gmonkey42

I DVR Glee and I hadn't seen the latest episode yet when I read manda Marcotte's post about it. So I watched it today.

Kurt is my favorite character, he's awesome. In this episode, Kurt's father had a heart attack and was in the hospital in a coma. The other members of the glee club want to sing "spiritual" (a.k.a. Christian) songs at school and pray for Kurt's dad but Kurt doesn't want this because he's an atheist. He asks these people, who are supposed to be his friends, to respect his beliefs. They don't. He catches them at the hospital praying over his comatose dad. They even make the ludicrous claim that they all belong to different denominations and religions (some Christians and one Jew) so one of them must be right. He shows admirable restraint and asks them to leave.

I got pissed off and fast-forwarded through a lot of it.

Then later Mercedes, Kurt's best friend and one of the people who were praying over Kurt's dad, confronts Kurt at his locker, accuses him of missing out on experiences and of shutting out his friends. Kurt agrees and apologizes. Then he agrees to go to church with her. I turned it off at that point.

The other major problem with the episode was the only atheist character besides Kurt was the show's villain, Sue Sylvester (and the only other character I like besides Kurt). Both Kurt and Sue had stories about how they became atheists because they're mad at God.

The clear message of this episode was that Kurt's friends did a good, noble thing for Kurt by trampling all over his feelings and doing what he had specifically asked them not to do.

Several characters gently admonish Kurt that he should be nice because people are only trying to help him. When in fact they're helping themselves feel better at the expense of making Kurt feel worse. These characters are selfish assholes and they're being portrayed as generous friends, while Kurt is portrayed as being unreasonable and mean to them by rejecting the "help" he made it clear he doesn't want.


That is why I am done with Glee.

Following on from yesterday's ranty post, apparently there's been a lot of negative reaction to that one blog post I was talking about. Here's a good post about it, breaking it down point by point like I did, on the blog boy culture. And, I am sad to say, it's funnier than mine:

4. "Stories of how your mom finally came around, over-write the present realities of youth." This is where the essay jumps the shark entirely, apologizing to the creature for subjugating it by such an action.

That is pretty damn clever. I think I'm going to have to steal that at some point.

So there was this link on Shakesville: "Why I don't like Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project"

Here are excerpts from the article followed by my comments. Also: angry Sylar icon!

1. The video promotes metro-centric and anti-religious sentiment.
By aligning their bullying with the religiosity and “small-town mentality,” Dan and Terry tacitly reinforce the belief (especially rampant in queer communities) that the religious and the rural are more bigoted.
There IS more bigotry in religious and rural areas (per capita, anyway). It's ridiculous to take the facts Dan & Terry presented about their own lives and accuse them of being unfair to the religious and/or rural. A whole lot of gay people had bad experiences that they have reason to believe were made worse by the (rural, religious) environment they lived in. But apparently they should just shut up about that?

( Read more... )


The article ends with a bunch of incomprehensible garbage about how we only want to help people who don't actually need our help and that by participating in this project we're exploiting gay teens and erasing their individuality? Somehow?

Also I think the author only watched Dan & Terry's video and conveniently ignored all the others that were made by people who aren't white, middle-class men.


Another important purpose that these videos serve, that the author ignored, is to show people (like everyone, not only gay youth) that being gay doesn't condemn you to a life of misery. That's what a lot of young gay people are being told and that's what a lot of homophobic adults believe. These videos are a powerful counter-message to that.

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ETA: Ha! I was right about this: the author criticizes Dan for just putting out a video and not doing anything to actually change things and I was skeptical (see my comment below) that the author was practicing what they preach. And lo and behold here's this from a more recent post by the same author:
[allegedly a criticism she has received] 13. Ho, what have you even done to help poor, suicidal kids? You just sit around criticizing people! Come up with some tangible solutions!

[her response] I’ll tell you what. You take care of your work, and I’ll take care of mine.
Translation: I wrote this brilliant-ass blog entry, my work here is done. People like Dan who put their faces and voices out there can be held responsible for actually changing things; don't worry, I'll be sure and tell them if they're doing it wrong.

LMAO.

OK, the more It Gets Better videos I see, the more hesitant I am to make one because there's no way mine will be as awesome as this:


ETA: I'm just kidding, I'll still make a video. And soon, while people are still paying attention. I'm waiting a day or two now because I have a zit on my chin. But I'll do it soon! :)

Apparently that's not the first time I've used this subject line.

I was wavering* on whether to read it before seeing it but I decided to read it and I'm glad I did, I think I'll get more out of it now. I just finished Millennium Approaches. I really love it. This might replace Cyrano De Bergerac as my all-time favorite play. It's amazing.

And now I know what this scene is about:


Oh, Louis. You adorable, fauxgressive asshole.



* you could say I was AMBIVALENT. Unlike love. See what I did there? :D

I think this is a wonderful idea: Dan Savage's It Gets Better project. Gay adults share their stories with gay kids who are suffering through high school as we once did. Whenever I hear my younger LJ friends having problems in school, I just want to reach out to them and help them know that it will get better. I think I'm going to contribute to this.

[Error: unknown template qotd]WEIRD AL and YES.

My parents are awesome for letting me listen to Weird Al. They also let me read MAD magazine.

Oh my freaking god, Zumba is the most fun workout EVER. And it's not too hard to follow; with my dance training, I picked it right up. And it's a good workout. I think my abs are going to be sore tomorrow!

I know I've enjoyed a class when I don't want to stop afterward and I have to make myself calm down and rest so I don't overdo it and be totally wiped out the next day. I want to keep dancing!

And it included Shakira's Waka Waka song! I just taught myself the dance steps for that today from the video on YouTube! That was cool. I mean, it was largely that song that made me want to go to Zumba. But then I went to the class and I thought "wouldn't it be cool if they had that song? Nahh, they probably won't- HOLY CRAP IT'S THAT SONG! I LOVE THAT SONG!"

Then I had Pad See Ew and some ice cream. Good times.

I'm really enjoying this AU K/S fic: Leave No Soul Behind.

The AU is that there's EPAS - Emergency Personnel Ambulance Service - which is like super badass emergency medics in space, and they're affiliated with Starfleet but they're not military and Starfleet is being all incompetent about dealing with Nero. Spock joined EPAS instead of Starfleet and at the beginning of the fic, Kirk transfers to it and winds up under Spock's command. The relationship builds really slowly - I'm up to chapter 5 and I just got to the sexy part.

I really like it. The characterizations and the world-building are both great. That's one thing that's been really hard to find: fanfic where the writer really gets the characters. I love how they write Spock's dialogue in particular. Not many people can pull that off. It's so good I'm willing to overlook the occasional misuse of apostrophes and the PADDs problem.

Some douche gets his ass handed to him by Sady Doyle.

It's super mean but I love it.