galax-arena

So apparently there was a scene in Thor Ragnarok where we see a girl leaving Valkyrie's bedroom after sex, but it was cut because it ruined the flow~. That's convenient. I just hope the movie doesn't expect any cookies for LGBT representation. For the record, I actually liked Ragnarok and I absolutely adored Valkyrie's character regardless. But I'm so tired of movie cast/crew talking about how so-and-so is totally gay/bi/whatever in interviews but not actually bothering to show it in any meaningful way on screen.

I'm all for the Bughead ship being broken up, although I'd prefer it if it happened because Jughead became the Black Hood's next victim. His death could propel the way for Dark Betty to arise once more in all her batshit glory. For me that'd be killing two birds with one stone because 1) ugh, Cole Sprouse and 2) I only really like Betty when she's being crazy. Definitely not interested in her being the target of a stalker with a crush. How boring. Toni, love yourself, girl. Don't go for that weirdo. I mean, have you ever seen him without that stupid hat?

No, no, remember, there was like one guy behind Archie who was in a tank top! Poor anonymous dude, maybe he had weird nipples or something.

The highlight of the episode for me was when Jughead got his ass kicked. Too bad it happened off screen. Oh, and the very end with Archie making that unintentionally hilarious militia video. Archie, you're so hardcore. God, I love this stupid, ridiculous, trashy show. ETA: People like Ethel and Dilton might not be conventionally attractive, but there are plenty of other straight people in every single town in the world who aren't conventionally attractive. So yeah, I'd say that they still probably have more options than an out gay guy in a small-ish (?) town, at least when it comes to doing anything like conventional dating (as opposed to closeted/furtive hook-ups and cruising). The fact that Kevin's actually dated someone while those two (to our knowledge) haven't doesn't really negate that. Even in larger towns with extant gay scenes, it can be hard because it's not necessarily safe to assume that someone is into your gender. A lot of straight people don't know what that's like (and the common rebuttal is, "Well, even if they're gay, they might not be into you..." but that's different). I thought Kevin had a point in calling out Betty for being so clueless... but I agree that he's really not doing bad as a 15yo who's already had one serious relationship! Plus the cruising was dumb af. Betty was right to talk to him about that, she just should have gone about it differently, tho I agree with others who say that it was very in character. Oh, and Kevin's comment justifying cruising over grindr was definitely stupid.

Flawed characters are interesting. What's not interesting (IMO) is when the narrative doesn't actually treat or frame the characters' flaws as, well, flaws. Xander might have done the right thing in not taking advantage of Buffy - what a swell guy - but the story completely glossed over the fact that he brazenly violated Cordelia's autonomy and consent in the first place. Same goes for Willow and Tara's relationship. It was great when Tara asked Willow what the hell was wrong with her. But that call out didn't go far enough. It's like the show writers were (barely) aware that what Willow was doing to Tara was messed up, but they couldn't comprehend just how fucked it was. Willow violated Tara's mind and effectively took away her ability to consent. And they continued to have sex in the meantime. Yo, that's rape.

Too bad they didn't succeed in killing him.

I wish Sydney Park could get something that was on a better platform than Youtube Red.

Disney will be featuring its first gay main character in season 2 of Andi Mack It will be interesting to see if Cyrus will eventually be allowed to have a reciprocal love interest - the storyline makes it sound like he's going to be crushing on someone who's straight (or, if not 100% straight, still not reciprocated because of Jonah/Andi) - but even if he doesn't, this is progress from a channel that gave us Ryan "totally coded as gay but god forbid we ever acknowledge it" Evans on High School Musical.

Yeah, I follow Asian-American pop culture so I was aware of Jeff long before I was aware of Hudson.

Jeff Yang, Hudson's dad, has said that Nicole does have an arc over the season, including an episode centered around her coming out. He also says that he genuinely can't think of anything like Nicole's upcoming arc on sitcom television... but he's also a straight guy so I'm taking his words with a grain of salt. That's not really meant as an insult, it's just that, well, I remember when straight Hollywood was falling all over themselves to pat themselves on the back for the Beauty and the Beast movie lmao.

In its season 4 premiere last night, Fresh Off the Boat had Nicole come out to Eddie. Pretty cool, although it should be noted that Nicole is very much a peripheral/side character; when I told one of my friends that a (female) character had come out on FOTB, she assumed I was talking about Constance Wu's character and I felt bad for getting her hopes up lmao. Anyway, Nicole is Honey's stepdaughter and the girl that Eddie's had a crush on since season 1. They had this exchange: Eddie: "So when did you turn gay?" Nicole: "You don't turn, I'm not a werewolf."

IMO this was an excellent farewell to Hugh Hefner: Good Riddance to an Abusive Creep Fuck him, fuck his abusive, lecherous ways. Fuck him for not giving a shit about the health of his Playmates; fuck him for treating them as nothing but sex toys; fuck him for telling Holly Madison that quaaludes were "thigh openers"; fuck him for reducing Marilyn Monroe to a sexual punchline even in death; fuck him for saying that Playboy only chooses girls from respectable families and never poor girls because "poverty brings sadness with it, a sort of dirtiness that becomes evident even on a naked body"; fuck him for saying, "A girl resembles a bunny. Joyful, joking. Consider the kind of girl that we made popular: the Playmate of the Month. She is never sophisticated, a girl you cannot really have. She is a young, healthy, simple girl – the girl next door. The sex we fight for is innocent sex…we are not interested in the mysterious, difficult woman, the femme fatale, who wears elegant underwear, with lace, and she is sad, and somehow mentally filthy. The Playboy girl has no lace, no underwear, she is naked, well-washed with soap and water, and she is happy." Fuck him for reducing sexual liberation/freedom to the ability for men to treat women as disposable sexual objects without scorn. I hope he rots in hell. And that's my epitaph for Hugh Hefner. (And I don't give a shit that he supported gay rights or Obama. People on the left can be misogynistic assholes, too.) ETA: We Are Forever Merely Bodies, Eternally Just Things Finally, Hugh Hefner, the man who'd leaked Monroe's nudes in the first issue of Playboy decades before the phrase 'leaking nudes' was even in the lexicon - he became an instant celebrity; she had to apologize for the photos, and feared for her career - bought the crypt next to Monroe's for $75,000. It was a gruesome joke, "sleeping with" the woman he'd almost ruined, and doing so without her consent - claiming her in death, as he'd claimed the right to exploit her in life. "I'm a sucker for blondes and she is the ultimate blonde," Hefner told CBS Los Angeles. "It has a completion notion to it. I will be spending the rest of my eternity with Marilyn." "Monroe is exceptional for her beauty, sex appeal and iconic status. But no woman is safe from the dehumanization that comes with being a female in possession of a body in the presence of a man. Every woman has experienced, in one way or another, what it is like to be reduced to parts, like an old Chevy or a broken laptop. ... To be a woman is to be a series of parts. Parts to judge and discuss and to touch, and they are always, always entitled to these parts, our consent acting only as a hurdle, the word yes both optional and perfunctory.... This is our fact of life. And, in the case of Marilyn Monroe, some of us can’t even escape it in death." My only regret over his death is that I never had an opportunity to punch him in the dick.

Once they've shown me that they've actually matured and moved on, then I'll be happy to stop holding their previous stupidity against them.

Maybe they were huge fans of The Face on the Milk Carton. Rowan probably sounds too pagan for their Christian hearts!

I know Jeremy likes to fancy himself an intellectual, but let's be real, neither he nor Auj will actually give enough of a shit about intellectual/academic pursuits to care if their kid gets a B in math. I'm sure that Auj at least will care a whole lot more if Ember ends up not being a total girly girl and hating all the makeup and jewelry and girl clothes that Auj will push on her. To say nothing if Ember doesn't embrace their version of hipster conservative Christianity...

This bullshit - the idea of the "inscrutable" Asian - was the sort of rationalization that led to Japanese internment during WWII.

I love this. Shows that white actors speaking out can make a difference, if only because studios might be more reluctant to invite more outrage by hiring another white guy after already being called out for it lmao. I have seen some grumbling that they hired a Korean guy to play a Japanese character. As an Asian, I don't have issues with East Asians playing other East Asians, South Asians playing other South Asians, etc. (With a few exceptions, like if the subject is particularly sensitive or significant.) It's when you cast an East Asian as a South Asian (for example) is where it starts to get hairy for me.

Oh, I forgot to address this point: I have issues with Ryan Murphy's characters that go beyond how he portrays women. (e.g. His POC characters kinda suck too.) BUT I do want to give credit where credit is due in that Ryan Murphy has been making a concerted, active effort to hire more women & minorities behind the scenes. And not just, like, hiring a woman here and there; IIRC, his Half Foundation initiative was created with the express purpose of hiring more women and POC until they were to make up at least half (?) of the directors for his shows. That is more than what a lot of showrunners do. So, yeah. I think Ryan Murphy is complicated. His on screen characters still leave something to be desired. But I appreciate that he at least is putting his money where his mouth is and seems to be genuinely concerned with giving underrepresented groups more opportunities.

If his wife's allegations - that he was essentially using his position to sleep with actresses on his show - are true, then it's both personal and professional. It's a misuse of power, especially considering the way he then went on to blame the women for being needy and desperate. And since so much of his "brand" so to speak is about how he's such a strong feminist ally, blah blah blah, I wholeheartedly disagree that his behavior is irrelevant. Then again, I've never been that impressed with the way he writes women. IMO he seems to have a particular "type" that seems to have more to do with what turns him on personally than anything else. Which is fine as far as it goes - he wouldn't be the first to stick to the Author's Appeal trope - but we should have stopped fellating him for "omg writing such great female characters~" a long time ago, because... no.

Eh, while that's of course possible, it's also possible that he wasn't aware that the character was supposed to be of Asian heritage. The character's last name is Daimio, which isn't exactly a popular Japanese surname that would be immediately recognizable to non-Japanese people the way Watanabe or Suzuki or Yagami is. (I've seen speculation that it's actually not a legit Japanese surname at all, and that it's simply a play on "daimyo" but I'm not Japanese and can't say with any degree of authority.) And a lot of actors don't research their characters beforehand for whatever reason.

Not a tv show either, but one thing I loved about Stuart Gibbs' Space Case, which is a series of children's books that takes place in the future on a space station, is that it's noted how most people in the future are mixed and that very few people are purely one race or the other. (In fact, IIRC the only 100% white characters we see are the antagonists.) This is a concept of race/racial demographics that I feel isn't addressed enough in SF television/movies.

It's just tiring. And for the record, I actually like the show in question, albeit in a love-to-hate sort of way because it's such a hot mess. That is to say, I'm more interested in making fun of it for how soapy/ridiculous it is than I am in getting into super serious discussions about its portrayal of POC/LGBT characters (speaking as a gay woc). But, like, I'm not going to begrudge anyone who does want to talk about it or get shirty about it, because they have a point too. If I don't want to discuss it, I just scroll. I don't think we need to blithely dismiss other people's concerns over a show just bc it harshes our own buzz. That's not to say one can't disagree, e.g. "I don't agree that so-and-so really qualifies as a racial stereotype because blah blah blah," but tbh I don't think "ugh, the show has only been on for 7 episodes!" counts.

Cole Sprouse. I get the vibe that he's a lot more like Jughead's super unique "I'm weird, I'm a weirdo" artsy-fartsy white boy than he'd like to admit. He's such a condescending douche in every single interview or piece of social media I've seen of him. Plus he's a terrible actor. I swear people only think he's good because his competition is KJ Apa's dead eyes and monotone lmao. But Sprouse's overacting is just as bad IMO, only in a different way. That little hand gesture he made as Jughead when he was going on his 'weirdo' rant (i.e. the moment where he says, "I'm not normal and I don't want to be normal") was something straight out of a high school acting class 101 playbook.

I was reading the episode threads for one show and came across a comment defending the show against criticism re: its portrayal of POC/LGBT characters, saying how the show had only been on for ten episodes. This is a common rebuttal I've seen, the idea that it's silly to criticize when a show has only been on for [insert arbitrary number here] episodes because omg it's still early and we need to give them tiiiiime to develop their characters. And frankly, I think it's annoying af, because 5/10/12/etc. episodes don't seem to stop these shows from developing their straight white characters much better than their minority characters, so.... why should we cut them slack? Why are POC and LGBT characters expected to go to the back of the line and wait until the white characters are done cooking before they get their slice of the pie?

Ed Skrein pulls out of Hellboy movie after outcry re whitewashing. ^ This is what being a good ally looks like. I appreciate that Ed had the integrity to do this, even though this role would have been a major one for him, considering he isn't exactly a name. And now there really is no excuse for more famous white actors to keep taking POC roles. If the lesser Daario can do it, so can they. I'm rooting for him now, I hope he books something else.