Culture

Our First Reaction to Robert Pattinson in ‘The Batman’ Trailer

August 23, 2020 // 0 Comments

Last night, DC dropped the first trailer for the heavily anticipated The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson, and the Internet is freaking out about how awesome it looks. This comes after months (or even years!) of speculation and questions about the casting of Twilight-famed British actor Robert Pattinson in the role of the edgy and mysterious Bruce Wayne. For those of us who have always known our beloved RPatz had the acting chops to take on the darker role (hello, Good Time or The Lighthouse, //

The Boys: Why We’re Excited for Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy

August 21, 2020 // 0 Comments

Fan art by @BossLogic on Twitter After being the star of Supernatural for 15 years, Jensen Ackles is ready for a change. It was recently announced that Ackles would be joining the cast of Amazon’s The Boys in Season 3, which will likely debut in Fall 2021. For those who aren’t already fans, The Boys is a TV series based on Garth Ennis’ comic of the same name which explores the dark and corruptible side of superheroes, namely what happens when our beloved caped crusaders abuse //

Bury Your Gays: How a 1930s Hollywood Production Code is Killing Your Favorite LGBTQ Characters Today

August 21, 2018 // 0 Comments

Note: The following article contains spoilers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Orange is the New Black, and The 100. If you’re an LGBTQ television fan, chances are you’ve seen your favorite lesbian character killed off — Tara McClay, Poussey Washington, Commander Lexa, just to name a few. And if you’re part of gay fandom culture, you might also be familiar with the #LexaDeservedBetter and #LGBTFansDeserveBetter hashtag riots when The 100 killed off their beloved lesbian warrior in //

Dean Winchester is the Bisexual Hero Supernatural Deserves

August 2, 2018 // 0 Comments

Dean Winchester wearing a medieval costume

Warning: Supernatural spoilers ahead. It’s been more than a decade. It’s been thirteen seasons of the Winchester brothers killing monsters along the lower forty-eight. Of booze-fuelled sex romps and bro hugs. Of monsters and men. And thirteen years has certainly taken its toll on Sam and Dean — they’ve been chewed up by Lucifer and spit out by the Almighty Chuck himself. Dean has been in dire straits since season four, when he returned from Hell — his alcoholism //

Reading Violence as Romance: The Twilight Saga & Fifty Shades

July 27, 2018 // 1 Comment

Let’s go back in time. Back to the 21st-century aughts, when vampires and werewolves ruled the airways, followed years later by women reading fifty shades of BDSM on city buses (replete with hide-a-book covers). Because I really want to talk about two of the biggest female-driven media phenomena of the last decade: the Twilight saga and Fifty Shades series. These two otherworldly tales aren’t just Hollywood blockbusters: these are popular texts that circulate across multiple mediums //

Why Is There So Much Gay Shipping in Fanfiction?

February 12, 2018 // 5 Comments

Sherlock and Watson. Dean and Cas. Derek and Stiles. There’s no denying it. There is a lot of gay (male) shipping in fanfiction. In fact, a 2013 survey by Destination Toast suggests that M/M slash pairings make up a whopping 42.6% of all ship categories on AO3 as compared to 21.3% for Gen and 15.4% for Het (F/M). M/M shipping is not a new phenomenon. Slash, and particularly male slash, is as old as contemporary media fandom itself, with Star Trek’s Kirk and Spock largely cited as the //

‘Hannibal’ Changed the Game for Women and Gender on Television

January 18, 2018 // 1 Comment

NBC’s Hannibal likes to play with, twist, and tear down sex and gender stereotypes. Hannibal is a serial killer — prim and proper and baking in an apron. Will Graham is sweet and gentle… and also an ex-cop swilling whisky in his lumberjack shirt. They both appear one way to outsiders. But inside they are almost inverses — both of each other and of what you might expect. This is before we even consider the way two male original characters in Thomas Harris’ novel Hannibal //

‘Once Upon a Time’ Has a Consent Problem

December 7, 2017 // 1 Comment

For seven seasons, Once Upon a Time has grouped together packs of fairytale characters and allowed us to catch a glimpse of how they interact, solve problems, and slay monsters (both real and internal ones). We have seen characters find love, experience heartbreak, deal with self-doubt, find and lose their magic, and literally kill dragons. And when dealing with magic, Once Upon a Time has showed us that some villains put on disguises to get something out of another character that they //

Star Trek’s Economic Model — Fantasy or Future?

October 17, 2017 // 2 Comments

A small model of the U.S.S. Enterprise starship from Star Trek

One of the most well-known facts about Star Trek is that human beings no longer collect paychecks, and they aren’t obsessed with the consumption of material things. Now, most people hear this statement and assume that everything in Star Trek is free and that you can have anything you want. While that is technically true, it’s not how things unfold in the future. But, why is that? Well, in the absence of a currency-centric economy, humans of the future are shown to be focused on //

Is There Such Thing as “Required Reading” for Shipping?

October 2, 2017 // 2 Comments

Fan art of Dean Winchester holding a hand-written letter from Castiel.

“Saving people, hunting things, the family business.” Dean Winchester’s tagline in “Wendigo” (1×02) is one of the most iconic and memorable lines from the CW’s Supernatural. It sets up the series for a wild ride of horror, heartbreak, and eventually, heavenly interference. Speaking of heavenly interference, Castiel’s revelation to Dean in “Lazarus Rising” (4×01) — “I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from //