~ Le French Obsessed with To Sir With Love ~

French bi-ologist (w i n k), adult, they/them. Tea drinker, glitter enthusiast, awful pun connoisseur. Dumping all my obsessions in there. Sometimes I even draw! [Speaking french and english]

[firstofficerkittycat]

star trek is about. .,the sixties

[anghraine]

It sure is.

This is fantastic, and it very much captures the essential queerness of their relationship in a way that I feel is sometimes sidelined from discussions of what's going on between them. There's a quote from George Takei about the intensity of the scenes between Kirk and Spock that sticks with me:

“from the perspective of gay people, seeing that is eye-opening. They see the gay passion, the gay attraction, and the gay anguish depicted in those scenes.”

I understand the desire for one of the most iconic quasi-utopias in SF/F to also be a quasi-utopia for queer people, to imagine we could just fall in love and get married and nobody would blink an eye because it's the better future. I get the desire to imagine that as the context of Kirk's and Spock's lives specifically. It's not any kind of moral affront. But it's just not what I see happening on the screen in TOS.

I see layers of repression and guilt, two men struggling to re-package their relationship into some vaguely socially acceptable box that it can never be contained in. They're always saying too much, feeling too much, doing too much, and yet the full depth of their relationship is stifled and anguished and unspeakable.

Their mutual closest friend outside of their own little binary orbit, McCoy, is continually used to distinguish Spock's or Kirk's reactions/feelings from those of a close platonic friend. McCoy is generally supportive of het romances for them, where Kirk and Spock both seethe with jealousy no matter how unreasonable it may be. McCoy prioritizes pragmatic decency where Kirk can barely explain his readiness to torpedo his career for Spock, and Spock flatly refuses to explain his motives or feelings in jeopardizing any number of people for an off-chance of saving Kirk on multiple occasions. McCoy, loyal friend to them both, can be a pushy asshole about Spock's emotional expression, but he's often used to voice a frustration with Spock's denial of his feelings in relation to Kirk, a frustration that Kirk himself—who spends almost the entire series aware that Spock is ashamed of loving him—can't begin to register or articulate.

And at least half the time, Kirk and Spock seem too delighted and enthralled with each other to even realize how obvious they're being in front of other people (they seem to forget other people are even there at times). But they're also anxious about their true feelings being perceived by third parties, and keep covering up for themselves or each other (in particular, Kirk—who can "pass" in a way Spock really doesn't—tends to cover for Spock). Both admit at different points in TOS that they've never truly found peace or happiness. One of the most chilling S3 villains jokes about Kirk's desperate attempts to contact Spock and speculates with blatantly prurient interest about getting to see them demonstrate their feelings for each other. The series finale hinges on Spock recognizing that something is horribly wrong with "Kirk", and on the real (bodysnatched) Kirk insisting to Spock that "you are closer to the captain than anyone in the universe," which ultimately saves him.

I keep thinking of that infamous Roddenberry quote, too:

we never suggested in the series—physical love between the two. But it's the—we certainly had the feeling the affection was sufficient for that, if that were the particular style of the 23rd century.

Yes, we're free to ignore any external statements we want, but in all honesty, I feel like the taboo of their relationship, the conflict intrinsic to what it is, homosexuality not being the particular style of the 60s 23rd century—it's all over the screen.

[ladymichael]

This assessment is incredibly spot on. The repression is the very reason it’s so easy to see gay subtext in Kirk/Spock’s relationship and when I think about it as a show from the 60s, yes, these are two men struggling with how they feel for another man.

But since I do prefer to imagine that no one on the core Federation planets is particularly hung up on the many, varied expressions of sexuality or gender, I like to imagine the in universe explanation as both men trying to hold back their feelings for the sake of the other: Spock sees Jim falling in love every third mission and assumes Jim’s flirting with him is also casual and Jim can’t recognize that the mild affection Spock expresses to him represents a tidal wave of deep love under the Vulcan veneer.

[sunderwight]

^^^ If we want to go even deeper on that, Kirk is often depicted as being caught between the warring desires to settle down somewhere or to remain a free and unattached starship captain whose only duty is to his ship and his wider community, and Spock of course is still resolving his own sense of duality between his human and Vulcan natures, and deciding whether to embrace any of his deep emotional nature or to extinguish it entirely in favor of an existence based in pure logic. Either of them introducing romantic love or sexual desire into that equation might seem like a selfish attempt to sway one's decision towards their own desires, or come across as an imposition, an unwanted intrusion against a very personal struggle.

If you want to go for a less homophobic 23rd century, you can still have an extremely repressed one!

[celluloidrainbow]

MON ARBRE (2011) dir. Bérénice André Marie is ten years old and part of an incredibly modern family. Conceived by two men and two women, all gay and today all separated, she has two dads, two moms, a step-dad, a step-mother, and a handful of brothers and sisters. Celebrating Christmas with the family, in these conditions, is almost a feat. But as she goes from home to home and tries, as best she can, to share her love, Marie asks herself questions about her coming into the world. Could she be, like the other Mary, the Immaculate Conception? (link in title)

[zestoflemon]

happy star trek day to all who celebrate

[fangirlshipper]

Probably has been done before, but this is so them

[galileosballs]

This interview with Ncuti Gatwa crossed my dash again, and I was reminded of how much I like it. Because it makes the rare Third Argument for representation in fiction, the argument I think is the best, and I'm always happy to see it. I quote:

At times, Gatwa’s casting in those projects has been dismissed as an exercise in ‘box-ticking’. Gatwa scoffs. ‘First of all, you don’t know anything about me. Secondly, tick fcking boxes! People need to be fcking seen. What are you going to do, tell the same stories? Have the same people fronting things for all of eternity? Representation and inclusivity and branching out… it enriches us all. How embarrassing. You people with your tiny mindsets – open a book, look out the window and then f*ck off.’ (source)

What do I mean by the Third Argument? Well, I'm not sure I've ever made a post about this directly, but as far as I can see it, there are three main arguments for greater diversity in popular media. The first two are the most common, and they go like this:

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see people like them on screen. That is, the beneficiaries are marginalized people.

It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see and learn about people who are not like them through art. That is, the beneficiaries are non-marginalized people, who then (hopefully) pass on the benefit by treating marginalized people better.

These two arguments are the source of a lot of debate here on ye olde tumblr. Despite both being arguments for representation, they pull in different directions. What counts as 'good' representation for the purposes of Argument 1 often would not be good for the purposes of Argument 2, and vice versa. Authentic versus sympathetic. Ugly or over-sanitized. You see this debate play out constantly. It's really hard for a piece of - say - queer media to do both at once.

But these debates tend to leave out Argument 3, the one that Gatwa is making above. And that argument cuts through a lot of this debate.

3. It is good for media to be diverse because art needs variety. The beneficiary of representation is art itself, absent any social effects that may or may not be present.

For this argument, diverse stories are intrinsically good. It is good to make art that's not just the same thing you've seen a hundred times before. Putting the kinds of people who don't often make it into mainstream media into your art is an extremely efficient way to make that happen. It's not the only method, but it's a really good method.

For representation to be 'good representation' according to Argument 3, all it needs to be is interesting. A story you haven't heard before, at least not in that medium. That which counts as 'bad representation' by the lights of this argument are stock characters, like the Eternally Patient Mother, the Gay Best Friend, the Wise Black Advisor. Perhaps there was a time in which these characters were new, but that time has long passed. There's no art in pulling a bog-standard character trope off the shelf. Show us a new kind of guy. The world is infinitely diverse. You're not going to run out. Telling the same stories with the same voices for all eternity, as Gatwa says, is boring. Even if there was nothing else wrong with it, this would be. Art isn't supposed to be boring.

And that's why Argument 3 is my favourite. I do want the world to be a better place, of course, and I think art is a part of that. But the main job of art is to be good as art. And diversity in all aspects of the production of art makes art better.

[screentunes]

kamen rider seasons i finished this year

[zziazz]

Some Rock Lee

[thecrenellations]

“These hands used to bend bows and tame horses. But now, they can only hide in the dark and stir the pot.” (Nirvana in Fire, ep. 11)

he told me to make this meme himself!

(image of tiles from this lovely gifset)

[br3adindadung3on]

Y’know what? *chiikawafies your Candescent Creed*

[niccoguedes]

Earth below us, drifting, falling.

INPRNT

[suppresed-trauma]

FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF - PUBLICITY STILLS

I tried to stick to studio pics used for the film’s promo stuff, instead of those classic scenes everyone’s already seen (even though those were used too, like in that last pic).

more movie & bts pics in this pinterest folder here!

[sarascamander]

P3

[soft-october-night]

The real issue between Tim Allen's Jason and Alan Rickman's Alexander in Galaxy Quest was that Jason was blissfully unaware of any of the fanfic people had written about their two characters while Alexander had been asked in detail about some of the finer points of Mak'tar "biology" at every con since the 80s

[shenzhiheng]

women who can do no wrong collection (4/?)

↳ Naran as Su Daji in Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms

[typhlonectes]

"Whale and Cat" by Boris Zachoder.

[wifiwuxians]

Opening commissions!! I'll start working on them in August, but you can go ahead and contact me for them now! I've made a carrd for them, too, so please read through it!!

Weiwifis' Commissions

Come get your food.

[hollisbrownthornton]

VHS — permanent marker on paper, 23 × 30 inches, 2010

Website — Instagram