Ya know, I'm going to wait until the series is over because maybe I'm going to be proven wrong, but I have some Thoughts about Hunter and bisexuality in regards to the Owl House
Let's just say that, if Hunter is confirmed verbally in canon to be bi, and the cherry on top has a confirmed interest in men either in the past or present, then I wouldn't even be exaggerating when I say that The Owl House might have the best bi representation I've seen in a while.
And if he's not, then well the representation is still really good, but I'll be kinda disappointed ngl lol
You know, a lot of people say that the mysterious elbow person is Lanyon and while that would make a lot of sense, given how Hyde talked about him, I think there's some evidence that it could *not* be him as well.
Take when Jekyll says (paraphrasing) "Everyone has feelings for their friends, most just have a good sense to keep it to themselves" Now to me, that line wouldn't really make sense if they did have an affair? If you're denying that you're feeling some type of way towards your friend it wouldnt really make sense to have slept with said friend ya know? Cause at that point you're not denying you have feelings for them.
(Unless Jekyll is lumping in *sleeping with someone* as those same "feelings" you get towards your friends then hoah boy is this guy more repressed than anyone have previously thought.) My intial thought was that the elbow person was the continuation of the werewolf woman he was in love with so I was surprised when everyone just kinda decided it was Lanyon.
There is also the possibility that "there was a time I had sense too" refers to the fact he told Lanyon he had feelings for him, which maybe Lanyon rejected out of his own insecurities or listing his wife as a reason or both, and Jekyll ended up gaslighting himself into thinking his feelings weren't actually there.
Hyde could be over exaggerating the issue as well, in his heightened state and the fact he wasn't remembering something completely correctly that flashback could literally be anything at this point. Maybe he has thought all those lessons and stuff on Lanyons part was him flirting back thus being put out when he ultimately was rejected.
Anyways I think it's still a tad too early to tell but those are my thoughts! I really like this dynamic and the history this pair has with each other I look forward to seeing more of it.
(also even if it is an affair and Lanyon broke it off. Guys Lanyons dealing with the same cultural suppression that Jekyll is, even more so from a rich family who would absolutely emphasize not making a scene and being in the norm let's cut him a wee bit of slack aight? like kinda weird you're demonizing Lanyon and uwuing Jekyll when they both have similar flaws/suppression going on. I can list a reason why but I'm not going to).
This may be my sleep addled brain and it might be an obvious take but imma say it anyway
Something about Belos' behavior always struck me as a bit...odd. He'd often talk about the titans plans and whatnot but a part of me always wondered if that was really sincere or not. If he actually believed there was a Literal Titan with plans that he wanted carried out.
Him doing anything/manipulate anyone to reach his goal was never the question, we all know he's willing to go for whatever underhanded tactics as possible. But the *motivation* always puzzled me.
Does he really think he's exalting a divine will? Or is he merely using the name of the titan for his own gain?
At first, I figured he must believe it, because I couldn't really think of anything he himself particularly wanted.
But then it hit me
The *palismen*
It was never about controlling witches and their magic, it was about finding a way to seize a witch, and subsequently their palismen while raising the least suspicion.
Of course, that leads to the people who *did* comply with the law and have palismen. Especially since Belos is now running out of palismen.
I think that's where the coven tattoos come in. After all, if it can restrict most types of magic, whos to say it can't also restrict that last one so a witch is powerless? So now you've got everyone who wouldn't comply locked in chains, and everyone who did comply powerless to stop you. You can just take whatever you want.
Well where does the human realm come into it? I think it's honestly rather simple. Magic doesn't work in the human realm. I bet Belos thinks his curse won't affect him if he crosses over
See I think he set up the whole magic coven system as a way to keep up the temporary solution to his problem, but now the finish line is almost here so he isn't bothering with phase two of his plan.
Which, if Luz and the Gang stop Belos, then he might go through with it
Which I think will pose a very interesting question. Do you let the Objectively Evil guy get what he wants just so he won't hurt anyone else? Or do you fight him anyway out of principle and have a lot of people suffer?
Hey genuine question. Why are the Owl House and Amphibia paired together so often? Is it because both feature a main human character(s) that left their normal home life to explore a fantastical one? (I've only seen owl house but I think that's the premise of Amphibia too?). Or is it something else?
No but once again I shall be saying things about Lancelot because I've been having thoughts and that post just made them worse
It really seems that Lancelot characterization begins and ends with his affair with Guinivere. And even that is only explored at a superficial depth. Oh, Lancelot feels guilty okay. But this doesn't really seem to effect how he acts despite a dialogue here and there.
And plus! He got other personality traits! Like God, he had so many instances of him running around impersonating people. He has an entire son he didn't know about before with a woman (in the normal legend) that tricked him into sleeping with her. What was that like, emotionally? Finding out about this son he didn't know about? It's stated that he was around for a bit when Galahad was younger but then left. Why did he stay at first? Why'd he eventually leave? He was a mentor to Gareth and Gaeris in life, then he ends up killing him. What was *that* like for him emotionally?
HE WAS RAISED BY THE LADY IN THE LAKE. LIKE *IN* A LAKE. Where's the fairy content guys!? Where's the weird shit that Lancelot does cause sure he's human but he's also just slightly off because he was RAISED BY THE FAE. Where's his reluctance to eat food He's not prepared? An incline to sweets? Him being so partial to the truth that it's inconvenient at times?
He's literally written as some dude. I think the way his sword works is really cool, and I wanted stuff like that mentioned in his actual character. But he literally could've just been anyone. There's nothing that he says or does that (unless you knew already) would've suggested he had nothing but a normal upbringing.
We're given just the barest glimpses of his relationships with other people, and even then it's usually a line casually mentioned by either him or the other person. Certainly we don't get them talking about the other knights in depth besides the occasional line. They don't even talk to *each other* about it, they only mention it to the Master!
Like sure, we have the Camelot singularity. But I want to know how it went down in the Actual Camelot!
A lot of these things are mentioned by the characters as if they were passively relaying things from the past. They're emotional impact, how it effects what they do now? Not really explored! It's just, stated. And then never brought up again. Even though these events were core events for their characters. Certainty Lancelot's.
For Christ's sake, we're *how* far into this franchise where the main girl was King Arthur, and we *still* don't have a full canon design for Guinivere!? And that's the one character trait we do have for Lancelot. Do we even get to see the woman he was willing to risk it all for, the woman who eventually leads him to insanity? This core facet in Lancelots personality, the core part of why we have the Berserker form and we don't even get to *see* the person he had this connection with.
How the hell are we supposed to care about it if we didn't see the relationship? How were they together, what did they do how did they bond? Where was the turning point where they realized that they loved each other? That they couldn't ever be with each other publicly but they would support each other from the shadows? You make the affair Lancelot's one personality trait but then you don't even show the affair (but still make plenty of jokes at his expense about it.
This is argubly not a FGO problem because how the current story is set up, there's really no way to explore these concepts without some AU of the actual events. But youd still want the full emotional impact of that character in his lines, ya know?
FGO set up a lot of ways that most of the characters magically moved on from the emotional impact of what happened in Camelot. Oh, actually, Gawain isn't mad at Lancelot for killing his siblings anymore, because he realized he did things wrong too. Oh, Gareth doesn't hold a grudge for Lancelot killing her because she *u n d e r s t a n d s* why he did what he did. The characters get summoned and FGO wanted to get them to the point where they'd be fine and interacting with each other again that they just skipped over the emotional work to do so.
It boggles my mind that, one of your three starting girls is the Legendary King Arthur of Camelot. And the *second* biggest character in that story you're *not* going to develop him to the fullest potential? And it's not like you don't have the material it's all right there. You couldn't have more material to work with. There's so many things to add to his personality that would make him much more interesting to the audiende. It's just not emotionally connected to the character in any real capacity.
Okay so. I watched Q-force. And I have no idea what I think about it.
Imma just be rambling so I'll break down the characters and my likes/dislikes about them before giving my plot breakdown at the end. Only the main/prominent ones because I don't have time.
Steve Maryweather-Easily the best character out of them, with Deb being a close second. He could've very easily fallen into the trope of being someone who was incompetent but expected the world anyway, but he doesn't. He graduated top of his class, and despite his quirks is a genuinely competent team leader, and wants the best for his team. He wants to prove that he and his team are competent enough to get recognition, and has a genuine faith in the people around him. It was refreshing to see him hold his team in a genuine high regard, where a lot of times it's like "We're shit but lets do this thing now" He's a genuinely well-rounded character, and (and forgive me if this isn't the best way to frame this) it feels like being gay is an important part of his character, without encompassing the whole thing. I thought Benji and his relationship was super cute and I was sad when they broke up. I was afraid he was going to be, like a second but worse Twink with the stereotyping but gladly fell away from that.
Deb-I thought her and her wife were super cute (though I hate how the wife is designed ngl adjafkldajfd). I liked Debs character, but I feel like she had a lot of racial stereotyping that wouldn't be inherently obvious unless you were looking for them, her being the strong one, and also the "mama" type at the same time. No one treated her with disrespect, and her lesbianism seemed to be more authentic but I feel like there wasn't a lot of thought put into what these tropes were and why they were bad. Her being black and making her the mama type, as well as the big strong type could be read as tasteless. Again, I really liked her character but these were some things I noticed while watching.
Twink- You know, I didn't really like him at first, I thought he was the epitome of all the bad stereotyping (though I'm just glad him and Mary didn't get put into the same category). His humor isn't my taste, and it just kinda seemed like someone for half of his lines went "what twitter stan language can we put in here?" And sometimes it was a bit too random for my tastes. However! I do like that his drag was considered important and was an integral part to a lot of missions they went on, and not just "Ah look at that dumb gay trying to find reasons to dress in drag." His talents and expertise were both respected and, save for Buck (which his whole point was supposed to be offensive anyway) no one undermined Twink for his femininity. His back story is also kinda random but did play a role in the missions as well. Still, personally think he's the worst character. Plus, he's French so minus four-twenties amount of points.
Stat-You know, in a show where everyone was stating what letter they were every few seconds I was surprised that I had to look up that Stat was trans. I...liked her character for the most part, except the part where she was fucking a robot. Kinda weird ngl, outta left field, and with her being trans I wonder if her having that sort of relationship is problematic for her. Love her design tho, love me a hacker girl. She's also listed as "ambiguously gay" tho showed to have mostly girl love interests but, okay.
Buck-He's the straight guy, emotionally repressed haha and he's bigoted. Did think it was funny later on when he was more "accepting" but managed to be even more infuriating about it. Tied with Twink as worse character but you know they tried to do stuff with him.
Vee-Really liked me a boss lady, but kinda weird how they bait-and-switched us with her actually being a lesbian, then go "no she's straight tho" in regards to Karen. I thought her and Mary's relationship was cute, wish I saw more of it. But she did feel like a random plot device in later seasons, what with her disappearing and reappearing when it was plot relevant. (Tho she HOTOHOTHOTHOT bikini episode WOOOWEEEE)
....
Okay, so now the plot....which. it had one?
It felt like it was flip flopping back n forth about whether it wanted to take itself seriously or not, and it seemed to decide on serious more towards the end, but then it would have this random plot element that would be so out of left field it would pull me out of my suspension of disbelief. See the whole "Back cracking to unlock memories" plot point. This back and forth on whether it would be a comedy or not I think weakened both categories it tried to play into.
If I had to compare the show to anything it would probably be Futurama, but the thing with Futurma is, its set in the future, so you're suspension of disbelief is allowed to stretch a bit more because all the wacky quirky stuff can be attributed to future shenanigans. Q-force, to my knowledge, is set in the modern day, which makes the wacky stuff that much wacker, because it's set in our modern times, which you apply the rules of everyday life to.
A lot of the problems that I had with Q-Force is, in the attempt to write specifically about the "gay experience" revealed that the writers have really only had a very specific experience of interacting with gay ppl, what I call the "Urban Gay" experience.
The fact they're in West Hollywood, and all the things that were listed as "universal gay experiences" but were only things that you'd be exposed to if you were in the city. I think a flavor of "white gay" can be implemented here too, which Q force has exactly one black woman, who manages to be the only lesbian.
That coupled with the fact that, there's a difference between having Twink naturally being a drag queen, the whole team being gay to some degree, and the fact they interact with the gay community often without Drawing Attention to all of those things and self-congratulating itself on concluding it. Funnily enough, Q-Force had examples of doing this right and doing this right. Right way: In the second or third episode where Mary found that guy with the flash drive to the uranium in it and seduced him in the gay bar. Relevant that it was gay without overtly drawing attention to it. Wrong-Way: Having Pride go on while Girl Boss was trying to take over the world.
And, for the show that promoted itself as representing the gay experience, there were...two gay men, one lesbian, one trans person, one straight guy and...no bisexual people. Also no nonbinary people. Like of course it's unrealistic to include every single identity but you're one bisexual person who appeared for one episode and was promptly blown up. And also showed to be...more off than the other characters, what with the stealing of silverware and all. Just, bisexual people are already forgotten enough as it is and not including them in the show, but you include two gay men just kinda reads as tasteless to me (as a bisexual person, obviously).
Which makes it so weird that Stat was left "ambiguously gay" when she could've easily been bisexual (which still would be problematic because of the robot-fucking but at least you got the B in there somewhere in the main group)
Overall, it tried to market itself as the "be all end all" of what it was like to be gay, but ended up excluding the exact people that get excluded in real-life lgbt spaces. This combined with the indecision with what kind of show it wanted to be managed to make it fall short. If you arent the very specific type of gay person who lives in a city environment and doesn't fit the stereotypes showed you're not going to feel "seen" by the show.
Weirdly though, I didn't hate watching it, and I would probably watch another season if they managed to make one. The parts that did work, I think worked really well, and even the bad parts just read as tasteless, and not actively terrible. If they focused less on making "hey I'm gay" jokes every three seconds and just let each character be what they are I think the show would be stronger for it. And I think they'd find less problems overall if they did that too. In the mean time I'll just be here side-eyeing the whole thing.
Edit: I forgot to mention, and this is a problem a lot of adult TV shows fall into, that because they got the clear to show nudity/sex they felt like they *had* to show nudity and to a lesser extent sex every episode. So just that whole "Haha adult=sex obviously."
Oh! And this generally goes for the whole "shove it in your face" part, but a lot of the characters who are bigoted were shown to be. Very blatantly so. And not to say there isn't blatantly bigoted ppl of course they are but I don't think that's where you see a lot of bigotry nowadays. This was sort of touched on during the show but more of a jokey manner, but I think it would've been more realistic if we had more "girl with a gay best friend" kinda bigotry as opposed to the "I'm literally hurling slurs at you" bigotry, especially since they're in Cali.
