Author: michellegruppetta8387

onyourleftbooob:

dykeschur:

tv shows helmed by heterosexuals only know how to make existing characters gay in one way: by introducing the character to a new side character who appears visibly gay or mentions a past same-gender partner or whatever in one of their first conversations, then letting that dynamic develop at a rapid pace until they finally have an emotionally charged kiss. bonus points if the side character never meets any of the other main characters and if the main character they’re flirting with is at a point of feeling isolated from the main group, allowing the two of them to spend more time together. 

you see this script everywhere: veep, the bold type, crazy ex-girlfriend (with darryl, but honestly it seems like maybe with valencia too), the 100, supergirl (really great job with this shit, the CW), etc. clearly i’m familiar with these arcs in a lot of lowbrow shit but i’m confident it appears at the prestige level too.

sticking to the same plot beats so predictably is a waste of the natural ability to analyze media that all gay viewers innately have. historically gays have been reading texts with a fine-toothed gay fucking comb to find lines loaded with extra intimacy and assessing that dynamic in a way straights don’t know how to. it is an insult to our intelligence to make everything so blatant and soapy. also this script reinforces some bad ideas. for one thing, the idea that gay people act and look “just like them,” but at some point in their lives they fall for one specific person who happens to be their same gender. this does happen, but making it the dominant narrative creates the impression that being gay is circumstantial; that without having met that one special person, they could have lived quite happily in hetero relationships until the end of time. this script also overlooks the huge amount of lgbt people for whom their identity is a huge part of their experience, and who came out not because they met that one special gay person but because they never could have missed that they were gay because every part of their personality screamed it at them since childhood. in crafting these somehow sexless yet overly romanticized friendships that develop along the same beats, straights neglect to understand that being gay isn’t a RELATIONSHIP, but a LIFE EXPERIENCE AND IDENTITY. it is not, for most people, a narrative arc that starts at 30 when we meet that one nice girl with short hair.

This is why it’s important to have non-cishet people writing LGBT characters. Straight people can never properly write the experiences LGBT people go through unless they check in with LGBT people.

magnolia-noire:

willoghby:

cottonginandjuice:

therealkingzo:

When the tea is HOT LAVA

I’ve always felt some tpye of way bout us having an entire museum dedicated to the holocaust and germany’s sins, but not one dedicated to trans atlantic slave trade or trail of tears or japanese internment camps or how we made hawaii a state

There absolutely should be museums dedicated to all of these tragedies. 

I do want to point out that the only reason we have a Holocaust Museum is because Jews and other survivors had to petition for it and raise the money to build it themselves. This country was more than happy to erase its Anti-Semitic  history, too. 

and don’t forget that America turned away Jewish refugees in the 30s and 40s

Source: z-o-e-x-o

spiletta42:

roxilalonde:

power move: put the fbi agent watching you through a series of endurance tests. stay awake for 72 hours. put obscene images over your webcam. chew gum really loudly next to your mic. they may have wiretaps but by god they won’t have peace

And most importantly, keep calling them FBI agents, that’s what’ll really grind on those NSA agents’ nerves.

Why Do We Let “Genius” Directors Get Away With Abusive Behavior?

verifiedaccount:

Shelley Duvall won Best Actress at Cannes in 1977 for her part in Robert Altman’s 3 Women, but her performance as Wendy Torrance in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, three years later, was criticized so harshly that it would ultimately overshadow everything else she accomplished in her career — even as the film has been used to bolster the claim that Kubrick is one of cinema’s greatest artists. Duvall, playing opposite Jack Nicholson as a woman tormented by her husband’s mounting, murderous rage, was nominated for worst performance at that year’s Razzies; Stephen King, who wrote the original novel, once said, “Shelley Duvall as Wendy is really one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film. She’s basically just there to scream and be stupid and that’s not the woman that I wrote about.”

But as she explained in her own words, Duvall’s acting wasn’t a mistake, but rather a performance precisely engineered by Kubrick, who intentionally created a horrific environment for her:

“Going through day after day of excruciating work was almost unbearable. … I had to cry 12 hours a day, all day long, the last nine months straight, five or six days a week. … After all that work, hardly anyone even criticized my performance in it, even to mention it, it seemed like. The reviews were all about Kubrick, like I wasn’t there.”

Nicholson has corroborated this description, calling Duvall’s task on set “the toughest job [of] any actor that I’ve seen.” There is even visual proof of that torment in the documentary Making “The Shining,” which was directed by Kubrick’s daughter Vivian and shows the director asking others on set not to show Duvall sympathy. Yet, despite this clear evidence of verbal and emotional abuse, Stanley Kubrick’s reputation as an “auteur” has remained mostly untouched.

In fact, the Duvall incident — and the way in which Kubrick controlled his set — has been wrapped into the mythic aura surrounding him and his film, casually inserted into lists like “25 Things You Might Not Know About The Shining,” alongside trivia like its record-breaking number of takes. Director Saul Metzstein once said of Kubrick that “his films are amazing, and there’s something in them which you couldn’t get unless you were being unbelievably particular and methodical. You need some sort of obsessiveness to make that stuff.” Not only is Kubrick considered one of the most influential directors of all time, but The Shining, specifically, was named the 46th best-directed film ever by the Directors Guild of America.

The implication of all this acclaim is that there was a “method” to Kubrick tormenting Duvall, and that even if it hurt her, the ends justified the means. From von Trier, who once said that watching Nicole Kidman wear a dog collar with a bell on it while shooting Dogville gave him “personal pleasure,” to Hitchcock, who sexually harassed Tippi Hedren while making a film about sexual violence, a man directing can rationalize almost any behavior toward women if what emerges as a final product is something beautiful in the eyes of other men.

Why Do We Let “Genius” Directors Get Away With Abusive Behavior?

vijara:

if there’s anything i believe in these days it’s my own resilience. no matter how many setbacks i come across i am still actively dreaming the best version of myself into existence each and every day. i am relentless in pursuing what i want and i am patient enough to wait for my efforts to pay off. i’ll make it. i’ll always make it.