@philosopherking1887 re: your tags, what’s the deal with tumblr and joss whedon? I keep getting snippets here and there but I’m not sure what the story is haha
@iamanartichoke I’m honestly not sure. There seems to be a pattern on Tumblr of idolizing a celebrity to a ridiculous degree and then collectively turning viciously on that person when they turn out not to be as impossibly perfect as the fans made them out to be; I’ve seen people predicting that Tumblr will shortly turn against John Mulaney en masse because the level of adoration is becoming unsustainable.
I have been told that a similar thing happened with Joss Whedon, but I never saw the worship phase. I joined Tumblr in late 2015, and being an ordinary geek, I liked his work a lot (and still do). I had watched Avengers: Age of Ultron and I really liked that, too (and still do!), probably because I wasn’t steeped in The Tumblr Consensus that it is Sexist and Terrible. There are stories about Whedon treating actresses badly, and after his wife divorced him, she published an essay saying that he’s not really a great feminist and he would complain to her about all the beautiful young women throwing themselves at him and not being allowed to touch them. He also does sometimes fall into sexist tropes with storytelling, characterization, and visual depiction of women, and arguably he does this with Black Widow in both Avengers movies. (I don’t think she was saying in Age of Ultron that she’s a monster because she can’t have children, though it is easy to hear it that way, and he should have been more careful about the potential for misunderstanding.) I have not read his draft script for a Wonder Woman movie that’s floating around online, but I’m told (by people I generally trust, but who are susceptible to being swayed by The Tumblr Consensus) that it is full of sexist crap.
Tumblr being what it is, the fact that Whedon is morally imperfect, and that he is an imperfect feminist (if not the completely fake one that Tumblr has decided he is), has led everyone to conclude that he must be a terrible writer in every way. People will make offhand comments about how the scripts of the Avengers movies were “terrible”; they claim that he doesn’t understand any of the characters and exaggerate the extent to which his dialogue is made up of jokes and pop culture references. One of the most absurd, infuriating examples of this that KEEPS GOING AROUND is a pair of gifs of Steve/Cap, in one saying “Son of a gun” and in the other “Son of a bitch.” The original caption is “character development”… but then someone reblogged with someone else’s tags saying that it was actually the difference between Joss Whedon’s gee-whiz boy scout version of Cap and Steve Rogers the scrappy Brooklyn kid and WWII Army vet, and a bunch of people piled on with the insistence that Whedon got Steve All Wrong. Now, I think most of this stems from a shallow understanding of what was going on with Steve in the first Avengers – and in fact, I think the criticisms of Age of Ultron also stem from shallow understanding (which is rampant not just on Tumblr). But the most glaring irony is that the second gif of Steve saying “Son of a bitch” (which is supposed to be the accurate, appropriately vulgar characterization) is from Age of Ultron… which was also written by Joss Whedon. Say what you want about the recurring “Language!” joke in AOU (I have a theory, but I don’t want to go into it here); you can’t say that the gif on the right is an improvement from Joss Whedon’s terrible characterization if it is also by Joss Whedon. I think people must assume that it’s from Winter Soldier because they don’t remember that the ironic punchline to the “language” joke is that Steve swears, too.
In approx. 6 months when all of Tumblr hates John Mulaney and wants to burn him at the stake for no apparent reason, I will remember the “John mulaney should be gay” posts as I sip my lemonade and watch the rabble dance on the ashes of yet another person they idolized into destruction
Actually, I’m gonna map this out for ya right now
John mulaney should be gay. Some fans quote the “God may ¾ of a gay man and then forgot to flip the last switch” joke from New In Town, I believe, but most people chuckle, nod along, and reblog
This will develop and evolve into “John mulaney is appropriating gay culture,” because this is Tumblr and Olympic leaps is what we do
That will quickly evolve into “John mulaney is queer baiting,” because, again, Tumblr
John mulaney will be the new Taylor swift, John green, whomever the hell else that Tumblr once loved and then decided to hate because ~50 million people can never agree on anything
In 2 years, the salt n’ pepper diner video will get passed around again, only people who innocently reblog a funny story from a comedian they don’t really know will get anons “warning” them about the awful, homophobic John mulaney
Most people will accept it outright, because we’re all a little weary of comedians, lbr, but some will question it. When the answer they get is “idk, but I think I remember people saying he was queer baiting because we thought he was gay but apparently he’s not and some people made joke posts about it that a lot of other people took too seriously,” they’ll respond with “are you serious?”
Yes, I am. Welcome to The Dark Ages™
I’m gonna schedule this post for 3 month intervals throughout the year.
Let’s see if Tumblr’s straight, white, golden child du jour survives 2018, shall we?
It’s happening
Ayyyyyyyyyyyyye
I’m so mad at how accurately you predicted this. This website…
And now there’s a post about how he’s the gays favorite comedian that was quickly derailed to talk about how he’s an anti-Semite who thinks his wife is a bitch based on a series of jokes taken wildly out of context. I hate how accurate this post is.
2011: I love Tumblr because it’s an environment where I can fangirl over my fictional preferences with like-minded fellows as I don’t feel comfortable sharing my passion for fictional characters and couples with people in real life.
2018: Tumblr is a hellhole filled with brainless Puritan Calvinist wannabes with Spanish Inquisition-ish attitudes telling me that I will never be granted salvation if I ship Character X and Character Y and if I like fictional villains I am literally Hitler. This environment is too toxic now. Mom? Dad? Can I talk you about my 10k Modern AU Game of Thrones fanfic?
Me when I first joined tumblr: Oh why does everyone say they hate this website?? Come on guys we’re not that bad!! I mean it can be dumb but at least we’re progressive and accepting
Me today: I hate this website
Me then: Nice. A place where I can express myself and connect with others about the things I love.
Me now: Just keep it to yourself. Don’t prod the hornets nest.
Why are there all these Thorki shippers who apparently don’t like Loki, and just think he’s a no-good lying self-deceiving butthurt pissbaby drama queen who has no legitimate grievances against anyone and just likes killing people for no reason? Look, I’m not one of the Loki apologists who claim that he’s never done anything wrong or screams “abuse!” every time Thor so much as lifts a finger toward him. Anyone who reads my blog (or my fic!) knows that. But I also think Loki has some genuine reasons for complaint about his treatment in Asgard, and it does an injustice to the interest and complexity of his character to ignore them.
Nuance, people. It’s possible to rebut the apologists without careening to the opposite pole and completely tarring Loki’s character. Anyway, if Thor is such a flawless angel (as such people tend to claim, once more eliding nuance in their rush to take the polar opposite position from their adversaries), why would you ship him with Loki if he’s as much of a piece of shit as you make out?
@foundlingmother, you’ll understand what I’m vagueblogging (vaguebitching) about.
*storms back into the the room* You know, I think these godawful readings of the movies that make Loki into a completely worthless piece of garbage character with absolutely no good reasons for doing anything he does, which people pull out of their asses just in order to distinguish themselves as much as possible from the woobifiers of “Loki’s Resistance,” serve much the same function as the utterly tone-deaf, inconsistent readings of Joss Whedon’s work that aim to show that he’s a completely shit writer of plot, dialogue, and characterization as well as a bad feminist (again, not gonna contest the latter, but contesting the hell out of the former). People will convince themselves that all kinds of obviously false things are true in order to prove their membership in the virtuous puritanical elect that can recognize no value in anything or anyone that is morally imperfect.
Why do I even waste my time on this fucking website…?
Today, I came across someone claiming that when you make your original characters suffer in your stories, that makes you an abuser, and people shouldn’t declare original characters their ‘babies’ and then put them in harmful/dangerous situations.
Loki is the Philosopher King 