Lindsay Ellis

Here I am thinking I edited my message too much.

I made one more edit, it's perfect now, I think...

Edited by ParaChomp on Jun 28th 2018 at 10:27:00 AM

Lindsay's entire point about Michael Bay's films is that they are worthy of being talked about, even if they're not good movies. That would seem to cover any queer relationships within them. Like, she specifically sees something worth talking about in regards to this series, and it turns out LGBT stuff is one of those topics.

And you came off kind of snippy even with the edits. "Oh, I don't think this is worth talking about" because... they just used already established characters for it? Like, that doesn't make something unworthy to be talked about. There is no good way to say "queer relationships aren't worth talking about" in regards to just talking about them when they come up in movies. Or any other media.

Edited by AceofSpades on Jun 28th 2018 at 1:43:25 PM

This reminds me of the point Lindsay made about lady robots in that despite what seems like a simple topic (why not make some robots female or bring in already existing ones into the film), the defense from Orci on why they wouldn't use them in the first film and subsequently the way it impacts presentation of them in sequel films is worth examining, and so the same goes for queer topics in Transformers.

Edited by Nouct on Jun 28th 2018 at 11:42:21 AM

Ah, the old "I'm not actually homophobic, but...". Nice.

Your argument is straight up nonsensical. You know what else can be said to be "forced" and "unworthy of discussion"? Making a series of video essays academically analyzing Michael Bay's Transformers.

Unworthy of discussion from whom? Like, Lindsey is openlt bisexual, so of course she would have a desire to talk about such a topic. Would it really be a misuse of her platform to voice those opinions in her (already exhustavive) 10 part analysis?

LGBTQIA+ plus people talk about representation in everything,as is natural to do, why would that discussion not be worthy of a wide platform?

Well, I do wonder if a video on queer Transformers in the films is worth it because... frankly, Transformers interact with each other so little that I wonder how much fuel there actually is. The Autobots mostly interact with the humans, not each other. And the Decepticons are mostly completely devoid of character entirely.

Other than Megs and Screamer being in a clearly abusive relationship in ROTF... oh wait, I suppose that's enough fuel there.

Fuck me...

You're right, anything is worth being talked about. These relationships don't feel like they're done for the sake of representation and that's why they're a healthy portrayals.

It's out for patreons.

I will say... it doesn't go where one might expect (Though some of you guys did call it).

Barring Cogman, turns out there's no queer coding in the movies, coz all the characters hate each other too much for there to be any.

Edited by Ghilz on Jun 30th 2018 at 1:25:24 PM

And it's out for everyone

I liked how she touched on how Weird it is that there exists, in the 21st century, a transformers property that is so very, very straight.

They're too busy focusing on selling toy robots that fight each to bother with things like diversity

Thanks to the video, I've found out that there's a fifth Transformer movie with Mark Wahlberg as the lead actor. And apparently Anthony Hopkins is there who Took the Bad Film Seriously?

Actual things Anthony Hopkins does in T5:

• Flip off pursuers from a car.

• Call a Transformer a "b***hing ride".

• Call Mark Wahlberg "duuuude".

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jul 1st 2018 at 11:43:41 AM

On her video, it's an interesting argument that the Transformers films have no queer subtext because of too much animosity between the characters. But sometimes animosity can be subtext, in a Slap-Slap-Kiss kind of way.

For instance, a comic I like, NIMONA, is about a "hero knight" and "evil villain" (both men) who hate each other, but their hate-rivalry starts to read subtextually as a romance the more we see them duel. And to cement that the subtext is intentional, author Noelle Stevenson is gay herself and has drawn AUs where they're just a modern gay couple.

Maybe Transformers' "the characters' insult each other" is meant to be like Nimona's "characters who like each other mask their affection with snark and insults". but since it's ONLY insults from the Transformers gang and no Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other moments, it comes off as if there's no sarcastic teasing and that all the animosity is genuine hatred.

I would have liked Lindsay's video to discuss the distinction between that.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jun 30th 2018 at 10:19:48 AM

Wow, that is just... Wow.

Considering the prevalence of Ho Yay in fiction (almost always unintentional), perhaps it's some sort of achievement that the characters in Michael Bay's Transformers are so hate filled and lacking in chemistry that Lindsay can't find any queer subtext between them. Also, as surprising as this may sound, watching a few clips of Mark Wahlberg's character (Cade Yeager, really?) makes me hate him even more than Sam. What drives you to make your main character so unlikable, Michael Bay?

Edited by HottoKenai on Jul 1st 2018 at 6:37:05 PM

One of these does not seem like the others. Is calling Mark Wahlberg "duuude" some sort of insult I'm missing?

It’s just so unexpected coming from him, in a mysterious British monologue of history, and how his line delivery doesn’t change at all when he says it.

Like how one Youtube-comment says there should be a law against Hopkins ever saying "dude" again.

I'm not sure what Lindsay's point was in this episode… She does an episode about queer-coding in the Bayformer movies only to come up with the conclusion that… there's none? >.>

True, there's not really any of it, and she's aware that that might make people feel like it's a waste of time, but I think this still served well as an introduction to queer theory, as well as an interesting analysis of why there isn't any in Transformers films and what that means, and how Michael Bay handles that sort of thing in general (as opposed to how Transformers as a franchise has dealt with it).

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Jul 1st 2018 at 6:33:55 AM

Hopkins's delivery in that scene makes him sound like he's sarcastically mimicking Wahlberg's character, indicating that Wahlberg called him "dude" earlier. Is that the case?

I've heard it said that in order to understand good art, you need to understand the bad as well. In that way, the Transformers series is really an ideal thing to take apart and analyse since it's kind of the quintessential bad Hollywood mega-blockbuster franchise. And it's probably an easy one for Lindsay to sink her teeth into since she seems to like Transformers a lot and know much about it while also realizing that it is, at its very core even outside the Bay movies, a fucking stupid franchise.

Here's a clip with more footage. As far as I'm seeing, Wahlberg's character never said "dude" to Hopkins earlier.

...stupid how?

I think the main problem with Sam isn't just that he's unlikable, it's that he's also extremely uninteresting and doesn't have a great reason to be the main character. Lindsay's video about Michaela makes a decent argument about how on paper she'd be a much better main character, it's just how the cinematography of the film really colors people's impressions of her.

Sam is practically emblematic of a big problem a lot of Hollywood scripts where they assume that making an Everyman character for your movie means making them as bland and uninteresting as possible so audiences can project onto them. In reality, it just creates bad characters where you question why they deserve to have the story centered on them in the first place.

“Stupid” might be the wrong word - “silly” is probably better.