Considering they position themselves as the guardians of Britishness, it has been so weird seeing conservatives here in the U.K. adopting the US’s anti-drag narrative, especially the idea drag is inappropriate for kids. Like, this is something every british child went to see as a school trip each Christmas:
And these are considered our best TV shows/TV stars, who I watched all the time as a child in the 90s:
Something that really stuck with me from Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse was the theme of suffering inherent in the hero narrative (and specifically the spiderman narrative) and how we can perpetuate suffering in our justification of it.
In the intro to the movie, Gwen gives background into how she became Spiderwoman. She explains the traumatic experience of inadvertently causing her friend Peter’s death and says that because of this she can’t have friends. We see how this has caused her to further suffer, forcing a wedge between her and her band, her and her father, and her and Miles. She is obsessed with not letting a loved one suffer at her hands in the same way again. Furthermore, she is okay letting herself suffer through isolation as long as her loved ones are safe.
Then, we meet Miguel, Spider Man 2099, who fervently defends his and his organization’s behavior as making sure some suffering occurs in order to prevent larger suffering. Miguel took over a different dimension’s Miguel, allowing him to have a daughter and live a happy life. However, this dimension fell apart because he was an anomaly and caused that dimension’s timeline to not flow as it should. After this, he forms the Spider-society, which is intent on making sure that anomalies are taken care of and, more importantly, that canon events happen.
This is where the main conflict of the plot arises, as a canon event in the timeline is the death of the police captain, who in Miles’s universe happens to be his father. Miguel insists that Miles has to let his father die, and rages that Miles has already helped another Spiderman (Pavitr) avoid that fate. This is not a surprise to Miguel’s character; he is tormented by his attempts to lead a happy life and therefore believes that suffering is necessary.
However, what is striking is that all the spider-people seemingly stand by Miguel except Miles. The characters we know, namely Peter B Parker, Jessica Drew (Spiderwoman), and Gwen all support Miguel’s perspective. This seems wildly out of character for these individuals who we’ve seen be insistent on saving people if it is in their power to do so. But it is important to note that, besides Gwen, they’ve already suffered that canon event of the police captain dying. For them, that was a necessary trauma in their lives that allowed them to be who they are today. It is in a sense a passive justification. They did all they could, but the captain had to die. But for Miles (and Gwen), the death of the captain is something they’re being forced to allow or even facilitate. They have to make the active choice to let their captains, both their fathers, die. Miles is insistent that this is wrong, and that there is another way to live.
As a story centered on characters of colors (and minority characters given Gwen is implied to be trans in the movie), this can be seen as a message about how some communities or people of color treat suffering. That is, the belief in many minority communities like mine (Hmong) is that suffering is a necessary evil to endure for the good of everyone. They suffered, so their children must suffer as well. However, this mindset moves from a coping mechanism to harm when, upon finding no or a lack of suffering, we fabricate suffering onto others like us because we believe this is necessary for success. Instead of finding help, lifting one another up, leaning on each other, we lean into the suffering, the pain, and the isolation. We are unduly harsh to our children, or we don’t try to disrupt the unjust systems that harmed us, or we just let bad situations be.
The Spider Society may be a group of spider-people, but there is surprisingly little care being given to one another’s wellbeing. Instead, they all look at each other and empathize rather than offer real care. I understand rather than let’s understand together. The coldness of this community is made clear with how harshly Jessica treats Gwen when she screws up, with how cruelly Miguel treats Peter (”I’ve had enough of you”), and most humorously with the therapy scene where the therapist spiderman rudely remarks, “Let me guess your Uncle Ben died?” The spider-people are all heavily traumatized individuals, and instead of healing they’ve worked themselves into a web of control and fatalism. By accepting that suffering as inevitable, they create the suffering of Miles.
As a daughter of a refugee, I grew up hearing the message that suffering made us strong, that it allowed them to be successful. Children who didn’t suffer were spoiled and grew up to be ungrateful wastes to society. I heard stories in my LGBTQ+ community about how young queers take things for granted and don’t understand how hard it once was. And when I suffered myself, I felt a similar urge to say that this suffering made me a better person. And this is so hard to fight because if you acknowledge the suffering wasn’t needed, that means you shouldn’t have had to go through it, that it was unjustified, that it was a random cruelty of the universe. And that is a tough truth to accept, because that means it didn’t have to be that way. Uncle Ben didn’t have to die for Spiderman to live.
In order to let our stories continue, instead of repeating the past, as well as help our communities Across the Spiderverse asks us to let go of the suffering and the belief we needed it. It is not what makes us heroes. It is not what makes us good. Instead, like Miles and Gwen (by the end of the movie), our heroism is in our love and our loved ones, and in the belief that there is a better way.
I've no real interest in seeing Elemental, but apparently it is good but was underserved by Disney's marketing department. Where instead of focusing on how it's a story about a second generation immigrant woman wanting to respect the challenges their family undertook to establish a new life in a city that wasn't built with them in mind, while also wanting to go and establish a new life for themselves rather than inheriting the family business and staying in one place (and getting a boyfriend from outside of the community whom her dad disapproves of due to not very subtle racism reasons), they decided to focus on the visuals and the inevitable comparisons to Zootopia.
Oddly similar to Nimona's original situation before getting picked up by Netflix, in that as a lgbtq-focused movie Disney reportedly canned it (allegedly) they weren't able to market it to as many folk as generically as possible. But while Nimona had to be rescued by another studio, a big chunk of Elemental's plot "had" to be glossed over in by the marketing team with the supposed goal of making it appeal to EVERYONE, rather than focusing on the specific story it was trying to tell that'd still be relevant to a good sized chunk of the audience the same way similar themes in Turning Red were.
Trying to appeal to everyone is something morons and cowards do
I don’t want stories that are “For everyone” because art that is “For everyone” is garbage. It’s shit. It’s spineless bullshit that’s so whitebread even Ned Flanders would be bored by it
Stories need to be about something and be for someone.
Otherwise you might as well just let an AI write them
Absolutely. Stories should be written with purpose, and with an audience in mind. Not to mention, it's important to have stories that one might not particular connect with fundamentally, because as humans we are wonderfully diverse and it's good to celebrate that with perspectives we might not have previously considered. I like stories "not about me" just as much as stories intended for my self-identity things.
The article is a little funny though, inasmuch as it's focusing on "Disney telling stories that only perform 'pretty good' instead of Exceptional". It's wild that we're writing under the framework of an animation studio "establishing dominance" and who's "on top". Honestly, if more studios get to share the spotlight to tell different stories, that's ultimately a better outcome.
THIS
Like
People who are normal and not bigots can still enjoy stories that aren’t specifically made for them.
hey i know that i dont talk about it a lot on here but this blog is pro masking. official govt and world organizations ending the health emergency doesn't mean covid is over. long term organ damage happens w every infection. the chances of long covid increase w each infection. we are facing an ever evolving infectious disease with no institutional protection. respirators protect you and others, please mask up!
you can request free n95 masks from project n95 here:
all we have is each other, mask up and take care of your community
as air quality worsens each year during fire season here's a reminder that n95s also help protect against smoke
if you live so close to the fires that even indoors is smokey an air purifier is a good investment. you can build a high quality purifier yourself with a box fan and filters
its going to get worse every year so we need to start thinking now about how we protect ourselves as climate change threatens our health. no one is coming to save us so we all need to step up and start making plans to protect our communities from disease and air pollution.
my air quality is in the red today so im reblogging this again. get some masks, tape a filter to a box fan, stay inside if you can and limit activity as much as possible.
You know, when I see fictional characters who repress all their emotions, they're usually aloof and very blunt about keeping people at a distance, sometimes to an edgy degree—but what I don't see nearly enough are the emotionally repressed characters who are just…mellow.
Think about it. In real life, the person that's bottling up all their emotions is not the one that's brooding in the corner and snaps at you for trying to befriend them. More often than not, it's that friendly person in your circle who makes easy conversation with you, laughs with you, and listens and gives advice whenever you're upset. But you never see them upset, in fact they seem to have endless patience for you and everything around them—and so you call them their friend, you trust them. And only after months of telling them all your secrets do you realize…
…they've never actually told you anything about themselves.
Adding onto this: characters who are so deeply repressed that they don't even realize they're not fine, or at the very least not supposed to be fine. Characters who do tell you about a situation they're in that should be bad, but instantly laugh it off saying they can handle it (spoiler: they can, in fact, not handle it). Characters who laugh with you and listen to all your woes and much later you learn that they were actually going through something at least equally bad at the time, but they wave it off and don't want to speak of it. Characters whose main coping mechanism seems to be "don't think about it" on endless loop.
Basically, the fictional embodiment of the "this is fine" dog.
"characters" who do this.
Didn’t see any posts about it so here it is for the other Photosensitive folks,
Alarm sequences (red lights, ‘police’ lights), explosions and gunfire
Sparks/flashing/flickering lights, firelight
Thunderstorms and lightning effects,
Flashes from color to black (hard to describe)
All within the first few minutes of the movie, frequently throughout.
It wasn’t too terrible when I watched with other lights on during the day but I tried watching it with them off and it was pretty bad. Sharing this so other people can find it would be much appreciated!
We need more of this
I'm not a PoC but this is just incredible, *exceptional*, culturally sensitive patient care, period. Absolutely should be shared with every healthcare professional I know.
We should always keep in mind that we are treating an entire person, not simply their condition, and the effects seemingly minor kindnesses can have on them long after they leave our care.
If you want to support black doctors who are just starting out, Farrah-Amoy Fullerton, a fourth-year med student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham just set up a way for people to help black fourth year med students transition to their residencie. This often means moving to a new city where they won't get a paycheck for weeks. Black students are also less likely to have access to generational wealth to keep them afloat during school. So if you have a few bucks and want to buy a graduation gift for a future black doctor, check out this article or search #medgradwishlist on twitter.
We need more black doctors to because doctors are often untrained on how to diagnose conditions in black peoples vs white people and are taught black have a higher pain tolerance and just a whole bunch of other ridiculous things........ black people need black doctors
thefloatingstone
grubus
This is Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise speaking. We’ve entered the orbit of a planet not terribly unlike our own… save that it is exclusively populated by petty old queens.
They seem to have accepted Commander Spock as one of their own.
update: Spock and Bones now lead rival factions
