nonononono  no, its just rats and wolves- and maybe a little bug problem’ see shes got the spirit. let her get french dick in peace. but also, how the fuck are they gonna explain her and scott hooking up in the future because idk what a fucking ride.

-goes to the window instead because her friends are trying to cockblock her- shes DETERMINED PPL U CANT STOP THE DICK.

-lol scott steps aside and then lydia moves into malias way MY GOD before scott pulls her back out, fuckin i cannot.

-two seconds of disappointed looks but cmon guys lets not pretend that malias an independent person who can make decisions outside of the group- aaaannnnnn shes back. wow. quelle surprise.

-but hey at least she hit scott in the face with her bag, get it girl.

-injured white mummy hellhound staggering through the woods then shift to lydia, malia and scott in the car ‘we opened a door to another world and something came out with us’ THIS IS LITERALLY THE PLOT FOR SEASON 3? 4? THE ONE WITH THE NOGITSUNE CMON PPL.

-of course guidance counsellor college lady is gonna kill white mummy hellhound boy. i support her.

-’what kind of price a big price?” ‘big’ wow, A+ dialogue here, someone give them an emmy for this shit.

-oh no guidance counsellor lady in trouble. bu t of course when push comes to shove, shoot white mummy hellhound boy in the head. but white guy actually died for once???? props. lets see how long hell stay dead before theres a reason that makes no sense to bring him back. cough cough theo.

-two seconds later cause apparently thats enough time for her to escape without the Gang sans stiles noticing. even though two of them have increased hearing and sense of smell?!!!??!! because it wouldnt be teen wolf otherwise.

-lydia ‘i thought you couldnt kill a hellhound’ WHEN WAS THAT EVER SAID??? I LITERALLY DO NOT REMEMBER THAT BEING STATED???

-scott, picking up the bullet casing which apparently killed an unkillable hellhound but hes just so good its not an issue. oh hey, is that a fleur de lis?

-’argent’ ooooooooohhh more suspense. dont think i can take it.

-’the sound of someone who’s never lifted a hand against a human being’ you can says shes a hunter lydia, her trunk was full of murdery shit we get it.

-also whats with teen wolfs repetitive need to make girls have an emotional distressing response to something before they go all ‘i kill you, ill kill everyone, ill kill myself idgaf’ and their expression goes all Tough Girl. like cmon. u realise girls dont all react the same way to the same things right?

-but hey props to guidance lady for not dying, though i mean she’s a girl and shes not white so lets assume her chances arent strong for future eps.

-lol all three of them sitting on scotts bed together. is it just me or should they all just make out, im just saying.

-’can we say we forgot?’ omg lydia PHRASING, u literally forgot stiles barely a few eps ago, dont crush him already.

-’we almost lost him last time’ i just love how the girls have all the emotional lines and scott just gets to sit there a nod like stiles hasnt been his best friend for years and years. but apparently connection on teen wolf means only if you want to fuck each other since scott magically forgot stiles without much effort and the entire season was about lydia getting him back even though they literally werent even dating and theyd given no indication shed even liked him when he was taken. but suddenly shes magically interested in him and the connection with scott, his best fucking friend for life somehow wasnt strong enough and I AM SALTY.

-malia- ’if this turns out to be somthing big and we don’t call him-’ ‘he would kill us’ hey look Scott got to say something accurate about his best friend, yay!

-’you guys didn’t hear his voice, he was really excited to be there’ aww scott, but seriously you asshole writers are still telling me their connection wasn’t enough for scott to bring him back? for shame.

-’lets just play the voicemail’ lol here comes the swelling emotional music.

-but seriously fuck you guys, heres stiles telling scott to leave beacon hills behind him and that its not his responsibility and not to worry about it and take stiles’ jeep (which we know he loves more than anything) and drive, and the instrumentals are getting really emotional showing stiles at the fbi and youre still trying to tell me that scott wouldnt have remembered his best friend without lydia???? fuck off.

-omg the nerd stopped at the fbi seal and straightened his tie i fucking love it.

-seriously whats with this music??? like stiles just won the damn noble peace prize or something just for showing up. its no wonder ppl think scott isnt the main when the writers give stiles all these storylines and attention, like this is not subtle ppl.

-stiles constantly interrupting the fbi dude in the middle of the presentation gives me life omg.

-’one recent manhunt had our crisis response team chasing down a bizarrely feral unsub in the wilderness of north carolina-”

-OFMG LOL ITS DEREK 

-STILES SPAT WATER EVERYWHERE THIS IS GREAT

-are they literally trying to sell that this is current??? like that is clearly season 1 footage of derek what the fuck is happening right now. why cant he just have a vacation for fun, why do the writers have to ruin everything for him but nope, mass hunting derek time ofc,

-the way stiles put his hand over his mouth as if that would cover up the fact that he literally spat water everywhere. smooth stilinski.

-omg the presenter dude look down at the list of names seeing Mieczyslaw Stilinski and legit being like ‘uh... young man’ thats awesome.

-’just got a little excited’ honestly what the fuck teen wolf. you baiting sterek fans or what?

-stiles trying to find out what they’re after him for- ‘Murder’ but what type of murder. “Mass murder’

-suspenseful music AGAIN jesus fucking c h r i s t.

-OMG now they’re just zooming in on dereks tattoo, increasing the music. dude we fucking get it, thats derek hale and you, the writers, fucking hate him. chill.

#teen wolf season 6b #spoilers #semi live blogging #i have a lot of feelings apparently #this is one hundred per cent sass lets be real here #lololol what a laugh really #teen wolf spoilers #6b spoilers