I think it’s overlooked sometimes how political Guardians of the Galaxy 2 actually got.
Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther are both about an evil thing, colonization, taking something not yours to take and fashioning it to your own needs. But Guardians 2 forms the first part perhaps of Marvel’s anti-colonization trilogy. Ego is the ultimate colonizer, having no purpose in his life other than taking things and making them into more of himself. To this end he’s become the ultimate eugenicist, too. Every time he creates offspring – potential second versions of him, not even people in his eyes – he tests them and if they’re not what he wants he kills them. He’s a slaver (he owns Mantis in every way that matters) a killer, a manipulator, an absolute monster behind a smiling face.
There’s a running theme in GOTG 2 about the evils of treating people as things.
The Sovereign do this too – they’re gold in colour, but they’re essentially white supremacists. (The slight satire of them also being basically really hardcore video gamers, who sit behind drones and make mass murder into a competition, was not lost on me either.) And Yondu, Rocket, Gamora and Nebula are all where they are because they were treated as things – slaves, experiments, disposables. The movie explores their traumas, and makes it clear that they’re justified in their rages.
GOTG 2 does with Ego what Infinity War somehow didn’t manage to do with Thanos, and completely and utterly kill the monster at the end of its story. Peter is granted by Ego all the power he could possibly want, as well as the promise of the family he’s always craved. But once he discovers that it’s all built on bones, he rejects it utterly, even at what he thinks is the cost of his own life. Ego’s not given an ounce of mercy or sympathy, not even from Peter, his own son.
Essentially GOTG2 follows almost an identical path to Thor: Ragnarok – a god (alright, demigod in Peter’s case) discovers that the powers granted to him came from a place of evil, and rejects them in favour of something better. Those two films and Black Panther form an epic “dismantle oppressive systems, even if they benefit you” triple-bill.
Calypso’s island is magical. It supplies every possible demand Odysseus might have for food, drink, clothing, sex, companionship or conversation. He has only to pay over the coin of his self. His entire self. Calypso wants Odysseus body and soul. She wants everything about him. Physical, moral, and verbal. She wants the work of art that he has made of his own human being. And she wants it for all time. She promises to immortalize him.
When he rejects the transaction she’s baffled. Why would anyone choose to abandon a consumer paradise where he could live forever with a ravishing divinity? Odysseus’s answer is: “I know you’re a goddess and bigger and better looking than my wife, for you are deathless and ageless while she is a mere mortal, and yet, I prefer Penelope and what I really long for is the day of my return.” Odysseus’s answer sets up a calculus. He measures the infinite days and infinite pleasures of Calypso against the single day of his homecoming and the mortal attractions of his wife. The infinite comes up lacking.
Neither Odysseus nor Homer ever tells us exactly what the infinite lacks. That is, we never get an objective description of Penelope. We do not know if she is dark or fair. Odysseus no where itemizes the qualities that make her more desirable than a goddess. What becomes clear in the final stages of the poem however as husband and wife engage in a so called recognition scene that extends from Book XVII where Odysseus shows up in disguise at Penelope’s house to Book XXIII where she falls weeping in his arms and calls his name is that these two people are a match for each other in wits and ambiguity.
We watch Her throughout the six books seduce him by the simple tactic of never letting him know what she’s thinking. She dangles herself. She dangles the prospect of homecoming before him in a series of tantalizing interactions. She gives him clothing, a meal, a bath, a bed in the courtyard and several deep conversations without ever letting on whether she’s recognized him or not. Scholars still disagree on where exactly in the poem she decides Odysseus is Odysseus and she should welcome him home. Penelope’s power is the power of a meaning withheld.
—Anne Carson on the distinction between selling and selling out
when the mcu tries to gently Just Good Pals steve and bucky i want to laugh at them because, like. they were the ones who structured their arc, from the very beginning, as a story about leaving a plucky sweetheart behind in the states when you ship out. it could have been lifted wholesale from practically any wartime romance filmed between 1940 and 1950. “i just wish they’d take me into the army too– i’d go with you, show that fuhrer a thing or two– just promise me you’ll take care!” “darling, don’t worry, you can do your part right here at home– it’s ever so important to the war effort!” it’s the theme of fucking “tender comrade” and “since you went away” and “mrs. miniver” and i could go on and on
the part where steve gets turned into a tall dangerous hillshire farms beef log is the surprising science fiction twist; but the part where he grumps about being Left Behind by a uniformed hottie is 1000% period-accurate romantic dramedy that could have been screenwritten by david o. selznick. i’m sorry mcu i don’t make the fucking rules. this is just how it is. give them their v-e day kiss already and let me rest
also THEY are the ones who put a searching-for-romance subplot in Winter Soldier where Steve says he just can’t find anyone with “shared life experience” 30 minutes before his lifelong best friend who is also a super soldier and was also frozen and also missed the last 70 years comes back from the dead
like what the fuck did they think they were trying to convey there
Say, Thanos, I recall you telling your adopted space daughter (who you routinely abused, by the way) that her home planet of Zehoberei was now thriving because you killed half its population – including her birth mother – because ‘balance was restored’.
Do you know what I think about that?
I think it’s nothing more than a
BIG
FAT
LIE!!!
So apparently her planet prospered to the point everyone spontaneously died? Troll-logic yourself out of that one, you insane oversized prune.
Actually in the Gamora comic it’s stated that another race came in and destroyed the rest of her people. Thanos then let her kill the royal family of that race that ordered the death of her people as a birthday present.
“as a birthday present”
Would that race have been able to kill the rest of the Zehoberi people, if they hadn’t been half dead already because of Thanos? Maybe not….
My point exactly. The war against Thanos would have severely weakened Zehoberei’s defense forces even BEFORE Thanos halved them. Add that to the infrastructure loss, societal collapse, and mass panic caused by, oh I don’t know, HAVING HALF OF THEIR POPULATION MURDERED RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES, Zehoberei would never be able to recover even on its own. The second invaders were just a catalyst for their damnation.
tumblr: when people include racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. ideas in their stories it has real life consequences
also tumblr: but ships are never problematic, what’s with all these “antis”? it’s just fictional and can’t affect anything
Just Anti Things: I honestly don’t see any difference between popular mass media and someone’s obscure fanfic
this….isn’t a new argument. we’ve had it before. many times. representation matters, people can also ship what they want. those don’t contradict each other.
if a producer puts something racist, sexist, or homophobic work, it is their fault for broadcasting that out into the media, where it affects hundreds of thousands of lives and portrays an imbalance in the system we live under.
if some average teenager from kentucky has racist undertones in their 20 page, freely-made fanfic, then that just shows that they’re racist. and you can go on with your life avoiding/blocking/not liking them because of that. because racism in people won’t die so soon, but racism in the institution absolutely should.
the internet and tumblr, however, are just places where average people congregate. It is not an institution and absolutely shouldn’t be treated as such. that’s why tumblr isn’t held to the same standard, because their users are average people.
“It is not an institution”
Thank you for bringing this up. Fandom is not an institution. It should only overlap with social politics in the sense that fandom should be inclusive – beyond that, assigning responsibility to everyone in fandom to portray only non-problematic things is not only impossible, but presumes fandom has way more power than it does. A nebulous gathering of people with similar interests in fiction is not an institution that you can or should hold responsible for fixing society’s problems.
Fandom is not an institution is such a good goddamn point
Fandom is not an institution and has little, if any, centralized social power. It’s not formally organized, it has no proclaimed goals and few longstanding traditions; fandom is to mass media what a pick-up football game is to the NFL. I don’t want to downplay the influence that small, loosely organized communities can have on lives, but they’re neither the cause nor the solution to institutional problems – at worst they’re a symptom.
Fandom activism aiming to address social problems is basically doomed to fail. The best it can accomplish is education of individual members, because fandom is not an institution.
If you can explain to me how I am fetishizing queerness by being queer, I will take your words into consideration.
Nonie has the sheer audacity to call you incoherent.
Yet does not use an apostrophe, space-key or question mark where it is clearly needed.
I assume- and it’s an assumption made on little evidence other than personal experience- that they’re typing poorly because they’ve got the shakes because they’re very upset that someone pointed out that their behaviour is unacceptable.
Trauma responses are Like That, and the majority of antishippers, especially those who are angry enough to send me detailed fantasies about post-mortem rape torture, tend to be dealing with trauma.
They’re dealing with it badly, but I try to cut them a little, little bit of slack in that regards.
That’s actually heartbreaking.
It’s a very common kind of reaction to the abusive manipulation that dominates antishipping “discourse.”
People with severe trauma are collected and preyed upon by a small group of aggressors, usually sex-negative radical feminists, and turned into a self destructive police force.
They are then praised for harming themselves, as long as they also harm others.
It’s actually one of the many ways that anitshipping discourse models itself, consciously or not, after cult dynamics which claim that it is noble to suffer as long as you make your enemy suffer too in the name of righteousness.
You also see this kind of thing a lot in extremist Christian sects, for example.
You make the right choice in trying to leave situations that are harmful for you. That is one of the healthiest coping mechanisms out there.
But it’s also something that has to be learned. At least in the context of abuse. If you grew up in a situation where abuse was unavoidable, you rapidly lose the “flight” stress response, and it takes conscious effort to regain it. Instead you rely very heavily on your other fear responses (fight and friend, usually, and sometimes freeze). This makes you extremely valuable as a tool for future abusers, as your “friend” response will tend to make you more accessible to them, and your “fight” response will tend to make you a useful attack dog against others.
Now, of course, I imagine the great majority of antis aren’t trying to indoctrinate themselves into an abusive cult dynamic. They’re victims here, too. They deserve an escape from the shithole they’re stuck in, and if they ever want to leave it all behind, I support them wholeheartedly.
But just because they don’t know better doesn’t make it acceptable for them to do the things they insist on doing.
An incisive, lucid and important analysis.
Now, of course, I imagine the great majority of antis aren’t trying to indoctrinate themselves into an abusive cult dynamic. They’re victims here, too. They deserve an escape from the shithole they’re stuck in, and if they ever want to leave it all behind, I support them wholeheartedly.
word. I will welcome them with arms wide open, just as I would any trauma survivor.
@
fangasmagorical, if you have time and interest, could you talk a bit about the “friend” response? I’ve never heard of it before, and I think it may be something I do. I think I and others could benefit from your thoughts.
“Friend,” also called, “fawn,” is one of the primary ways human beings react to fear. It’s like fight or flight, but there are other ways people respond to fear, especially people dealing with trauma.
Fawn types seek safety by merging with the wishes, needs and demands of others. They act as if they unconsciously believe that the price of admission to any relationship is the forfeiture of all their needs, rights, preferences and boundaries. –Pete Walker, Psychotherapist
Trying to talk your way out of a stressful situation. Rather than Fight, Run, or Freeze on the spot, we decide to reason or rationalize the situation. This can be anything from flattering the abuser, cringing in obedience, attempting to please and seek favor, offering alternatives; doing whatever we have to do to save ourselves by talking our way out. –Surviving My Past, abuse support group
It basically involves trying to turn the thing that made you afraid into an ally, or getting help from existing allies to face the threat. It’s part of why humans are so super social.
Unfortunately, in people who have been traumatized or abused, this natural response to fear can become overactive. You may have heard that people who are abused once are more likely to find themselves in abusive situations later in life?
This is because the friend/fawn reaction is very easily taken advantage of, and abusers know it (albeit often a subconscious knowledge). People who are overly likely to respond to fear by ignoring their own needs in favour of pleasing others are much more attractive to abusers, including cults.
While it’s called a fear response, friend/fawn is a response to stress of all kinds. You don’t necessarily have to be afraid of the person you’re appealing to, just experiencing stress that you’ve learned can be reduced by appealing to others, especially to authorities.
The way you see this work in the context of antishipping, since that’s the discussion at hand, tends to be a little bit like this.
Victim: I saw something that set off my PTSD, and now I am in a stress induced panic and I don’t know what to do!
Manipulator: Don’t worry, if you just listen to me, I will tell you what to do and you will be fine.
Victim: Okay! I completely believe you, because you are offering me safety from my trauma, and by subconscious mind perceives this as you literally saving my life.
Manipulator: Great, so since I saved your life taught you how to repress your fear, you should do anything you can to please and appeal to me.
“Manipulator” here refers not only to the handful of “ringleaders” in antishipping circles, but also to the social group of antishippers as a whole.
Social pressure is one of the most important reasons the friend response exists, and the larger or more aggressive a social group is, the more likely people will fall in line with it just for that feeling of safety.
This is also why major political movements that rely on fear-mongering are so effective: they create a stress response in the populace, and then say, “come with me and we will eliminate your stressor.”
This is so true though. I’ll never forget the shock and almost trauma of being bluntly told by my therapist that it isn’t wrong for people to like things I think are misogynistic and predatory. It took a longer time to understand that people who consume media I hate are not a direct threat to my well-being. It’s not at all an age thing either, I didn’t receive access to proper care and a safe environment till my late twenties and was therefore extremely volatile and reactionary. Less now but it’s a work in progress.
The fawn response makes so much sense. I’m mad confrontational but also takes a long time to call out the bad behaviour or wrong arguments of anyone who is nice to me or sides with me because it feels like ingratitude and I’m afraid of them turning on me.
I appreciate OP’s empathy towards triggered people so much. Regardless of whether you’re right or not, a hyper-aroused brain is an awful thing, like an earthquake in your head, shakes, mutism, nausea, inability to disengage. At no point are you more convinced that the ferocity of your emotional response matches reality than when you’re triggered.
Absolutely true. During the throes of a flashback, I’ve done and said some truly fucked up things to try to get away from the stimulus.
One of the more horrifying things that abusers manipulating victims in this way do, is ensure that their victims are in a state of hyperarousal as often as possible. This makes their victims more reliant on the abuser for guidance, and much more vicious to their targets if their abuser tells them to fight someone.
This cocktail is something that antishippers do to each other constantly, even without any organized leadership, because it’s what they’ve been taught. At this point they are a self policing group, and the law they enforce is “be constantly on the edge of stress overload.”
But you can’t live in a state of constant hyperarousal. If the over taxing of your adrenals and sympathetic nervous system don’t kill you, the sharp decrease in impulse control and altered concept of self preservation will.
Constantly exposing yourself to triggering material to gain the approval of a group that is abusing you is self destructive.
Unfortunately, I’m not trained to help people escape the fear conditioning of group abuse, and if I was, it would certainly be unethical for me to do so online and outside a clinical capacity.
But I know enough about the problem to know that sometimes the people who come in this blog looking for a fight will see discussions like this, and that can be the start to realizing that the “help” they’ve been getting is dangerous, and that there are alternatives.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This just keeps getting more important and relevant.
Interestingly enough, online clinical work is becoming more and more accessible for trained workers to offer to clients, and is, in fact no longer an inherently unethical practice. There’s still a lot of grey area that clinicians are working out how to make as beneficial as possible, but the combined rise of internet’s own cultural linguistic quirks and telemedicine means that more and more clinicians are able to offer some level of support to people seeking this kind of work online. I’m pretty excited about it actually, and figure I’ll probably make some arrangements for people to be able to hit me up if they like in about *checks watch* four years.
Hey everyone I am incredibly stoned and having a lot of feelings about our like fourth and most explicit canon confirmation that time is non-linear as far the Force is concerned in the Star Wars universe, and what this may actually mean for those who can sense it
Especially when it comes to how Force-sensitives experience memory (premonition as memory of possible future events) and experience their relationships to others (how much can you sense your future feelings about a person before you develop them?) and ESPECIALLY when it comes to attachment and what that implies/means if/when you are able to experience emotion in a non-linear manner.
I mean how many times when we see Force-sensitives fall in love they do it instantly hard and fast, bringing an intensity to the table their non-Force-sensitive partner often does not understand? When that pattern does not manifest, how often in its place do we see the Force-sensitive couching their feelings in terms of restraint or denial, hinting they feel an intensity that has to be held back?
What does it mean if through the Force you can sense the all encompassing love you will one day have for a person you may have only just met, or not met yet at all?
Or to use a truly and fully non-romantic example – when Leia tells Luke she always knew he was her brother somehow, could that have not been her sensing a biological bond, but rather her future relationship with him bleeding through into their past? Much as Padmé – who Leia never knew at all – could bleed through from her past in the form of visions/memories so Leia knew she was kind and beautiful and sad?
THIS IS SUCH A MIND BLOWINGLY FASCINATING THING TO THINK ABOUT.
That time is non-linear in the Star Wars universe, that Force-sensitives are tapping into this thing that is non-linear, which means they can be tapping into everything at once, all across the span of their lives (or possibly greater) and how that affects their (basically psychic) abilities.
How it affects these things that they just “always knew”, how Leia just always felt that connection to Luke, that it’s a little bit some part of her knowing what’s coming (and this puts Force users’ ability to know the future/past into a whole new light, that it’s the Cosmic Force’s non-linear nature brushing up against them) but also that she’s feeling her future feelings and her past feelings.
How it affects someone like Anakin Skywalker, who is already so overloaded with feelings and doesn’t want to do anything less than wholly embrace them–he’s piled on with all of his feelings for Padme over the entire course of his life, that he loves her instantly because he loves her in the future and all of that is jammed into him at once the first time he actually sees her?
What does this mean for Luke, who would be feeling all those terrible things Ben will do, but hasn’t done yet, but he still feels them and they’re still true? What does this mean for all those potential futures that Force-sensitives get a glimpse of, that Force Spirits can see and know would have been true?
I really love how massive and eldritch this makes the Force, how unknowable it can make the Force, because no mortal mind could really understand it, how this explores something new about the Force and yet seems to fit so well with everything else. Emotions in a non-linear manner, no wonder they’re always having to brace themselves, if you’re not only bombarded by what you feel in the moment, but occasionally the entire span of your life, the more you let those feelings run awhile, the more you’re hit with a mac truck of sheer emotions.
Obi-Wan experiencing his ENTIRE LIFE’S WORTH OF GRIEF AT MOMENTS, not knowing what it meant or where it was coming from, only that he sometimes felt this impossibly infinite span of sadness? THANKS, ANON.
The distinction I think is that the top characters are mostly designed to be monstrous with sexual undertones, whereas the bottom ones are mostly designed to be sexual with monstrous undertones. In other words, the guys up top were built as primarily monstrous and then people sexualized them (the Shape of Water guy not really, but he’s based on one that worked that way), whereas the Monster Musume cast and most “monstergirls” generally are designed as sexy cheesecake type characters first and then the monstrous elements are like the Miscellaneous Forehead Putty on Star Trek aliens.
If you look around art sites, though, you can totally find the counterparts to each pattern: monstrous female monsters being sexualized, and beefcakey sexpot guys with some monstrous elements. And definitely nobody would ever accuse guys of having trouble sexualizing female characters, so it’s clearly not a lack of imaginination. I think what’s actually reflected here is patterns of media creation rather than consumption.
In the media, primarily-sexual characters default to female because being sexual is coded female. But being female is marked while being male is unmarked, so if a character’s point is mainly to be a monster without being overtly hypersexualized, they’ll almost never be made female. Conversely, given a female monster creators will often sexualize her to an excessive degree just out of habit. There’s an underlying assumption here in content creation that sex sells, but only to men, and that there’s no other reason for a monster to be female except for that. And maybe that’s true to some extent in the sense that it probably shows up in raw sales numbers. But I’m pretty sure that if there were more female-coded monsters that were seriously monstrous, you’d see a comparable amount of Tumblr thirst, if only because Tumblr is that way. (And, comparably, if they made Monster Musume but all cutesy hypersexualized monsterguys, it might not move mountains in Akihabara but it’d do pretty okay.)
When Ron, frustrated with studying for NEWTs and with Hermione’s anxious sixth-year nagging, explains to her what reading is like for him, Hermione’s breath catches. “Ron, you’re dyslexic,” she says, softly, and instantly regrets every snide comment she’s ever made towards his study habits.
Soon, by asking around, Hermione amasses a list of spells for Ron to try – some stilling the page, some changing the font of books for easy reading, some going after Ron’s temporal lobe directly.
These help, a little, but not as much as knowing there’s a word for why reading is so hard for him. That it’s normal, that he’s not stupid, and that Hermione suddenly helps instead of criticizes, looks for solutions rather than complains, praises instead of gloats.
just moving along like everyone else 