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"mirror mirror on my phone, who's the baddest?

✨ us, hello? ✨"

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ngl yall some of the new love 365 characters be real unlikable like at least TRY to hide the misogyny

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the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

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— Nikita Gill

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the real rhys montrose was really going about his days having no clue that some psycho was having a deeply homoerotic relationship with a murderous version of him

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Nadia being a published writer and helping inmates process their traumas. Marianne being a famous artist. Kate back to being an art gallery manager and a mother. Bronte rewriting Beck's book.

The girls won this season as they should!

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i always wondered what would be the most satisfactory way to wrap YOU up and lowkey assumed that the finale would not be some sort of perfect culmination to the whole story.

and boy, was i wrong...

the finale of YOU s5 was perfect. it surpassed my expectations for a great ending bc it went beyond the show's assumed formula and became a self-aware, raw and surprisingly feminist meta commentary on the show itself, joe goldberg, his victims and the real world realities of the victim/predator dynamics.

throughout the season, i wondered what was the point of introducing a character like louise. was it to show once again that joe will always find a flaw in his "soulmate" and continue the pattern of his predatory behavior?

yes, but more importantly, it all clicked and made sense when the finale revealed the point of louise to be about HER, not joe.

louise is not a random chick whose life and story is split in "before joe and after joe". she is an echo of beck. through louise we see that beck was not just a tragic heroine in joe's story, she was someone who left an impact on people in her life such as louise.

she is not the perfect victim or heroine. she has some moments of internalized misogyny, thinking that she is smarter than those women who fall for toxic men. she believes that she can fix joe. she fantasizes about being saved and dominated by him, giving him control to build her up bc she does not know who she is and has self-esteem issues, struggling to love herself without a lover's validation.

in some sense, she represents joe's perfect victim; in some sense, she represents the audiences who romanticize him. and she is the one who snaps out and sees herself clearly, thus seeing joe as he truly is and becoming his ultimate reckoning.

and with her, we see joe as he is as well. a pathetic misogynist with mommy issues who does not accept anything he deems selfish in women he preys upon. a predator who kills his prey once she does not reflect the image of himself to him he wants to see. someone who does not take accountability for harming others, always making excuses for himself. his mask is finally off, he is naked.

once louise confronts him and takes her voice back, demanding joe to admit the truth, the story takes off the romantic lenses that reminded more or less intact throughout the show and turns into a pure horror of brutality and violence.

but joe can not kill louise. metaphorically, it's bc he does not have power over her anymore, she found her own power in herself. power that is found through self-acceptance and love for all the victims who were silenced by joe. she declares that she is not bronte built in his fantasy, she is louise.

i actually teared up when louise had a vision of beck autographing her books and then it cut to an older lady, showing the lifetime that was taken away from her.

in the end, we recognize what joe refuses to recognize - that he is responsible for his loneliness. yet, he is not wrong when he breaks the forth wall and confronts the audiences for participating the culture that blames the victims and gives power to the abusers.

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Bronte is all of us. Let's be fucking real. She's literally THE chronically online girl with a difficult home life who uses the internet for escapism. Whether she was pretending to be someone else or if it was her projecting her inner vulnerabilities, it doesn't mean she is not representative of a large chunk of the online sphere. I agree with the sentiment that it should have been someone from the past to destroy Joe Goldberg but why is everyone scrutinizing this poor girl for no reason. She knew what he had been doing and couldn't help but fall for it. Isn't that our whole point of view as viewers? This mob of Joe defenders cannot separate Penn's attractiveness from a character. And I was a Beck hater but I think what made her so special was that she was literally just a girl. She had hopes, dreams and she was flawed but she was incandescent. I read somewhere that Love was Joe's equal and Kate was the opposite of what he had ever been. Marienne (imo) was what he thought he could be, a flawed altruistic and confident parent who strives to be better for their child. Bronte is a fangirl who's accepted his darkest parts (as opposed to Love, who challenges and brings that part out of him). Stop criticizing the dumbness, the validity, the beauty, the intelligence, and the survival instincts of these women because they are victims of a person and a society that we actually live in.

If you think about it, we are the most immersed in Joe's head from the first season to the second season's finale. After the glass shatters with Love, we see things a little more clearly throughout the third one cause we have Love. He loses the plot in Season 4 hence Rhys Montrose. And Season 5 he has officially lost control over what we see, hear and believe.

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im super artblocked rn. anyway its funny how the protags are recolors of the rivals

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nah jk i hate drawing lysandre’s facial hair

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I was going to say that the Legends ZA graphics are muddy and flat and stir a sense of dread and despair in me but then I realized they're just trying to be authentic to the experience of going to paris

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welcome to paris. we have ceded parts of our city to the feral dogs, and people will try to physically attack you specifically in real time combat. this is what a redevelopment plan looks like

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Musa the fairy of music <3 Basically was going for a very space pop, or space groove for my league of legends fam, look for her! I just thought making her skirt see through would be so fun and then based the look around that.

Disclaimer: These are some Charmix redesigns, don't get me wrong i ADORE the og designs, to me they are perfect exactly the way they are this is just me having a bit of fun with the looks.

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Musa enchantix ✨

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ALL YOU GOTTA DO IS BELIEVE IN YOURSELF AND EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE

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