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Your New Favourite (queer) Youtubers: First ten videos
I've been going through the Your New Favourite Youtubers list by Kat that hbomberguy linked to in a recent video, in an effort to support good queer youtube essayists. It's been interesting enough I thought I'd write some short reviews for anyone who finds the sheer number of videos overwhelming.
I used rich text so I could cut and paste the links, which has made the formatting a MESS, sorry.
TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self Diagnosis Alexander Avila: What I saw was fine but slow, and felt aimed at people who needed way more convincing about the benefits of self diagnosis than me, so I got bored and stopped.
What Makes Disney Villains so Gay? Matt Baume: Great fun and I felt like I learned something. Very focussed on gayness versus other kinds of queerness but so is most of the relevant villain coding. I think the most recent movie discussed is The Lion King and I'd be curious to see a discussion of whether things have changed.
The Evolving Relationship of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy Lady Emily: Quite good, even as someone who has only a vague interest in the characters, and interesting as a sort of case study of how a queer couple has been written over time within the huge, varied canon of DC.
The Lesbian Gaze verilybitchie: So I kept seeing this in my recommendations and ignoring it because every discussion I've seen of "the lesbian gaze" has pissed me off by acting like lesbians and straight men are the only people who exist (or at least the only ones attracted to women) AND OH LOOK, that's exactly what it did. Well made and interesting enough despite that that I made it to the end and felt like I gained something, but UGH can we NOT.
Queer Horror: Understanding Gender as Body Horror RickiHirsch: More relevant to my interests than I expected, given that I don't consume many horror movies. A very trans take on the subject, with a long digression on the not-actually-horror manga "Inside Marie" which I found interesting enough that I have started reading (it's one of the very few manga on Crunchyroll)
The Internet is Turning its Back on True Crime Shanspeare: I found the introduction a bit silly but the actual essay part is quite good. The title is misleading, it's just a general meditation on why people like True Crime and how it can be created and enjoyed with empathy for the victims. Also contextualises modern true crime with history going back to murder ballads and 17th century woodcuts etc, which I hadn't really thought about before.
Maybe you should stay in the closet?...Coming Out re-examined | Khadija Mbowe: An interesting discussion of coming out (mostly to parents) from the perspective of a Black Canadian with West African Muslim parents, about how it doesn't always work like the movies and can interact in complicated ways with valuing family and culture, especially for POC and children of immigrants. It's not a call to stay in the closet, just a reassurance that you can approach things at your own pace in your own way. At one point they present, without really endorsing or criticising, the idea that some people feel it's selfish and maybe even culturally intolerant to 'make' their parents accept them, which I and from the looks of things some commenters felt weird about, but also some people DO feel that way so... idk.
A Very Normal Yuri Manga hazel: A straightforward but infectiously enthusiastic review of the humourous yuri manga School Zone/School Zone Girls. One of the side-ships is incestuous.
The real “Gay Agenda” has always been to Misrepresent LGBT+ Herby Revolus: A discussion of the misrepresentation of lgbt+ people in media over history. I probably wouldn't have noticed or cared so much that they were taking clips from The Celluloid Closet without even mentioning the documentary exists, had that not been a whole THING in the hmbomberguy criticism of James Somerton. It definitely wasn't the same level of unoriginal plagiarism, but in context it annoyed me and I stopped watching. Otherwise seemed fine, I guess.
LGBT in Fantasy | LOTR + THE OLD GUARD Film Analysis Maggie Mae Fish: Quite good, less an essay and more a discussion between Maggie Mae Fish, Molly Osterburg and Lindz Amer. It's a compare and contrast: LOTR as fantasy that likely wasn't intended to be queer but still resonates that way, versus The Old Guard as fantasy that is explicitly queer. There's a few things I was left wishing they'd dug into more but at least it got me thinking.
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