I have seen this Roger Ebert quote being passed around Twitter in the past few days, making fun of people.
Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other, which is so much safer than having to ad-lib it. Your fannish obsession is your beard. If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That’s why it’s excruciatingly boring to talk to such people: They’re always asking you questions they know the answer to.
And it drives me mad because he’s describing autism! What he is condemning is the thing that I, painfully obviously, am! I have read reactions to this quote on Twitter and Reddit and while some people are not impressed, plenty more commented things along the lines of “Yeah, you tell those autists.” (God, I hate that word.) I watched a documentary today about autism that touched on obsessive behaviour and special interests so I suppose it’s on my mind. Why does everyone mock instead of help people with bad social skills? Why don’t they accept it when they find something (in some cases, fandom) that does help?
If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, then you have found a sibling. What’s wrong with that?
Seein’ too many Twitter refugees asking if they’ll get in trouble for saying “kill yourself” to people and while no, you’re not gonna get nuked from orbit, that is maybe something you just shouldn’t be doing in general perhaps?? Maybe telling people to kill themselves is bad actually?? Some of y’all are wild, why is the first thing you can think to ask on a new platform if you can send one of the worst kinds of harassment to people?? Grow tf up and learn how to use the block button. It’ll do wonders for your mood, trust me.
“It’s a joke!”
People in the notes desperately trying to come up with a group subhuman enough to warrant suicide baiting: I don’t trust you.
You’re told “this is a cruel and evil thing to do” and your first instinct is “okay but what if I find an acceptable target”, and that tells me everything I need to know about you as a person, which is I don’t want you anywhere near me.
The problem with dehumanizing others is not that you chose the wrong target, it’s the fact you’re ghoulish enough to do it in the first place. Congratulations, you’re actively part of the reason we’re having a human rights crisis world-wide right now: assholes like you keep thinking if they find the right target demographic, they get to unperson people.
The long lost Gravity Falls “Next Time On,” reel has FINALLY been found!
This right here is what made this show happen and the reason why every new Disney cartoon also has a next time on reel. GF’s last big lost media hunt is over!
Alex Hirsch said that he was okay if this ever was to leak. So, if this goes down, blame Disney!!
For the Star Wars Day (May the Fourth / May the Force Be With You) there was shared (with the permission of the Pratchett Estate ) a Terry Pratchett story from the Star Wars Universe that was only published in a newspaper 45 years ago! Very excited to read a new Terry’s piece! :)❤ (tweet)
Also, Terry Pratchett writing fanfiction 45 years ago, can I hear a wahoo? :)
I’ll probably have more to say about this later bc I’m going to sleep soon, but I feel like, you, oliveroctavius, me, and a few other people are like the small minority I’ve seen anywhere who actually criticize TASM for the eugenics and ableism, and it honestly floors me that no one talks about it when it’s so blatant and tumblr loves bringing up disability and ableism otherwise? Like, it’s not even a case of how everyone has valid differing opinions and needs/wants when it comes to how the vast range of disabled experiences should be approached in fiction and there’s nuance in how to do even tricky, but real experiences like grief and loss – we’re talking about a film series where an antagonist meant to be sympathetic makes a speech about disability being a weakness of humanity that must be genetically eradicated to strengthen it (which is never deconstructed or challenged) and has no other characterization beyond sad amputee whose only interest for a decade is his missing arm, and where Peter is some kind of genetic chosen one whose Good Genes give him cool powers, and the whole mess with Harry.
The few other times on tumblr I’ve seen it brought up is to like, woobify (internalized) ableism even though the films go way beyond realistic personal struggle and straight into eugenics, and as someone with a Lizard niche in the Spidey fandom, I’m floored at how everywhere else, I keep seeing the TASM version of the character topping best adaptation discussions by a huge margin compared to way better takes with zero references of the ableism (this was not the case even a few years ago, idk what happened), and you can correct me on this if I’m wrong bc you would know more about the Harry side of things than me, but I feel like TASM!Harry used to be very popular and be moved, at least until MSM2017 and Insomniac came along. -spider-xan
Hi sorry my brother just graduated college. Anyways, in regards to the Harry side of things, I think a lot of the ableism SHOULD be pretty obvious, but apparently it’s not considering how little critical thought there is with all these villains. There’s the good genes bad genes eugenics of Harry wanting Peter’s blood to cure himself and then it doesn’t work because the spider only worked with Peter’s “good genes” (I don’t care about their in canon excuse, it still buys into this trope) and it reacted so badly with the TERMINALLY ILL CHARACTERS “bad genes” that he turned crazy and evil. And that’s ignoring my general distaste for disability or “insanity” being used primarily as a source of fear for the good, noble, and of course able bodied protagonists.
Something that’s also pretty weird that nobody mentions is the fact that like, Electro in these movies just HAD to talk to nothing. Normally it wouldn’t bother me as much or I might be willing to give it a pass, but it’s these movies, which just love to make their disdain for disabled people clear, so it comes off as super bad taste.
Like… I’m only scratching the surface. Why are there three people who consistently point out how ableist these movies are? Especially when as you said, tasm Harry is pretty popular! Ignoring my beef with him as a Harry Osborn, it’s so odd to me because so much of that is either like, sort of romanticizing his chronic illness and breakdown or getting off on that ableist insanity I mentioned earlier.
And when you bring it up, people get SUPER defensive. I don’t know if like, the amount of invalid criticism just makes people defensive or if it makes people think there’s NO valid criticism but like… these movies aren’t bad for the reasons you think. The issues they have are like… the writing saying that eugenics is cool and fun alongside generally iffy writing.
I believe I am still shadowbanned from Tumblr so I can’t reply to this which is what I actually wanted to do, but I remember the ableism discussion well. I think the portrayal of Harry in TASM hit me rather harder than it should have. (It’s my least favourite movie eveeeeer to this very day.)
I do remember posts going around Back In The Day about the ableism wrt both Harry and Electro in TASM 2 specifically, but you know what, I feel like when the Kindred arc in the comics rolled around a lot of Harry-ableism discussion sort of shifted to there. Now that TASM is being re-released I wonder if we’ll see more.
OOOUUGGHHH I’M GONNA CRY, Obi-Wan going after Anakin to check on him and tell him he believed in him and he had a place as a Jedi, all while still grieving Qui-Gon’s still recent death, like this guy just lost his father figure and he’s still stopping to ask, “Are you all right?” and reaching out to put a reassuring hand on Anakin???
EXCUSE ME I NEED TO GO LOOK AT THE ENDLESS FATHOMS OF THE OCEAN FOR AWHILE THAT IS ALL THAT CAN ENCOMPASS MY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS.
