i said this about bridgerton re: race, but it works here too: i would prefer to see a show about actual gay people from that era and their lives as opposed to a fake version of history where there's no homophobia
and i get how some people out there really need that vision of history, and stories about queer love that are comforting, but often it becomes an either/or when it can be both/all. i love my gay shit to be about living in spite of the horrors--that's what comforts me.
And like, I get a lot of queer folks have trauma burdens, and I'm not encouraging trauma porn. I'm looking for even 90s sitcom level of "intro, ohshit, de-escalation, learning moment, aftercare hugs, credits"
I like the idea of goofing around in a quasi-historical setting and e.g. getting Nick Kroll to wear a silly powdered wig, it loses me when they're trying to make that something sincere
i think the best compliment i can muster is that the first season is sometimes funny but it has tonal and pacing issues, and idk. it is a kind of lgbt+ work that i probably would have loved before i came out as a teen but now just doesn't do anything for me at all.
So you want "Black Sails". Which is a pirate show, with a lot of queer people and it has depth on queer representation. It's not about coming out. Just a lot of portrayal of what means to live on the margin of society. (Don't be fooled by the first season)
You need to watch Black Sails. It doesn't feature any non binary, but it has a lot of other queer representation, and the story is good. It starts out being very GOT (portrayal of women), but by the end of the first season it has found its tone and it makes for a very compelling story
I know you shouldn't judge a show by its fandom but all the "it's so inclusive! and fun! and silly! and diverse!" and I was like okay I'm still waiting for the part where it's actually *good*
there has been a parallel trend in horror where books about how the monster was actually RACISM are very in vogue but it makes it hard for me to know if a well reviewed book is actually going to be fucking scary or not
Fantasy thankfully has shaken off this curse but that's largely due to GOT swinging in and solidifying the 'in' thing being political drama and prophecies.
It was fine! I'm glad we have 'fine' shows now, but also sad that we have to make such a frothing fuss about 'fine'.
Made me feel like a lot of those teen/YA queer books where like, I'm glad they exist, but a bit sad that grownups have to be so fixated on them due to lack of options.
Or how I feel about coming out narratives now, as a 38 year old tired cockroach queer. Yeah, come out, good for you! Can I have something else, thank you.
I liked season 1 when it was new, but just one episode of season 2 was enough for me to realize either I had changed or the show had changed, but either way it crossed some sort of line and was no longer for me and I never watched the rest
I watched half of the first season, but then never bothered with the rest.
I think it ends up in that "if this is your first experience with [x] stories, you'll love this" category for me. Since it ISN'T my first, I mostly shrugged. It's fine, but it's no MORE than fine. It has too few edges.
I don’t know if it’s not good or just not for me, but I bounced off of it after an episode or two.
I was excited to watch the Gay Pirates Show everyone was talking about, but then I did and it was just… kind of doofy and boring?
But I’m glad it made other people happy🤷🏻♀️
It definitely kind of makes me believe that it was Jemaine Clement’s involvement that made WWDITS and its tv spinoff enjoyable, because left to his own devices taika waititi is insufferable
Like as Our Flag Means Death devolved into soap opera melodrama and got cancelled for it, shadows got to close out on its own terms after five seasons and gave us a better gay romance as well
Taika didn’t write the show and only directed the first episode. He did more creative work on reservation dogs, I believe. You gotta blame David Jenkins.
Thor: Love and Thunder is what you get when Waititi is left to his own devices. Much like the Roman generals of old, he needs someone to stand next to him and tell him to bring it down a peg.
There’s a whole genre of ‘preaching to the choir’ escapism telly now I guess; Ted Lasso, Bridgerton, Our Flag Means Death. Meanwhile actually grounded but beautifully magical realist Indigenous-led show Reservation Dogs exists (even has Waititi involved) but is criminally underwatched.
I think the bar for wholesome queer content is low because we're all starved for representation. We fawn over scraps we're handed + only certain types of projects get made in the showbiz machine... It all adds up to just-okay stuff getting grail status.
I enjoyed it, but that was pretty much the extent of it. it was fine while I was watching it and for about a week after, and then I forgot about it entirely.
I agree; I think, for me, it’s because the sense of humour in today’s TV is not really funny to me. By that I mean, it’s faaaar too obvious. There’s no sharp wit. It’s like a clue-by-four to the head. It plays like a parody more than something original.
oh nooooo, i think i agree! i enjoyed it at first, definitely had some fun jokes, but the tone was kinda all over the place by the end of the first season and i just lost interest if i’m completely honest. 🫣
(No pressure to answer) Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about other Taika Waititi works, from talking to people it seems to me like OFMD generally is well-liked by people that enjoy Taika Waitit productions and people that don't like his (especially recent) style also don't like OMFD.
I watched the whole second season on a plane trip and it was very confusing to miss out on the context of the first season. It was fully Taika Waititi ballyhoo. Watching what we do in the shadows with similar abandon.
yknow i remember really enjoying the first season but it probably says something that when the second season came out I felt something along the lines of "oh neat!" and then never watched it
I stopped watching like 2 episodes into S2 because there was nothing there. The first season was fine, but there is no movement in the early second season to keep people interested.
as someone who grew up in the superwholock era of fandom i really enjoyed the 1st season because it felt like a love letter to tumblr fandom spaces. the 2nd season suffered from severe budget cuts and i was disappointed with how it turned out. that being said i was satisfied with the ending. it was-
fine. it did what it could and had an ending while leaving room for fanfiction to fill in the rest which i highly enjoyed until someone came out as a zionist and that was just too much for what mid enjoyment i got out of the show and left the fandom.
good omens is fascinating in that it is at once courageous for making the subtext textual, but also cowardly for muting the real horror of the end of the world that is present in the novel and not present in the show. it's cute, but it could have been more.
so like. one of my most cancellable media opinions is that i never got the subtext? so rendering all of that text felt like just stapling in stuff that was trendy. like to me it was the same gambit as castiel goes to megahell.
okay so my read of the novel was ABSOLUTELY filtered through being in LJ fandom where it was basically accepted as canon that they were fucking, so this is super interesting to see
oh man yeah i read the book cover to cover probably a dozen times from middle school through college before i encountered the online sphere for it at all and was surprised to see the shipping. i don't talk about it a lot bc i do not want to yuck yums.
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We can have the popcorn too, but God, give me a somewhat realistic take on actually being queer in the period.
(Kaos gets a pass.)
which really worked out tremendously for everyone in the longrun...
Made me feel like a lot of those teen/YA queer books where like, I'm glad they exist, but a bit sad that grownups have to be so fixated on them due to lack of options.
I think it ends up in that "if this is your first experience with [x] stories, you'll love this" category for me. Since it ISN'T my first, I mostly shrugged. It's fine, but it's no MORE than fine. It has too few edges.
I was excited to watch the Gay Pirates Show everyone was talking about, but then I did and it was just… kind of doofy and boring?
But I’m glad it made other people happy🤷🏻♀️
But agreed on everything else.
I think the bar for wholesome queer content is low because we're all starved for representation. We fawn over scraps we're handed + only certain types of projects get made in the showbiz machine... It all adds up to just-okay stuff getting grail status.
(i agree)