queer villains and the death of media literacy

[@HeyRowanEllis]

Thank you to those who bought this to my attention! I, for some unknown reason, called the creator of Nimona "JD" instead of "ND" in the video - I blame the seminal 2000s medical comedy Scrubs - but apologies for the slip of the tongue! You can check out his stuff here if you rightly watched my analysis of Nimona and went "oh, wow, this dude seems like a genius, more please!": twitter.com/Gingerhazing

[@Lucky_Dagger]

He has the same handle on Blue Sky but his bsky is pretty empty. God i wish he'd ditch that transphobe billionaire's shit house.

[@voidify3]

There are problems with your subtitles, they seem computer-generated. one telltale sign is that the subtitles don’t know the show is called “helluva boss”, it consistently mishears it as “hell of a boss”. Why don’t you just paste your script into the subtitle generator rather than letting an algorithm guess your words from the audio??

[@i.7525]

i assumed it was because of heathers lmao

[@DOOMsword7]

@porter9494this is not the kind of conversation to start on an essay about queer representation and themes. Please reconsider your welcome here

[@perhaps1094]

@porter9494 This barely relates to anything talked abt at all in this vid, your literally talking to a fucking strawman? Is the creator of this video in anyway making their sexuality their personality: No, not in the slightest. Go comment this shit on a video that's at least related instead of seeing queer in a title and dropping some random word vomit, good luck with your son who definitely exists!

[@Lucky_Dagger]

I remember hearing about how Miyazaki hated Hollywood because producers planning theatrical releases of ghibli films would always want to know "who is the villain?" Princess Mononoke for example features a woman who uses industrial technology to build her settlement polluting the water and creating firearms. She employs people who were outcasts for their illnesses and perceived "unclean" attributes housing them and providing food and healthcare. Lady Eboshi is a complicated character, she defies the patriarchy and caste systems but also creates weapons and pollutes. Depending on the story teller she could be a hero or a villain but miyazaki simply wanted her to be Eboshi a woman at odds with the protagonist and nothing flattened to meet easy marketability. If we had less capitalistic meddling maybe there would be more stories full of complexity on TV and in theatres. Maybe characters in fiction could just be people who are at odds instead of champions of moral values.

[@TabbyWithMittens]

Reminds me I watched a reaction to that movie and they really REALLY wanted Lady Eboshi to die. Like I get you don’t have to like her, that’s the beauty of fictional characters, but damn it just felt uncomfortable how much they hated her.

[@kaiyodei]

@@TabbyWithMittens the people who have the pristine green dream, were humans go back to being their evolutionary ancestors 9 milion years ago?

[@goddamnit7230]

The sad thing is, whenever I hear someone say patriarchy it is clearly from someone who has never experienced such a thing before. I don't believe Lady Eboshi necessarily defies the patriarchy more than she defies the culture who has outcasted its own people. Patriarchy isn't just being a strong woman or anything like that as I feel you will see that kind of person throughout rural areas in droves. Patriarchy is more the religious political system like in Islamic countries, which I personally came from, that literally view women as second class citizens and provide them less rights than men. Such as, half of inheritance that men receive, men capable of taking numerous wives while the women cannot take numerous husbands, and things like marital rape not even considered 'real'. I think there is a stark difference between the two. I want to see what you mean by defying the patriarchy as I think you will realize, that isn't necessarily defying the patriarchy as society has rules bestowed by a wide variety of different classes, religious beliefs, the sexes and etc. The rich being one of the most influential groups and not necessarily being a patriacrhy but I agree that greed can certainly affect our entertainment. We are seeing it now with star wars and marvel at the moment.

[@DarksideGmss0513]

I think a lot of times people tend get villain and antagonist mixed up.

[@ANIMAL.LOVERS.DONT.EAT.ANIMALS]

@@goddamnit7230 just because the patriarchal slant of a culture isnt that extreme doesnt mean theres no patriarchy present in a society. also there were a lot of hints that eboshi was taking care of women who were outcast by their culture, ie, discarded women of a patriarchal culture such as widows.

[@JohnnyTheWolf-d3p]

Of course, the ultimate irony is that Scar's black mane would have actually made him quite popular with the lionesses, since it signals high testoterone.

[@thisrandomperson1843]

Another fun fact about lions: While having a black mane is considered more attractive among female lions(I hate autocorrect), a major downside is having a darker mane means getting physical hotter, which causes lower sperm counts(Thanks Casual Geographic).

[@seeleunit2000]

Well, Disney couldn't allow a villain too be popular with women (or in this case Lionesses) inan animated movie.

[@Partyarti_23]

​@@thisrandomperson1843suffering from success

[@karathewolfsfanficchannel933]

@@seeleunit2000*cough cough* Gaston *cough cough*

[@wombatiferous]

I mean also, in real life it's very very common for lion brothers to share the same pride. Adult Simba is the one who would have to leave to find unrelated mates. Scar and Mufasa don't get along because they're Hamlet Sr and Claudius in lion suits, not because they're lions.

[@cbw900]

Commenting to boost and make an empty-headed remark about how I want more queer heroes to kiss queer villains in order to save the world

[@beckyginger3432]

I can only think of two off the top of my head

[@matilda5753]

they don't kiss but tbh lego batman

[@beckyginger3432]

They do hold hands though 😂

[@AC-dk4fp]

My queer heroine can't even kiss the queer villainess to save herself sigh

[@pleaseelaborate3163]

This, this is the take

[@SparksArtandCosplay]

Something I think is interesting about Nimona is the only damage that she causes to the city while she was marching to the statue of glorith is either her being knocked over and falling onto buildings, or destroying trauma triggers

[@NoiseDay]

Legit, she only got mad and retaliated when she was attacked. Otherwise she was on a focused march to her death.

[@user-vw9lj1yn1b]

in the original comic she murders a bunch of people and tries to kill ballister, forcing him to kill her

[@SparksArtandCosplay]

@@user-vw9lj1yn1b valid point though I am specifically talking about the film and not the comic and I have never read the comic and I should’ve noted that in my original comment

[@joeb8935]

@@user-vw9lj1yn1bright… the comic and the movie a very different stories

[@Al_-cf1dj]

​@@user-vw9lj1yn1b okay, and? We're obviously not talking about the comic, so why bring it up?

[@princessjellyfish98]

it's me, IM the depraved bisexual 😔

[@EmmaDelamare]

Oh thank god, I thought it was me 😅

[@AmyThePuddytat]

​@@EmmaDelamareI am yet another unhinged sapphic slipping into the comments to admit that I see myself in the depraved bisexual, lol.

[@Pinkywinkykinky]

You can count me as one too, girlie

[@LegendOfKitty]

Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!! I hope that was dramatic enough for you.

[@FabulousSquidward]

And That's... Pretty hot Tom.

[@davidcheater4239]

My favourite gay/queer villain is The Corinthian in Sandman(tv). I'm hoping we've reached a point where queer characters can just EXIST rather than be symbolic of all queer characters.

[@Thenewboidahlia]

Oh I LOVED The Corinthian even in the graphic novel! Such a good villain!

[@haeherfeder1713]

Well _The Sandman_ was created by Neil Gaiman. He’s always been great about LGBTQ stuff. And he’s a great writer.

[@nitzeart]

Yesss the Corinthian ❤ I love this character so much. He’s be gay, do crimes personified haha

[@qiae]

As I have aversions regarding the eyes stuff, I wouldn't say he's a fav of mine overall, but his characterization is exemplary of why we have more broadly embraced Neil Gaiman. Regarding the aspect of queer characters existing, a huge part of that will come down to proportions, as with all representation, because part of why the Hayes code and other facets have been so detrimental is not only by restricting queer characters almost completely, but also by pidgeonholing the characters who were permitted, into the boxes discussed in the video. I hope for a day when the proportions reach a point where we no longer need to fear the likely weaponization of fictional characters against us, but I suspect that it will still be a while till that can genuinely be achieved.

[@BlakeH..888_]

​@@haeherfeder1713I'm pretty sure Neil Gaiman also made the two neighbor ladies a couple in Coraline, and that wasn't even recent. The book was already being written back in the 90s and the movie was released in 2009. So yeah, he's always been good about that stuff 👍

[@nomisunrider6472]

I mean, I always have to be careful with "media literacy is dead" because sometimes it means "people are missing key clues and context that adds to the story due to a lack of knowledge or a bad faith approach" and sometimes it means "mine is the objectively correct and only interpretation of the source material and anyone who doesn't see what I see is just dumb. Subjectivity in art is just for people too stupid to grasp The True Meaning".

[@FabulousSquidward]

I had this guy present the idea that movies can have deeper meanings that we can relate to real life as though it wasn't the entire purpose of most narratives. The example he used was Avatar. I had to hold back laughter. He was like "there's some real stuff there y'know? Like native Americans actually had their lands taken". He didn't manage to think a little further about how the movie ends and who the heroes were.

[@MasonShmason]

As someone who has seen a LOT of people apparently watching the same show I have, with things blatantly laid out in front of them, and they run with something that has nothing to do with ANY of what was going on, or miss that key information altogether and ask questions like "Why was X character doing Y?" ...a lot of the times it's the former.

[@firelordoregano5632]

@@FabulousSquidward bro discovered the purpose of art

[@RoonMian]

I feel like there is a lot of overlap between the two.

[@TheRibottoStudios]

I think in terms of "media literacy is dead" from what I'm seeing, is that people lack the ability to critically think for themselves. The point of media literacy is to have the ability to dissect what you witnessed. Think for yourself. People just don't know how to do that anymore. And with the next generation specifically, they're gonna get sht that's spoon fed to them because they don't understand or have the mental fortitude to grasp nuance and subtext. Here's an example: In Avatar the Last Airbender, there's a shot of Zuko in his bed in his ship looking up at a tapestry that has the Fire Nation sigil on it. We know now up to this point he has been OBSESSED with going back home and restoring his honor. But after his incident with Aang in the forest, where Aang wondered if in another life they could've been friends...he looks at that symbol of everything he thought he knew...and turned away from it. They were planting the seeds of his redemption even before we knew it. Meanwhile in the remake, they have Aang and Zuko have this long drawn out conversation that just does nothing to add to the connection between the two, other than just telling the audience "HEY GUESS WHAT THEY'RE GONNA BE FRIENDS ONE DAY".

[@aischaamrhein535]

"To simper at the feet of those who condemn us, while pointing to our most vulnerable as collateral damage in queernesses good name, is what real villany looks like." Damn, that is a quote! You are absolutely right. Also, I adored Nimona, such a great movie!

[@SLYKM]

The real villains are still the ones who condemn us, btw

[@nyssalynn5216]

I find people moralize a lot of things that.. dont need to be moralized. Nuance is good, and without it, its too easy to fall into us v them

[@Samookely]

this explains most wars tbh

[@nathancollins1715]

@@Samookely Eh, not really. Maybe modern wars? But even then, only a subset of modern wars are genuinely driven by ideology. Most are ultimately driven by scarcity, something which is fundamentally anti-ideological. When two tribes compete over one resource, their respective political, moral, and philosophical beliefs have no effect on the fact that they will cease to exist, or at the very least be weakened and open to conquest, if they are deprived of that resource. THAT is the explanation for most wars throughout history. Ideology can be used to justify wars, but the wars would be inevitable even without that ideology.

[@wyrdautumn]

I have Opinions about Rocky Horror because I think the last act makes a really powerful kind of heartbreaking statement that I feel like people kind of miss in the wild campy mania of it all. To whit: we see throughout the film that Riff Raff and Magenta are just as perverse and sadistic as Frank 'N' Furter, from their treatment of Rocky to the weird... uncomfortable brother/sister intimacy they have going on. Their appeal to authority and the social order at the end is deeply hypocritical. It's not Furter being punished for his villainy and things being set right, it's heteronormative society deciding that it's tired of indulging his queerness and throwing him away. That's why the last numbers reframe Frank 'N' Furter as a more sympathetic figure and frame his murder in a tragic light. He was a bad person, sure, but that's not why they killed him. They killed him because that's what the straights do. They tolerate the queers for a while, so long as they get to enjoy campy musicals and drag shows and have a little bit of brief temporary fun playing around with sex and gender, so long as it's not TOO challenging. But then as soon as times get tougher and they get tired of consuming queerness and they need someone to blame for what's wrong in their lives, all of a sudden we're degenerate threats to society and we have to be put down like the dogs we are. That's what the movie is about, to me. How queer acceptance is a temporary indulgence that cishet society can and will take away the moment it suits them. And as a trans person in the year 2024, boy is that a dynamic I'm feeling POINTEDLY.

[@gentlerat]

Notably Magenta isn’t straight though. I’m not sure how that fits the narrative.

[@wyrdautumn]

@@gentlerat she does a little bit of fooling around with Columbia but i don't think that changes the interpretation all that much either way. when she comes in at the end it's explicitly as an agent of Transylvanian order, and by Dr. Scott's description, proper, decent society as a whole. She clearly doesn't feel any particular affection towards Colombia and whatever queerness she was indulging in previously, she's happy to throw it away to get rid of that troublemaker Frank 'N' Furter, go back home, and restore the proper order of things.

[@jerrahaynes1564]

​@@wyrdautumn I think your original analysis is really poignant, but as another trans person, i see order/queerness in the film as far more compelling than straightness/queerness. I've been reminded over the past couple years that there are some queer people who will throw us under the bus. I think Magenta can remain queer through the film and have the rest of your analysis remain true -- there are in fact some cis gays who stand against "gender nonconformity" as they see it. tldr i think that in this analysis, magenta could be a terf :'D no offense meant to people who identify/identified with her, this is only one reading :)

[@Starlight-ue8jy]

Wow, pride month

[@seeleunit2000]

That's an excellent point.

[@pedroff_1]

Ok, correction time: The creator of Nimona is ND Stevenson (aka Nate), not JD Stevenson

[@beckyginger3432]

Litterally the second time Rowan has gotten his name wrong 😅

[@mothslug4387]

Jate Stevenson

[@LectionARICCLARK]

Interestingly, the movie version of Nimona is less morally gray and conplex than the webcomic was. Nimona is more purely victim in the movie.

[@privatehere3324]

thats for the best honestly I can already see people caling nimona "bad representation" and the main gay couple "toxic and abusive" if it was more complex.

[@aWinterCrow]

To be fair ​@@privatehere3324it kind of already is the case in the movie, especially the toxic couple, they really are terrible xD Maybe Nimona should be more nuanced too, I don't think her character works at all in the movie, but then again, I haven't read the novel

[@batabids]

yarr i prefer the book since nimona felt more interesting as a character to me

[@jacqueshardin4601]

In regards to Hazbin Hotel, Vivienne 'Vivziepop' Medrano has stated that being queer is not the reason why many sinners are in Hell. Also, sinners in Hell can only be permanently killed by weapons made from angelic steel. By any other means, they will respawn. This is stuff we know from livestreams back when the pilot had just come out. This stuff also explains why sinners do a lot of dangerous things to each other that normally kill humans or even do cannibalism. Or at least why sinners have such an extreme devil-may-care attitude, pun intended. My one criticism of the Hellaverse is that certain parts of the worldbuilding and lore are not always made clear to the audience. And I say this as someone who has been a fan for nearly five years at this point.

[@randomhuman_05]

Yeah, its a little odd to me how people automatically assume these characters being queer and in hell have anything to do with eachother😭. Especially in Angel’s case, I feel like him being a former gangster is fairly obvious. Him being a demon has nothing to do with him liking men or his current profession.

[@FloofMother]

It’s also made clear that whoever is in charge of who goes to heaven and hell isn’t a good person, or a good judge of character, so even if that were the case, it still wouldn’t matter.

[@FloofMother]

Idk man I only recently got into it (I watched the pilot when it came out but so did everyone on the internet) and I inherently understood everything just by watching the shows. I just think they might’ve been on their phone while watching it or something. People need to be more autistic (ie aware of the fact that they can’t multitask so they give their undivided attention to whatever they’re doing)

[@mistresslum6682]

Heaven has so much in the way of queer aesthetic too! The fact that Vaggie is a lesbian and used to be an angel, only cast out for sparing sinners during an extermination, not being gay. People say more about their own ideas and biases than the show’s when they try to use it as a critique

[@gracel2mart]

@@randomhuman_05I assume the assumption comes from when there was only the pilot, so there was no heaven to compare it to. And even if the info was stated, it seems LOTS is said in livestreams aka not the best medium for diffusing informatiob

[@nyssalynn5216]

Not a villain per se, but Jack Harkness didnt start out as a good guy in Doctor Who and he is the epitome of depraved bisexual considering hes like, pansexual but with sentient species.

[@q.is.tir3d]

i feel like he'd consider "depraved bisexual" as a compliment tbh lol

[@chanterelle483]

What?

[@middlenerd178]

Yeah, that’s a good point, and I would say he fully steps into the “promiscuous bisexual with grey morals” role in Torchwood. He’s not a villain, but he’s definitely not a hero.

[@AC-dk4fp]

@@middlenerd178 He's so Jesus coded by the end of season 1 that calling him morally grey is just giving the writer's too much good faith.

[@scottbuck1572]

@@middlenerd178 Have you seen Torchwood? Dude is literally Jesus in that show; like yeah, his framing in Doctor Who is a little sus, but if you think Torchwood doesn't worship the ground Jack walks (as it should), we watched a different show

[@mythicalgirl2005]

People need to realize that villain and hero and antagonist and protagonist are not synonyms. Villain and hero are moral judgments, but antagonist and protagonist just refer to the role they play in the story. A protagonist is simply the character through who we see the story, and an antagonist is simply a character who opposes the protagonist. And yeah, as a general pattern most protagonists are heroes and most antagonists are villains, but that's not always the case. Villain *does* mean evil.

[@rossjones8656]

Heroes are 99% protagonist but not all protagonist are heroes Villains are 99% antagonist but not all antagonist are villains. It's still messy but a simple way of putting this.

[@inconsistizzy]

HOOOLY shit is that prospero?? 😭😭🫶🫶🫶my fav comic omg

[@thefandomsmoothie]

A good example of this-to me-is Death Note, which is also somewhat queer-coded: Light is the protagonist, but he is undoubtedly the villain as a mass murderer. L is the antagonist, but he is…well, maybe not a hero, but more of one than Light for sure.

[@killuanatsume]

Villains doesn't mean evil.

[@mythicalgirl2005]

@@killuanatsume Yes it does.

[@wen6519]

I love villains, and queer villains, because there is a longing to be campy, over the top, larger than life, to occupy space regardless of others instead of making myself smaller to accommodate what I believe makes others want. Nimona's exchange, saying that without shape shifting she feels worse... It hits hard. Because she was literally being asked to act like a girl, to go back into the closet, to make herself smaller to not make others uncomfortable. Acting like Ursula, like Scar, like the Evil Queen feels like a dream (except the murdering of people) of freedom within my own skin.

[@robinjames7212]

This is my fav part about the old Disney villains. They are already outcasts and just say 'fuck it' and have FUN with it. You want evil? Fine here is a song about how evil I am

[@FreyjaStar]

Same here I remember as a child relating heavily to characters like the evil queen and then slightly later in my childhood to Elsa because of the position of feeling inferior and then saying fuck it. Nimona perfectly embodied this punk rock spirit for me more than anyone I've seen before her.

[@deetlebee]

I am glad that I fell out of fandom spaces after Gundam Wing because I do not think I could deal with modern fandoms. I too love Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel, but quickly realized I should avoid watching KZbinShorts about them because HOLY WOW. I think as someone who got "gay married" before it was legal, I probably have a different view on a lot of this stuff. Respectability Politics gets us no-where. We have to be angry and messy and loud to be heard and taken seriously. I also think my education in Communication Studies has changed the way I view things. I cannot imagine looking at a piece of media in the black/white way a lot of folks seem to do. Like Blitz/Stolas is a fascinating story to me BECAUSE they are both messy and terrible. Their relationship is unhealthy and and they are honestly terrible for each other. But it is that messiness and complexity that makes me listen to "Look My Way" every few days. So much emotion and meaning behind a beautifully performed song that is beautifully animated.

[@its_miscu]

The Blitz/Stolas plot has been one of the few times I've seen media (particularly in animation) get to explore a messy queer romance without it being rooted at all in that queerness. Way too often in recent films and TV shows, a writer will use LGBT identity for a character as a fast-track to making the (presumed open-minded) audience sympathetic, like being gay or trans carries some inherent quality of pitiable innocence. Queer characters should get to be imperfect people, rather than the common extremes of "confused deviant" and "harmless little puppy."

[@MasonShmason]

Absolutely. Their relationship is so engaging because it's portrayed as just as messy and complicated as a straight one.

[@artikulv731]

While I think that the show itself does a pretty good job portraying the characters and their relationship, the FANDOM is a whole other story. It’s legitimately disappointing to see people saying “oh, they should just get together already” or treating the characters like they are little beans that could do no wrong.

[@voidify3]

Exactly!! The problem is that neither of them had the skills to connect healthily with others

[@mintykiwi]

it's not "messy" dawg blitzo is being emotionally manipulated into getting with his abuser

[@Parasolhyena]

Can I throw in Marceline and Bubblegum, all their messy baggage is because they were polar opposite people with there own traumas and problems and refused to communicate or did so poorly. It took time and growth for them to be good for each other.

[@TwinPisces]

Rock Horror is so funny to me because when I watched it for the first time (it was the first big musical I had watched) I thought Frank-N-Furter was a protagonist not an antagonistic role so by the last act I was so confused about what was going on

[@sadqueermess]

Same. I never saw him as a villain (but I didnt see him as a hero either tbh). To me, he just owned the movie and was all the „roles“ at once.

[@chloe-fy4wc]

Whole video I couldn’t help but think about Hannibal and how the queer villian trope plays into it. A super masculine cishet protagonist who got corrupted by an evil european pansexual. I think Hannibal is one the best shows to date which explores queer villians. On the surface level queerness isn’t what makes Will or Hannibal evil actually. There’s barely any homophobia as a I remember. Yet them being murderers and cannibals is a queer metaphor. Doing what’s considered utterly immoral and finding it beautiful, having to hide part of yourself, letting in only those who are like you. And unsurprisingly, many people believe that Will was abused by Hannibal the whole way so shipping Hannigram is immoral ( and also they’re cannibals). But I find that to be so annoying bc the good thing about the show that it’s very clear you’re not meant to look at things literally

[@baguettegott3409]

Now I'm very curious, as somebody who has seen Silence of the Lambs, but not the Hannibal show. Is Lecter the "super masculine cishet"? Probably, right? He's not European, is he? I'm so bad with regional accents in English. But tbh "super masculine" is not the first descriptor of Hannibal Lecter that would come to my mind. Does the show even exist in the same universe as the movie? Because it doesn't really sound like it tbh.

[@chloe-fy4wc]

@@baguettegott3409 Hannibal’s European in the show and pretty sure he is in the books too. And yeah, the show diverges a lot from source material.

[@phaIIicaIIyimpaired]

​@@baguettegott3409canonically Hannibal was born and spent his childhood in Lithuania. In the show he's played by Mads Mikkelsen who is from Denmark though, so the accent is danish.

[@somethingcooliguess8959]

I’ve also heard somewhere that the director for silence of the lambs said that buffalo bill was meant to be a homophobe mocking/imitating trans people but he admitted that it didn’t come across well

[@JennyTroutstanding]

@@somethingcooliguess8959 It's been a long time since I've read the book, but I felt like it came across in the text, better. It's like he was repulsed by transgender people but obsessed with them or something.

[@dreamer.exe.hasstoppedwork1970]

I think that its important to remember that simply because a character is a villain and queer doesn’t mean that they are specifically being called out as “depraved” for their queerness but rather the actions they take are wrong (once again not necessarily their queerness)

[@colbyboucher6391]

But it did happen. Dune (the novel) is a pretty good example. Making the baron a pedophile to emphasize his greed was a good idea, but he's also just fat, and his mentat is explicitly called "effeminate" without that really appearing as a character trait aside from it's literary connection to slyness. With the hindsight of Herbert being perfectly fine with his halo character Duncan Idaho screwing a horny 14 year-old, and Herbert's less-than-flattering relationship with his gay son, you get the impression that there was a definite "gay men are all predatory, pedophilic sex pests" thing going on, particularly to contrast the manly virtues of the Atreides.

[@dreadangel3752]

The way you described people wanting to play the hero and defeat those who consume "the problematic media" is so true, cuz that's the vibes I've been getting for ages now. No one actually gives a shit, they just want to look like they just slew the dragon. There's a Hazbin Hotel artist I like, he made some pins about Angel Dust and Husk depicting their scenarioes a while back, chains, choking, that stuff. People lost their shit at the poor dude, even told him he deserved the abuse he himself had went through. And that's when I just felt...horrified, I guess, cuz I was right when I didn't want to be. No one gave a shit about "exploiting sexual abuse for money", they just wanted to look like a hero.

[@yarata0]

reminds me of when some antis were harassing a SA victim or claiming she wasn't a real SA victim because she defended episode 4 of Hazbin Hotel. That type of shit kind of made me realize that people only care about SA victims if it means they can use them for an argument against something they don't like because the minute an SA victim disagrees with them...suddenly it doesn't matter. it like you said. It all about ''slaying the dragon''. Not actually treating the SA victims like human beings. Human beings that have their own way of seeing and portraying their abuses.

[@tami7992]

That is horrific, these people are awful...

[@theninjaphoenix_6043]

45:38 "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me." -Martin Niemöller They dont see us as the 'good queers' and the 'bad queers'. we are all just queers to them, and the only way we can endure is united.

[@technicolorsoultheory3924]

media literacy is not any worse than it has been in the past considering education rates. Social media has allowed us to hear everyone's opinion instead of assuming our opinion is the most popular, best or logical. Media literacy has always been bad because it is a skill.

[@AC-dk4fp]

That's sort of true but not that relevant to how toxic communities are forming and doing harm.

[@mistresslum6682]

I’ve been in fandom spaces for years and this isn’t true. It is much much worse now. There’s a big cult like community that’s formed around ideas of policing the kinds of characters and stories people are allowed to like and watch that never existed a few years ago. That used to be the domain of the normie conservative old people, not 19 year olds. But now it’s young people that are the biggest proponents of the idea that depiction = endorsement and they endlessly harass people in fandom spaces and even professional reviewers of books and movies for disagreeing

[@FranBunnyFFXII]

As an Elfen Lied fan I disagree. A long time ago people realized quite often many of the nuances and understood that portrayals of abuse in Elfen Lied are not endorsements of abuse. Infact Elfen Lied takes a strong line stance against sexualization of minors. It's one of the few anime to boldly do so. But this ultimately is lost on so many people these days that the anime gets acused of being "law lee pr0n" all the time... which is absurd. Among other things many aspects of Elfen Lied people ask about that could easily be answered by simply watching the series and paying attention. But people barely get these things now days and it's dramatically shifted the opinions of an anime series once well known for being an example of anti-discrimination and anti-abuse.

[@dreadwolfrising]

You make a fair point, but I think that we also need to hold education systems and cultural trends to account for the underdevelopment of media literacy skills. Mandatory education in humanities, history, and social sciences in public education have often been cut back or condensed in many jurisdictions in North America for example. That compounded with increasing anti-intellectualist rhetoric in politics internationally has created a populace that hasn't been given much direction in development of many critical analysis skills. Yes, media literacy is a skill, but as with all skills, it requires direction and practice - it's very difficult to develop on one's own

[@kostajovanovic3711]

​@@FranBunnyFFXIIthis seems like a case worth digging into

[@reyfan011]

The stolitz ship drama has gotten especially bad in the build up to the upcoming episode because it heavily focuses or at least implies heavy focus on their relationship and a potential break in it with Stolas attempting to break their agreement to have sex for access to the grimoire. He’s doing this because he wants to free blitz and have a possible real relationship with him. But we have seen how blitz feels about himself and his relationship with stolas. He hates himself and feels stolas only cares about him as a plaything. And to be fair up till maybe Ozzie’s or truth seekers episode, that’s all stolas seemed to treat him as. Blitzø and Stolas used the other for their own needs. Blitz for the book for his business and stolas to satisfy his sexual desires. While Stolas tried to put a flirty spin on their relationship and seem playful, he still used blitz. Blitz is obviously more blunt about it being a transactional relationship. But now since Ozzie’s, we as an audience now see Stolas is head over heels for blitz. And blitz still sees their relationship as it has been. So obviously blitz doesn’t look good in this context. So blitz is seen as the villain. When in reality we have seen blitz has started to care for stolas but he’s filled with such self doubt and hatred, he doesn’t believe Stolas could love him. They are both messy and bad at communicating but one is seen by fans as the victim who deserves better and the other the villain who should suffer on what he missed out on. When in reality there is no bad guy. They both hurt the other and need to change.

[@evapunk522]

God yeah, I love their messy relationship. It's a good story..

[@coolcoffeybeans]

Loving how this KZbin comment is better than the essays I write for school

[@blackk_rose_]

Black and white thinking is something we as humans love way too much. You see it everywhere, but especially online where people are distanced from the human beings they're talking to. But the world is not black and white, no person in the world is 100 % good or 100 % bad. Even the meanest person has done nice things before and even the kindest person has been mean. People are messy and characters that always make morally good choices and never do anything mean or bad would be so boring. Also, normalise just not watching something you don't like or agree with instead of tearing it apart. It makes me so angry how especially queer shows are torn apart for minor details and it often turns out that the people who are complaining simply weren't the target audience. Sometimes something just isn't for YOU and that doesn't mean others loving it are horrible people. Simultaneously, people who critcise or dislike your favourite piece of media or character aren't automatically wrong or bad either.

[@RationalNerd]

Excellent video as always, yes to all of this. Loved seeing Nimona in it, this movie moved me so much for the whole unfairness of villainizing Nimona for being different. And yeah, I've also noticed the moral purity coming up in fandom, and been concerned by it...

[@bjones6441]

As someone who has always gravitated towards more complex morality anti-hero or even outright villainous type characters, I've tended to avoid fandom spaces for the very reason that some fans feel the need to equate enjoying a fictional character to the personal values held by that person in real life. (its not that I even mind discussing it, we should be allowed to dissect our feelings, negative or positive, about media, but it's the outright aggression and moral-grandstanding that puts me off) Also, I recently got into Hazbin and Helluva boss as well, and it's the exact kind of visual media i've been missing. But, the fandom is a lil terrifying, so i'm just gonna enjoy it from waaaayy over here lol

[@tomgames8616]

Get closer, the music covers can be fun to watch.

[@mistresslum6682]

To me it’s less the fandom which seems pretty chill from a distance. It’s the weird obsessive anti fans who have the kind of rabid hate for it you usually see from white men any time a new Disney remake has a POC lead. I’m totally convinced the majority of the hate is just open homophobia. Even the haters of the show who are queer themselves tend to fall into the very young and reactionary sex negative “antis” camp

[@RM-xr8lq]

those kind of shows are heavily marketed towards children (producers/advertisers well aware of how children interacted with deviantart/tumblr/etc. related adult content over past decades, which those shows are heavily influenced by) that means the fandom is largely people still in grade school

[@randomhuman_05]

@@mistresslum6682oh definitely, those people are terrifying😭

[@Romanticoutlaw]

most of the hazbin memes I see are in relation to school and teachers and I just 💀 I don't want to get involved with a fandom where I'd have to trust the 25% who are 18+ to not just be lying about their age

[@strategicowl192]

One of my experiences with media literacy (or lack thereof): there is this Light Novel / anime series with the English title "The Saga of Tanya the Evil". The details don't matter, but she is the protagonist and she is evil, though fun. The comments on the OST here on KZbin however, uncritically cheer her on as a hero. And while yes, the anime is less explicit with its criticism of the character, it does not make her a good person.

[@Thefluff99]

She makes the wrong choice each time as pushed by the literal deus ex machina. She wants the easiest life but she's put into situations where she reveals her worst side each time and makes the world as a whole so far worse due to accidental influence.

[@PurplesttCoffee]

Not trying to make a bell curve meme here, but it's pretty funny how you have one group of people that will demonize creators for portraying any kind of "bad person" at all... And then you have another, which looks at Metal Gear's Armstrong or Jojo's Funny Valentine, and see those guys as role models. Lack of media literacy is what truly brings us together lmao

[@toothfairy10133]

mom come pick me up theyre saying tanya's a good person

[@CheshireCatism]

Thank you for talking about the complexities of Stolitz (Blitz/Stolas ship name)! Their relationship being a sh*t-show isn’t just one of their fault’s, it’s a combination of two characters with trauma and baggage and poor communication skills who have accidentally ended up hurting each other. People (audience) taking sides on that relationship has always baffled me.

[@qiae]

Nimona consistently hits me so hard in the feels, for so many reasons. Not only do i have a history of being othered because of gender expression stuff, but also neurodivergence, and honestly i see so much of both in the characterization, and also the slow process of recovery when Nimona does actually have someone to rely upon. In recent years i have been fortunate enough to meet people who do hear me, and like me as i am, and because of the history, i have to catch myself so often, when i panic the moment any of the old warning signs are procced, and remind myself, or be firectly reminded by them, that they do actually want me there.

[@enzie8786]

This. All of this. The movie came out (haha) at the perfect time and it's bizarre watching my exact healing process play out on screen in front of me

[@katisawriter]

Your closing remarks were spot on! As someone who reads/writes fanfiction it's been alarming to see the purity patrol come into those spaces and really tear into works that they deem "unsuitable" or "wrong." I do believe a big part of the Internet fandom purity movement is not just the "victory online" = victory in real life equation but also that it is just EASIER to practice this shallow online activism than it is to get involved in something offline. A FF writer and I were chatting about how out of control the entire world feels right now and how maybe these purity crusaders are doing this also to try and get some control. Not to excuse their behavior AT ALL. 👵back in my day we always said "don't like, don't read" and that seems to do just fine. Sad things aren't that way anymore. I'm not really sure how to fix this either except for always encouraging people to leave positive comments on fanfic/fan works that they like. 💜 You are a voice of reason in an otherwise crazy world. Love the Fizz plushy BTW😊😊😊

[@Elora445]

I wish people stuck a lot more to "Don't like, don't read". Really, If I stumble across a fic I really don't like the development of, I take the easy way out: stop reading it and look for a fic I actually like. I really don't care what other write. Does some things creep me out or make me feel disgusted? Sure, but that's not the writer's fault, so I leave them alone and go my merry way elsewhere. It's sad that not everyone feels that way. Think I was more of a purity warrior when a lot younger though. Early twenties, at the most. People behaving in that way as a way of feeling some kind of control sounds logical to me, at least.

[@fool4spuffy]

i hate when people act like lestat is biphobic representation. book readers know he isn’t the last bi character to show up and it’s such a frustrating argument to me when i LOVE that lestat is a whole character character beyond his sexuality and the traits associated with it. like as a bi person i’m obsessed with the fact that he’s a multifaceted character and i think it’s important that queer characters aren’t constantly policed for potentially being problematic and accidentally falling into any stereotypes when straight characters are allowed to do anything and no one ever blames their actions on their sexuality. i just think it’s really freeing that the show never implies that he does any of the things he does is bc he’s bi, it’s so much more complicated than that and i love how vampirism transcends these trivial human debates. it’s refreshing seeing queer characters who don’t fit the mould of unproblematic sweet teenager with a coming out story. there’s only one season out of the show currently and Exclusively show viewers should know there’s so many more queer people to come

[@AC-dk4fp]

Lestat isn't bisexual he's an Anne Rice Vampire human sexuality isn't that relevant right?

[@CorwinFound]

Absolutely agree with you. And I'd go further to say that in the books, vampirism is post-sexuality. Granted I read it quite young and waaaay before any movies or shows, but almost every vampire character felt asexual and omni romantic. (Gabrielle being the one really aro character.) In the new show, yes sexuality is very much a thing but every single one of the vampires is queer. If not explicitly then in spirit. And they are all seriously messed up people! Not because of the queerness per se but because any issues a person has pre-death are magnified many times over after being vamped. So a vampire like Louis with internalized homophobia and shame is going to be even more that as a vamp. Lestat was bi as a human and as a vampire... well, sex addicted doesn't quite cover it. But it's part of his personality of utter excess in everything. Lestat is sex, drugs, and rock and roll to the _nth_ degree. And if people have a problem with all the queer people in the show (all vampires) being messed up... well welcome to the queer community. We are all messed up first by being human, and second by the ongoing systemic, familial, and social trauma that we experience. Issues are not a rare thing in the community and it's nice to see messy queers on screen. It's validating. Lol

[@clairekim2525]

I agree with everything you said, and if anything, show!Lestat's problems are depicted as stemming from his latent white supremacy, not his queer identity. I think that aspect makes his character very compelling because it truly grapples with the fact that one's identity as an oppressed minority doesn't act like a "fix-it" for other kinds of bigotry and prejudice. Edit: ALSO, what makes this kind of multi-layered critique and character-exploration is just that: it's multi-layered! Lestat is a complex character that reflects a lot of the ways that humans in real life are complex, just with the heightened framework of vampirism. I feel like if people treat him like he's just a caricature of an "evil bisexual" then that just lets them avoid actually thinking more deeply about all the dynamics at play, and therefore miss the actual themes of the show.

[@Kalle_Demos]

@@AC-dk4fpIn the books, yes. In the AMC adaptation they have explicit sexualities and also engage in sexual acts. This was one of several aspects of the books changed for the tv adaptation. A good choice for the medium imo.

[@asherscott3151]

I'm pretty sure literally all the vampires are bi 😂

[@edamamame4U]

As a biromantic asexual, I feel that if we do get any ounce of asexual representation in media, we are either depicted as hyper-intelligent, psychotic/sociopathic, narcissists (Alastor in Hazbin Hotel) or naive, innocent, anxiety- ridden "pixie children" that help the protagonist realize themselves(Todd in Bojack). I just find the juxtaposition between the two so insanely bizarre.

[@mushroomkid4510]

I get that. Also the hyper intelligent asexual often feels to me like really bad autistic "rep"

[@LettiKiss]

I also feel that. Many ace characters are shown as emotionless, as if not having sexual desires would lead us to be ripped off any feeling. That's one reason I'm mad at Alastor's character: he is my fave because of his humor, but I'd never see him as representation, since his sadistic and sociopathic nature being linked with his asexuality feels borderline offensive.

[@Charbified]

@@LettiKiss But is it ever stated that he is that way because he's ace? or is that just how he is, and he's also ace. Representation can be representation even if you don't identify with the character in question. You're the one attributing these traits to the asexuality, instead of just seeing it as another individual aspect of the character.

[@hajarmdn4883]

@@Charbifiedthat’s exactly how I see it. I didn’t even connect the two. Also we don’t know much about him yet. His backstory is still mysterious and we don’t know what brought him to where he is. The whole act seems like a mask. And it has nothing to do with his sexuality. Adam is just as depraved and narcissistic and he’s straight. And his straightness has nothing to do with him being a villain.

[@Parasolhyena]

I would only describe Todd as one of those things and that's pixie child. He cuts off the main character for his(todd's) own good and doesn't really help BoJack realize anything, he just says what BoJack's been told many times in the past and it doesn't help, i'd say it actually drives BoJack down a worse path*. Todd is not naive (unless with mpb) and he's not innocent, being very flawed with relationships like his family, ex-partners and even friends. Todd doesn't have anxiety either. Honestly the character you are describing sounds much more like Mr Peanutbutter, he hits every one of those except for the anxiety. *not saying he was wrong though, everything he said was right, I just don't think he should have said it at that time. Especially to someone he knows is likely suicidal and was clearly having a mental breakdown. I just don't want anyone thinking I'm defending BoJack even if I think Todd had poor timing and none of Bojacks actions afterwards are on todd. Like Todd said "You are all the things that are wrong with you."

[@randomhuman_05]

Seeing Angel Dust in Rowan Ellis thumbnail wasn’t something I expected but I’m here for it- (god, people’s lack of media literacy really shines through when it comes to him😭)

[@Partyarti_23]

He is such good bpd rep ❤ and I also like how it not said that he is cis, I feel represented (ignore my name lol)

[@mingotproductions1335]

it really comes through with any of viziepop's work in generaal.

[@julianpolakiewicz6866]

@@Partyarti_23 bro I'm so sorry to tel you this, but VivziePop is transphobic specifically against transmasc and nonbinary people...

[@bertie184]

I think it's worth pointing out that one solution these "moral purists" have to complex character writing presenting unpalatable traits in queer characters is to completely ignore those traits, or worse, deny them. Stolas is an example. I have also seen a lot of the same edits you're talking about, and how often people in the comments seem unprepared to accept the reality of these characters they love is galling. In many ways, Stolas is an ass. He is an out-of-touch aristocrat who treats his servant imps (and imps in general, aside from Blitz) dreadfully. But all of that seems to get swept under the carpet in favour of a "noooooo my gay owl baby can do no wrong" narrative. It's kind of frightening.

[@Unhappytimeaper]

This ultimately I find is the complexing issue with narratives and fandom; personally I used to like Hellavu but dislike the route Viv's team has gone with the show/characters but often time complexities are cut down because there needs to be more of a sense of winning in discourse rather than willing to separate personal enjoyment with the media. Stolas as a character I think production wise has gone through a lot of changes and because of that people love to rather argue which one is the correct one, with often infantilization of the complex nature of the setting, social dynamics, and overall world. If we look at the original take of Stolas he used power dynamics and often made advances that came off as more harassment then romantic; Blizo was original often grossed out by Stolas' comments and didn't like him. He enjoy partaking in what felt realistic for a powerful demon and yet there was still a lot of nuanced to him. As changes were made, like it or not I don't care, Stolas' arc changed from things like harassment into a genuine relationship but still holds complex aspects of hierarchical dynamics, often lacks the emotional and needed maturity for his actions, and selfishness continues to point out the effects his actions have had daughter. None of this is to say he's a villain but fandom culture often likes to negate these flaws with excuses because of personal connection/enjoyment they feel. Moral purists who shame people for liking villains with negative traits feel like other side of the coin of the fandom who likes to remove the overall complex nature in the goal of self riotousness for liking them. I don't think everyone needs to bring up complexities and the nuanced debate of characterization in every moment, but there is often a very real divide that treatment is given of black and white thinking to characters to justify enjoyment/viewing/etc.

[@seeleunit2000]

Thank you ! That's what I have been saying. No I find it more sickening than scary, but you're right.

[@ruthmellodasilva348]

The fandom from Interview with the Vampire is a kind worse. They love Lestat because he is funny and hot, and forget all the things he have done hating all the others characters in the books/movie/show. They are like "Oooh, he just want to be loved", and he just rips someone's head off, wtf.

[@voidify3]

@@Unhappytimeaper”he’s bad so you can’t like him” vs “I like him so he’s not bad”

[@sirrivet9557]

Yeah honestly my main criticization of helluva boss so far has been it's attempts to sort of defend rich people. Every character who has brought up how angry they are at the elite of society has been treated as someone being too harsh on the elites who are actually fine people totally and they're just "misdirecting" their anger. I get that there's only so themes to explore but I really wish theyd do a better job explaining why so many in hell are fed up with the elites.

[@limaisstilldrawing999]

Thank you SO MUCH for making this video, you highlighted some really important and necessary points. As a big Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel fan myself, I really appreciated that little evaluation of the Stolas/Blitz relationship! I'd like to add something here about Alastor from Hazbin Hotel, who has been confirmed to be canonically aromantic/asexual, from the perspective of someone who's also aroace. While the bad-spirited aroace-coding of some villanous figures in media is a real phenomenon (since we often get labeled as 'heartless', or 'cold', or whatever other supposedly ""bad"" adjective you can think of), I don't think Alastor falls into that category. Especially because he is clearly set up to be a morally ambiguous character with ties to both the heroes and the villains of the story, and not some one-note sociopath. And honestly, that sounds like a breath of fresh air to me! Especially bc aromantic/asexual spectrum representation in fictional media is still in its infancy, and does NOT compare in the slightest to the breadth of representation for other queer identities, whether well-intentioned or not. TLDR: I want my queer villain rep too and Alastor is the closest thing I have to that! Which rules!!!

[@user-wi3yx3gy2o]

Ursula is modeled after Divine, btw

[@alexlissau275]

Was about to mention this, I also feel like it’s a disservice not to mention Howard Ashman’s impact during the Disney Renaissance in regards to queer-coded villains

[@TheRibottoStudios]

The fact that people LEGIT thought with their whole chest that Poison was glorifying SA is enough proof to me that media literacy ( the ability to critically analyze stories presented in the mass media and to determine their accuracy or credibility..) is a dead skill. There is no ability anymore to think critically regarding the media we consume. People assume things before speaking. People demand apologies for when creators display things they're uncomfortable with whereas instead that person who is uncomfortable with something can just...Not subject themselves to it. As a Millennial, I think what's going on, is this need gen z feels to overcorrect the wrongs of the past. They're so hyperaware of the state of the world, that they've become immediately reactive to it. And when we immediately react to things...that's where the trouble comes in. Because instead of thinking through things with logic, immediate gut reactions are based on emotion.

[@KicsiFloo]

Dude I'm so MAD about the Poison discourse, like, if you watched that sequence and didn't cry (or at least choked up) at the end, that's on you, not the creators. Of course it was glamorous, the whole point is that even when Angel is suffering, as soon as the cameras turn on, he has to perform, and make his misery arousing and marketable. It's heartbreaking to watch and listen to every time.

[@jennifervasquez]

I agree that gen z has a habit of overcorrecting but i think a big factor as well is corporate overcorrection. Weve seen this recently with the netflix atla adaptation where they completely erase sokkas sexism at the start of the series, rather that depict complex characters a lot of productions would rather overcorrect in order to avoid alienating any potential audience members. More and more pieces of media are being simplified in this way that just makes it harder n harder for audiences, especially young ones, to develop a nuanced understanding of media.

[@BecKM94]

@@KicsiFloo Very well said. I always have to wonder if people who have the opinion(? somehow come to the conclusion?) that the song/show glamourises SA have actually watched ANYTHING from the show or actually know the characters or if they have just seen parts of "Poison" or heard of the discourse and always assume the worst… Because I just can’t wrap my head around it, especially when you see how Angel acts around Valentino, Husk and Charlie in this episode. I think Angel Dust is one of the most well-written characters on the show and his “It's not an act! It's who I need to be. And this... This is my escape! Where I can forget about it all! How much I hate... everything. A place where I can get high, and not have to think about how much it hurts. And maybe... If I can ruin myself enough in the process... if I end up broken, I won't be his favorite toy anymore... And maybe he'll let me go..." to Husk at the end was absolutely heartbreaking! I also feel like people immediately want/demand resolutions and a happy ending or a clear answer to something like his abuse and his toxic relationship with Valentino, when it’s clear that this storyline probably won’t be done for the while and there isn’t an easy fix, it’s something not even Charlie (maybe not even Lucifer?) could change about this situation, so the understanding and empathy Husk and Charlie showed to Angel, and him opening up more and letting his masks/act more down, were wonderful first steps. And then we even see him standing up to Valentino for his friends (Angel is so damn protective of people he cares about) in 1x6. I can highly recommend therapist Georgia Dow’s Hazbin Hotel videos btw, she also has one about Angel’s abuse, which would probably be quite eye-opening for some people…

[@EdenNeedsAYoutubeHandle]

I don't even like HH, but the amount of times I've found myself defending the show over the Poison discourse is exhausting 😭

[@ScorpionClaws789]

As someone who has not watched Hazbin Hotel since the pilot came out, I looked up the sequence to see how I felt about the video just based on the imagery and lyrics and. Did we watch the same thing? There is so many gratiutious shots of Angel's assaults. There is literally a shot where we see him c*m from being r*ped. What about that is necessary? It feels fetishistic. It feels even more fetishistic when you learn that the storyboarder actually does have a fetish for r*pe p*rn, specifically with Angel Dust and Valentino. I'm sure we're meant to come away with the message "r*pe bad", that Angel Dust is truly traumatized, but I just came away feeling like the thing was animated with one hand.

[@jupiterliam7961]

i think it's important to state that ND Stevenson, the creator of Nimona, is a transmasc person, and while the comic the movie is based on was written before he came out and started transitioning, the parallels between Nimona's story and the stories of queer and trans people is entirely intentional.

[@imjusthere1539]

As someone who used to spend hours crying because I was afraid liking imperfect media made me a bad person, thank you for this video. Also, I think one of your ending points might be really true; people see so many problems in the world, but it’s easier to blame individuals than fight systems. I have had friends who claimed to want to fight systems, but just spent their time morally policing others and never actually got active in meaningful politics.

[@voidify3]

I finally watched nimona because of this. Nobody had given me a compelling enough pitch for it before. But this was a compelling pitch, so I watched it and liked it a lot! Thanks

[@grillmad]

what a great opportunity to recommend black sails

[@FunctionallyLiteratePerson]

Looking forward to this one, especially since Frank is in the thumbnail

[@literaterose6731]

Did you shiver in antici- 🫦

[@nininoona]

Neither Stolas, or Blitz, are the villain in the relationship. They are both hurt people who hurt people (ie. each other).

[@saskiahorton]

Wow, "The DEPRAVED Bisexual" - I need that on a tee-shirt

[@erinsmith4416]

See also: Undue Villainous Influence

[@ragcat3732]

Another thing that makes queer villains (especially more modern ones) appealing is the fact that they sometimes feel more real in showing the complexity and struggle compared to the more sanitized and corporate “I’m just like you presumed straight audience watching” characters who kinda end up falling flat. There is room of course for squeaky clean queer characters but sometimes messier characters make for more interesting and realistic stories.

[@nickyschou4343]

Thank you so much for this video, Rowan. I've been talking about this problem for so long. As a writer, I'm really annoyed that I can't write a evil queer character, without being categorized as "homophobe" even though I myself am queer. I need media to be able to handle problematic queer and trans characters. And as a Hazbin Hotel fan I *love* the character of Valentino. Not for his actions (yes, he is a true monster) but as a writer I love how he's written as a villain. ❤

[@SirusShea]

i agree with this so much. even more than flattening characters, i hate the flattening of creators of those characters, with people trying to find a reason they are morally bankrupt because the media they produced isnt 'perfect' enough. then they get thrown into the villain category of black and white thinking, misrepresenting their intent, and attacked.

[@morgannyan2738]

Like J.K Rowling

[@jyjaeskz]

​@@morgannyan2738Jk rowling is the exact opposite of this. She didn't write problematic books that made people look for faults in her as a person, she says transphobic things that make people look for faults in her writing

[@shananigans0117]

Showed the video to my parents and it sparked some cool conversations- their second date was a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show 😂

[@bunnie6994]

baffled as to how your captions call nimona “Pona” the whole time😭

[@mpan7376]

It always frustrates me when people have this sort of media take towards Hannibal in particular, because in that show him being a queer character is what humanizes him. He hears people and is awful but everything he does as a villainous character is underpinned by the fact he’s pining after a guy. He’s only relatable when he’s behaving like a lonely person in love with someone.

[@jennifervasquez]

Im literally writing a research paper on queer villains this semester so this video was perfectly timed

[@hydrangeadragon]

I love the new version of Lestat so much, he's so captivating

[@moustik31]

Me too, it was a fascinating depiction of a charismatic abusive romantic partner: the escalation from grooming/control to physical violence was really well-paced and hinted at. A very rewatchable season.

[@N3RDYG0GGLES]

Honestly this is both fascinating and extremely appreciated. I’ve been in some heated conversations before about the morality of certain characters and whether it was even okay to like them, and sometimes it felt very unclear whether we were right to question that approach or just being some sort of apologists

[@kezia8027]

This is it. This video needs to be heard and felt far and wide. Phenomenal. I hope it reaches as many people as possible.

[@BurningQuestion]

As a bisexual Satanist I'm always so glad to find people who understand Hazbin Hotel.

[@AdventureGirl-zn4wc]

Same! I'm also a bisexual Hazbin fan, nice to meet you!

[@Arnumdrusk]

Talking about moral policing instead of looking with empathy and having a more nuanced understanding one's own failings reminded me of this quote about A Wizard of Earthsea: "I resisted its lessons. The student wizard Ged cracks open the surface of the night and releases a shadow version of himself into the world, a Jungian clot of personal darkness, that hunts him till he turns to face it and incorporates it back into himself where it belongs, by naming it with its true name: his own. I resolutely thought of the shadow as a bogey alien to Ged, and wondered why he wasn’t different at the end of the book when that dark thing was inside him. You cannot outrun yourself, the story said: a deeply unwelcome thought to me. I didn’t go to the worlds of story to be reminded that on a dark road your anger and your cruelty pace just behind you, daring you to turn your head, unless you let them travel safely within you." - Francis Spufford on Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, in The Child That Books Built (2002)

[@user-hm4yi7um9d]

I'm sorry but... "THEYRE TURNIN THE FREAKIN VAMPIRES GAY!"

[@zkkitty2436]

always have been

[@TabbyWithMittens]

THEYRE PUTTING CHEMICALS IN THE BLOOD

[@kerriharris7418]

I see that Fizzy Pop on your shelf.

[@kerriharris7418]

Oh my god there’s two of them!

[@artikulv731]

Twin Fizzies!

[@crunchylettuce]

​@@artikulv731 twizzies, perhaps?

[@oliviab4079]

With so much understandably bad representation of queer characters being stereotypically nefarious I think now people have confused messy or morally grey characters with falling into negative cliches and the only acceptable fix is for queer characters to be 100% perfect and infallible in every way. At that point, to me, can you even call them a character if they’re so aggressively sanitized? At the very least they sure aren’t interesting anymore…

[@PassTheMarmalade1957]

Exactly. The whole problem before wasn't "Queer characters are always villains," it was "Queer characters are one-dimensional." There were just as many 'positive' portrayals of the Queer Best Friend as there were villains, and they suffered from the same problem. They did not feel like real people beyond having a fun surface aesthetic of queerness. Suddenly you have queer characters with dark sides, motivations, and flaws, and people are like, "No, we want unrealistic perfection." Which is exactly what makes so many milk-toast straight heroes boring!

[@chess77]

This was such a really well articulated, thoughtful essay. Let queer characters be problematic and toxic and awful and evil! Let them be people.

[@MG-hz7wi]

There is an old saying that is attributed to Mae West: "Good little girls go to heaven, but bad little girls go EVERYWHERE". In my younger days, I delighted in being the "bad" girl, because I could not identify with the stereotypical and popular girls my age. People who are raised with harmful moral stereotypes feel bad and shameful. Why wouldn't they identify with the villain? It's where they've been told they belong.

[@ianlaue6283]

So, its a minor point, but "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective did receive a PG-13 rating, which to me puts it above the standard of "kid movie" even if some parents may let their younger kids watch it.

[@Sarah-J-she]

Yeah, I guess but when I saw it, I was 15 and I was still a kid. It was probably the first time I'd seen a trans person in a movie. It taught me the lie that trans women are criminals and their bodies are disgusting. I have very strong feelings about that movie, and that scene in particular. When we say protect trans kids I guess we should also be protecting them from seeing BS like that.

[@ianlaue6283]

@@Sarah-J-she The larger point about it reflecting a transphobic attitude is correct of course, but my biggest issue with some of these bits of film analysis is that they risk suffering from cherry picking (in that there isn't any stated 'criteria' for these movies and not others), and more importantly, theres no sense of these movies 'reflecting' societal attitudes, though Rowan never says so, this kind of plot is obviously generated by writers that were ALREADY transphobic, so the extent to which the film is 'spreading' transphobia to people that would otherwise not have such attitutudes is hard to say. Like, no question theres a feedback loop of some kind, but the 'background' level of transphobia in culture at large in the 90s was probably already pretty high.

[@Sarah-J-she]

OK yes 90s culture not good for trans people. The only times we were visible seemed to be as a joke like in Ace ventura or shock shows like Jerry springer. In drama we were only shown as criminals, or mentally ill victims. It really sucked.

[@ProsecutorZekrom]

@@Sarah-J-she But Ray Finkle isn't a trans character. He found out about a missing hiker whose body was never recovered and got surgery to look like her so he wouldn't be thrown back into the mental hospital, and so he could get his revenge. "Einhorn" isn't his own identity, it's just a disguise he uses.

[@ASTROMOSTRA6]

Yes, it was not the first in doing that sort of trope of "outing" a "lie" as a narrative plot twist about an antagonist, Naked Gun did it, and Soap Dish did it years earlier.

[@geoffreyrichards6079]

This lack of media literacy is, sadly, the reason why I think a lot of media has been suffering in terms of quality. A good example of this would be Sokka’s sexism in the original “Avatar:TLA” series being removed or underplayed in the live-action Netflix remake despite it being a key part of his character arc, or the general lack of villains in recent Disney animated films. It also explains why dialogue has gotten more obnoxious as well, with certain characters often having to speak forced exposition so that they can keep audiences’ perceptions in line and not misinterpret things, rather than trying to let them figure it out themselves.

[@leriety]

Interview with the vampire was quite progressive for its time, they're not openly described as a couple for obvious reasons but they do live together with an adopted daughter for about as long as a human lifespan. I didn't like the new adaptation though. There's so many in the fandom painting Stolas as the bad guy just because he seem to be in a privileged position compared to Blitz, sure him asking for sex in exchange for his book was a questionable choice (and coming out later in life when you have a family is always messy) but there's so much more to their relationship and personalities.

[@MasonShmason]

And Stolas has the benefit of seeing his mistakes, recognizing that they were wrong, and is taking steps to do the right thing. That's what change and personal growth is for, and everyone is capable of changing for the better, despite what the puritan dogpile brigade wants to think when they dig up ancient posts from upwards of 10-15 years ago to portray someone as a bad person.

[@Elora445]

@@MasonShmason That last thing is something I hate. It's as if people won't allow others to develop at all. As if one can't ever change their mind on something big because of new information, or anything like that. So many things can influence people in the span of 10-15 years.

[@themagpiem]

just letting you all know that if you like Nimona and queer monstrousness, you should read The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo

[@scottbuck1572]

It makes me so mad that Saltburn has so much attention when it is just a shittier Talent Mr. Ripley, especially since it's so explicitly afraid of anyone who isn't monstrously wealthy. On a completely unrelated note, it would be pretty sick to see a movie monster that is made through the lens of wealth destroying humanity; like the most evil people alive are extremely wealthy, straight, white, cis-men. Imagine a movie monster based off of Vince McMahon

[@ralphmoore6413]

You do realise that you just described Saltburn? A film about how the wealthy aristocracy are dysfunctional, vapid narcissists and that the promise of acquiring their obscene wealth and power turns people into violent sociopaths? A film about how promises of social mobility are lies meant to cover up entrenched inequalities and class conflicts? Saltburn is a really fascinating case study about interpretation and media literacy discourse. On the one hand, so many audience seem to get so distracted by the sex and imagery that they miss vital plot and character beats. On the other, the film relies so heavily on niche cultural and literary references that it ends up being opaque to large sections of the audience. Do we blame the viewers for insisting on shallow readings or do we criticise the filmmakers for making the text too obscure?

[@scottbuck1572]

@@ralphmoore6413 Nah, I want the villains to the family, not Oliver. Like really show how craven wealth can turn you into a monster. The kind that admits to being evil for no other reason than it is the only thing left they aren't desensitized to. I mean you can read that for sure, but I think you are giving the movie more credit than it deserves: it very much frames Oliver as the villain (especially since he planned it from the beginning, unlike Tom where it spiraled out of control and he just was the kind of person that could commit murder). Like I think your reading is totally valid and fair, I just think the movies subtext is a lot less critical of it's text: I think that reading relies on having much more radical and leftist perspective than I think filmmakers did. I do completely agree with your points about subtext: it feels like more and more people are not engaging with it because they enjoy the spectacle of the text.

[@ralphmoore6413]

@@scottbuck1572 OK, but you do get how the Cattons are villains in the film? How they emotionally and financially abuse each other and their 'friends'/pets in serious and horrifying ways? The twist isn't that Oliver is the villain to their unwitting victims, it's that he's been playing their twisted, manipulative game from the beginning and comes out on top.

[@scottbuck1572]

@@ralphmoore6413 No I do, but it frames their evil as MOSTLY a byproduct of class dynamics, not that them being on the top of the said class dynamics has fundamentally fucked with their minds (human ego is literally a desire, at its most basic level, to be the absolute master of your life and environment). When you ACTUALLY get that in a society that is already extremely exploitative, you turn into an almost cartoon villain. The movie very much frames the family as being redeemable and while it frames them as the villains, it switches upon the mother getting sick and Oliver explaining his shit. It makes all of commentary up until that point muddled, as it seemingly points to the system as the problem, without recognizing that families like the Catton's are not just active participants of it like us all, but have an active stake in maintaining the current system and have participated DIRECTLY in upholding the status quo much more than even the upper-middle class does. It's very "blame the game not the players," but seemingly doesn't realize/doesn't want to reconcile it's players like the Cattons that keep the game going

[@morgannyan2738]

Aren’t you a white man who’s at least wealthier than me, a person of color? You must be pretty evil then.

[@lnt305]

Me: I don’t like how everything has a plushie nowadays. That seems so wasteful Also me: Rowan has a Fizzarolli plushie 😱😱😱 I need one!!

[@lnt305]

Omg I just realized she has multiple

[@opptimisticotter]

Thank you for making this video. I do not interact much on the internet, so cons is i dont get to talk about my fandoms much, but plus side is i have been able to engage with them without anyone directly telling myself to kill myself or that im personally a bad person for liking a nuanced series etc.

[@dameanvil]

00:00 📰 Media literacy decline affects how audiences interpret content, leading to misconceptions and moral judgments. 01:28 🎭 Representation discussions now involve complexities beyond just internal community perspectives, considering broader societal reception and impact. 03:23 🦹‍♂ Queer villains, like the obsessive queer archetype, perpetuate harmful stereotypes and reflect historical societal biases. 07:38 👹 The queer monster trope has roots in historical censorship (Hays Code) and persists in modern media, perpetuating negative perceptions of queerness. 11:57 💔 Queer-coded villains are both criticized and embraced by the LGBTQ+ community, raising questions about the complexity of villainy and redemption. 16:13 ⚔ Depictions of queer villains often intertwine with themes of colonialism, sexual violence, and societal norms, reflecting historical prejudices. 18:08 💔 Bisexuality in villains like Lestat can reinforce harmful stereotypes, highlighting the intersectionality of queerness and villainy. 20:03 🏳‍🌈 Depictions of LGBTQ+ characters in villainous roles raise questions about agency, stereotypes, and societal perceptions within and outside the queer community. 21:56 🌈 Queer-coded villains often defy societal norms, especially regarding sexuality and gender identity, perpetuating stereotypes. 23:21 🦹‍♂ Queer-coded villains like Dr. Frank-N-Furter from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" blur the line between hero and villain, deviance and freedom, reflecting complexities in queer representation. 27:13 🎬 The forced outing of a trans character in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" perpetuates harmful stereotypes and reflects the use of transphobia as a comedic device in media. 29:09 🌟 "Nimona" provides an allegory for queer experiences, highlighting themes of marginalization, resilience, and the struggle for acceptance. 31:34 💔 "Nimona" challenges perceptions of villainy and monstrosity, exploring the impact of societal prejudice and trauma on marginalized individuals. 34:28 🤔 "Hazbin Hotel" blurs the lines between hero and villain, prompting viewers to question moral judgments and societal norms. 38:47 ⚔ The embrace of queer villains by the LGBTQ+ community reflects a defiance against societal norms and a recognition of the complexities of identity and representation. 42:36 🎭 Viewers on platforms like TikTok are debating which character in "Hell of a Boss" is the villain in a complex relationship, missing the show's context of self-doubt and trauma. 43:32 📚 Moral panic around LGBTQ+ issues reflects a broader cultural trend of purity culture, even in online fandoms, where fictional harm is conflated with real harm. 44:54 🤔 Pressure for queer characters to be perfect reinforces respectability politics, limiting authentic storytelling and condemning those who don't fit narrow standards. 46:21 💡 Queer characters shouldn't need to justify their existence or adhere to moral standards, but rather be allowed to explore diverse themes and emotions authentically. 49:42 🔍 Queer villains have been underexplored in media, especially those seeking righteous revenge, challenging the binary of good versus evil and prompting audience reflection. 52:35 💬 The push for moral purity in media consumption reflects a broader societal trend, detached from empathy and community, hindering meaningful progress.

[@pinkerhero]

Is this AI-generated?

[@Jake28]

AI?

[@awaredeshmukh3202]

Autogenerating helpful timestamps and summaries is EXACTLY what we should be using AI for

[@dameanvil]

@@awaredeshmukh3202 Of course not! AI should be banned, as it makes all the idiots feel bad.

[@awaredeshmukh3202]

@@dameanvil Sorry I'm confused. What do you mean? How does it do that or am I missing the tone of your comment?

[@scream_kinh614]

I think (before watching the video) that writing a morally horrific character is not a problem, i think its about how the overarching narrative views the character and their actions. Take humbert humbert from lolita. Hes objectively terrible, but we as readers are aware that he is horrible. Everyone around him knows hes horrible, everythinf about the narrative, despite his narration, lets the reader know that he is not the hero in the story. And i think that people need to pay less attention to the misgivings of a character, but the narrative surrounding those characters. To tie it to queerness, I dont think its bad to write a queer villain, its just essential that when you do that their villainy is not why they are villainous, but just an aspect of their person, as well as having some other queerness within the story.

[@ladygrey4113]

For me at least, it’s not that people write queer villains is the problem. It’s when it’s clear in narrative the writer is woobifying them I’m rolling my eyes that they’re not brave enough to actually make them repulsive.

[@moustik31]

I disagree: first year in college, I had to "debate" some classmates, who viewed him as a "victim" bec. Lolita "seduced" him first. My experience of is that too many pp read Lolita (or watch the movie) and it turns them on: they want to do what HH does and they want to blame their actions on "sexually liberated" pre-teen girls. It was a very disheartening experience.

[@l.n.3372]

​@moustik31 Yeah sadly not enough people realize or admit nowadays that he's the villain. Some accused the girl of being a seducer??? They refuse to accept it's not a love story but a pedophile who abused a child.

[@scream_kinh614]

@@moustik31 I agree that Lolita is often misunderstood. But I don't think that's the book's fault. The movies very much water down HH's actions, but when reading the novel is relatively clear that no one around him thinks he's normal or ok

[@scream_kinh614]

@@ladygrey4113 true true. This reminds me of how some people were upset at lemony Snicket for the fact that count Olaf tried to marry an underaged violet in the first novel and he responded, "I'm sorry, I'm unsure how I'm meant to right a villain who doesn't do villainous things?" And he's right. Villains should do villainous things. Of course, a good villain does them due to their own fucked up moral code and reasoning, but they always have a REASON.

[@greycat1246]

I always get a bit uncomfortable around the phrase "the death of media literacy" as it can get into generational handwringing about how young people are dumb Given examples like Pokemon being called satanic, I suspect most people historically were always bad at media analysis and what social media has done is merely give those people a microphone and give them places to organize around their interpretations

[@jijitters]

Eh, bad example. The people calling Pokemon satanic were not the ones playing it, they were the old people viewing scary news in their periphery like our boomers now.

[@greycat1246]

@@jijitters yeah that's a good point

[@steventrujillo5866]

Commenting mostly for the algorithm but damn these essays are so good they make me challenge my abysmal attention span

[@Sly-Moose]

You inspired me to not just be a silent-until-x-brand-is-brought-up boycotter about the thing that's happening in Palestine, as to avoid seeming like a pushy nag. Ty. I finally told my friends about it

[@mushroomkid4510]

Hell yeah, that's awesome. I'm working towards that too rn. Free 🍉

[@kaiyodei]

i'm waiting for someone to make a fiction with an analogy inspiration of that, but using fantasy and see if they get labled a hatemonger

[@sapphic.flower]

Although, queer media is subject to criticism, it upsets me when queer creators become blasphemed by the community for how they write queer characters. I saw people hate Q-Force based on the first trailer because of its gay humour playing on stereotypes. When the queer creator, writers and even animators insisted the series wasn’t homophobic, they were then accused of copaganda?! Because it’s about a cartoony depiction of secret agents?? Similar with how people say Angel Dust and Vaggie are offensive queer representation because they only want to view Hazbin Hotel in bad faith due to the creator being controversial (which is already a valid enough reason to not support the series). People deliberately depicting queer fiction to be far more nefarious than it actually is just because it’s not flattering representation feels so regressive. We shouldn’t restrict the risks queer writers can make! To play purity games about queer media is only limiting how queer people are allowed to exist, in media and in real life.

[@Randomyoutuber-4831]

Okay most of the controversy about Vivziepop is either made up or blown way out of proportion. It’s nothing but a bunch of Twitter idiots making bad faith assumptions about things they know nothing about.

[@katiaotero2392]

That is bs. Vivziepop is not problematic/controversial, people just love to hate her and have and obsession with putting her down because she's a woman who doesn't take crap from others. Stop spreading misinformation.

[@wispisang]

No but this is literally so true. So often I see people trying to justify not liking something by throwing out all of these bad faith arguments about “morality” and trying to paint the thing they dislike as something evil that shouldn’t be allowed to exist when, like, it’s okay to just not like something and simply disengage from it. To hold this idea that you can respect your own feelings while also being able to look at other people and be able to see their point of view. To let their thoughts exist as well. Except with the way most of these people view life and situations, that’s not really a concept to them. It’s so black and white. There are pieces of media out there that are very problematic and harmful pieces of propaganda and hate, but these shows aren’t on that level at all. They’re just edgy or play off of stereotypes in a unique way. It just feels like these people see something that CAN be problematic and immediately assume it is with no second thought. They just choose to focus on this possible negative to prove a point that might make sense within their personal view of the situation, but often completely disregards nuance and the full picture. No one should be forced to watch or like things like Hazbin Hotel or Q-Force if they get bad vibes from it, but no one should be policing the queer people telling their stories and the people who enjoy those stories over personal feelings of moral superiority. Policing people based solely on your views and feelings NEVER ends well, whether it be over fictional media or the lives of others. It just leads to censorship and erasure. We shouldn’t have to stick to writing purely safe and vanilla concepts simply because we’re queer. Like it is just a little saddening seeing queer people write adult shows and these shows being so avidly hated and ridiculed meanwhile there are so many adult shows that are also “problematic” (sometimes legitimately problematic) that are not written by queer people and are seen as cultural icons.

[@ladygrey4113]

I mean in Qforce’s it was actually funny and internally consistent. The problem was also it was not afraid to poke fun at the creators own communities (they’re all queer even the voice actors). The dig at white gays for deeming Ariana grande a gay icon was hilarious “shout out to my gay brother Frankie! Who is gay!” “Omg Ariana I’m gay like your brother!”

[@scottbuck1572]

It's the internet's fault; EVERYONE is in an echo chamber and no matter how diverse, echo chambers lead to the death of critical thinking, as ideas that promote group cohesion and further investment into the echo chamber become the goal and then the standard, truth or even alternative perspective be damned. Like obviously blatant bigotry and phobia is not an "alternative perspective" but equating liking/not liking a piece of media to said bigotry and phobias is a byproduct of being terminally online to the point where everything is a dog whistle/signifier of a persons morals and is genuinely not a good way to interact with other people

[@Khotetsu]

There was an innocent and humorous poll on Tumblr I saw this past week on which was the better queer media: Homestuck or Dykes to Watch Out For, and the entire comments section was just a bunch of people screaming about how if voted for one it meant you were racist/lesbophobic and if you voted for the other you were transphobic based on how problematic the author and content was/is. All I could think about was how we don't need the conservatives to tear the queer community apart, because we're more than happy to do it ourselves.

[@scottbuck1572]

@@Khotetsu Wild. This and moralized of media interested are going to tear APART the online left. I saw a comment I really liked about media in general; these aren't things that have objectively correct answers, like trans rights being human rights, they are HIGHLY subjective and treating peoples opinions about them as dog whistle/signifiers of moral alignment is not productive. Its like judging someone for a favorite color; its an ephemeral experience of enjoyment, not a moral litmus test.

[@Khotetsu]

@@scottbuck1572 I agree. There's something to be said about financially supporting creators who donate money to hate groups through buying their stuff (looking at you, Wizard TERF) or something, which is more of a grey area about trying to be conscientious about where your money goes, but one of the biggest issues in society right now I think is the nature of the internet as a public and permanent record. Especially social media. If somebody says something one time, it's cast in stone and regardless of how their position changes later on, people have already created an opinion based on something they said years ago as a teenager or whatever, and that will follow them for the rest of their lives. Even if they're not a creator of some kind. As I saw somebody say, "Is it any wonder that Gen Z has grown up with so much anxiety?"

[@morgannyan2738]

You mean like progressives with Harry Potter?

[@scottbuck1572]

@@morgannyan2738 I mean kind of; its one thing to be unaware of her being a TERF (lots of people who only read the books have no idea) and its another to be aware of it and try to sweep it under the rug as you directly giver her money by buying Hogwarts Legacy and using the excuse "but my fantasy!"

[@caitie8921]

Thank you for making this video, it’s so disheartening to see this demand for moral purity in fandom spaces all the time.

[@jackaleope]

the respectability politics for trans people and characters is so bad right now that i was criticized for having a “violent” trans character simply because he has the gall to fight back against the people who come at him with micro and macro aggressions. his validity was called into question because of this perceived flawed characteristic. “you shouldn’t promote violence” i was told. we are expected to portray ourselves as perfectly and respectably as possible in media lest we give the “normal people” a bad impression of us. its such bullshit

[@ATontheDL]

This is all so interesting to me especially as someone who is mostly part of marginalized groups along just about every axis folks talk about and is also autistic, which has ended up in missing a lot of the things that are made to appeal to a mainstream audience (including hero/villain binaries that almost always seem weirdly imposed on a story that feels complex even when ppl try to flatten characters?). I default assume that well-to-do "respectable" people in power are more the villain in any story because that's been more my experience. I also really appreciate calling out the pushing of respectability politics as real villainy, thank you for that. The lack of media literacy keeps cropping up in lots of parts of my life and sometimes it hits that hopeless spot that makes me want to try and do something about it, especially as a working artist, heavily marginalized person, and massive lover of fandom. Sometimes I feel insane for wondering why people get so into things like the Hunger Games but don't see the parallels all around them, and the same for so much of scifi and so many other pieces of every kind of media that are just talking about actual conditions/events through the lens of fiction or metaphor (including watching Promare with my fiancee and her not understanding why I was crying until I explained how familiar it felt to me and how often that story happens IRL, and she had never even thought about anything in that way before). So it helped to see someone else at least name that that's a thing, a real phenomenon that happens--it makes me feel less crazy, so thank you.

[@ATontheDL]

Also maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always found the predatory lesbian stereotype pretty hot. Maybe it’s born from a desire for the queer women in my life to be more forward (with me and with the people they moon to me about) but 🤷🏻‍♀️

[@nagillim7915]

When you talked about how people in your comments were arguing about which character was the villain and which the victim, this seems to be a very real problem in society right now that goes well beyond queer representation and has its tendrils into every facet of life. In media, in politics, in social interactions and even in people's personal lives there appears to be a worrying (and dare i say dangerous?) propensity for black and white moral thinking. Everyone is stripped of personhood and reduced to either a faultless angel or an irredeemable devil. And that kind of rigid moral dualism never leads to good things in the world. We need to resurrect nuance and complexity in our societal discourse or the end result is going to be people a few decades from now counting the dead and asking, "how did we let this happen? Again." Maybe that sounds like far fetched catastrophising but every genocide i've researched started with binary moral thinking and dividing people into faultless innocents and irredeemable monsters.

[@JinxDoesChaos]

omg the fizzaroli plushies in the background is the best think ive seen all week

[@Radhaun]

I do think context is incredibly important. If you're *only* queer character is the character portrayed in the worst light, the character we are absolutely not suppose to root for, yeah.... That's not great, though there are exceptions. I never watched The Talented Mr. Ripley, but I did listen to the audiobook and honestly it was uncomfortable at times how alike my internal thoughts were to Mr. Ripley's. I don't think he was a bad character or even necessarily bad representation since he's so far up his own ass that there's really no way to reliably look at the behavior of anyone else in the story. On the other hand if your story has a lot of diverse characters and sometimes the is a queer character who isn't great or is maybe straight up the bad guy, I think that's fine. Don't get me wrong, I am tired of the cloud the Hayes Code holds over all media, but sometimes I love a campy queer villain (more so if their campy queerness has nothing to do with their villainy). For the example of Hazbin Hotel, Valentino is unabashedly portrayed as a horrible person, but it isn't his queerness that makes him awful. Charlie is a literal poster child for goodness and her queerness also has very little to do with what makes her good. It's just an aspect of their characters and that's it. It's not made strange or out of the ordinary and I think *that's* the kind of rep I prefer. Although given a choice, I'd *really* prefer a story that was just exclusively queer characters. No heterosexuals. Pull an uno reverse on the Hayes code.

[@maklamb]

This is exactly what it wrote my undergrad honors thesis about so I’m so glad you’re bringing this topic to a wider audience. 👏👏

[@kertchu]

Thank you for making a better and more clear version of what I believe James Somerton’s *why bad gays are good* was trying to say. You didn’t even invalidate anyone’s preferences.

[@emilyrln]

I think I need to give Helluva Boss another try. I loved Hazbin Hotel when I watched it literally a few days ago, and I've been low-key obsessed ever since. Also, great video. The cult of purity around media is really unnerving as it bleeds into real life, with abuse hotlines getting raunchy fan art submitted that drowns out the legitimate images of real people being harmed. Kind of like how QAnon has made it harder for organizations that fight child trafficking with all their bullshit conspiracies.

[@Sina-dv1eg]

Abuse hotlines being sent fanart? That sounds super messed up, and I wanted to read more about it, but googling didn't get me anywhere. Do you have a source for it?

[@emilyrln]

​@@Sina-dv1egOh, crud, sounds like I may have repeated hearsay! I'm pretty sure I heard it in the video "Fandom Policing, Purity Culture and the Death of Media Literacy" by E. Link in next reply in case links don't behave here. They do have sources linked in the description, but I didn't find what I was looking for on a skim. *EDIT:* upon googling, *I found an article called "Internet Reporting Hotlines Are Censoring Art as Child Sexual Abuse" that deals with the issue of false reporting in general* (not just fan-related). Here are some notable quotations from it: 'Since the images are illegal to view, the platforms aren’t allowed to share them after reporting them. This means that *there is a risk that lawful content, or content such as cartoons that aren’t images of real child abuse, will also end up on these lists,* and that it will be impossible to get it off again. 'In fact, we know that *this happens regularly* and that the Internet hotlines are complicit in it. When NCMEC, the United States hotline, receives reports to its CyberTipLine that relate to a user in a foreign location, it sends the complete report to the foreign police force, including the personal details (IP address) of the user, without any verification that the content in question is illegal. As a result, *up to 90% of the images passed on by NCMEC are later assessed to be innocent.* '… Yet even flagging “potential concerns” is a determination of potential illegality, which exposes the user to the risk of prosecution. It is natural that foreign police forces will take these “potential concerns” seriously, and it is disingenuous for the Canadian Center to wash its hands of responsibility. Unlike the case of real images of child abuse which directly harm children, the harm caused by drawings of child abuse is entirely subjective and much more difficult for a non-judicial agency to determine.'

[@emilyrln]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3e5g52EfJamic0

[@emilyrln]

@@Sina-dv1eg Google "Internet Reporting Hotlines Are Censoring Art as Child Sexual Abuse"; it deals with the reporting of art in general, not specifically fan images. I've tried replying a few times and I'm not sure if any of them have gotten through. I heard the claim on the video "Fandom Policing, Purity Culture and the Death of Media Literacy" by E.

[@charliemarian_01]

Yes to all, FREE PALESTINE

[@sophiephilips-roberts3311]

Just to note-- the creator of Nimona is ND Stevenson, not JD!

[@as4180]

as a gay man and villain lover, I've always hated the argument that queer characters have to be perfect moral paragons. Like I think that historical queer coding of villains led to that defensiveness and I understand that inclination, but I think swinging hard in the other direction is also harmful. I usually find heroes with no moral ambiguity so boring and villains generally more complex and interesting characters because real people are also messy and contradictory. I grew up in the American South in a very religious community, so there's something relatable about some villains in a way and something cathartic in watching them fuck shit up and having a good time doing so lmao I escaped that culture of moral purity, I don't want to replicate it

[@onceuponamelody]

I feel like things online can be so black and white. Real people (and therefore more interesting characters) are more complex. We see that with the nerfing of the characters in the recent ATLA reboot. We really don't want characters to be one-dimensional and boring, but when they are more complex people scream "bUt WhAt AbOuT tHe cHiLdReN?!11!" The children will be better off learning how complex people really are (they also shouldn't be watching Hazbin or other more adult shows...it's called parenting, try it sometime.)

[@gota7738]

An aspect of the Hayes Code relevant to the ending section, is the fact that the code itself was heavily preoccupied with the idea that audiences might get "the wrong message" and thus a binary of Good and Evil had to reinforced and simplified lest "impressionable audiences" be led astray. Displays of deviant behaviour could only be shown if by the ending the villains was punished, or less frequently repenting, to make clear that imitating the behaviour led to a dark end. To this end I'm slightly weary of the idea of just flipping the roles to have minorities be "good" or even uncritical depictions of punitive justice, even in the name of the downtrodden. It all still falls within the framework of the Hayes Code, and doesn't explore the idea the world simply not falling into a binary of some sort. I'm also skeptical of the whole 'media literacy' phrase being thrown around, it leans into the idea that there's an innate stupidity in audiences which is easily exploited by authoritarian movements.

[@_shannons]

Considering the rates of literacy in general (at least in USA) I have little hope for media literacy

[@katies3733]

Ya i love hazbin and helluva. I've been a backer of vivziepop for... well since the hazbin hotel piolet. But. I can't with the fandom sometimes. Especially now that hazbin has reached a larger audience. I just can't partake in those online spaces. I forget that a loud subsection of people have passed moral judgement on the characters for being in hell. There was a thread where people were debating which hotel goer is least likely to he redeemed. And people legitamtely said angel dust in the comments. And i went oh i get it, i've never seen addiction as a sin, but other people do count it. Because i live in a world where addiction is usually a coping mechanism in an unjust world that doesn't have enough social safety nets and i don't see it as a moral failure. But apparently i'm in a fandom where some people count "excessive" sexuality and like using unhealthy coping stratagies as moral failures... and like less forgivable then being a serial killer (like literally choosing angel dust over alastor as unredeemable). And i'm like oh welp i'm gonna yeet myself out of these spaces because they've gotten a bit toxic, not as a whole, just toxicity has been seeping in at the sides and i dont have to spend energy interacting with it. It suprises me that people are debating whose the villian in stolas and blitzøs relationship. Because they are just two very flawed very damaged individuals trying their best. Neither is the villian, both have been essential for the growth seen in the other. Like i've seen a lot of: are the stolas and biltz healthy relationship. And currently no. But i also come from the general stance of: the real evil was the capitalism we found along the way.

[@juniperrodley9843]

tbh I've avoided Hazbin partially due to people yelling about it and partially cause I just never wanna interact with the fandom

[@fisheyenomiko]

People think Angel is the least likely to get redeemed? Did they watch the 6th episode, where the fact that he could be redeemed was THE WHOLE DAMN POINT? And as for Alastor? I don't think he'd even WANT to be redeemed. He's having way too much fun in Hell.

[@l.n.3372]

I watched Hazbin and found myself really liking Alastor. Maybe some find they like him and dislike Angel thus they personally want their favorite to be redeemable? Perhaps it makes them uncomfortable to root for a villain thus they'd prefer Alastor as "redeemable villain" instead?

[@wanyasworld8914]

It is a shame that a lot of people respond or have so many opinions on media which is often highly edited and short fragments for social media without full story or any context, and not doing proper research, background check or just trying to understand a certain piece media before giving their respond or 'opinion'. Often I miss a more nuanced discussion online. That's why I love your video's.

[@mr.fish666]

wait, are you telling me that nimona isn't nonbinary in the og version? ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT THE FRICKING POLISH DUB BENDED OUR EXTREMELY GENDERED LANGUAGE, SO THAT NIMONA CALLET THEMSELVES BY NEUTRAL PRONOUNS JUST BECOUSE THEY WANTED TO. That doesn't sound real, I will investigate and make an edit becouse what the hell. edit: ok i think that this is real, making nimona refer to themselves with neutral forms seems to be a contious decision by the polish dub, and frankly, i am shocked and kinda proud of us

[@AC-dk4fp]

Which original version? Nimona is whatever gender their body currently is but barely uses pronouns in the English version of the movie and more ambiguous in the comic because its aimed at an older audience who don't need stuff spelling out. They're not like Double Trouble who has a non-binary true form.

[@mr.fish666]

@AC-dk4fp ok i get you, but I was refereing to the fact that Rowan addressed the character with she/her pronouns only (witch i assumed is the case in the english dub), and in the polish dub they explicitly refer to themselves in a neutral form, witch hardly a coincidence, bc of the languages gendered-nature

[@AC-dk4fp]

@@mr.fish666 Sure but precise language is also a lot to expect from a video essayist with ADHD who I think talked about burnout in another video (might be misremembering).

[@mr.fish666]

@AC-dk4fp yeah ofc! My comment wasn't meant to criticize anyone! I was just marveling at my usually pretty homophobic country's pretty cool approach to this wonderful queer story. I want to watch the english dub now to see how it plays out there.

[@Lucky_Dagger]

​​@@AC-dk4fpNimona is an interesting character because in the movie the main thing Nimona says is "but im not a girl I'm Nimona" and never makes a big deal out of pronouns just the identity of "girl". I'm not sure if this is just because when Nimona was conceived as a character Stevenson refered to Nimona with she/her or if it's just a reflection of nuance in gender identity. I personally don't care what pronouns are used for me i hate being pigeonholed into the category of "girl".

[@grinch56]

Outlander does have a sympathetic queer character! Lord John Grey falls in love with Jamie but when it's unrequited they become friends for life

[@SistersTape]

yes, I wanted to say that too! I'm only in season 3 but I really liked Lord John so far!

[@grinch56]

@@SistersTape yup he's a cutie I wish we had a whole spinoff for him

[@Angelique24118]

I had a racist uncle (because, you know everyone does) he believed that there are men who dress as women to “fool them into thinking they are women, too” in order to SA them or something one of the things I hate most about homophobia is how you must “hide your children’s eyes” from it. I unfortunately live in Tennessee, where our government seems to consider cross dressing as “adult activities” I didn’t even know about the gay community until I was a teen, I didn’t even think it was an option.

[@samaranthae9671]

I had a interesting time with something like this. It was actually the "evil" characters in BG3. But it was the adoration of those evil characters by my friends. I think where to me it became a problem is not that people like villainous characters, but that people try to justify their actions, make excuses and apologise for them in order to make themselves feel better about liking them

[@kina259]

I love Stolas and Blitzo in hellovabuss. They both have a lot of issues and tho the love is clearly there, it's a toxic relationship. Because of both of them. why does there have to be a good/bad guy? They're both complex characters.