September 11, 2005 – a plucky Irish newcomer named Nick Roche sent me this image 12 years ago today to see if he could ever find work as a Transformers artist. I felt like it showed promise and we used it as a cover.
A dozen years later, Nicky’s logged well over a decade of TF work, as well as Doctor Who, Monsters Motors, plenty of covers for other things, written his own Transformers series, and is currently drawing three issues of Spider-Man. And has remained the same floppy-haired, eager, and ultra-talented sort he was in 2005. Only moreso.
The fandom: My sweet little avocado baby. My beautiful little pile of goo. My adorable little poached egg with antennae on top ❤
Sleeper: Fuckin lobotomizes a guy, with 0 deliberation before and 0 regrets afterwards. Just fuckin chomps down on his central cortex, then proceeds to pilot his lifeless body around the universe. Night night motherfucker
I am aware, but I think it’s funny that like, it actively freaked Eddie out and disappointed him–it’s definitely not something he approved of. It’s kind of bittersweet; they put SO much emphasis on their baby growing up to be good, to be a hero. Welp, kids will go their own way and Sleeper is def. a Chaotic alignment more than a Lawful one, whether they like it or not.
Like. Killing someone, and then using their lifeless corpse as a vehicle instead of, idk, giving it a proper burial is, I think, definitely not something Spiderman or Captain America, or Superman or Wonder Woman, would do. Although it’s clearly justified, and what I would have done, it’s a pretty morally grey choice.
It’s worse than killing the blue smurf. Sleeper paralized his mind but the dude is 100% alive and will be living in a living prison in his whole life, and an unnatrally long one due to the symbiote’s healing ability. There’s no tell how much of the blue smurf is still capable of being aware of his surrounding (depending on how literal the word lobotomize is). The possibility of a life-long mental torture is cruel and definitely go against Eddie’s moral standard. Sleeper is 100% about being an eye for an eye, it’s amusing because I can see him got the more direct and brutal mentality from both of his parents, but his action is not restricted by the moral standard of human society, even though his action is driven by the human sense of family bond he share with them, which is scary and adorable at the same time.
Ya ever just stop and really think about how Eddie’s a writer. Like…
Eddie sitting in front of his laptop, a half-empty, half-freezing cup of coffee and a bowl of milk and cereal dregs from three hours ago on either side of him, staring at the blank document and feeling his soul slowly leech out of his eyes.
Eddie trying to remember a certain word, struggling for a solid half an hour with it on the tip of his brain before giving up and taking a break. Then having it come to him out of nowhere hours later and tripping out of the shower, shampoo in his ears, and yelling “PERSPICACIOUS!” like a man crazed.
“Eddie. What are we doing?” “I’m workin’, doll.” “We are watching an old PBS special about giant crossbows.” “S’research.” “Your article has nothing to do with crossbows of any size.” “Maybe not directly…” “I think we should shut it off and go back to work.” “I think judgy aliens don’t get chocolate chip waffles for dinner.” “…That’s cold, Eddie.”
Eddie waking Flash up in the middle of the night by straddling his chest and shoving the laptop screen in his face. “Read this.”
“What the fu- Eddie? Are you still awake? What time is it?”
“4:17. And I forgot how words work around 1:00.”
“Oh my God. Eddie, you can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
“Just read this sentence. I need to know if this sounds like how humans speak.”
“I’m calling Pete and staging an intervention. Eddie! Go to sleep.”
“After I fix this sentence. Read it.”
“I swear to God, I’ll throw that fucking laptop off the roof if you don’t get it out of my face and go to sleep!”
“Read it!”
“Ask Venom!”
“I need someone who’s spoken English for more than three years!”
The real reason Dumbledore isn’t shown to be gay in Fantastic Beasts (and why he never will be)
So, I’ve seen a lot of people criticize Crimes of Grindelwald for not explicitly showing Dumbledore to be gay. I’ve also seen a lot of people defending that movie by pointing out that there are still three more movies where Dumbledore could come out. But Dumbledore will not come out in the next movie, or the next one, or the next one. There’s a simple reason:
Money.
Homosexuality is still criminalized in 72 countries. Even in countries where it is technically legal, gay relationships might still be frowned upon and LGBT representation in media might be censored. That’s a minimum of 72 countries where the Fantastic Beasts movies will be banned and where WB will not be able to make money from ticket sales, DVD sales, streaming or merchandise sales.
I couldn’t find a complete list of countries that censors LGBT representation in media but it doesn’t really matter because only one country truly matters.
China.
In 2017, China explicitly banned homosexual content in its TV series. Movies banned in China include Call Me By Your Name and Brokeback Mountain.
Every Hollywood movie wants to be released in China. China is the second most important territory for Hollywood films and the only reason it is not the most important is because the Chinese government takes a sizable percentage of grosses. The Chinese government only allows 34 foreign movies to be released a year and every Hollywood movie is vying for a spot. In 2017, Hollywood movies made $3.26 billion at the Chinese box office. The first Fantastic Beasts movie made $85.9 million at the Chinese box office, or around 10.5% of the movies total worldwide gross.
So that’s a lot of money that Fantastic Beasts will miss out on if the movie gets banned! The first Fantastic Beasts movie had a production budget of $180 million. The second cost $200 million. That’s not including the money spent on marketing the movies, which is also probably around $200 million. To recoup this cost, Warner Bros. will want to distribute the movie to the maximum possible audience. The first Fantastic Beasts movie is estimated to have made a net profit of $164 million. So this money could mean the difference between Fantastic Beasts generating a profit and losing money.
Bottom line, Warner Bros. simply will not risk the possibility of Fantastic Beasts being banned in China and other countries where homosexuality is censored/banned. They stand to lose a lot of money.
Would I like to be proven wrong? Absolutely! But as it stands I would not be getting my hopes up for Grindeldore, or for LGBT representation in big budget Hollywood movies anytime soon.
Disclaimer: I am not a box office expert but most of this is fairly common knowledge and I feel pretty confident in saying this.
(So this isn’t showing up in the tags and I heard that Tumblr blocked external links or something so I’m going to try posting this without the links. If you want to see the sources just go to my blog!)
More people on this hellsite really need to understand the reason why gay people literally don’t exist in Hollywood blockbusters is not because individual writers or directors hAtE tHe gAyZ or your ships or whatever but because of Chinese censorship and money. It’s as simple but nonetheless depressing as that, and as long as Hollywood keeps relying on box office returns from China to recoup their 150+ million dollar budgets and not challenging the status quo in any way it’s not going to change.
So when Episode IX comes out next year and everyone has a fucking meltdown because Finnpoe doesn’t become canon remember it’s not because J.J. Abrams or Kathleen Kennedy personally hate gay people and want to keep gay characters out of Star Wars but because it is a several hundred million dollar product that relies on appeasing a homophobic authoritarian government to turn a profit.
This is why i do not rely on or even bother with Hollywood for my queer rep, It. Will. Not. Happen. You must turn to other media, and that other media is obviously not perfect, but at least it’s not fucking impossible.
The same with Venom. It earned >200M USD in China (and that’s 12 days’ box office). Even if Sony wanted to make Eddie/Symbiote (more) canon, they won’t because no way they will give up the chinese market.
The most we’ll get is something light and can be seen by the “straight” audience as banter or joke. This is a sad reality.
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 