People wouldn’t say “oh plz protect my poor baby Ben, he’s suffering”, treat him like a 13 year old child even though he is 30, or ship him with Rey after he kidnapped her, tortured her, force pushed her into a tree, killed her father figure, almost killed her close friend, manipulated her, said that she was “nothing, except to him”, tried to convince her to abandon her friends, ordered her to be blown out of the sky, and then threatened to destroy her…because they touched hands…nope.
And if Finn had looked like this.
People would probably think he’s the new Luke Skywalker, shit, even I would. There would be no question that he is the male lead of the trilogy, he wouldn’t be shrunken or removed in posters, removed from trailers entirely, he would have more merchandise, the Finn Skywalker and Force Sensitive Finn theories would be through the roof, Finnrey would be the most popular ship, probably even canon by the end of the first movie.
I am pretty annoyed it’s so common for people to tell women to “not let men get a rise out of you” when they purposefully try to annoy you or upset you it’s like Literally never in my life have I heard people tell men to just stop bothering women.
(Something Rukmini Pande said in the @fansplaining Race and Fandom podcast reminded me of this old meta I never got around to posting, so here it is, updated for 2016. Contains spoilers for In the Flesh series 2 (you can watch the whole series on Hulu). Thanks to @psmith73 for input and feedback!)
The Bad Guy of Color
In movies and on TV, we’re used to seeing people of color – especially men of color – as bad guys. You’ve got your drug lords, your terrorists, and your gang leaders (but not the “cool” white-friendly kind like mafia kingpins or bikers), all in a variety of shades of brown and black. As a rule, Bad Guys of Color have a few things in common: They’re scary (like, white folks’ worst nightmare scary), they’re The Other against white protagonists, and they’re not sympathetic characters.
Most of the time, there is no attempt to make us sympathize with the BGOC, because it might make it hard for us to watch them die, sometimes by the dozen. Usually, they don’t even give us a reason to hate them (exceptions, like Victor Sweet in John Singleton’s Four Brothers, who is shown as fully unsympathetic when he treats another Black man like a dog, are usually Black-written characters).
These are not the captivating villains. They’re not the Negan, The Governor, the Walter White, let alone the Loki, Joker, or Kylo Ren. They’re undeveloped, nondimensional, and more than a little racist.
When a person of color is written as a sympathetic villain, a developed character, they should be sympathized with, right? Especially if the character isn’t, as they say, defined by race?
This is literally such a good piece of writing and something I’ve thought about a lot and didn’t know how to address exactly, especially because the few times I’ve kinda spoken up for Maxine I’ve gotten “But she killed Amy/works for Victus!!” as a response – Which really demonstrates the point being made here. Maxine is a wonderfully written character and I adore her. While it’s questionable at best that the only recurring nonwhite character is an antagonist, she’s interesting and well written and given a very, very in-depth character and personality and motives, more so I’d say than other antagonists in the series.
As someone who’s been in the fandom for a long time, the sad truth is that most of the time, Maxine isn’t even talked about. People love to joke about Gary Kendall and Bill Macy being awful, or write long insightful metas about their behavior, but most of the time Maxine isn’t even brought up, it’s like she doesn’t exist. And when she is – like this piece says – she’s treated as the worst of the worst lowest of the low most terrible character in the world when she’s loads more interesting and sympathetic than a character like abusive lying bigoted scumbag Gary and violently homophobic abusive father Bill.
Anyway I don’t have any other commentary but I felt I would add that since like I said I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m really glad this is being discussed.
The way the media has been treating Ryan Reynolds and Josh Brolin’s dynamic during the Deadpool 2 promotion tour is giving me an insight into how all these homophobic fanboys can look past how blatantly queer the film is:
They think it’s all a fucking joke.
Josh Brolin has said repeatedly that he’s had a crush on Ryan Reynolds for a long time. That he admires him, that he finds him attractive, that his feelings for Ryan are complicated and unrequited but real.
And yet all I’m seeing are articles and youtube compilations about Josh’s “hilarious” “man crush” and how “funny” it is every time Josh talks about Ryan or they interact.
And I would suspect it was intentionally meant to be part joking and part queerbaiting for the purpose of fanning the movie’s hype except that:
Josh is out there correcting people who call it a bromance – saying “It’s a real romance”.
He’s having to tell people that “It’s not a joke”.
He’s calling interviewers out for laughing.
He’s saying that the only reason he feels weird admitting it is because people are treating his crush as funny.
And this audience attitude is the same one that allows Deadpool to come onto Colossus with the exact same context and tone he came onto Vanessa in the first film, and still lets straight fuckboys think it’s a joke.
It’s why Cable and Deadpool can explicitly flirt, and even have Cable do something as hugely self-sacrificing and romantic for the other man as he does, but there will still be people hypothesising that their strong connection is because Cable’s wife is Deadpool’s daughter or something.
At first I was annoyed that the film was too chicken to end with the two characters getting together, even though (without spoiling it for you) it wouldn’t have felt quite right for the plot so soon.
But now I’m suspecting that even if we’d had a passionate, candle-lit sex scene between Cable and Deadpool, these douchebags would still think it was some hilarious joke.
The franchise can capitalise on that homophobia to get more queerness into the movies, and to be honest it probably already has.
But I’m doubtful that they can do anything that’ll get through the thick skulls of these fuckboy-fanboys.
I haven’t seen the movie just yet, and i don’t doubt what you’re saying! H o w e v e r, I’d really like some sources or at least a point in the direction to find those specific interviews with Josh Brolin!
Sure! There’s so many interview videos out there right now, some with only a couple hundred views, and I wish I’d bookmarked all the relevant ones for now but alas I didn’t. Here are a few which hopefully get my point across, but there’s more like it:
Josh: I mean he’s tall, he’s ha- … Why am I talking about Ryan Reynolds so much? Jimmy: You have a man crush on Ryan Reynolds? Josh: I do! I don’t- [Jimmy laughs] Josh: I feel weird admitting it in front of you because you’re laughing at me right now, but I feel… I feel confidence in my- [Josh gets awkward and hides behind a magazine]
Will Njobvu: Now, I’m seeing this bromance blossoming between you and Ryan Reynolds, even a bit on screen, and- Josh: I think it’s more of a romance. Will: A romance? Josh: Like, a real romance. Will: Really!? Josh: I like him, man. What’s not to like? I like not liking him. It’s a lot of fun to have friction and tension between Ryan Reynolds and myself. Y’know, we can talk about the characters, and the Deadpool and Cable thing, but it has nothing to do with that; it’s him and me.
They also steal these children from their home countries and use them as props to make themselves look charitable and generous so…this is just par for the course.
My first response to this story was “Unbelievable!” but unfortunately
in America it’s all too real, too frequent, and very believable.
Tshyrad Oates says he has been a paying member of LA Fitness in
Secaucus, NJ for at least eight years. But when he went to his gym
earlier this week, the gym accused him of entering without paying. He
showed them his membership card – twice, once to the manager and once to
the expressionless clerk at the desk – and both times the computer
showed that he was indeed a member of the gym. But that wasn’t good
enough. Police were called in.
By the end of the video above (or the fourth video below), Oates is wondering why the gym is now terminating
his membership. He says he doesn’t know what he did. Even one of the
police officers admits he has no idea why Oates is getting kicked out.
The four videos below were taken by Oates’ friend, who was with
him at the gym. The gym manager told them they had to stop shooting the
video, and even tried to get the police to make them stop with the
camera, but the police admitted that it wasn’t illegal to shoot a video.
Rush's tumblr archive 