Fumbling Towards Melancholy

Is the attention to details in season 2 of Good Omens as perfect as in season 1?

P.S: Love Good Omens

I'm afraid not.

For example, in Season 1 of Good Omens, the part of a demon named Crowley was played by actor David Tennant. Budget cuts in Season 2 mean that the part of Crowley in Season 2 will be shared between a glove puppet, a dear friend of the production manager's named, I believe, Raoul, and five trained fennec foxes wearing an overcoat.

Top photo: Five fennec foxes.

The absolute refusal to allow anyone to use queer as an umbrella is both novel and regressive (I know, I know). For decades, queer was an accepted and neutral way to concisely refer to a coalition of loosely connected communities and identities. Queer theory, queer film, queer spaces, queer history.

This use came after another few decades of committed work in reclaiming the word from oppressors who flat out stole it from us.

It took a lot of effort to wrestle it back out of their hands, and now I’m expected to just give it over to them because decades of unity and collective action and shared experience don’t matter because a handful of (usually white, almost exclusively american) kids on this godawful website have deicded it’s illegal for me to “force it on others” and that I should instead just let them for LGBT or gay or whatever else on me.

Like, fuck off?

Fuck off.

I am going to refer to my community in the way that I have been doing for an entire lifetime. Not just my specific identity, which is queer as fuck, but the whole fucking shebang.

And I will not hand the word back over to straight people with a nice little ribbon and a coat of polish and say “here, some kids decided it was cool if I let you stab them with this word so here you go” like

Fucking, why would I ever.

Frankly, and I know how people are going to react to this but, frankly?

I damned well will use queer to refer to my community as well as myself, and anyone who wants to take it away from me can take it over my COLD DEAD QUEER LITTLE FINGERS.

I will not sit by and let antsy, nervous kids who don’t know a damn thing about our history talk down to me about how “well, actually” when they can’t even recognize the fact that trans people were still being policed out of here literally three fucking years ago.

The presumption and the ignorance are staggering.

So yeah.

Queer as in fuck you people in particular.

And, to my followers who are made uncomfortable by this, well. I will regret losing you on some level, but not enough to stop.

I fully intend to use queer as the umbrella term it has been for my entire life. LGBT never did my intersex, pansexual ass any favours anyway.

My point is, I’m not going to be referring to the “LGBT” community at all, anymore. It’s going to be 100% queer here, in a more conscious and consistent way than it has been before. Because, you see, even people who do use queer as an identity unashamedly have gotten into this pattern of being apologetic or conditional about it, with a constant, overbearing tone that even when we do use queer as a community term with have to hedge it and gentle it because it’s so dangerous.

but it’s fuckign not.

We spent decades pulling the danger out of it.

And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with

Because it’s absolutely surreal to see someone who is fifteen years old speak as if queer’s been used to constantly attack and smear and belittle and insult them, when they’re about twenty years too late, at the very least, to have gone through that as a teenager. I’ve seen it happen so many times, with so many teenagers on here, that it reads honestly like a script – like a Discourse Point someone’s taught them that they need to trot out as an argument, always and forever, amen. I made this connection over a year ago, when the screaming against ‘queer’ started in earnest on here and thought about it more in-depth when a number of very young activists both here and on Twitter told me unironically and with a straight face that they took all of their discourse points from the likes of leftbians and other exclusionists, starting with your garden-variety aphobes and biphobes and ending with outright radfems / TWERFs / SWERFs. 

That was the lightbulb moment for me. Question: 

what group has managed to spread their posts and their ideas far and wide on Tumblr, because people reblog without checking the source or reading between the lines? 

and what group has had a vicious ideological axe to grind against ‘queer’ as both a self-descriptor and an umbrella-term for decades now?

The answer to both is radfems. I was there ten years ago when they were absolutely driving themselves into a frothing lather over the fact that a very large number of LGBTQIAP+ youth were describing ourselves and our communities as queer uncontroversially – seriously, this was so common on the English-speaking queer youth forums I used to frequent back then that no one batted an eyelash, specifically because the work of reclamation had already been done for decades and if, asked, the vast majority of people answered that they preferred queer because it was INCLUSIVE (which is and has always been the kryptonite for groups of people whose ideas revolved around gatekeeping the community and their precious selves being the arbiters of who gets in and who stays out), Radfems quickly realized that they weren’t going to be able to demonize the word in the eyes of Gen Xers or people at the older end of the Gen Y generation in the community, because we’d either contributed to the work of reclamation or spent our whole fucking lives in communities where queer was a badge of pride. 

So, in what is honestly an absolutely brilliant move and which I’d be almost tempted to admire, if I didn’t want to spit everyone involved right between the eyes, radfems and other exclusionists targeted much younger LGBTQIAP+ people, leapfrogging a generation. Tumblr, in this sense, has been absolutely vital, both in giving them access to very young people who were just discovering themselves and whose knowledge of community history was nonexistent and in being built in such a way that radfems could make their posts go viral and attract tens of thousands of reblogs, if not more, if they knew to word them in just the right way (I’ve lost count of the number of what, at a shallow glance, seem like very decent PSAs on consent, but that at a closer reading were actually anti-BDSM screeds, easy to see for anyone who knows the dogwhistles). 

If radfems have managed to mire this place in their ideas intensely enough that they’ve turned their anti-kink crusade into an omnipresent thing in certain progressive communities on Tumblr, it’s not impossible to make the logical leap that they’ve managed to do so with their decades-long anti-queer crusade as well.   

The absolute refusal to allow anyone to use queer as an umbrella is both novel and regressive (I know, I know). For decades, queer was an accepted and neutral way to concisely refer to a coalition of loosely connected communities and identities. Queer theory, queer film, queer spaces, queer history.

This use came after another few decades of committed work in reclaiming the word from oppressors who flat out stole it from us.

It took a lot of effort to wrestle it back out of their hands, and now I’m expected to just give it over to them because decades of unity and collective action and shared experience don’t matter because a handful of (usually white, almost exclusively american) kids on this godawful website have deicded it’s illegal for me to “force it on others” and that I should instead just let them for LGBT or gay or whatever else on me.

Like, fuck off?

Fuck off.

I am going to refer to my community in the way that I have been doing for an entire lifetime. Not just my specific identity, which is queer as fuck, but the whole fucking shebang.

And I will not hand the word back over to straight people with a nice little ribbon and a coat of polish and say “here, some kids decided it was cool if I let you stab them with this word so here you go” like

Fucking, why would I ever.

Frankly, and I know how people are going to react to this but, frankly?

I damned well will use queer to refer to my community as well as myself, and anyone who wants to take it away from me can take it over my COLD DEAD QUEER LITTLE FINGERS.

I will not sit by and let antsy, nervous kids who don’t know a damn thing about our history talk down to me about how “well, actually” when they can’t even recognize the fact that trans people were still being policed out of here literally three fucking years ago.

The presumption and the ignorance are staggering.

So yeah.

Queer as in fuck you people in particular.

And, to my followers who are made uncomfortable by this, well. I will regret losing you on some level, but not enough to stop.

I fully intend to use queer as the umbrella term it has been for my entire life. LGBT never did my intersex, pansexual ass any favours anyway.

My point is, I’m not going to be referring to the “LGBT” community at all, anymore. It’s going to be 100% queer here, in a more conscious and consistent way than it has been before. Because, you see, even people who do use queer as an identity unashamedly have gotten into this pattern of being apologetic or conditional about it, with a constant, overbearing tone that even when we do use queer as a community term with have to hedge it and gentle it because it’s so dangerous.

but it’s fuckign not.

We spent decades pulling the danger out of it.

And I can’t help but think that someone who knows exactly what they are doing was behind it to begin with

Because it’s absolutely surreal to see someone who is fifteen years old speak as if queer’s been used to constantly attack and smear and belittle and insult them, when they’re about twenty years too late, at the very least, to have gone through that as a teenager. I’ve seen it happen so many times, with so many teenagers on here, that it reads honestly like a script – like a Discourse Point someone’s taught them that they need to trot out as an argument, always and forever, amen. I made this connection over a year ago, when the screaming against ‘queer’ started in earnest on here and thought about it more in-depth when a number of very young activists both here and on Twitter told me unironically and with a straight face that they took all of their discourse points from the likes of leftbians and other exclusionists, starting with your garden-variety aphobes and biphobes and ending with outright radfems / TWERFs / SWERFs. 

That was the lightbulb moment for me. Question: 

what group has managed to spread their posts and their ideas far and wide on Tumblr, because people reblog without checking the source or reading between the lines? 

and what group has had a vicious ideological axe to grind against ‘queer’ as both a self-descriptor and an umbrella-term for decades now?

The answer to both is radfems. I was there ten years ago when they were absolutely driving themselves into a frothing lather over the fact that a very large number of LGBTQIAP+ youth were describing ourselves and our communities as queer uncontroversially – seriously, this was so common on the English-speaking queer youth forums I used to frequent back then that no one batted an eyelash, specifically because the work of reclamation had already been done for decades and if, asked, the vast majority of people answered that they preferred queer because it was INCLUSIVE (which is and has always been the kryptonite for groups of people whose ideas revolved around gatekeeping the community and their precious selves being the arbiters of who gets in and who stays out), Radfems quickly realized that they weren’t going to be able to demonize the word in the eyes of Gen Xers or people at the older end of the Gen Y generation in the community, because we’d either contributed to the work of reclamation or spent our whole fucking lives in communities where queer was a badge of pride. 

So, in what is honestly an absolutely brilliant move and which I’d be almost tempted to admire, if I didn’t want to spit everyone involved right between the eyes, radfems and other exclusionists targeted much younger LGBTQIAP+ people, leapfrogging a generation. Tumblr, in this sense, has been absolutely vital, both in giving them access to very young people who were just discovering themselves and whose knowledge of community history was nonexistent and in being built in such a way that radfems could make their posts go viral and attract tens of thousands of reblogs, if not more, if they knew to word them in just the right way (I’ve lost count of the number of what, at a shallow glance, seem like very decent PSAs on consent, but that at a closer reading were actually anti-BDSM screeds, easy to see for anyone who knows the dogwhistles). 

If radfems have managed to mire this place in their ideas intensely enough that they’ve turned their anti-kink crusade into an omnipresent thing in certain progressive communities on Tumblr, it’s not impossible to make the logical leap that they’ve managed to do so with their decades-long anti-queer crusade as well.   

Now…. imagine, if in the last 38 minutes of LOTR, Gandalf never returns and no other characters mention him or grieves his loss. Aragorn stops pining over Arwen and she isn’t mentioned or shown again. Frodo destroys the ring, returns to the shire, and dies in a freak hobbit-hole renovation accident. Sam returns to the shire and doesn’t even go and look for Rosie, and instead settles on a blurry hobbit with no relevance to anything he has previously said. And for no reason whatsoever Legolas is shown half-naked in a scene.

While Sam and Jack have to drive, gather 20+ people from all over the state– if not country– in one spot, and then have to ward the whole place, which must have at least taken most of the day. 

Ummm. S'gotta be Cockles. You can’t *act* pupil dilation either. Go try it. I’ll wait.

I’m going to talk about Jensen’s pupil dilation for a second, because it’s incredibly obvious compared to whatever Misha’s eyes are doing.

let’s say controlled pupil dilation was possible. Jensen would probably attempt to conquer that ability for the sake of acting better. he’s all about the subtleties. we know that about his acting.

so if Jensen did indeed have impossible eye-controlling superpowers, I have a question. why would Jensen make a point of using that power to show Dean as attracted to Cas? let me list the reasons. 1. he was consciously playing Dean as bisexual, 2. he was invested in Destiel as a romantic relationship from the get-go, 3. both of the above. (of course, this is assuming that he dilated his pupils ~on purpose~.)

the thing is, though, over the years hundreds of actors and actresses came and went, playing other characters who interact with Dean, and Jensen didn’t bother to use this fantastic pupil-dilating power each time Dean was attracted to someone. so what made Misha different? was it that he’d be sticking around, and it was worth putting in the effort? nope. the writers hadn’t even planned on bringing Cas back after the first three episodes of season 4. Misha was supposed to be on set for a few weeks and then he’d be gone. at the time Jensen and Misha met, not expecting it to last, Jensen couldn’t have been deeply invested in Destiel as a future relationship – certainly not enough to care whether or not his goddamn pupils were dilated. this gifset is from the second episode they had together.

sure, Jensen could’ve been going for “the pushy angel turns Dean on”; end of story. whether he played that consciously or not, that’s what became canon. Dean is totally into Cas, hooray! nobody is surprised.

but c’mon, let’s face it. those aren’t magical eye-controlling superpowers. nothing’s happening to the lights to make Jensen’s pupils expand. it’s definitely not CGI. above all: Jensen’s not dilating his pupils on purpose. what you’re looking at is not singularly Dean’s attraction to Cas. you’re seeing Jensen’s attraction to Misha too. these dorks just met two weeks ago (8 days filming each episode), and Jensen is already hopelessly gone on Misha.

Never let go - Speedpainting 2014

Time total: 4 hours

Add.: any resemblance with tsuki-nekotas drawing is pure coincidence, same anatomy references were used.

………

….

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT FOR 11 YEARS, MITCH KOSTERMAN WAS CONFUSING THAT PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT DESTIEL MEANT A TV SHOW SHIP IN THE SHOW AND THOUGHT LITERALLY EVERYBODY WAS TALKING ABOUT COCKLES? AND MAYBE EVEN J2?

AND 

HE JUST HAD AN SM MEDIA RANT ABOUT WHAT’S FICTION WRITTEN IN THE SHOW AND WHAT’S RPS?

WHILE CONFUSING THE TWO?????

HE LITERALLY JUST WENT OFF QTING DESTIEL FANS RANTING THAT WHAT’S SCRIPTED IN THE SHOW (YES HE SAID THAT AND WHAT THEY’RE TOLD TO ACT) ISN’T REAL AND STARTED TALKING ABOUT RPS/TINHATS WHILE YELLING AT DESTIEL FANS

THAT IS THE FUNNIEST FUCKING DESTIEL CONFIRMATION I’VE EVER FUCKING SEEN THANKS DUDE

I’M FUCKING DEAD SEND HELP

also BONUS ROUND how much do you think J2 tinhats will laugh at Cockles folks not realizing Mitch was also widely addressing shipping real actors in general.

he’s STILL GOING 

I’M DYING HE LITERALLY CONFUSED DESTIEL WITH COCKLES WHAT.

The Last Goodbye (2011)