I read somewhere here on Tumblr that there was a theory that the masked Gun for Hire in New Dawn was the Deputy. It seemed like such an awesome idea and it got me thinking of the following scenario.
So, imagine the New Dawn protagonist finds Joseph either in Dutch’s bunker or at one of the locations on Dutch’s island. They move towards him to either talk or figure out if he’s an enemy, and then this masked bodyguard comes out of nowhere and takes them down and holds them at gunpoint; all the while remaining completely silent. Joseph calls off his ‘child’ and after a conversation, the protagonist ends up taking them back to Prosperity.
Any of the returning characters who see the Father’s arrival will understandably pissed, and the bodyguard senses the immediate tension and sees the dirty looks, so they stick really close to him. Eventually, there is a confrontation between Joseph and Nick. There is a lot of yelling from Nick while Joseph calmly stands there listening. Then, suddenly, Nick goes to hit Joseph and the bodyguard swings into action. There is a struggle as Nick and the masked bodyguard fall to the ground.
The bodyguard manages to subdue Nick, but not before he gets one last swing in, snapping his assailants head to the side and knocking their mask off. Then the bodyguard slowly turns back to look at the pilot and he finds himself pinned to the ground staring up into the face of his former best friend.
this might be because I’m a family law lawyer and also an old crone who remembers when marriage equality wasn’t a thing (as in, marriage equality only became nation-wide two months before I went to law school), but I have Strong Feelings about the right to marry and all the legal benefits that come with it
like I’m all for living in sin until someone says they don’t want to get married because it’s ~too permanent~ and in the same breath start talking about having kids or buying a house with their significant other. then I turn into a 90-year-old passive-aggressive church grandma who keeps pointedly asking when the wedding is. “yes, a divorce is very sad and stressful, but so is BEING HOMELESS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF MARITAL PROPERTY, CAROLINE!”
“oh, he thinks a piece of paper shouldn’t define your relationship? ASK HIM HOW HE FEELS ABOUT BEING ON YOUR BABY’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE, PATRICIA.”
“oh, sure, it’s all fun and games until your estranged parents are making medical decisions for you and inheriting all your property, TIMOTHY.”
so, I’ve gotten this question and similar ones before, and I want to use it to go into what marriage actually is.
so, in law, there are a couple of legal assumptions made when someone is a close family member, like a parent. the assumptions are that this person knows you well enough to make decisions on your behalf in an emergency, supports or is supported by you financially, and, most importantly, that they are emotionally significant to you in a way that makes them different from a total stranger or a good friend. immigration law, for example, prioritizes families over people immigrating for jobs alone, because not getting a job doesn’t have the same emotional weight as never seeing your mom again.
the difference is that you don’t get to choose your family (outside of adoption and, uh, legally that’s not a bilateral decision). you do get to choose your spouse. the fact that you chose them is why they get priority for things like inheritance and immigration, even over your parents or your siblings or your grandma.
how does the government know that this particular person is someone you want to have as part of your family? you fill out a form and you tell them.
what happens if you don’t want them in your family anymore, and don’t want those assumptions made about them? you fill out a different form and you tell the government that.
the thing I think that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around – whether you’re a starry-eyed romantic or a pragmatic bitch like me – is that marriage isn’t an announcement of how much you love someone. that’s what a facebook status update is for. you do not need to be in love, or sexually/romantically monogamous, or be religious, or any of the other things people associate with marriage, in order to bemarried.
it’s a legal decision. it is choosing to get certain benefits (like taxes, because it’s assumed you’re financially supporting each other) in exchange for certain responsibilities (because it’s assumed you’re supporting each other, it stops mattering exactly who bought what after you got married, so divorce splits the whole pool of stuff even if one person bought like 75% of it).
you don’t get the one without the other, and you don’t get either if you don’t affirmatively say that’s what you want to have happen. it doesn’t happen automatically, or in every romantic relationship no matter how serious, because the choice is the point.
and, to be clear: if you do not want, or do not care about, the legal rights and responsibilities of being married, you should not get married. it’s a fucking legal contract that has serious legal implications! it’s not something you should be doing for funsies!
tl;dr: if you want all the shit that comes with a marriage, good and bad, you need to tell the government that’s what you want. if you don’t want it, then you don’t need to do it, but you need to also be aware of what you’re potentially losing (in exchange for what you’re keeping). that should be an informed decision, not one you make for emotional reasons like “I just want everyone to know I’m only having sex with this person forever” or “our love is so pure it transcends legal boundaries.”
Is there any option other than marriage for telling the government you want this person to be part of your family? Like, can you draw up some kind of homebrew contract?
Short answer: No. If there was, queer people would have done it already.
Long answer: That’s a little like asking “can you become a citizen via contract rather than going through the immigration and naturalization process?” Marriage is a legal status: you either are or you aren’t. Can you cobble together very specific stuff, like advanced healthcare directives and wills and whatnot? Yes, absolutely. But anything that requires you to be legally married as a status cannot be contracted away: you can’t file taxes jointly or sponsor someone for a green card or get someone’s Social Security benefits if they die if you’re not married to that person.
Now, to be clear: some things that often require marriage do not always require marriage. For example, usually you need to be married to have someone unrelated to you be on your health insurance, but my job’s specific health insurance plan allows coverage for domestic partners, which they define as a single person who has cohabitated with you for six months or more and is in a committed relationship with you. So even though my fiancé and I are not married yet, he’s been on my health insurance for the past year and a half, because we hit the six month mark of living together right around when I had to re-enroll in my health insurance for the year.
But if we’d gotten married sooner, he’d have been able to get on my health insurance right away (getting married is a qualifying event that lets someone get on a health insurance plan outside of the enrollment period), but since he’s just a cohabitating partner, we had to wait six months for him to get on my insurance. And if he’d moved in with me a month later, we’d have to wait a whole year before he could enroll with me on my health insurance. Even though it’s allowed, it still doesn’t have the same standing as a marriage.
I guess technically adult adoption is an option, in that it is what queer people did for a while in lieu of marriage, but it’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons (not least of which being that you can divorce a spouse but you can’t undo an adoption).
this, THIS is why QPR make me so fucking nervous. i’m not trying to shit on your beautiful poly aroace love affair, i’m asking you HOW WILL THIS RELATIONSHIP HOLD UP IN COURT. cause, news flash: it won’t.
if you have shared bank accounts and a house and a kid with someone who isn’t married to you, they can wipe you out – legally speaking – and you have no recourse. none. you will never see your kid again, unless you’re lucky and contributed half their DNA.
if they have a car accident and end up in hospital, you don’t have a legal right to see them. if they’re in a coma, their parents can pull the plug and adopt that child and you can do nothing.
queers wanted marriage equality not to Be Like Teh Hets, but because it is the most legal protection you can ever have against that bad stuff that comes (and it comes for everyone).
if you don’t have that stuff, if you’re relying on your partners to do the right thing forever and be perfect people and never have a business collapse or a messy family situation or an accident or even to get sick … you’re being really, reallynaïve.
Pre-legal-gay-marriage, I saw this happen. I was on a parenting board and one day a woman we’d posted with for years told us her partner and one of their children had died in a car accident. And because she wasn’t the biological parent of the surviving child – the child she’d been a parent to since conception – her ex’s parents took custody and took the child away and kept her from seeing that child. Ever.
Because here’s the thing: children are not property. Specifically, in estate law, children are not, and cannot be “Real Property.” You cannot bequeath them like furniture, books, and bank accounts.
“But my will states who I want as guardian!” You say.
Welp. That statement is, in law, only a (strong) suggestion. A judge still still have to rule on guardianship of your minor child, and you cannot, from the grave, dictate where they end up.
Again:Children are not real property. If you are not their biological or legal parent, the state can remove them from your custody and hand them to someone more closely related, or not related at all but merely less gay, less queer, less “inappropriate” by your state’s legal standards.
The woman I knew back then was on good term with her not-quite-in-laws. Or thought she was. Because as soon as her partner died, their tune changed 100%, they found anti-gay legal support, and they took that woman’s child from her. Forever.
That’s not my only “my outlaws are great and fine with us and its okay we’re not legally married” story, but it’s probably the most heartbreaking. Though the image of a man who has just lost his partner of 25 years watching his ex-outlaws take ½ of his chairs, ½ of his pillows, ½ of his sheets, ½ of his napkins, ½ of his towels, ½ of his dishes, ½ of his books….. is pretty fucking close. After they made him sit behind “the family” at his partner’s funeral.
My mother was a lifelong Republican, a very conservative Catholic. The thing that pushed her over on legalizing gay marriage was stories about people being in the hospital and their partner of 20 years not being allowed to see them, because they weren’t legally married. She thought that was wrong and unfair.
Also a reminder “get married” does not mean “have a wedding.” You can file the paperwork and get married in a courthouse or office. There doesn’t even need to be a ceremony, you just have to sign some papers. (Bonus: you get access to the legal privileges of marriage as well as the protections, AND you get to stick it to the billion dollar “wedding industry” that preys on us all.)
This Johnny Depp trial is showing a fascinating overlap between mid-30s white women who still haven’t gotten over Jack Sparrow and Sweeney Todd and hardcore anti-feminist incel men who are busting the fattest nuts at Amber the Bitch being dragged through the mud in a misogynistic media spectacle
And it is an intensely, deeply misogynistic media spectacle. I don’t follow celebrity bullshit and I don’t know all of the “facts” of this case and I don’t care: the only reason this is getting so much fucking press - aside from the braindead celebrity gossip aspect - is it’s a woman being legally tried for allegedly lying about domestic abuse and defaming her poor wittle ex-husband, because our society still has a deep-seated hatred and contempt for women who survive abuse and assault and speak out about it, and The Bitch being on very public trial is a chance to reaffirm and reify those beliefs against whatever meager gains were made (and then shat out by the collective media betrayal of Tara Reade) by MeToo. It’s really not fucking complicated.
People in the notes saying “I like Johnny Depp but I’m open to changing my mind on this!” girl he’s a fucking celebrity not a worldview don’t invest so much into caring about some asshole you don’t know who does make believe that you have to “change your mind” on him.
This is a very specific My Story I Am Currently Writing thing, but I am now obsessed with the idea of Jiang Yanli always having been secretly convinced it was Wen Qing, Certified Wen Medical Genius, and not Baoshen Sanren, who restored Jiang Cheng’s core (who were WWX/JC even kidding with that ridiculous magic mountain story!) and being silently grateful to Wen Qing for years because of it.
…until Jiang Yanli eventually finds out exactly how Wen Qing restored Jiang Cheng’s core. At which point, her feelings become, shall we say, Decidedly Mixed.
Anyway, this is like the best argument for Chengqing, ever, because my god can you imagine the tension. Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing get married and for years, for YEARS, at every family event, Jiang Yanli is just like trying to endure this with a rictus grin, trying to be polite to her sister-in-law who saved her brother’s life by carving out her other brother’s spiritual internal organ and transplanting it into him and she’s pretty sure Jiang Cheng knows about this by now but they never talk about it; they never talk about how they alllllll know why Wei Wuxian always gets a sword Lyft to Sunday dinner; and Jiang Yanli, who believes the best of everyone and profoundly wants everyone she loves to be happy, at peace, and not in conflict with one another, is just constantly struggling with the desire to hold her sister-in-law’s head under the river until she stops twitching.
Jiang Cheng, who knows his sister well, but not well enough: Jiejie why does your eye always twitch whenever Wei Wuxian comes to visit us and he hugs my wife?
Jiang Yanli: nothing, brother dearest. Oh my dearest sister in law, it’s that a scalpel you’re holding? I’ll just take that, there are children around, wouldn’t want anyone to get stabbed or wounded in the abdomen or anything.
Wen Qing: it was a letter opener?
Jiang Yanli: sharp edges!
Wen Qing: it was a SAFETY LETTER OPENER
okaydoes Jiang Cheng know, though
Whatever’s funniest! So….probably not? If he doesn’t know, Jiang Yanli’s frequent veiled allusions towards Just Being Honest With The People You Love, directed at Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian, go sailing over Jiang Cheng’s head, while Jin Zixuan comes to the stomach-churning conclusion that Wen Qing is cheating on her husband with Wei Wuxian, and this a kind of family drama he wants no part of.
I’m torn between wanting Wei Wuxian to notice and try to appease Jiang Yanli without directly addressing the subject, and him being absolutely oblivious and continually confused over how Wen Qing’s serving of soup always seems to be mostly broth.
I think so many people mistake the ‘you should reblog’ message with ‘I’m greedy and all I want is notes’ when it’s really not at all like that.
When creators say they’re discouraged from creating because their posts get no notes, they don’t mean they will refuse to create unless their last edit reaches at least 1k notes. What they mean is that the effort they’re putting into creating something purely out of inspiration and the need to share their passion and creativity with the world is being consumed and forgotten, just like it is on Instagram. Tumblr has changed from having an even reblog-like ratio, or even twice as many reblogs as likes, to being another social media where users consume content instead of sharingit.
We’re not trying to force you to reblog everything or want you to fill your blog with things you don’t like. But Tumblr is built on reblogs and likes. This is not a fast-food company where you can order something, consume it, and then throw it away. The very base of this website is sharing, as opposed to Instagram. Here, likes don’t give our posts exposure, reblogs do.
Notes are not the problem, the fact that you want new content without supporting creators is. So yeah, don’t be surprised if creators stop creating because nobody wants to share their creations.
And its like…. people dont even fucking realizehow special tumblr is
Tumblr doesn’t have verified checkmarks. Tumblr doesn’t have an algorithm to you show ❝The Best Stuff❞. Tumblr doesn’t display how many followers you have. Tumblr isn’t obsessed with subscriptions.
Tumblr is an evenplaying field compared to websites like Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube. Which means its up to us, the users, to spread the word of people we enjoy– the way the internet shouldbe.
I’m not asking you to reblog shit you don’t like. I’m not asking you to reblog everything out of pity. But when you see a post you genuinely like, reblog it.
My intention isn’t to BOSS people around. But people who don’t create on tumblr really have to understand that if creators stop posting here, you won’t have anything else to like but maybe memes. If you want content to circle around to your dashboard… you have to pay it forward and reblog. That is why this website is dying. The Ban is not the only reason.
If the latest episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi shows anything then it’s the pure horror, terror and soul-ripping despair Darth Vader brings to the galaxy.
And I don’t mean the scene where he drags Obi-Wan into the fire, bc that’s, like… yeah sure, he’s petty and vengeful and so full of hatred and anger, but that’s personal. That’s him and Obi-Wan, of course he’s vengeful and cruel there.
But that scene before.
Where he walks through the village, killing people when he passes them for no reason other than… killing. Trying to get a reaction of the man he assumes is there. The father he rips through the window and chokes in the air, the child rushing to try and help his dad whose neck he snaps. The woman he drags face-down through the sand while she flails. Holy fuck. Imagine you’re living in the galaxy and one day, the Empire comes and takes over. And the Force-sensitive people they have are broken and cruel and they maim and threaten and are horrible enough. And then comes Darth Vader. And you just know that NOTHING is safe. Nothing will ever be safe again. You can be a loyalist and still be dead the next second just because… no because. For no reason. Nothing is safe.
And what I really appreciate is that they’re not pulling any blows when it comes to show that the Empire is BAD. Not a little, not “but the Jedi”, nosirrah, the Empire. Is. Bad. Period. They take your lifelihood, your home, your family, your hand, your life whenever they feel like it.
And then to think of the courage of the people trying to help in the underground? My heart.
i feel so bad for lucas. he’s made his intentions clear by joining the basketball team from the start. him, mike and dustin all said they wanted high school to be different and he’s sticking by what they said. he just wants him and the gang to stop being bullied because they’re outcasts… like he’s not even doing it for himself; he’s doing it for everyone.
then lucas said that mike and dustin coming to his big game was really important to him and yet they chose a campaign over him. he saw them exiting the hellfire club looking like they had an amazing time without him, like they didn’t even care that he was there or not. he had no one - not a single person - come to support him. lucas’ ambition and efforts to experience a better life is lowkey being punished by his friends.
he’s also trying his best with max. he’s being so concerned, gentle and understanding with her even though she’s evidently been brushing him off for months. he won’t give up on her. he offers her the ticket, sees her suffering and expresses his worries but doesn’t get angry and push her. he’s so patient and understanding.
lucas is trying his damn best. he’s so underappreciated by his friends. he’s trying to better himself whilst helping all of them and he deserves better.
Crowley isn’t unkind. Like, in general. He’s just not.
He creates mischief, and he’ll do bad things if he must, but given a choice, he generally chooses the kindest method to do something that he can get away with.
He refuses to kill children. He would rather run than fight. He scares the shit out of the paintballers, sure, but they all get near misses. He lets Aziraphale question the lady at the convent because Aziraphale will be kinder about it. He freezes time for Aziraphale in Paris, rather than come in guns blazing or by hurting anyone. He takes Jesus to see the world- the stories will say he did it to tempt him, but we see Crowley’s face and we know he did it out of compassion, out of a hope that he could save him, somehow, by showing him everything that was available to him. He delivers the antichrist and immediately seeks out an angel to help him undo what he has done, and by raising the child better, not by any unkindness.
And look at the other demons. Hastur tells him about the pastor: ‘i put doubt into his mind’ which implies direct manipulation of mortals. Hastur caused that evil directly. Crowley isn’t like that. Crowley tends to affect the environment, to set up situations, to cause low grade evil that isn’t really any one particular person’s fault and won’t damn anyone on its own. He leaves people the free will to choose to commit the evil or not. His evil is the sort that knocks out the phone network and leaves people the opportunity to either get mad and lash out or shrug and go about their business. His brand of evil is to do his best to give humans a fighting chance to do the right thing, still.
Like he’s just. Kind. Or at least, as best as he can be, considering his job requirements and the role he must play to continue to exist.
And how must it feel, to want to be that kind, while knowing it is against the rules and could get him killed?
And how must it feel to be have found this absolutely perfect angel, and angel who should hate him, who should want him dead, who should try to kill him, himself….. who presents him every opportunity to be kind, and so obviously approves of it, even loves his kindness at every turn?
When all of hell would destroy Crowley for his kindness and when none in heaven recognized it, the one angel he is beside on Earth not only notices but adoresit.
And that’s what makes it different, when Aziraphale asks him, with just a look, to clean the coat. That’s the difference- Crowley’s kindness.
Aziraphale cleaning his own coat with a miracle would be an act of selfishness that Aziraphale would remember every time he looked at the coat.
But Crowley?
If Crowley does it, that’s an act of kindness. That’ssomething Aziraphale would want to remember every time he looked at the coat.
And that’s why Crowley does it- because he wants to be kind, and he’s so, so willing to indulge the only creature in any world that has ever noticed or cared.
Attack of the warm fuzzies! Also, Crowley found the perfect recipient for his kindness in Aziraphale. With how Heaven treats him, the angel just soaks up any kindness, affection and validation (or, hell, just the acknowledgement that he exists at all) that is directed at him personally, and returns pure sunlight. So Crowley gets to be nurturing on a personal level without ever having it thrown back in his face or endangering his life. It’s a neverending positive feedback loop.
the funniest part about loki meta is that more often than not the implications are monumental and have dire universal effects that canon simply fails to explicitly address
Seriously, it surprises me that people still don’t get that “whitewashing” doesn’t just mean “taking a character of color and turning them white,” but also applies to “focusing disproportionately on the stories of white people,” “glossing over or altering parts of a story to make it more palatable or make white people look better,” and “treating ‘white’ as the default race”
The fact that Disney churns out film after film after film after film about white people with a maximum of one film per ethnicity that showcases a group other than white people is whitewashing.
The fact that the story of “Pocahontas” (not her real name) has been substantially altered so that some of the white people in that story don’t look like such villains, with John Smith younger and Pocahontas significantly older, as well as recounting a popular myth of her saving John Smith from near-execution (a story John Smith made up to make himself look brave, the real Pocahontas told him to stop telling and hated him for using her to make himself look good, and he started to spread like wildfire after she died because she could no longer object) is whitewashing.
The fact that the characters on “How I Met Your Mother” are all white, and they supposedly live in New York City, but apparently associate exclusively with other white people (with the exception of Wayne Brady, who occasionally visits from out of town, and a recurring taxi driver) is whitewashing.
The fact that the Doctor has now been a white man a full twelve times in a row is whitewashing even though the character’s always been white, because the idea that there’s a character whose entire appearance can change in a matter of seconds, yet ends up white twelve times in a row by pure random chance, implies that white is a neutral default and other races are a deviation from that norm.
The fact that people get really angry at the suggestion that characters like Newt Scamander or Hermione Granger could be black because the books never explicitly say “they are black” is whitewashing.
Because that’s the thing. People often assume that when someone’s race isn’t explicitly specified, they’re white. People insist that Katniss Everdeen must be white because it is possible for them to rationalize that idea in their head. People think of white as “raceless” and every other color or ethnicity as “raced,” and that’s what we call “eurocentrism.“
And that’s the thing about whitewashing. It’s this idea that a “person” is white, and a “person of color” is black or asian or arab or latin@ or whatever they might be.
It’s why people call John Stewart the “Black Green Lantern” but just call Hal Jordan the “Green Lantern.” It’s why Miles Morales is called “Black Spider-man” but Peter Parker is just “Spider-man.” If you want to throw gender into the mix, it’s why Jennifer Walters is the “She-Hulk” but Bruce Banner isn’t the “He-Hulk.”
People think “character” is white and “character + black” is black. There is no default race. Community did a whole episode about how a truly raceless character would look something like this monstrosity:
But there’s the tricky part: Once you stop thinking of white characters as “character” and start thinking of them as “character + white,” it becomes really overwhelming how many characters are white.
I mean, I know there’s a kerfuffle over Disney Princesses right now, so let’s look at the list of official Disney Princesses, shall we? That is, let’s look at the list and include everyone’s race, not just the princesses of color:
Snow White + White
Cinderella + White
Aurora + White
Ariel + White
Belle + White
Jasmine + Arab
Pocahontas + Native American
Mulan + Asian
Tiana + Black
Rapunzel + White
Merida + White Soon to beadded:
Anna + White
Elsa + White
4 of those 13 women are women of color. All four of those women of color are different races than one another. At the moment, the number of white princesses is seven, but it’s about to go up to nine. All nine of those princesses are the same race as one another, despite a few of them being different nationalities, although most of them hail from Western Europe.
And a lot of people are saying “but they’re just accurately portraying the parts of the world those stories are set in!” First of all, the presence of a person of color has never been implausible in any part of the world, in any period of human history. Hell, a bunch of these movies were set after Shakespeare had born, lived, and died, but he still managed to write a play set centuries earlier featuring a black male lead in Italy.
Second, and most importantly, it’s not like they are being assigned a setting at random and have to accommodate it in their character designs. The people at Disney choose to set film after film after film in France and Germany and Denmark.
It’s not that those areas produce more or better fairy tales and folk tales than any of the other continents, it’s that the stories that come from those areas are the ones Disney considers universal.
In the eyes of Disney, there’s a Princess for Black little girls to look up to, a Princess for Native little girls to look up to, a Princess for Arab little girls to look up to, a Princess for Asian little girls to look up to, and nine princesses for all little girls to look up to. It’s no coincidence that in almost all promotional art featuring the “Princess Lineup,” Jasmine, Tiana, Mulan, and Pocahontas are all standing in the back, usually obscured by other white Princesses’ dresses, while the blonde lady brigade stands in the front.
anyone wanna hear my rant about how marvel basically destroyed media literacy
ok so. little anecdote before i start
back when guardians of the galaxy came out i went and watched it. bear in mind this was the first marvel movie i watched since thor. the first one. so naturally, when the credits rolled, i got up. immediately, the entire theatre started laughing at me and taunting me for missing the post credits scene. which was. you know. very fun for an autistic kid with massive social anxiety but i digress
my point is that, in order to consume marvel content, you have to have watched literally everything that came before the film you want to watch. there are lists and arguments and timelines consisting of i don’t know how many movies so the barrier of entry is *massive*. it’s so self selecting because literally only people who are committed will sit down to watch all of this stuff and god forbid you’re a casual who just wants to watch the one movie.
now i don’t have a problem with movie franchises or even movies that lean on other previous movies for an overarching narrative. but the marvel movies are exhausting mainly for these reasons:
1) they are blatantly a money making scheme. on a certain level, all movies are, naturally, but the marvel movies have such a disdain for their audience, for the people these characters are for and for the characters themselves that they will completely kill any given character’s arc - thor ragnarok did so much character development for thor and it was immediately undone the very next movie. characters are not allowed to have a consistent narrative or a satisfying ending and god forbid you’re someone who is invested in a character
2) marvel doesn’t trust its audience to put things together. everything is explained and explained again, we are on movie #4567 of collect the action hero without thought nor care for their arcs or their feelings or the things that make them themselves - the blatant whitewashing, the ableism in the treatment of characters like hawkeye, to name a few. it feels like most of the writers consider their average audience to be too stupid to follow a narrative thread without having their hand held
3) their spoiler culture. i don’t know if marvel introduced the idea that spoilers are a unique evil but GOD can it go die in a fire. not giving your actors full scripts, costumes, sets or context to play off of and then laughing at those *stupid* actors for being upset about that? the notion that the only reason to watch a movie is for the plot? i don’t know about you, but if a spoiler can ruin your movie, it’s a fucking shit movie. even movies like gone girl or rebecca, which hinge upon their plot twists, are enjoyable EVEN IF YOU HAVE BEEN SPOILED. this enables marvel to withhold pay from actors because they are not aware how big a role they’re playing. A PLOT TWIST SHOULD BE HINTED AT! if a few of your viewers figure it out that’s a good thing!!! a plot twist is not something that hits you out of nowhere with no hints or no possibility to figure it out by yourself! there is no merit whatsoever in punishing your audience for figuring out your plot twist (cough wandavision cough)
4) the way marvel has monopolised superhero movies. it’s not a strict monopoly, but marvel has managed to become synonymous with superhero movies and sets the standard for the way they are consumed. there are so many people whose media diet consists almost exclusively of marvel movies or movies like them, which teaches them to just accept what is thrown at them in disdain. so when they are shown a movie that doesn’t spell everything out, that is artistic or queer or up for interpretation, they get angry at the movie for not holding their hand. when you only know a very specific sort of media that never lets you think for yourself and that just keeps churning out more and more derivative content (i watched the last spiderman movie when my bf was here. not only did you need to watch ALL THE MARVEL MOVIES BEFORE, you also had to watch BOTH SPIDERMAN FRANCHISES in order to understand what the fuck is going on) that gatekeeps people who are NOT ENTERTAINED BY THIS BULLSHIT and creates a self reinforcing bubble
5) the way the movies broke apart and sanitised so many of their characters under the guise of expanding their appeal - in the most blatant example i can think of, they made PETER PARKER AT LEAST MIDDLE CLASS AND TIED HIS ORIGIN EXPLICITLY TO TONY STARK. like that is not the point. the people who write the characters don’t care about them and it shows and it is so, so exhausting.
marvel paved the way for massive, long series that get more and more difficult to enter as you go, unneccesary plot twists that literally gut punch you because you cannot have seen them coming, spoiler culture as it exists today while teaching their viewers that it’s okay to never ever have to think critically about media, just buy the next ticket for iron man 545 and no matter what we show you in it, you’re gonna be happy because it’s MARVEL
as a writer it legitimately makes me want to CRY
also the sexism and the homophobia and the racism etc
the way that like. having one unnamed character from one scene utter the words my husband is considered representation to fawn over. retch.
yall wanna see the worst take ive ever seen on why leather bars and hankie groups dont belong at pride
someone honest to got thought this up, wrote it, and hit post
btw that comment was specifically abt leather bars/leather daddies being unwelcome and like. yall. the first (estimated) leather bar in the usa was in new york in like 1958 and then in san fran in the tenderloid in 1960. these were before the stonewall riots. these men were alive through the entire AIDs crisis and ya called them the reason people are homophobic. im going to loose my mind.
like this is homophobic. this is activelyhomophobic. you are telling a group of gay men who helped create this community that they are so degenerate that their mere presence at pride has caused a spike in bigotry against this community over the past few years. like imagine typing that out and not realizing how wildly homophobic that is
“Elain cannot help Bryce in her world, she will be unrelevant in cc3”
…..
Meanwhile in ACOWAR
Elain able to search for The Suriel with only one try, without any training, with her eyes closed
Elain can detect if something MOVES THROUGH THE WORLD
The Suriel about Elain
“I did not expect to see those doe-eyes peering at me from across the world.”
ALL OF THIS @echotzzz, and shameless plug here, but I have a whole crossover section, most of it addressing why Elain is even more relevant now and could be super important in CC3. All because of what we learned in CC2. My personal favorites are:
Elain’s murky realm (her mighty powers of sight and how they connect to both oracles and mystics, witches in TOG, Asteri in CC, etc.)
Forbidden secrets (the mysteries of the sister peaks, how they are connected to the Daglan/Asteri, and why it makes sense for Elain/Azriel to map their secrets)
Crossover (why Sarah said CC3 is next and what it might mean for ACOTAR and Elain’s journey)
Other elriel blogs have written amazing theories about Elain’s role in the crossover, including @silverlinedeyes,@offtorivendell,@merymoonbeam, and more. I encourage others who are curious to check them out as well.
But if you take away anything from this reblog, it’s this: The Asteri have a whole host of mystics who spy and influence others for them (across realms), making them particularly lethal. Elain, who has—at the very least—a combination of oracular and mystic abilities, is the only one in ACOTAR (that we know) with a similar skill set who might combat that influence and/or use it against them. She is important, and admitting that does not negate the importance of other characters in the series.
