sunnyside30

[sunnyside30]

Pre-vampirism Armand/Arun

[sunnyside30]

"i dont ship them theyre too toxic i just think their dynamic is interesting" i hope they kill each other mid-fuck

[sunnyside30]

I want to tell you this story without having to be in it // Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape

[sunnyside30]

hallo ich bin a little german boy who can only count to three

[sunnyside30]

i think another reason prime time was so satisfying is because it delivered on the promise of dennis takes a mental health day. while they were both emotional episodes centred around dennis, the main difference between them is that in dtamhd, dennis wins, whereas prime time is about him losing - losing control, losing face, being constantly reminded that he's ranked lower than everyone else by an audience who he's failed to fool.

in dtamhd, we're treated to life through the eyes of the most unreliable narrator on the face of the earth. of course everything goes his way in the end - he lowers his blood pressure, shoves it in the face of his doctor, walks out of there with a smug smile and a fresh layer of delusion. pointedly: he is alone.

in prime time, we see all that stripped back. he's a stuttering, teary mess, humiliated and exposed and spiralling when faced with other people seeing him in the exact opposite way than how he is (literally) begging them to. his insecurities, his sexuality, his trauma, his deep and immovable sadness on show. no matter how hard he tries (has tried all his life), he simply is not fooling anybody. he relied on the scripted nature of reality tv to carry him through, to keep up appearances, to maintain a sense of control - he is classy. he is refined. he is dignified. not the least bit abnormal in any way - and the audience sees right through his bullshit.

prime time is so satisfying because it denies him the mask, denies him the opportunity to try and change the shape of the shadow he casts. he loses, monumentally, publically. but at the end of it, where is he?

surrounded by his friends, just as degenerate and abnormal as he is, the people that know him best and have stuck around all these years for better or worse, feeding his own words back to him:

can we just be us? people get you or they don't get you. yes. alright. yeah.

the final stage: acceptance.

[sunnyside30]

I made myself sad thinking about how in all of the major character moments for these characters (13x10, 15x08, and 17x07, respectively), the framing of the scene is of someone who is alone yet not alone.

Mac is alone against a storm but he has God and the approval from a father figure and a room full of strangers.

Charlie is alone on a Irish mountain but he still has his duty to his deceased father and the (eventual) support of his friends.

Dennis is alone under a spotight, his every words and movements judged. His friends fade into the background and the camera slowly pushes them out of the frame, highlighting his solitude. But when all is said and done, his friends do stay through the whole monologue and show their love for him after he gets a failing grade.

[sunnyside30]

I think an aspect of The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time people might be overlooking is that the viewers aren’t the only ones this play is about, it’s also very much about the writing of the characters.

And, as almost always when it comes to viewing these characters in certain environments, you cannot treat them all as equals. Neither Charlie nor Dennis are comfortable being in front of a live audience. This is shown over and over again (Sweet Dee’s Dating, Family Fight, Wolf Cola, PTSDee, etc.) and, perhaps most beautifully, in this Season’s premiere. Dee and Mac, in complete contrast, are desperate for attention and feedback, especially in the face of an audience/camera (Sweet Dee on Fire, Billboard, Goes to Hell, Wolf Cola, etc).

So whereas Dennis and Charlie are using this experience to rehearse normalcy in front of an audience/camera they don’t like to be in front of, Mac and Dee are using this experience to showcase their personalities in front of an audience/camera they thrive in front of… and that’s where the character commentary clearly diverges, obvious in the result of the scores, but perhaps less obvious as to what that means.

After Rehearsal 1, Charlie and Dennis only get “confused feedback" and comments on their appearances, because their performances were rooted in stifling their insecurities. Their attempts to look normal were a little botched, and now they only have negative feedback to try and correct. Because Mac and Dee veer the other way and play to an aspect of their personality that they like (being macho and being funny), they get enough positive feedback that allows them to try and improve.

So by Rehearsal 2, you have Dennis and Charlie even worse off, Dennis obsessing over his insecurities, tripping over his words and snapping and Charlie spiralling into a character of himself no one can recognise, to a point where they’re rejected by the audience even further for those insecurities and disregarded; meanwhile Dee and Mac much better off, leaning in to their strong suits allowed for their real personalities to shine from behind, which gave way for genuine feedback about themselves that’s revealling:

Mac, who has had his personality neutered by his obsession with having a singular identity, ends up realising from the audience feedback that people like him when he’s a mix of things, and he’s taking in this feedback and excited to build on it. He’s excited to find out an audience can view him as both badass and gay (and with Dennis)… as a vampire (s)layer, even (of course he takes it to an insane place, because that’s Mac.)

Dee, who has had her personality rejected by the Gang due to their dogpiling of her, is able to discover that she is funny, even situationally so, and her gags are not only encouraged but enjoyed as repeats, she's only dinged by a few due to the fact that she comes off as pathetically sad.

In my reading, this is indeed the writers addressing Dee and Mac criticisms of recent years (S13/14 heavily), and acknowledging their own shortcomings with characterisation there, using the repeat audience members who like their quirky personalities to highlight this in the neutering that occurs in Rehearsal #3:

"Dee never has anything to do ("How come I don't have any lines?"), they cut all her screentime and so she has no role in the Gang. ("How am I supposed to pop with this? I need to be slinging zingers.")" They are showcasing that Dee is a funny character, and having the return audience all sigh disappointingly when she sits down and they don't get the rubber chicken cry is acknowledging Dee as a central, reliant point of the comedy whose expected beats have been missing at times.

"Mac became one dimensional, all he cares about now is being gay/getting Dennis and he's lost every other aspect of his personality that fans loved." 'Badass' Mac make a fantastic showing, to the audience's delight, but the return audience witnessing him clean cut and falling in line, giving in and up to Dennis, results in vocal protest. "Let your boyfriend flip." Mac can be more than one thing at a time, people want to see every aspect of him, regardless of what his current focus is.

Charlie at the end, saying, "Forget it, can we just be us? We're trying to please everybody and that never works, man," is not him telling the Gang to accept that they're going to get a low rating from the audience no matter what, it's him telling them to forget what just happened. Forget the 3. Because the audience's rejection of Dee and Mac in the final Rehearsal wasn't about the audience at all, it was about the characters changing, for no good reason to the deterioration of themselves.

"People either get you or they don't get you, you know what I'm saying?" being met with Dee's very adamant "Yes." is clear enough to me: the audience was getting Dee until her gags were taken away from her; the audience was getting Mac until he was pushed into the role of sit down and shut up to please.

Dee and Mac being able to directly face the audience and see their enjoyment and encouragement of their over-the-top, raw personalities for themselves, has freed them of allowing themselves to be scripted into boxes based on their insecurities. They are free to re-embrace those things (as the writers are doing once more).

(This is obviously Dee/Mac focused, I would love to see someone expand on what I bounce off of with Charlie/Dennis here, if possible)

[sunnyside30]

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – 17.07: The Gang Gets Ready for Prime Time

[sunnyside30]

i neeeeed people to be normal about the grooming line. i need everyone to consider WHY dennis as a victim of csa would use the term grooming to refer to what mac has done in the past (hiding his intentions, trapping and coercing dennis, sexually assaulting him) and his paranoia about it happening again. please stop joking about how it's "working", or acting like this is an absurd statement because of his age; it's not about him being a literal child. he's getting triggered and recognizing it as the same type of abuse he experienced as a teen. dennis was groomed by klinsky and was made to believe he initiated things. maybe being told after the fact that he couldn't possibly have consented despite how he apparently felt about her or the situation makes it a little harder for him to trust how he feels, and know whether that has been manufactured. mac not actively pursuing dennis or having some hidden agenda is precisely why they've been Fine lately. dennis doesn't need to be ~forced out of the closet~ because it isn't about his sexuality; he needs to be allowed time to adjust to having someone pursue him again. he needs to trust mac's intentions (or lack thereof), but more importantly, he needs to trust himself.

[sunnyside30]

Did i catch you in a fantasy?

[sunnyside30]

Not to be the guy that takes iasip deadly seriously sometimes but I think Dee Reynolds of iasip fame is genuinely the perfect execution of the thesis that being a woman and engaging in misogyny will not actually make you equal to men, nor will it make men see you as their equal. There's so many iasip episodes where Dee assumes that the guys will have her back because she's partaking in their shitty behaviour with them, only for the guys to hang her out to dry almost every time. There's a recent episode where Frank is in a coma, and they all claim that they're gonna sit by his bedside until he dies, but the guys end up agreeing to leave Dee to do it alone while they go rustling up investment opportunities for Frank's money. This was never gonna happen any other way. Of course they were going to do that because they're assholes, but also because Dee is a woman and bedside sitting is often gendered towards women because nursing is gendered as feminine. Dee, famously, is not nurturing in any way, exemplified by the actual nurse who's there monitoring Frank who is actually nurturing. But none of that matters because Dee is a woman and this is what women are expected to do under patriarchy so the guys abandon her to do it. I won't spoil the episode, though it's a doozy and if you're familiar with iasip you probably (like I could when I watched) could see what was gonna happen from the start. Like in most episodes, these incredibly bigoted and cruel beliefs each of the gang have is ultimately what stops them succeeding or growing in any way, including Dee. But Dee Reynolds is truly such a brilliant character because I think we all know a woman like Dee who is an asshole and is misogynistic and they ultimately trap themselves forever in a social hellscape of their own making where no woman will ever wanna be friends with them really so they just hang out with dudes who don't really respect them and as a result they're incredibly lonely and bitter. She's basically the best critique ever of the guy's girl or pick me or whatever you want to call it where women who uphold, enable and even partake in misogyny will never be rewarded for it because misogyny and patriarchy is not built to reward women and it never will. Men will never actually reward women with power for stooping to their lowly heights and no character embodies this more than Dee Reynolds and she's my forever woman for that

[sunnyside30]

i lov her so goddamn bad…..

[sunnyside30]

there's something in the fact that mac assumes that freddie mercury was 100% straight because he only perceives him as masculine and tough while dennis assumes that freddie mercury was 100% gay because he only perceives him as flamboyant and camp. neither of them recognise the nuance of his identity just like they don't recognise nuance in their own. mac can only be gay or a badass, not both. dennis can only be into women or in an openly sexual relationship with mac, not both.

[sunnyside30]

[sunnyside30]

Getting a good grade at being the boss of dinner, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve

[sunnyside30]

[sunnyside30]

dennis getting to a point where he has to literally plead with the audience to see him for who he is, while still putting up fronts of who he wishes to be... classy, straight, good, palatable... his desperation to be seen as all these things that don't truly fit him, only for the audience to ignore that clearly expressed need in favour of just labeling him scary... his moment of vulnerability being played as something off-putting by the show and the audience simply buying into that... yeah they couldn't have gotten any more obvious with this