fetchen

[fetchen]

skye riley? more like GAY riley- an analysis

so, i’m a very hyperfixated autistic lesbian with a weird gender and that definitely influenced how i thought of and perceived skye’s dialogue and actions as a character. regardless, i feel like my analysis is pretty okay. i’ve spent at least the past month thinking about smile 2 and i never miss a chance to drive home how important it is that a character can be read as queer in a canonical sense. maybe this is just me being that one friend that too woke but that is what i do best! i want to talk about it. :3

i think the people i’ve seen drawing and talking about skye in a more “queer” way are mostly just…headcanoning with no reason behind it. now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that at all. it’s a thing i do pretty often. there is, after all, a beautiful kind of fun in being able to see yourself or your community in a character you love. with this analysis, what i want to do is give some insight as to why i personally have taken to the idea of skye riley as a queer coded character. i want to take note of skye’s traits, dialogue, inspirations, etc. i want to show that media can be interpreted in different ways and that my own interpretation is just one of many that can be seen in skye riley and smile 2 as a whole. here, i’m giving my headcanons reasons- citing my sources, i guess. so here’s what’s up.

to start with, the most obvious example, i would say, of skye’s queerness is her relationship with the character named gemma, her ex-best friend. to me, their relationship is just like…super gay. there’s really no other way to describe it. gemma is the person that’s emotionally closest to skye throughout the entire movie. skye values her relationship with gemma over her relationships with quite literally anyone and everyone else. skye has no pictures of herself with anyone else but gemma in her apartment, she has no other contacts with an emoji in their name (excluding those for business reasons), and she feels incredibly comfortable hugging and kissing gemma; things that all may seem small but, really, show how close skye considers gemma to be. she doesn’t give anyone the grace or consideration she gives gemma. skye hurts the most when she realises that the gemma she’d been interacting with wasn’t real. she wants gemma back in her life more than anyone else she’d lost. she cares about gemma the most, she thinks about gemma the most, and she loves gemma the most. skye doesn’t show any desire to have paul, her dead ex-boyfriend, back in her life. no- she only shows guilt over the car crash that she caused and that killed him. in all of her interactions with paul, at least with the visions of him she has in her head, she doesn’t like him, let alone love him. she had no passion nor intimacy with him and the movie is clear about that. she doesn’t want him back, she just wishes what happened hadn’t happened. she just feels an immense amount of guilt over her actions that night. truly, we see that she pays very little attention to the men in her life which is a mindset i think a lot of lesbians (including myself) have.

not only that but gemma and paul have some parallels as well. i don’t think many people notice how gemma and paul both haunt the narrative of the movie- meaning that they themselves are barely present but they have quite a large effect on the story and/or the story’s characters. skye lost gemma and paul at similar times- in fact, skye’s falling out with gemma occurred only around two weeks before the car crash that killed paul. both gemma and paul were people that skye kept close to her and they were also people that skye hadn’t seen in at least a year during the time when the movie took place. let’s not forget that the gemma we see skye interact with in the movie isn’t real. we only see the real gemma having a real interaction with skye once- twice if you count their text messages. i cannot hammer it in enough that the gemma we see in the movie is not real. and once you really understand that, you also begin to understand the difference between how skye viewed gemma and how skye viewed paul. now. the curse uses skye’s grief against her, generating hallucinations of both paul and gemma to manipulate her. what’s the difference between these two hallucinations? only one speaks. when skye begins to see paul, she sees him bloodied and bruised, a reminder of his death. but he remains silent. the entity doesn’t bother trying to give skye hope when it comes to paul. but when it comes to gemma…it’s a much different story. the fake gemma is more than skye’s memories of their fight. the fake gemma is made up of skye’s memories and thoughts about gemma as a whole. the fake gemma speaks directly to skye and gives her everything she wants. it makes skye think that gemma has forgiven her with no questions asked and that gemma believes skye when she says that something isn’t right. given that the entity is like a parasite, relying on only its hosts thoughts, emotions, and memories to generate these hallucinations, what we can gather from fake gemma vs. fake paul is that, ultimately, skye valued her relationship with gemma far more than she did her relationship with paul. in the present, she told the fake gemma that she loved her and meant it about the real gemma. in the past, she’d told the real paul that she hated him and meant it about the real paul. i find it telling that the movie chooses to show us the ways in which gemma is similar to paul, someone skye supposedly loved romantically, and when we see the ways they’re different in their relationship with skye, we see that it’s mainly about how much more willing skye was to love gemma the way she was supposed to have loved paul.

furthermore, she’s also surprisingly gender non conforming in a sense. in the movie, it’s not as obvious as her disregard for men but in my opinion, it’s shown through her costuming and some of her dialogue. to me, her most interesting line in this case is what she says after she finds her dressing room trashed. she argues with her mom and says, “i am not in the headspace to put on a fucking dress and play dancing monkey in front of a room full of strangers!” and i’ve not really seen anyone talk about this line even though i think it’s actually very telling about how skye perceives her own identity. consider what it means to skye to “play dancing monkey.” using what we know about her, i would say that playing dancing monkey means being inauthentic solely to entertain others, something that skye finds stifling. she does not want to be used. with her wording, she compares herself to an animal. now, i think that’s something of a different conversation but the takeaway in this case is that skye does not want to be someone she’s not or do things she hates in order to please others. and what is it that she specifically says here? that she’s not in the headspace to put on a dress and play dancing monkey. and so, i want to point out that she specifically says that she has to be in the right headspace to put on a dress- that is, to perform femininity and to be a spectacle. this line shows us that femininity is not generally something skye enjoys expressing for herself. rather, it’s something she has to psych herself up for and that doesn’t come incredibly naturally to her. and that brings me to what does seem to come naturally to skye.

when skye has control over her own image- that is, her own makeup, her hair, and her outfits, she often chooses to dress in clothes that give her a bulkier silhouette and are less form-fitting. she chooses to wear little to no makeup. there’s never a moment when skye chooses to wear a dress or wear noticeable makeup if she’s not under scrutiny. she chooses to be androgynous and with that one line we looked at earlier, we see that it’s about more than just physical comfort.

i also want to talk about one of her most glaring traits that indicate her queer gender identity: her hair. i’ve seen other people talk about skye hypothetically liking women and one of the main responses i’ve seen was “just because her hair is short?” combined with a type of facetious tone. and while i’ve surprisingly never had that response to my endless weird gender skyeposting, i want to say that yeah, skye’s hair is part of her queerness…but not in the way you might think. no, i don’t think that skye is gay because she has short hair. but…i do think her hair is part of a queer reading of skye as a character. hair is kind of a big thing in this movie. skye goes through a big hair transformation: from long and black to short and blonde. skye tugs at her hair when she’s anxious and as her anxiety worsens, she pulls more and more of it out. hair is important. and in the cultural context of the movie’s production, skye being a woman with short hair is kind of just…inherently queer. by cutting her hair short, skye defies a patriarchal beauty standard. by that metric, skye inherently becomes a little bit more queer. as far as we know, skye wasn’t told by anyone to cut her hair short. she very well could have kept it much longer but she didn’t. she chose to go through with this radical change. so not only is the cutting of hair typically symbolic of letting go, something skye was desperate to do, but her new hairstyle can also be seen as her effort to be a little more masculine while keeping her safe enough to not arouse any real suspicion.

so no. i don’t think skye having short hair makes her gay but i do think that her hair being short is definitely supplemental to her being read as queer.

it’s also not at all lost on me how common it is for queer celebrities to struggle with their sexuality/gender identity, how common it is for there to be stories about it, and how often closeted queer celebrities turn to poor coping mechanisms like drug abuse. skye’s character and story is so deeply rooted in the pressures of the music industry and how they can affect a person. her struggle with inauthenticity and feeling stifled by an image she’s been forced into but doesn’t enjoy is one that a lot of queer people know and can relate to heavily. while i’m sure smile 2 wasn’t written with a queer skye riley in mind, skye’s story and its themes can surely feel so familiar to queer fans. not only that but a very important part of skye’s character is the fact that she feels that there is something deeply wrong with her. she’s surrounded by people who don’t see her, don’t understand her, and make no effort to do so which leads to her always feeling out of place and like she is broken on a fundamental level. she has nobody on her side and, as a queer person in a cisheteronormative society, that is often how it feels when you have no support system. skye is a person who is under constant scrutiny and pressure to conform to what the people around her want from her without considering what she might want for herself. she goes on a short rant in which she essentially calls herself a “deeply broken person” and expresses that she’d thought success would fix the things that were wrong with her before coming to find that that just wasn’t the case. and guess what: so many celebrities who came out later in life express feelings of entrapment by their industry. so many queer people express feelings of somehow being “wrong” just for existing as queer. i know that as a queer person that struggles with mental illness, i feel incredibly seen by the character of skye riley. i feel like that’s the best part.

i would say, broadly, that smile 2 is really a story of poor mental health that’s been left to marinate too long. it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of not asking for help and having no support. but it’s also a story of feeling trapped by the expectations of others. i think there’s something a little beautiful in that, as odd as that sounds. like i said, skye’s story can certainly feel incredibly relatable to queer fans when watching the movie through the lens of a queer reading. the movie’s themes aren’t exclusive to queer people and queer characters but they certainly can be meaningful in that way.

it personally makes me really happy to know that i can say that skye riley, this character i love, is queer and have genuine textual reasons for why i think that. it somehow feels so right. and i hope with with this analysis, i’ve made my reasons clear.

basically, i love skye riley a lot. and if you’ve gotten this far, i’m sure you do too. thanks for reading :-)

[fetchen]

quiet the noise

skyegem comm for @skyeislimitless :-)

[fetchen]

i miss my boyfriend (skye riley)… will you guys please hear me out on her being a gender nonconforming futch lesbian…trust i am working on an analysis that explains why i think of her like this it’ll be real good :3

skye’s just so handsome :-( i love her very much :3c

[fetchen]

hai YA >o< !!!! they’re so silly

just them being silly

[fetchen]

gemma smile 2 appreciation post :3 she’s so silly but it’s actually impossible to find high quality screenshots of her so i took some myself! enjoy :3

[fetchen]

Hi guys!!! More Skye Riley!!! This is like,,, my headcanons if she were to have survived at the end of the movie :3 mullet, diamond tattoo (for Gemma … shhh), and little puncture wound from the syringe on the side of her neck.

I just love Skye so much man :-( she should be happy always and forever I think.

[fetchen]

hello smile 2 tumblr fandom . do U guys have any headcanons about the movie/its characters? pls share them with me i wanna know what U guys are coming up with :3 !!!!!! i’ll start!!!!!

- skye’s full name is shaya riley-banjaree . yes banjaree like mo banjaree from lemonade mouth!!!

- speaking of mo banjaree from lemonade mouth, i headcanon that mo is actually skye’s half sister :3 (same dad, different moms)

- i headcanon skye as a gender nonconforming lesbian who uses she/he pronouns but prefers she/her

- skye sometimes binds her chest (unsafely) using multiple sports bras layered atop one another. the severity of her dysphoria varies from day to day

- also, skye’s around 26 in my head

- skye’s love language is physical touch by a landslide. she’s kinda bad with words and tends to trip herself up.

- skye knits. she mostly does it when she’s stressed and trying really hard to cope. she never meant to get so into it but she realised that it really relaxed her.

- gemma time!!! since gemma didn’t have a full name in the movie i headcanon that it’s gemma lannister . i might give her a middle name at some point if i feel like it :P

- gemma’s a femme lesbian and lowkey kind of a misandrist. also she uses she/her :P

- gemma’s only a month older than skye but she never lets skye forget it.

- gemma is a nepo baby . her family is super well off and she certainly enjoys it but she doesn’t flaunt it.

- she’s pursuing theater/filmmaking, mostly writing scripts. she also likes to write music.

- she plays guitar! mostly electric. she had lessons when she was little.

- skye and gemma write music together frequently :3 they’re each other’s muse.

- during the events of the freezer scene, morris successfully helped skye get rid of the curse . however…it left skye unconscious for around a week and a half. gemma visited skye in the hospital every single day.

- after the events of the freezer, skye keeps in touch with morris. they’re close friends.

- when they were younger, skye got herself and gemma matching rings. gemma found hers while skye was in the hospital and started wearing it again.

- skye and gemma founded a music club in high school together.

okay . that’s it from me for now . share ur smile headcanons with me guys pleak!!!!!!

[fetchen]

i fs bombed my math final but idgaf skye riley is more important!!!!

[fetchen]

they were gay IDGAF!!!! skye had such strong feelings for gemma like gemma literally mattered more than anyone else to skye I MISS THEM

Smile 2 (2024) dir. Parker Finn

[fetchen]

why would you say this. 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

One thing that makes the Smile Entity so terrifying and evil to me is that while it feeds off of trauma and spreads trauma, what it ultimately uses to kill its victims is hope. It gives them something to latch onto and then snatches it away.

You can see this so clearly with Skye and it's already in play far earlier than I had realized on my first watch - through the use of Gemma and Skye's love for her.

As soon as we meet Skye it's evident that not only is she still extremely traumatized by what happened to her but she also has no support system. Everyone is there for her as a product (her mother included) but no one who cares about her as a person. That loneliness is present in every frame. After she witnesses Lewis' death, she starts spiraling and nobody notices. Fuck, she is literally assaulted in plain sight by that stalker fan and her mom just goes "It's ok, take a breath and let's keep going yeah?" Skye needs someone to talk to that she actually has a connection with, and that person, the one she needs and wants, is Gemma. So she dares to call her.

She doesn't think Gemma is gonna want to see her, but she hopes it. And that's the Entity first way in. It gives Skye what she wants.

Then, the Entity triggers her fear from the meet & greet and takes the form of that fan. It makes Skye believe he's going to attack her (or worse since he's naked), she tries to run and quite literally slams into Gemma. The vision disappears and is replaced by her best friend being there. She goes from a state of extreme fear to complete relief.

This is everything Skye wanted. Not only does Gemma listen to her, but she forgives her AND she believes her. This allows Skye to feel like she can take a breath for a moment, when everything else around her is overwhelming her. Gemma centers her, which is also why Skye immediately asks her to come on tour with her. It's made very clear that Skye, even before the curse, doesn't want to do this tour. She's not ready, she's not healed, but she's performing only because she feels like she has an obligation to the people around her. What she wants is Gemma with her. She has tasted that temporary comfort and now she needs it. So the Entity makes her crave for it. "Gemma" disappears and Skye texts her over and over, her need building the longer Gemma doesn't reply.

Then everything starts going to hell.

She meets Morris and he offers a crazy plan to defeat the Entity, but she's too scared, unable to trust him, and the plan literally involves killing her so of course she says no. She runs off and is attacked in her apartment by the Smiley Dancers, which is also where I believe the first stage of the Entity's possession of her happens. After the attack, the Entity completely alters Skye's sense of reality and that's when the wickedness of its plan truly reveals itself.

First, it makes Skye believe that she killed her own mother, so it triggers her trauma and guilt of being yet again responsible for the death of a loved one. And it affects her so profoundly that she decides to go for Morris' plan. She's terrified, in physical and emotional pain, completely alone. And when things are at their very worst... Gemma appears again. Skye tries to leave, but Gemma insists on coming with her, and Skye lets her.

Again, we go from a heightened state of panic to a more quiet moment. And here, we see again just how much Gemma means to her. Skye needs her but she also doesn't want to hurt her so even with how terrified she is, she tries to act selflessly and tells Gemma to stay away.

And to that, Gemma replies: "Ride or die."

Look at the relief on Skye's face.

This is the person she cares about most, someone we know she hurt terribly, and despite it all, Gemma cares just as much about her. It fuels Skye, gives her hope. This is something she wants to live for.

And in that very moment, the Entity strips that hope away from her. Because that's exactly when she gets the call from the "real" Gemma. Thing is, there is no "real Gemma". None of this is real. Both Gemmas are an illusion created by the Entity, but whereas one serves to feed Skye hope, the other serves to rip it away from her.

Skye was JUST made to believe that she is loved. A moment later, she is told that it was all a lie. And how stupid of her to believe it, why the hell would Gemma care about her? Nobody cares about her.

Skye has hit rock bottom. She well and truly believes she has no one at this point, except herself. It's still her mind. She is still the master of her own fate. She still has a choice, even if that choice is ending her life on her own terms.

That's the final and most evil step of the Entity's plan. It creates a scenario wherein Skye believe she can beat this Thing. Even if she doesn't survive, she can bring it down with her. It's particularly symbolic that the Entity takes the form of Skye the night of the car accident - that's not only the embodiment of her trauma, but it's also the worst version of herself, the one Skye has been desperately trying to get rid of.

So when they finally confront each other and Skye injects herself, it's like she is not only destroying this evil thing, but also that part of her that she hates (and from her pov they probably one and the same, it's so beautifully intricate). Surviving is no longer her goal, her goal is killing the monster, and the monster is herself.

It's what she's been wanting ever since the car accident, if not even before that, made even worse by her survivor's guilt.

The Entity breaks her down, and at the very last second gives her exactly what she wanted. It gives Skye the illusion that she succeeded.

And that is ultimately what kills her.

The combination of despair and hope, and to have that hope taken away from her.

The Entity gives Skye her awareness back in the cruelest possible way. And there she is, on stage, wearing the very costume she didn't want to wear because it reminded her of her trauma, realizing that everything she thought she had control over was fake.

And now she is in front of of tens of thousands of people and is about to be used by the Entity to hurt them, which is exactly what she tried so hard to fight against.

There is no coming back from this. It's not the terror, or the trauma, it's the hopelessness that kills her.

I don't know if Morris' plan would have worked, my theory is it would've and this is why the Entity crafted such a complex illusion to make sure Skye wouldn't go through with it. But the Entity took the chance away from Skye.

There is nothing worse than believing you have control over something, believing that you have a choice, only to realize you never had any chance to begin with.

[fetchen]

holy shit i didn’t think anybody else would ever connect these two besides me

i feel like... Smile 2 is everything The Idol thought it was... yknow?

[fetchen]

maybe nobody else will get it but i LOVE stories about fictional celebrities. the ones i can think of right now are skye riley in smile 2, ashley o in black mirror, and jocelyn in the idol. now…i’m not necessarily saying that those stories were good. they were okay in smile 2 and black mirror’s case. the idol was…pretty bad but i still loved it despite that fact. the one common thread between all three was that they were all stories about fictional celebrities. i can guarantee if they were about anything else i would’ve liked them much less.

my girls ⬇️ :3

[fetchen]

with every bad thing that happened to her i just thought “my poor girl 😭😭😭😭” because she really is my poor girl she didn’t deserve any of it . she and gemma should be living happily together

SMILE 2 (2024) dir. Parker Finn

[fetchen]

Begging. And I mean BEGGING. For some Fetchen crumbs 💔💔💔hyperfixating on mean girls and I miss my baby’s

me too man 😭 unfortunately my mean girls hyperfix kinda fizzled out but I’ve got plenty of stuff to look back at if that helps 😕

[fetchen]

i’ve been thinking a lot about mbav and especially sarica/serica and idgaf how ooc it is their doomed yuri potential is so high

is anyone else constantly thinking about these pics in sarah and ethan’s lockers or just me

[fetchen]

hello descendants tumblr . today i bring you my favourite chloe headcanon :3

- after chloe met red and they time travelled together, chloe begged her parents to let her get her nose pierced so that she’d match red and could surprise her with it the next time they’d see each other!

- she has a big fear of needles- it’s, like, one of her only fears. because of that, this was a really big thing for her. she wanted to show red that she wasn’t alone.

her new look! :3

[fetchen]

i’m back so let’s talk a little bit about something ive never seen anyone else mention: red’s nose piercing. :3

when i first noticed that red had her nose pierced, i assumed that it was just something that was already on kylie’s face. but as i got a little more into the making of rise of red, i realised that kylie actually doesn’t have her nose pierced. i’ll be honest, it kinda pissed me off because it told me that red’s nose piercing was a deliberate choice on the part of the character/costume designers and i hated that it was just…so boring. it just made me wonder why they didn’t do something way cooler with the jewelry. from that perspective, her gold hoop doesn’t really go with her colour palette and, frankly, it’s just kinda boring.

and then i thought about it from the context in which red as a character exists. her mom, the queen of hearts, is insanely controlling, to the point where red is unable to eat what she wants. because of this, she takes every chance she gets to show defiance. it makes sense to assume that each and every part of her design, in some way, reflects her rebellious nature- even down to her nose being pierced. in that case, i’m impressed with the fact that a design element so small can generate so many questions about the character and their environment.

like…when did red get her nose pierced? how did the queen of hearts react? who did it? did anybody else know? why the gold hoop? there are so many questions i have that will probably never be answered but are very, very fun to speculate about.

now, let’s talk about the gold hoop itself. my biggest complaint, from an aesthetic standpoint, is that the gold hoop just…doesn’t really fit red or her aesthetic. she wears exclusively black jewelry and the only other hint of gold in her design is her belt buckle. i think the biggest possibility is that the gold hoop is subtle. well, as subtle as a nose piercing could be. it blends in well enough that her mom doesn’t bother to make a fuss about it. if red had anything else, anything that stood out more than that gold hoop, she’d risk bearing the brunt of her mother’s punishment.

the act of red piercing her nose in and of itself was a physical manifestation of her disloyalty to her mother’s tyranny. intentional or not, in the queen’s future vision via the looking glass, red is notably missing that gold hoop she’s never seen without.

what that says about the looking glass, in my opinion, is that it’s not an objective tool. rather, it’s more of a gadget that shows the viewer the future they have in mind- but that’s not really the point i’m trying to make here.

my point is that red’s nose piercing is a physical representation of her rebellious nature and her closeness in ideology to her mother. she’s never seen onscreen without it unless it’s in the future scenario where she’s become a dictator alongside her. honestly, whether intentional or not, it’s a beautiful piece of character design- one that i bet you probably wouldn’t expect from a disney channel movie of all things.