Tag: fuckyeahrichardiii

fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “foundlingmother replied to your post “Still unfollowing people who…”

oh my god, the TW wank has gone way too far. and whoever wrote that post is obviously unfamiliar with the original sources, where Loki is CLEARLY and obviously depicted as analogous to Satan. wtf tumblr?

Have I told you lately that I love you, @fuckyeahrichardiii?

Listen to the honest-to-God medievalist, fandom. She knows many things.

fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “Fun times in academic philosophy I missed the visit days for…”

your DGS should write to the chair at Oxford and let him know what happened

honestly garbage people like this need to be culled from the field

As lovely as that would be, @fuckyeahrichardiii, I suspect there are strong professional norms that militate against it. I think all we can do is hope that he’ll never get a job because if he never learns that that kind of shit doesn’t fly outside of Oxford, he’ll keep doing it on fly-outs and get himself ruled out immediately. Or hell, maybe the culture at Oxford will change enough that he’ll get put in his place eventually. Or kicked out… though he’d probably have to do something really bad for that to happen, and I don’t wish whatever it is on whoever he’d do it to.

fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “foundlingmother:
philosopherking1887:

shine-of-asgard:

…”

It felt like the film equivalent of that move in modern comics where writers essentially douchebro beloved characters (this is especially true if IM comics) in part for the explicit purpose of alienating female fans. The whole time I was sitting in the theater I felt like I was being insulted.

Funny you should mention that, @fuckyeahrichardiii… I recently saw a post from @flange5 where she referred to that kind of behavior by male comics writers (in reference specifically to Iron Man comics, I think) as “fencepost-pissing,” because they’re making a point of “leaving their mark” on the character rather than remaining consistent with the character as it’s been established previously. I remarked that according to that definition, Taika Waititi is also a fencepost-pisser.

fuckyeahrichardiii
replied to your post “I attribute the sparcity of Ragnarok criticism to tumblr’s obsession…”

I also have no idea why the movie hasn’t been savaged by tumblr for its frankly awful queer-baiting. We’ve got a regressive case of textbook villainous queer-“coding” (though it’s barely even coded) with the GM, who despite everyone’s obsession with JG, is a really vile person (imperialist, slaver), and the FIRST almost open depiction of same-sex relations in the MCU (Loki/GM) is characterized by suggestions of frankly horrific power dynamics. Like, really Taika?

(2) And Valkyrie being bi was barely a whisper in the movie compared to the joke that was the GM’s sexuality. Even so, Taika had the tired trope of the dead lesbian in operation as part of Val’s backstory which honestly gets him 0 credit as far as I’m concerned. 

But god forbid anybody critique the movie on these grounds because OMG JEFF GOLDBLUM SQUEE + benevolent racism (a great term!).

@fuckyeahrichardiii, you are entirely correct about the stereotypical villainous queer-coding – involving Loki, inasmuch as he is a sometime villain, as well as the Grandmaster. I will admit to being amused by Jeff Goldblum’s schtick – especially the use of “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – but now that you point it out, I should be suspicious of the characterization. And you’re also right that it’s a serious problem that the only semi-canonical queer relationship in the MCU is basically a sugar daddy/ sugar baby situation, where the “sugar” is not so much money or luxury (though that is involved) as survival, i.e., exemption from being forced into gladiatorial contests or melted.

I’ve been having some fun with Frostmaster as kind of a crack ship, because the Thorki fandom’s obsession with the Burgundy Jacket of Sin from AOU revealed to me my susceptibility to daddy kink. And I absolutely do have a thing for relationships with fucked-up power dynamics – IN FICTION, not in real life. I think it’s hot to read/fantasize about, but NOT a good model for real-life relationships. I kind of don’t get people who seem to ship Loki with the Grandmaster seriously and think they would be happy together. Loki is clearly not satisfied with the situation, as indicated by his suggestion that an “accident” might befall the Grandmaster and he and Thor could take over. I think he’s lying back and thinking of England, so to speak.

Holy shit, I did not even catch the dead lesbian thing. You are so right.

fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I…”

Reading this has me practically crying in relief — I’ve felt like an oddball because it seems like the movie was universally loved and I couldn’t understand why.

I thought I was alone, too, @fuckyeahrichardiii – at least among MCU fans other than the “Loki apologists” who have been annoying the rest of the fandom since 2012. But being the contrarian I am, when I think I’m alone in an opinion (including thinking there’s nothing wrong with 1st person POV, or that Joss Whedon is still a good writer in many respects), I don’t keep my mouth shut for fear of alienating people or starting controversy. I make posts bitching about it, either hoping to call allies out of the woodwork, or to force people to reconsider the opinions that they formed “for no reasons worthy of the name” (as William James puts it in “The Will to Believe”), merely “out of habit” and/or to go along with the rest of their community, as Nietzsche says of the “fettered spirit” in Human, All Too Human (I, 226). “Later… [they] may perhaps have also devised a couple of reasons favorable to [their] habits” (as one sees in posts people make presenting their Tumblr-approved opinions); but typically, alas, “if one refutes those reasons one does not refute [them] in their general position.”

(Yeah, I judge people who don’t think for themselves. Fucking deal with it.)

It seems that, on this issue, I have actually been finding allies who were too scared to say anything because they thought they were alone (among non-Loki-justifiers) – and possibly even getting people to reconsider the high opinion of the movie they assumed they must have because everyone else seemed to…

fuckyeahrichardiii replied to your post “You know, it wasn’t until I was talking to someone in person about…”

I’ve gotten madder and madder about Ragnarok the farther out from it I get. My sense now is that TW didn’t really have much affection, if any, for ANY of the characters (except for the GM, which I can’t even talk about without flying into a rage). They were all at best caricatures of what they were in earlier movies. But this is especially true with Loki. He became a kind of joke. Ugh.

THANK YOU, @fuckyeahrichardiii. And to be clear, I don’t mind the slapstick humor involving Loki (though as noted elsewhere, I’m uneasy about the electrocution scene), and I recognize that everyone undergoes similar physical treatment. The problem is that his motivations are completely dismissed; he gets turned into some kind of Trumpian narcissist, retroactively erasing all the humanizing characterization he was given in the first two movies (and even The Avengers!).

And then there’s Thor, who bore virtually no resemblance to his character in any of the earlier movies. Neither TW nor CH seemed to care about the integrity of the character; they were just indulging their own sense of humor at the expense of the coherence of the character and his arc through the franchise. Ironically, I don’t think they made him any more interesting or likable than he had been before. They turned him into an inarticulate, mostly bumbling but occasionally cunning buffoon.

Yeah, there were parts of the movie I enjoyed. Valkyrie was great. Heimdall was badass. Hela was kind of cool, Skurge kind of endearing. Some of the bonding moments between Thor and Loki were nice; as a fan/shipper, I cling to those. But on the whole, the movie was a betrayal of everything that came before it.