Did I ever mention how much I love my palâs OCs?? Every single one of them? They are all amazing? Like, you created this fictional human from your own imagination and Iâm so wowed by them thank you for your, and their, existence
'to be loved is to be known', fandom edition: going into your friend's dms to complain about something and having them respond 'i saw that too and i KNEW you'd be mad about it'
a non-exhaustive but unordered list of things i really really like about robert "robert" chase
he is so good with kids :( he clearly loves kids, he even weirds taub out with how tirelessly he plays with the sophias, he's so protective of kids with bad parents, it's soo
when he gets frustrated and just say the MOST out of pocket things. "works for spaghetti!" "do you think tv is the work of the devil or?" and every time people turn to him and he's just. ahem. oops
the fact that he is a huge troll. him coming up with a million reasons why a patient might not be on drugs to an increasingly annoyed foreman, only to reveal he has a drug test result. him delighting in teasing cameron all thru spin. this is why even tho his sister is a retcon i'm like. yeah checks out. man has insane annoying big brother energy.
super fake idafer. makes a big stink about hating nuns, then falls over himself to comfort the patient when she's sad. hates his dad, but follows his career obsessively. tends to fall in love after one date. can't stay mad at ANYONE.
b o w l i n g c h a m p
the way he just. avoids drama. so unsubtly. like he'll leave the room. he'll ask if he's going to be fired and then walk away. he is a fake dgafer but he also truly does NOT care about the things he does not care about he is gone
he's a hugger?? he hugs people?? hugs his dad. cameron. house. 13. i think he hugs more people than anyone else on the show (don't correct me). the fact that he is so emotionally Weird about some things but so ready and willing to Engage and reach out and hug and fall in love. ughhh my boy
the way he's just. such a Guy. he is the most Guy. he likes Beer and Cars and Girls. he plays like 5 different sports. he was on the football team (not soccer/football: AFL). he probably only listens to 80s rock.
After rewatching Unfaithful and starting discussion on the casual biphobia in that episode, it got me thinking about character biases and, beyond that, how similar biases affect fandomâs view of characters. So letâs talk about it.
No one can be completely unbiased, and in a well-written character this also means that characters will have their own personal biases. However, there are times where the creatorsâ biases bleed into the characters they are writing, and sometimes it becomes difficult to tell the difference between whatâs intended as a character choice or whatâs simply unintended author bias. A very simple and obvious example of this is something Helen/all-pacas has discussed at length before, being that the showâs writers/creators being Jewish heavily influenced the references to Judaism in the show, and in Houseâs character (despite House himself not being Jewish). However, there are more subtle examples of this that I will get into later, tying back into the original biphobia conversation that sparked this.
To begin, letâs talk about something that gets brought up often in discourse around Chase: fatphobia. In Heavy, Chase makes several fatphobic comments. Most of his bias here is clear; heâs an athletically-built, attractive man. He doesnât experience issues with his own weight, and heâs influenced by both popular culture and the medical system to believe that to be âfatâ is to be unhealthy and lazy. But thereâs something else here I want to talk about that goes a bit deeper: a non-Americanâs biased view of Americans.
In the episode, Chase says this:
CHASE: What I havenât seen lately is a kid eating an apple or riding a bike. You Americans canât even compete with the rest of the world in basketball anymore, unless, of course, itâs the type you play with a remote control on a big screen TV.
Thereâs a commonly held idea by many people worldwide that âeverything is bigger in Americaâ, with larger portion sizes at restaurants and larger clothing sizes pointing to a country majorly affected by an obesity epidemic. Chase, as an Australian, is more likely to hold these beliefs. These are his biases.
Now to move on to the related fandom biases. There is a large portion of the House fandom that hates Chase, and a lot of that hate is rooted in his behavior in this episode. Obviously he was wrong to say the things he did, but other characters have said much worse, so why condemn Chase and not the others? The answer is fandomâs personal biases, of course! The House fandomâs demographics are more likely to be affected by fatphobia than other issues (such as racism, especially on a website thatâs largely white, but thatâs a topic for another day), therefore their biases affect the weight of these charactersâ actions. House fans can hate Chase for being fatphobic, meanwhile disregarding every racist or other discriminatory comment from House, because they are affected more by the fatphobia than anything else.
Coming back to the biphobia issue, in Unfaithful there are a few comments that point directly to common stereotypes about bisexuality.
Example 1:
KUTNER: Or the hardship'll bring 'em closer together. She'll invite friends over for Foreman to share.
This relates to the stereotype that bisexuals are somehow more âsexualâ/have more interest in sex than monosexuals, which is of course entirely untrue. Taub does counter this idea: âsheâs not a nympho. Sheâs bisexualâŚâ.
Example 2:
TAUB: It's just a matter of time before one of you finds the other in bed with another woman.
This perpetuates the stereotype that bisexuals are more likely to cheat (or, to cheat with someone of the opposite sex than their monogamous partner). Which, from Taub, kind of makes senseâheâs a chronic cheater, after allâbut the phrasing of âwith another womanâ is a blatant dig at Thirteenâs bisexuality.
We can agree that this kind of rhetoric is bad, right? That these stereotypes are harmful? Great. Now, letâs talk about fandomâs perpetuation of biphobia.
The biphobic rhetoric Iâm going to discuss differs from the kind of biphobia the show itself displays; while the show is a product of an era where bisexuality in characters was used often to sexualize women and/or sapphic relationships, the fandom of the modern era takes it in a completely different direction, instead participating in bi erasure in favor of seeing only same-sex relationships represented in fandom content.
The phrase I hear so often is âshe should be with a womanâ, and not only applied to Thirteen, a canon bisexual. But letâs talk about her first, since she is the only canon queer character in the main cast. Statements like the one I just mentioned come from a place of bias, of course: the queer members of fandom would prefer to see a âqueerâ relationship to a âstraightâ one (which, letâs be honest, is harmful language to begin with, because a m/f relationship does not imply by nature that either party has to be heterosexual, and calling it a âstraightâ relationship erases the identities of queer individuals within that relationship). Queer people want to see themselves represented in the media they consume, and thereâs nothing wrong with that! As a queer person myself, of course Iâm going to be biased in what I want to see! However, itâs the language used that creates the issue: âshe should be with a womanâ has much different implications than âI would like to see her with a womanâ. âShe should be with a womanâ implies that the bisexual character should âpick a sideâ, and that same-sex relationships are superior.
This rhetoric extends, as I mentioned, beyond the canon bisexual character: this statement is often put onto both Cameron and Cuddy as well, women who are canonically interested in men. Instead of headcanon-ing either character as bisexual, fandom would rather disregard their relationships with men entirely and claim they should be lesbians. This rhetoric is influenced by so many various biases I couldnât even begin to list them all, but the main two Iâve seen are: 1. sapphics who are biased against men, and 2. People who see lesbianism as a way to completely remove a female character from being in competition with a m/m ship.
Regardless, fandomâs personal biases inform their opinions on characters and ships, but the amount of overlapping biases between members of the fandom can lead to us forgetting that we are biased in the first place and instead believing popularly held opinions to be universal truth. Itâs important for us to each take time to reflect on our biases and experiences, and acknowledge that each individual has their own biases that inform their opinions.
okay it kind of bugs me how none of the characters have middle names because they SHOULD, most people have middle names, so here, have some complete bullshit headcanon middle names
Gregory John House - a traditionalist like his father would probably be into using his own name as his kid's, even just as a middle name.
James Evan Wilson - the one guy whose middle name we know! yippee!
Lisa Sarah Cuddy - it's hard because a lot of very jewish names also end in /É/ and sounds kind of repetitive with lisa, but also given her mother i know she has a super jewish middle name (i wanted to go with miriam but it just sounds clunky with her two syllable first and last names). sarah is me splitting the difference.
Eric Marshall Foreman - my vision here is he was named after a grandfather. marvin would also work. or miles.
Robert Josef Chase - i was really torn between him having either an Ultra Czech name or a much more anglicized one, since rowan doesn't exactly seem to be trying to keep up with his roots. splitting the difference: chase can spell it joseph if he feels like it.
Allison Jane Cameron - no deep reason here, jane just sounds good between her almost-rhyming first and last names.
Christopher Michael Taub - i once saw a comment on reddit saying taub can't be jewish if he's named christopher, so here's another name for him.
Lawrence Choudhary Kutner - apparently (correct me if i'm wrong), in india it is less common to use middle names. kutner was born in america, but his parents both have Very indian names and i'm willing to bet he's first generation: i can see them having given him an american middle name to go with his first, or just skipping it. in any case, it makes sense he kept his birth name even when adopted by the kutners.
Remy Abigail Hadley - troll answer but the idea of her being remy abby hadley makes me laugh so hard. what if she just has the Worst Name. remy tammy hadley. remy kayley hadley. no wonder she goes by thirteen.
Martha Meredith Masters - the other canon middle name haver!!
Chi Park - unlikely that she has a middle name, so she can keep hers as-is. i guess we could play a fun game of "how does she spell chi," as her mother's side of the family appears to be chinese filipino, but idk.
Jessica Caroline Adams - she's a WASP she needs a WASP name anyway. moving on
i block ppl all the time so my blocklist ranges from "actual fucking asshole fascist" n "post that mildly annoyed me because im petty" and if i went thru my blocklist rn i probably would have no idea why i blocked each of them but whatever
I love the phrase "they get along like a house on fire". It's perfect. You and me have perfect chemistry and it's setting off the carbon monoxide detectors. People are calling emergency services to get us to stop being so chummy. Someone died
origamiaround
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
kaledo-art
gummygunk
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
