Mind-Taking

So no Poland?

Its also a curious level of denial about who your core fanbase is. All of these wanted their Target audience to be someone else than who their most loyal fans were.

The typical comic fans are kids and teens, marvel wants to make blockbusters for adults. Star wars fans are hyperfocused sci fi nerds AND a lot of minorities and disney wanted to make Big numbers in china and also generally wanted to appeal to a larger audience instead of a loyal, smaller group. The initial got fans were fans of the books, history nerds and lotr stans, d and d wanted to write their own story and shifted the original Story around to basically make a sexed up talent show, you tune in every week to see who makes it to the next round. And now the most dedicated, loyal and borderline obsessive spn fans are of course young women, many of them queer. Same as with sherlock, the creators HATED this, bc they wanted their show to be for men. They begrudgingly played into the fanservice for the ratings, but deep down they hated themselves for it and let us know IN CANON how much they disliked their own fans.

It’s actually very obvious that 99% of mainstream media creators get visibly embarrassed by a female majority fanbase. The condecension is thinly-veiled even when they’re in the middle of asking for attention/money from a demographic they obviously despise.

It’s a mindset that says ‘women have bad artistic taste’ and concludes that ‘if women like a piece of artistic creation that means there’s something wrong unless it’s specifically designed for women, in which case it is already categorically inferior and peripheral’. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with conscious authorial decisions (although many of them are intentionally misogynistic in this respect), because it’s a mindset that runs deep and has a much longer history than capitalism - it is a reflection of men’s monopoly on the right to build and add to the semiotics of artistic expression. For centuries. Across many cultures.

It is harsh and cynical; once you start to notice that, it becomes practically impossible to whole-heartedly embrace any fandom of mainstream media at all. That’s why it’s not the fans’ fault for not seeing that, no matter how obvious it seems to outsiders - sometimes in some areas women are still so invalid that praise and love from them are detested and promptly avoided, even at the cost of bringing down the whole story.

This isn’t something we’d get rid of any time soon; people will get new mainstream media obsessions and get hurt when its creators do something silly to avoid women’s approval.

But in the long run we must create our own stories. If you feel like you don’t get what you want, if you feel like your perspective is being constantly invalidated, then draw, write, and support artists who are doing the same.

STOP the infighting and purity policing because we can’t afford to do that. We are in this together.

Our voices remain marginal till this very day, and our priority really shouldn’t be taking down someone who simply likes a differen ship, a problematic trope, or a character you hate. Tolerance is hard but try your best if you really want to see a win instead of these endless sequence of predictable disappointments.

https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2019_Its_a_Mans_Celluloid_World_Report_REV.pdf

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/family-films-twice-many-male-female-characters-says-new-study-exclusive-193648252.html

https://seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/key-findings-gender-disparity-family-films-2013.pdf 

And it’s true, sometimes female fanbases are actively disliked and discouraged:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/paul-dini-superhero-cartoon-execs-dont-want-largely-f-1483758317

I don’t think we can analyse all these texts as suffering from exactly the same failings in terms of their ending, however.  

Game of Thrones may have tried to surprise fans, but Supernatural and Rise of Skywalker tried to please certain segments of the fan audience (at the expense of others). A Reylo ending for Rise of Skywalker and a Just-the-Brothers ending for Supernatural were fanservice.  And it was that, cartoonish idea of, fanservice which impacted narrative and character growth.  

Avengers: Endgame -  the privileging of the heteronormative family remains a given in products this huge. The ending wasn’t “leftfield” to evade fans who had guessed ahead. The ending was, predictably, normative. Women are seen as a “reward” for male heroism; Peggy becomes Cap’s reward. Women who are not family-normative are seen as expendable; hence Nat’s sacrifice for Barton (because Barton had a heteronormative family).  Elements capable of “queer readings” (the team as “found family”, the close relationship between Cap and Bucky) got shut down by a heteronormative ending - dull and regressive, yes, but not leftfield.

In fact, it’s not the narrative trying to “surprise” fans which unites the endings of Game of Thrones, Rise of Skywalker, Avengers: Endgame and Supernatural; it’s the unimaginative straightjacket of (white) heteronormative patriarchy. Disruptive elements allowed space in the middle of the story are given normative endings. 

Rey, is the hero of the new Disney Star Wars trilogy, and hey, that’s cool, a woman in the Luke role. But, she’s written by men (and the virgin/ whore dichotomy is, apparently, still going strong with them) and so she is girlish and un-sexual (virgin category) and her story evolves to revolve around a troubled white man (Kylo Ren). Rey’s “purity” saves petulant Alt-right manchild Kylo, changing him back into “nice” Ben. It’s Beauty and the Beast, in space. 

Wonderful female characters who were allowed to breathe and evolve over the course of Game of Thrones get put back in their boxes at the end. Cersei becomes just the bitch her “nice” brother couldn’t escape from. Dany becomes  just the power-mad bitch her “nice” lover Jon Snow had to murder. And the final scene is Brann’s council (all dudes except Brienne) discussing the need to rebuild the city’s brothels as a top priority. Proper patriarchy is restored…

Supernatural, well, what even was that fuckery. But there are no women, no POC, and no queer folk visible in that final Heaven, only white men-folk. All the interesting elements allowed to breath in the middle of the story were bleached out at the end; blood family was reinscribed as more important than found family; Sam got some blurry heterosexuality; Dean and Cas were not allowed to reunite, in case queerness “tainted” the final bow on the corporate product.

“Children are the world’s most valuable resource.” -John F Kennedy

“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.” -Whitney Houston

Literally no reason to make that point by invoking Hitler. Like… the Hitler. Adolf “lemme just kill off every Jewisj and Romani person in Europe real quick” Hitler. Did I mention she literally quoted Hitler? If not: YEAH IT WAS HITLER.

Like, if she wanted to quote a conservative asshole, she could have at least gone with Billy Graham’s “The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.”

I can’t stop thinking about the zip-tie guys.

Amid the photos that flooded social media during Wednesday’s riot at the Capitol—shirtless jokers in horned helmets, dudes pointing at their nuts, dumbasses carrying away souvenirs—the images of the zip-tie guys were quieter, less exuberant, more chilling. And we’d better not forget what they almost managed to do.

It’s easy to think of the siege of the U.S. Capitol as a clown show with accidentally deadly consequences. A bunch of cosplaying self-styled patriots show up, overwhelm the incomprehensibly unprepared Capitol Police, and then throw a frat party in the rotunda. The miscreants smear shit on the walls and steal laptops and smoke weed in conference rooms. Someone gets shot; someone else has a heart attack, possibly under ludicrous circumstances. When they finally get rousted, they cry to the cameras about getting maced.

Those rioters, the bozos, were the ones who talked to the press, who waved gleefully to photographers, who selfied and streamed the entire afternoon, without even a thought that there might ever be consequences. They were doing it for the ’gram, and their story overwhelms the narrative because their faces and voices dominated the day.

But there were other rioters inside the Capitol, if you look at the images. And once you see them, it’s impossible to look away. The zip-tie guys.

Call the zip ties by their correct name: The guys were carrying flex cuffs, the plastic double restraints often used by police in mass arrest situations. They walked through the Senate chamber with a sense of purpose. They were not dressed in silly costumes but kitted out in full paramilitary regalia: helmets, armor, camo, holsters with sidearms. At least one had a semi-automatic rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails. At least one, unlike nearly every other right-wing rioter photographed that day, wore a mask that obscured his face.

These are the same guys who, when the windows of the Capitol were broken and entry secured, went in first with what I’d call military-ish precision. They moved with purpose, to the offices of major figures like Nancy Pelosi and then to the Senate floor. What was that purpose? It wasn’t to pose for photos. It was to use those flex cuffs on someone.

In October, the FBI and state authorities charged 13 men with plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan. Members of that plot attended protests at the Michigan Capitol in April, real planners of violence mixing easily with those for whom guns are fun protest props. The plotters discussed a summary execution—“knock on the door,” one wrote in the group chat, “and when she answers it just cap her”—but settled on a kidnapping, pulled off while police were distracted by a nearby explosion. Think of that plot, as these men surely did, as a dress rehearsal for what the zip-tie guys wanted to accomplish at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

They went into the Capitol, as Congress was counting electoral votes, equipped to take hostages—to physically seize officials, and presumably to take lives. The prospect is terrifying. But just because it seems unthinkable doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think hard about what almost happened. Don’t dismiss the zip-tie guys as “LARPers” or “weekend warriors.” First of all, given the well-documented overlap between ex-military, law enforcement, and right-wing militias, it’s entirely possible these guys were weekday warriors using their training in service of extracurricular interests. (One of the Twitter sleuths who are now trying to track them down sure seems to think they’re ex-military.) More importantly, the long awful course of history reminds us how slippery the slope is from playacting as a strike force to actually behaving as a strike force. Once the zip ties go on, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a “real” terrorist or not.

Today, we’re hearing more about the violence that accompanied the buffoonery: the Capitol Police officer killed with a fire extinguisher, the AP photographer dragged away by goons, the New York Times photographer thrown to the floor who feared for her life. No doubt we’ll hear even more as more stories come out.

He also just couldn’t handle the hot wings. The interviewer guy was eating the same wings as him but was fine but Gordon Ramsay was having a meltdown over them and got so frustrated about it that he threw one of the wings.

hi so the ONLY part of this post that is actually factual and not a half-truth or a bold faced lie is the part about Gordon Ramsay being unable to take spice. Go and watch it yourself and make your own judgements of him instead of taking tumblr posts at face value BUT *in addition* to that here’s a basic rundown of what actually happens.

Video starts out with Ramsay doing his ‘bit’ where he critiques the hot wings in a scathing manner. That’s just his brand, and it’s taken in good faith as a joke.

The interviewer then imitates a yelp reviewer as a segue into talking about the insane prices at some of these celebrity chef restaurants, and Ramsay goes on to criticise the chefs for trying too hard to bring up the price of a standard burger at the expense of the quality of the dish (e.g by putting gold leaf in burgers, the specific example he uses, something that adds nothing to the dish but the price).

Then Ramsay talks about rent and labour cost – how the more successful a chef is, the higher the rent for any venue is. This is in response to a question about whether there are hidden costs for the owners of restaurants that diners don’t know about, so he isn’t even complaining about this but rather is highlighting something that the average viewer may not know.

Ramsay makes reference to ‘millenial snowflakes’ in a lighthearted manner after talking about the frightening experience of training under an esteemed french chef who was borderline abusive. He actually calls them ‘beautiful millennials and snowflakes’ in a sort of teasing way while effectively giving these people a *pep talk*, encouraging them and conveying the message that you can thrive through adversity, as sometimes it makes you stronger. 

He first starts to feel the heat at around the 12 minute mark. Then, when the interview broaches the topic of scathing reviews, Ramsay jumps right in with his own example of an ‘amazing’ food critic who once described one of his dishes as looking like ‘toxic scum on a stagnant pool’. The mood here is very much still lighthearted and he reflects on it not with anger but with a sort of bemusement, indicating that he ‘took it on the chin’.

So then, right, the interviewer reads the Guy Fieri quote – and Ramsay begins immediately with ‘I know Guy’ which establishes that they are, at the very least, acquaintances and not intangible adversaries to one another, and so it’s unlikely that he’d want to show actual vitriol to him. All he says. ALL Gordon Ramsey says about Guy Fieri is literally a throwaway, relatively playful insult about him putting ‘Donkey Sauce’ on everything, which following the acknowledgment that they personally know each other does seem to imply that this is meant in playful teasing – and NOT, as OP suggests, a full on ‘rant’ about how he ‘hates’ Guy Fieri. Ramsay then says that he ‘takes it on the chin’ again and tells Guy to shut the fuck up, again, in a fairly lighthearted manner, before moving on. That is the entire segment about Guy Fieri, and it’s under 10 seconds. 

After that, Ramsay can’t handle any more and there’s a big production made about him crashing and burning. And then they cook. There’s nothing about Woody Allen (he actually references Mo Farah, a runner, not Mia Farrow), there’s no indication that he’s right-wing (aside from being rich I guess, but he really doesn’t get political like, at all). The spiciest thing in there besides the wings was when they talked about how Ramsay investigated illicit shark fin trades in Costa Rico.

I don’t know this man personally. I’m not invested in defending him against any legitimate claims of these sort. Maybe Gordon Ramsay IS right wing and misogynistic and we don’t know it, that isn’t the point. OP has very purposefully gone out to deceive readers by making shit up with the assumption that you won’t watch the video. I don’t care if this was a social experiment or some kind of elaborate joke or a ploy for notes of people debunking it. Stop spreading malicious lies – not for Gordon Ramsay’s sake, he doesn’t give a shit what you do, he’s a millionaire – please stop for the sake of people who already find it so difficult to understand what’s real and what’s fake/alternative information meant to gaslight them. It’s cruel and unfunny and you should absolutely know better. There are better ways to lampoon Tumblr’s reading comprehension, if that is what’s going on here, than just feeding into the problem directly. 

When the contestant was singing his song, they also showed this:

During one visit, Ruth noticed the nurses would draw straws, afraid to go into one room, its door sealed by a big red bag. She asked why and the nurses told her the patient had AIDS.

On a repeat visit, and seeing the big red bag on the door, Ruth decided to disregard the warnings and sneaked into the room.

In the bed was a skeletal young man, who told Ruth he wanted to see his mother before he died. She left the room and told the nurses, who said, “Honey, his mother’s not coming. He’s been here six weeks. Nobody’s coming!”

Ruth called his mother anyway, who refused to come visit her son, who she described as a “sinner” and already dead to her, and that she wouldn’t even claim his body when he died.

“I went back in his room and when I walked in, he said, “Oh, momma. I knew you’d come”, and then he lifted his hand. And what was I going to do? So I took his hand. I said, “I’m here, honey. I’m here”, Ruth later recounted.

Ruth pulled a chair to his bedside, talked to him

and held his hand until he died 13 hours later.

After finally finding a funeral home that would his body, and paying for the cremation out of her own savings, Ruth buried his ashes on her family’s large plot.

After this first encounter, Ruth cared for other patients. She would take them to appointments, obtain medications, apply for assistance, and even kept supplies of AIDS medications on hand, as some pharmacies would not carry them.

Ruth’s work soon became well known in the city and she received financial assistance from gay bars, “They would twirl up a drag show on Saturday night and here’d come the money. That’s how we’d buy medicine, that’s how we’d pay rent. If it hadn’t been for the drag queens, I don’t know what we would have done”, Ruth said.

Over the next 30 years, Ruth cared for over 1,000 people and buried more than 40 on her family’s plot most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.