#I guess I was REALLY DESPERATE for more women screentime

[sskk-manifesto]

Through all the first time watching the second season I thought the shadows were supposed to represent Lucy, and even now I have an hard time shrugging that impression off

[italeteller]

Thoughts on Undead Unluck 208

I love horny women

ngl tho I'm kinda sad Rip's got abs this loop, I'd hoped he'd have a more regular-guy kinda body now that he's more doctor than fighter. Also I'm gonna be annoying and wonder if Tella could actually play the guitar or not with Untell. But also also... damn, look at all that beefcake buffet. Tozuka really knows how to keep the fanbase well fed

Sean's mom's likely dead like his dad, so he knows what Fuuko feels like wanting to see her mom again

Eyy they gave Julia a Union uniform, that's nice

Neat little detail, Sean has the mind to keep one eye open even when being splashed with water so as to not trigger Unseen with civilians around, you know he's been training his reactions

I guess this is implying Fuuko gets her looks from her dad? Seeing them side by side her eyes are rounder than her mom's, and her hairstyle looks similar to her dad's, though with her mom's color

Also it's really damn funny that Fuuko's dad is completely used to the disaster of a human being that is his future wife. The man loves his cringefail girl. Though also, it's weird that Fuuko doesn't seem to have realized that the guy is indeed her dad. Maybe she had more of a relationship with her mom?

I love that the Union can just call Fuuko's ass out and she remains eternally oblivious to her shonen MC behaviors

The fact that Unluck gets explicitly mentioned twice makes me think there's some negation fuckery afoot. I know everything we've seen so far makes it look like no two people can have the same negation at the same time, but still. Maybe it'll be a red herring, but I have to wonder

Ok, the big thing of the chapter. I have no idea what is going on, by all means it doesn't make sense, but Tozuka specifically brought up how this shouldn't be happening only to make it happen, so I believe he's got a plan, and the man plans good, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I also wanna point out that this is the very first loop someone other than Juiz is the looper, so this is literally the first time this scenario is happening in this world

Baby Fuuko in her panpanda onesie is the cutest fucking thing I've seen all week

Ok so Billy and Tella are indeed part of the Tatiana rescue mission (no Nico in sight tho, which is weird). I was so fixated on Gina being part of the idol mission I didn't even think she'd be a big asset as the only other russian on the team. And Chikara also makes sense, a quick activation of Unmove might be able to freeze Tatiana's Untouchable before it can blow her parents to dust. I hope that's the only reason he's there, and Tozuka isn't planning to resume the nonsense ship this loop too

Rip and Latla are on Bunny duty, no surprises there (though again, no Ichico, which is weird) and Shen and Mui are training literally under Feng. Sad day for Mei fans though, she seems to have been demoted to tea girl and isn't even training anymore. Guess my hopes of her being the Mui of this loop are dashed

Hoo boy. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I desperately wanna see the whole Union play musical band. On the other hand, Tozuka has done a big group arc three times: on the 11 minutes fight, the Unmove arc and the Sick, and he only pulled it off on the 11 minutes fight. I'd much rather have only Gina, Mui, Latla (and Leila! Twin idols shtick!), Yusai and Haruka get solid focus than have a big group where a few people get most of the screentime and everybody else gets three panels like the Unmove and Sick arcs

Idk what Tozuka has in store for Kururu, but I don't see how she's gonna outshine all of this

[taffybuns]

do you think betty likes being golb.. i just want her to be happy and to live and it seems she made peace with the past and who she is now but i want more of herrrrr please god. season 2 more women screentime

HI HELLO I FEEL CRAZY ABT THIS

it feels really hard to say but i think we're now addressing what happened in temple of mars- i don't think she likes being golb exactly, but now she doesn't know where to go and is going to figure it out like simon is

she spent so much of her life devoted to him and now that they have time to reflect on what went wrong there's not much of her left anymore.. the ending felt purposely vague towards this, where she backs up and begins glowing into what looks like a portal in a pose like she's about to sprint- the memory ends with her going to an unknown destination in GOLB's language so i can only guess she doesn't know either, and is not exactly happy yet either

i really desperately needed a season 2 man LMAO i know they're holding golbetty back because she's a good potential plot for future spinoffs if theyre ever granted any (and if not then rip, they did leave it to try), i liked the ending but it's disheartening how much betty gets shelved again and again

i'm mostly just glad they addressed how her behavior was unhealthy bc i've been waiting for her to move on from her obsesson since temple of mars/come along with me kinda shattered the perfect petrigrof illusion so this is the first step (i hope)

final thoughts

[dontsh0vethesun]

Why are you complaining about the canonical gay kiss??? This is really big for both Marvel and Disney to do since they always try to cater to the Chinese market. You should be celebrating. Representation is representation, both WLW and MLM! AgathaRio will get their spotlight too so stop complaining.

Also why do you have Cis men in you DNI??? I get that Cis men can be really gross but it’s really strange to put a specific gender in your DNI. It just seems like you hate men in general.

It wasn't a 'complaint'. It was a factual statement followed by a joking one (you don't seem to have a sense of humour so I guess that needed explaining). But I also am not desperate to see characters who are 16 kissing, especially when there is another queer relationship who have had considerably more screentime together than Billy and his boyfriend.

'Representation is representation' is okay in theory but when sapphic representation has been, and still is, considerably different to MLM it falls short. Sapphic relationships in media are hardly ever given the same kind of attention as MLM ones so, god forbid, I am rooting for the two women who have actually been well written as queer characters to actually have an on-screen kiss.

I, as well as everybody else, am entitled to cater my own tumblr blog to suit me. As a lesbian who creates fanfiction depicting lesbians and sapphic relationships, I would hate for cis men to be interacting with my posts or even looking at my blog. Not everything has to include men and my tumblr page is one of those spaces that they are not welcome in.

If you follow me, the unfollow button is free to use. If you don't, the block button will also cost you nothing. Or, an even simpler option, you can just scroll past posts that you don't agree with rather than going to somebody's page to criticise them for holding differing, and completely harmless, opinions.

Get a grip and go outside. It's actually baffling that somebody would read a 19 word post by a stranger on the internet and then take time out of their day to criticise them - and anonymously, no less.

[therine-watches]

a Review - You

*major spoiler warning*

Oh, holy, holy, holy fuck.

Up until the last 30 minutes or so of the last episode, I was convinced that You Season 3 could be crowned the most disappointing season of all but lo and behold, this season was a Fucking Masterpiece.

Season 3 picks up a couple of months after season 2 with the birth of his baby, and just like any other season, the story starts off at a new place - a wealthy suburban area called Madre Linda - only, we start off with the same characters: Joe and Love. The cliffhanger of Season 2’s Mysterious Blonde Neighbour - surprise, it wasn’t his mom or Blake Lively/Serena van der Woodsen - turns out to be killed in episode one when Love quickly picks up on her husband’s unsurprising but disappointing infidelity. The next few episodes dig a different path from the previous ones; Joe’s main obsessive crush develops later and there is a tighter dynamic focus between Love and Joe. 

The rest of the season is told from a different lens from seasons 1 and 2; Joe is still the main narrator but the story expands to a larger and more diverse cast, as well as Love’s growing impulsivity, Matthew’s persistence in finding his wife’s murderer, and the shallow yet comedic dynamic of the people in Madre Linda. And while I wasn’t always a fan of the pacing, the season manages to pull it off quite effortlessly; so much is invested into each individual character and their thoughts, creating a fresher and equally unpredictable story as the other two seasons. 

I also felt like this season was the closest to the book. At a deeper exploration of Joe’s traumatic childhood, the light in his pattern of women is clearer - surprise, mommy issues! - but the novelty of his self-analysis isn’t generous to the issue of repetition and self-justification for the viewers. I’m still not sure if it was the lacking chemistry between Joe and Marianne or how expectingly forced the sudden crush was (or even the are you flirting with me? you are flirting with me a moment) that felt unconvincing and a mere tool for the final build-up. 

As previously mentioned, this season latches more onto Love’s perspective without neglecting Joe’s story. However, even with the perfect amount of screentime and plot line, the story continues to treat her as a side character; in addition to a deeper focus on psychological exploration, I think the show could have benefitted more if the narration had a power struggle between Joe and Love, teasing a potential story shift from Joe to Love that could have drawn a deeper impact in Love’s murder.   

In conclusion, here are some of the Most Memorable Moments of season 3:

- Taylor Swift and Bon Iver’s ‘Exile’ as Joe walking out of the house as it exploded. This is the scene that changed EVERYTHING. From the music to Joe covering up his act to Sherry desperately searching for the key to Love and her suicide letter… favorite scene of the entire show, hands down. 

- Joe finally doing one selfless act and giving up Henry to Dante and his husband for a much more healthy and normal environment. Sure, the kid will learn that his mother was a suburban wife-kill-innocent-husband cliche and the build up between him and Joe feels wasted, but I guess it’s the best end for a baby. 

- The bathtub scene between Love and Forty where he tells her that he is her soulmate. I cried a bit. This scene made me realize that I do wish that the show focused more on the repercussions of their actions and how grief hits the people around the victim, but I suppose because this is narrated by two killers who justify every action, that’s out of the picture.

- Love killing Natalie within the very first episode; Natalie really didn’t deserve it but it was definitely in character for Love and completely swung (lol) out of nowhere when the entire season anticipation was building up around her.

- The MYSTERY. The first few episodes adopt a Dostoesvkian change of narration; nothing is better than an ominous, murder-vibe American suburban story - and the first half of the season is exactly that.

- Joe’s monologue. Never fails to entertain.

- Victoria Pedretti. Absolutely obsessed with her and her performance. Perfect comedic timing to perfect switch up to a convincing impulsive and unpredictable serial killer. 

- Sherry Conrad - and the depiction of the rest of the ensemble’s story of arc and response. 

Albeit the slower pace, Season 3 of You manages to stay on its feet with a story as exciting and enthralling as the previous two seasons. The story does an excellent job of setting up high-stakes and unpredictable plotlines, and though I am definitely disappointed we won’t be seeing any more of Victoria Pedretti/Love Quinn,  I am definitely excited for the direction Season 4 will take.

[the-king-andthe-lionheart]

Major HOTD Spoilers

Going into House of the Dragon I expected to cry when Aemma died in childbirth.  I heard the little amount of screentime she had in the pilot really set her up to be an instant sympathetic, if not loveable character.  I also knew that the writer’s were taking the dangers of childbirth in a pseudo-medieval world seriously and realistically for the supposed time period, which really excited me because you hardly ever see this explored in fantasy or even in historical dramas, beyond “oh this woman died on the birthing bed, oh well”.  However, I did not expect how they actually did this in the show.  On one hand it was horrifying and brutal and just thinking of it makes me tear up and start crying again.  I was sobbing watching the scene of Aemma in childbirth, so much so that I completely missed Daemon and Christon Cole’s fight.  One would think that this reaction I had was a very negative reaction and that I hated it, but surprisingly I didn’t.  It wasn’t gratuitous to me like Sansa’s r*pe was in GOT S5, and I don’t feel like it was a cheap way to shock the audience or add just another act of violence against women in medieval-esque settings.  No, I thought it brought to light the realities of what women had to go through in that type of society and how they were ruled by their husband, or other men, to make decisions for them, even life and death decisions.

In the pilot they clearly depict that Aemma was subjected to the normalized abuse of constantly being subjected to pregnancy and childbirth just so a male heir could be birthed.  We see Aemma pregnant at the Great Council of 101 AC, and then we see Aemma heavily pregnant again 9 years later.  She pleads with Viserys about how she wants this pregnancy to be her last.  She has already had five pregnancies in twice as many years, none of them viable as she went through several miscarriages and stillbirths.  This is a realistic depiction of what it meant to be a married woman (especially a noble woman) in that type of society, with the expectations of producing heirs.  Aemma shows that she has accepted her duty/was socialized by the patriarchal society around her to accept it, but it’s obvious it’s been hard on her, and this isn’t even a show only thing.  In the books Viserys is desperate for a male heir and is constantly impregnating Aemma until her death.  And if the ASOIAF world is anything like the real medieval world, then 1 in every 20 women would die in childbirth.  I guess that doesn’t seem like a lot, but consider how these odds aren’t just there permanently, as in if you survived one childbirth you’ll survive them all, no, these odds were there every single time.  So when you factor in how many children women were having in those days, those rates get even higher and higher for a singular woman.  And let’s not forget the mortality rates of children in those days as well.  A quarter of babes did not reach childhood/past their toddler days, and only about half of the children born made it to adulthood, as in 16 years old or so.  

Childbirth, indeed, is a battlefield, as Aemma Arryn said, which leads me into another aspect I really loved about the pilot, how Aemma’s labor and death was juxtaposed with the tourney.  While the tourney wasn’t a real battle, the participants were playing at battle, while Aemma also fought in childbirth.  I thought it was just a really great bit of writing that was never really seen in GOT from my recollections.

So like I said, this scene of Aemma trying to give birth to her son was just absolutely heartwrenching.  And surprisingly, seeing Aemma’s choice being taken away was almost prophetic to our own current political climate in America, which I think just made the experience of watching it even more horrifying.  Giving Viserys the choice to let both Aemma and his heir die, or try to save the heir (because Aemma was going to die regardless) is something that really captures the core of GRRM’s world.  GRRM calls it “the heart in conflict”, but he also loves posing the question of “what would you do in this or that situation?” and he loves morally gray, complex characters who are both capable of good and bad.

As we saw, Viserys tries to save his son and heir, without so much as a discussion with Aemma.  Viserys doesn’t tell her the medical prognosis, nor the statistics.  He doesn’t give her the choice.  She doesn’t know what’s happening and she’s pleading and crying as they cut into her and it’s so fucking horrific, but it’s so horrific because of how real it is.  Viserys supposedly loved Aemma but he took her choice away and didn’t respect her enough to let her decide for herself or for them to decide together.  It’s despicable, but it’s quintessential GRRM/ASOIAF with its moral grayness and quandaries.  Think Jaime Lannister being capable of throwing a 7 year old boy out a tower window, yet two books later he goes back and saves Brienne of Tarth from being mauled by a bear.  Viserys, in the show, is a very complex character so far.  He’s weak, but he can make some of his own decisions, he trusts the wrong people, he loves his brother but is suspicious of him, he loves his daughter but didn’t think she was capable of being heir until he lost everything else and now he feels guilt over it.  He wants to keep the peace because of the heavy burden he bears, yet the Iron Throne keeps cutting him and infecting him, and instead of listening to his family and trying to join their strength together, he listens to conniving lickspittles.  He loved his wife, Aemma, but he still impregnated her back to back to back, and instead of informing Aemma about any of what was happening, he let people push her down into a mattress and cut her stomach open for her to bleed out in agony, not knowing why.  It’s despicable, it’s morally gray, almost black, and I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around his character thinking this is okay.  However, I like this moral complexity, I enjoy it, and it was something that was lost in the original GOT series where almost everyone lost their complexity.

But in the end, I mourn for Aemma Arryn. She was only in a few scenes but she held a huge presence, and I feel her death and the circumstances behind it will haunt Rhaenyra during S1, especially when she is forced by Viserys to marry and produce heirs.  I don’t know if I’m in the minority or not, but I thought the way they explored the dangers of childbirth and the complete insidiousness of how it could be was really well done.  It was horrifying and macabre, but narratively it was just a 10/10 episode for me, despite how heartwrenching it was.

(I hope I made it clear that I didn’t get any joy out of this death.  I thought it was just really well done, and I applaud them for writing something that wasn’t just obviously put in for shock value with nothing deeper going on.  I do not like it when shows become gratuitous, but I do not like when shows also shy away from hard topics or adult content that they could narratively address on a deeper level once put into the text.  And I thought the show did great with this so far in the pilot.)

[panharmonium]

@dreamersscape​ please forgive me for tagging you in a post to respond to your comments; tumblr’s reply feature is hard to have an extended/coherent conversation on, and I’m so excited to talk to a kindred Naruto spirit that I knew I was gonna write too much for it all to fit in that space XD

re: hinata - Oh my gosh, YES, my sister and I were so frustrated by how they just completely never addressed that moment again.  I wasn't surprised, because it's been clear from the beginning that this show doesn't really care much about women, so the female characters' storylines getting dropped or never explored in the first place is pretty much what I've always expected, but it's still infuriating.  

Honestly, the only good thing about this show's general disinterest in women is that it means that I don't place any blame on in-story Naruto for never addressing what Hinata did for him, because I know the fact that we don't see him dealing with her confession isn't actually intended to communicate anything about his reaction/non-reaction/level of investment; it's literally just a function of the fact that the writer doesn't care about her story.  It's the same way I feel about how we see so much less one-on-one time between Kakashi and Sakura - her lack of screentime with him isn't something about which a person can credibly argue "Oh, this means Kakashi doesn't care about her enough and he's a bad teacher etc etc," because the imbalance isn’t a deliberate writing decision we're supposed to analyze for characterization.  It's a reflection of the fact that the entire show is super sexist. XD

re: danzo: It’s one thing to have your villain believe himself to the hero of his own story, and like, another to have Danzo basically tout having darkness in your heart being a great thing and encouraging it’s presence/cultivating it - lmao YES!  And honestly, this is why I actually find Danzo LESS infuriating than the Third Hokage.  Like, Danzo is Super Evil and every time he exploits another child I want to watch him die all over again, but at least he like....owns his horribleness?  Whereas Hiruzen is the biggest hypocrite on the planet - when I rewatched the Shonen Jump stuff a while back (my sister and I took a little break prior to Season 11 and rewatched some old stuff), I couldn't stand listening to Hiruzen go on and on about how the entire Leaf Village is his family and it's his role to protect all of them etc etc, because like - he literally covered up the genocide of Sasuke's entire family and let the perpetrator remain in power (and that was before I even knew about all these other crimes he allowed to go unpunished!!!)  Danzo may be the Worst, but at least he's not pretending to be anything other than what he is.  Hiruzen is still acting like he's everybody's sweet old grandpa, and that makes me even more angry than Danzo's straight-up horribleness.  (And I do agree with you, they definitely lean harder into the "Lord Third is amazing" stuff pre-Shippuden, I just still feel confused about what the show is ultimately trying to say about him because we haven't gotten an explicit enough condemnation of his choices yet, and I feel like it's way overdue XD )

re: minato - Hard agree that Minato is an enigma.  I don't feel like I fully understand him either - and not in a bad way, just in the sense that he's hard to read.  The toughest thing for me to parse was always how distant he seemed with his students, which was surprising to me at first, because he'd been built up as sort of this "ideal shinobi" figure for such a long time, but to me, an ideal shinobi teacher looks more like...well, Kakashi, to be honest.  And it took a while for me to reconcile with the fact that Minato and Kakashi really do just relate to their students very differently.  I think Minato has always been a soldier, and I think he sees children as soldiers, too - not in an evil way at all, just in the sense that this is how the shinobi world works, and how it has always worked.  It's not a "wrong" way to perceive shinobi kids, in the context of the story's universe.  And so when things happen to those kids, he absolutely cares, but it's also sort of just a grim fact of life for him.  It's like when Kushina tells him she doesn't want to make Naruto a jinchuriki, and she asks 'why do we have to do that to him, why does he have to suffer that way for the sake of the balance of power between nations,' and Minato's response is “Because our family is Shinobi.”  That was a really telling moment for me in terms of how he sees the world.  It's not something I'm interested in condemning him for, like you said; I don't think the story is ever asking us to do that, it’s just a philosophy that's very different from how Kakashi sees things and what he thinks children's experiences should be like.  

I guess what I ultimately think (from the material we’ve seen so far, at least) is that Minato seems to perceive the loss of his students as something that Kakashi is struggling with, not something he himself is agonizing over.  It’s a very sad thing that happened, of course, but it’s just part of the way their world works/a function of the times they live in.  It's not something Minato is tormenting himself about.  Whereas I think that if Kakashi ever lost a kid, it would have killed him.  And I don't think this fact is in any way supposed to paint Minato as a bad person.  He's not!  All it means is that there is a generational difference between the world Kakashi and Co. are trying to create and the world Minato always knew, and people like Minato are doing the best they can with the framework they have.  

I do like the guy a lot - and I wonder what he might have been like if he had lived to see a permanent peace established.

re: little Yamato - oh boy, those episodes nearly ended me.  I am already very, very, VERY weak for Kakashi and Yamato’s friendship, and seeing Kakashi rescue Yamato from that horrible place (literally and metaphorically) was too much for me to handle.  Kakashi’s silhouette replacing Danzo in Yamato’s memories of being rescued from Orochimaru’s lab - that slew me.  And the way Danzo tells Yamato “you have no past, no future, no name” juxtaposed with Kakashi introducing Yamato as Tenzo because he remembers from three years ago how Yamato once rebelled at being called Kinoe and yelled “MY NAME IS TENZO” - Kakashi just using that chosen name without hesitation, without question, without needing to be told...it all ties back into the recent thematic throughline the show is working with about Identity - the importance of the Tailed Beasts having names, Kabuto’s desperate and misguided search for “who and what he is,” Itachi reclaiming his true self by undoing the reanimation justu and declaring “I am Itachi Uchiha of the Leaf Village,” Obito claiming that his real name doesn’t matter anymore, that he’s Nobody...it’s fantastic how they’re pulling all this together.

re: Kakashi and little Naruto - oh man, the feelings.  I agree with you that Kakashi was in no place to be dealing with this, but certainly under different circumstances I think he would have loved to be a part of baby Naruto’s life.  I actually think the reasoning behind “let’s put Kakashi in a situation where he’s in close contact with someone bringing new life into the world” is sound - I think that would be a really good thing for him!  Just not in the sense of “you’re Kushina’s personal bodyguard, so if anything happens to her and the baby you can blame yourself for it.” XD  Like...Minato could have invited Kakashi in for dinner sometimes, instead of having him constantly stand guard under their window???  If it had been more “we care about you and we want you to be a part of our family”....ugh, that would have been amazing.  Kakashi is already SO good with Naruto (who is NOT by any means an easy kid to manage) - he just has such good instincts about how to talk to that kid and teach him in ways that work WITH Naruto’s particular brand of high motivation/low frustration tolerance, ping-pong emotional extremes, explosive energy levels, zero impulse control, and an inability to process more than one thing at a time.  Handling Naruto effectively would be a challenging project for any teacher, never mind taking care of Naruto and two other kids, but Kakashi is a natural at it.  It would have been awesome to see what Kakashi was like with Naruto when they were even younger...though the Feels might knocked me out.

[also, you mentioned Naruto and Obito - I cannot even tell you the Extremest Agonies I was in when the big reveal happened and I had to hear Naruto blankly go “who is he” - utterly clueless, without the faintest idea that he’s looking at the person who shaped his entire moral philosophy.  The amount of things that these kids don’t know...that fact that Naruto has been quoting this very person all his life and making all his major life decisions based on the lesson Kakashi relayed to them on Day One - Obito’s words - oh boy oh boy I was not capable of handling that even the littlest bit.]

[diamondcitydarlin]

In reference to your previous post about Sy*ki but holy shit

'it just feels like loki was unashamedly remolded into a different character' and 'and in that way just feels like the product of a wishfulfillment fanfic'

Are you aware you have quite literally boiled down Loki to one of it's funniest core issues that I desperately hope you're aware of: It was based on the lead writer's self-insert script. I am not joking, Waldron wrote a script about a time-travelling male lead who can be easily argued to be a self-insert and about his fantasy woman being the coolest most kick-ass bestest woman ever but just can't help but love him and fall for his amazing male charms! For some reason !

Somebody found this script, and it turns out the entire Loki show is based on it, right down to having a President Loki counterpart. I can't remember the exact title, but it's something very similar to: 'the worst man in the universe and the woman who came to kill him.'

It's somewhere online and linked in a tumblr post somewhere, and god I wish I could find it for you.

Loki literally is a different character bc he's Waldron's fantasy man, doing nothing but still getting the blazing hot woman (Sylvie) bc women just can't resist him. I really hope you knew about this fact beforehand, or this is going to be a tragic anon to read.

Haha no worries anon, I'm not only aware of this script but I have (quite unfortunately) read it and as I do voiceover/narration work from time to time I've been tempted to do a funny dramatic reading of it lol but it really does enrage me and idk that this work, however laughably bad, is worth any of my time or energy so...probably won't do that. Might be funny tho.

Now, the truth is, there are elements of this screenplay that can work (though there aren't many and most of it is misogynist self unaware garbage). While Waldron didn't invent the TVA, he did provide inspo for the time-traveling story concept to be implemented in such a way that Loki could slot in...though the comics technically do the same thing, but I can't expect execs at Marvel Studios to uhm...*checks notes* be at all familiar with the comics themselves. I guess what I'm saying is, his script provided the inspo template they apparently needed to put all these pieces together, even though they all existed prior and could've been accessible with even just a cursory look at a wikipedia page for their own source material- but ANYWAY!

I also love the concept of President Loki, I think it can work well and I've outlined how I would've best implemented him in a story arc that would also address variant!Loki's character growth (that is to say that I would've started by giving him more than 5 secs of screentime lol). There is definitely some little bits of useful scrap here and there in this junkheap of a screenplay (that most certainly would've been ridiculed and rejected and shredded and deleted to hell had it been written by anyone not in Michael's demographic / sphere of influence) that can be salvaged into a story that is actually relevant to Loki.

But no one was interested in doing that, least of all Mike, who I'm sure has never had to suffer a shred of doubt in his life about this screenplay and felt fully entitled to pushing forward with the story as it was because fuck Loki, really, he's got a story to tell. Not a good one, and certainly not one that's going to appeal to most people who enjoy this character and will be tuning in, but fuck 'em, right? Why should he care?

Anyway, I'm glad that Owen and Tom did at least.

[runolllo-fanboygirl]

---------------------------------

I'm going to start by clarifying that these are messages I got in response to my post here /// LINK /// After this, I'm not replying to messages about this kinda thing in a long time. Talking about sexualization and such other topics is important but I'm not in a state to be made the center of it. Please, don't come to my inbox asking for discourse, go and create your own posts if you want to raise awareness or vent.

And now to answer to these new asks:

FIRST OF ALL: while I love the way Murata draws men, robotic stuff, monsters... I actually HATE the way he draws ladies! I prefer their proportions in the OPM anime and games. Murata is literally SO BAD at drawing women compared to the level of expertise he has drawing men, and it's all ‘cos he keeps drawing ladies "the h0rny way". We all know this, let's move on.

"He's drawing all the monster girls sexualized" Did the fact that Manako's genre reveal deconstructs the trope "the default is male" totally go over your head? That Psykos's reveal as a woman running the whole MA was a big deal for this same reason as well? There are a bunch of female monsters… you just assume they're all male unless you see big b00bs and then complain about that very fact. They literally made a whole point about this specifically!

"He changed Mizuki's shorts to p4nties to please fanboys" I liked the shorts better too (just because I find her whole character design a bit more balanced that way) so that change bothered me as well, but the "p4nties" are actually standard athletic wear for competition. Shorts are not. Technically, she’s drawn more accurately now.

"Sports Bras don't work that way he just wants to draw b00bs" neither do the shirts and bodysuits the guys are wearing. You can see all their muscles and manb00bs and cr0tch lines, just as much as with Fubuki and Tatsu's hero outfits and Mizuki's top.

"But when the boys are drawn that way, it's not to please the ladies, it's male power fantasy" THERE IS NO HETEROSEXUAL MALE POWER FANTASY BULLSHIT THAT CAN POSSIBLY EXPLAIN THE WAY MURATA DRAWS GAROU, FLASH, SONIC, STINGER AND SOME OF THE OTHER GUYS. The fact is that the way he draws eye candy of them appeals to other collectives other than the cis het men and he knows exactly what he's doing. Period.

"He constantly draws sexualized art of Mizuki to please the fanboys" Why exaggerate so much? This is simply not true. She's a woman in athlete wear, most of the time she's either standing up talking or fighting, no weird angles or anything. There is like 1 sexy cover of her, the back cover with all the girls in bikinis and then that infamous watermelon sequence. That's all the sexualization you are talking about.

"Mizuki only gets so much screen time because of how much p0rn of her there is" oh yeah Mizuki got a grand total of, like, *drum roll* 1 chapter and a half dedicated to her! Wow! Which is NOTHING taking into consideration how dense Garou's arc is and the fact that they will need at least 2 seasons of the anime to finish it.

But think about this: OPM desperately needed more female presence, in special with the prospect of finishing Garou's arc in the anime. Making anime is hard and COSTLY. Most of the people who is going to watch the anime haven't read the manga and they'll be like "what the heck there are no female characters in this anime for like 3 seasons?" and there is no team that's going to risk it working with such prospects. We know why.

Of all the expansion that Garou's arc got in the manga adaptation (and later in the anime), one of the most sensible and balanced decisions was to add more ladies. They put all those monster ladies for season 2, and then for season 3 we get Manako and Mizuki having some strong presence, Shadow and Kamaitachi there a bit in the back too. It benefits the pace and balance of both the manga and the future season 3 so immensely because Fubuki, Tatsumaki and Psykos take a LOOONG while to be relevant during Garou's Arc… in special with all the filler the manga put in between (but all that filler is of the S-Class boys getting development and a reality check which is kinda important too lol).

Point is: the screentime Mizuki got was VERY necessary to balance things in between of all the relentless Garou fights and the boys being boys. Sure Mizuki is beautiful and sexy and all, but really EVERYONE was waiting for a new female character that was relevant, likeable, fun… and on top of everything, it's so rare to see a strong 2m tall girl in fiction in general, not even just anime. Everyone got instantly excited about her because she's exactly what we needed AND MORE. And sure, people draw p0rn of her like they do with most other popular characters, what did you expect.

"The ladies are always more sexualized-" YES, in the OPM manga, the ladies are a little more sexualized than the men –but not by much AND not during plot stuff. By that I mean that most of the so called "sexualizing the girls" happens in the covers, back covers and promotional art very exclusively, and not during the story itself. HOWEVER, a lot of the sexy men bits do happen during the story, curiously.

 In the anime though, there is almost zero ladies fanservice (which makes sense since there is almost no female presence in the first 2 seasons anyway). Yet it's full of naked dudes, sometimes for a good reason, but mostly just so we can look at them being sexy and silly.

 I personally don't care if the man candy and ladies fanservice is not perfectly even in Murata's manga adaptation, because there is enough of both in his work, as well as other official OPM stuff like the anime and games to bring a very nice balance in the s3xy department.

 "The way the women are dressed-" Most of the background ladies are wearing skirt uniforms and shit, but all the relevant ladies primarily dress in nothing you can call "sexualized" except for maybe Tatsumaki with her strong leg game. To recall:

 Lilly wears the same as the men of the Blizzard Group; Twin Tail just dresses like a jester; Mizuki is the first to show so much skin, but she's still wearing real standard competition wear for athletes. All the other sportwomen (Hornet and Swim) and martial artists (Shadow, Suiko, Lin Lin) wear standard clothes for their respective professions too. Sure we've seen Shadow wearing some, uh, ninja bikini thing under her ACTUAL work clothes, but for actual fights she's fully dressed and surprisingly not stuffed in a tiny nylon bodysuit that rips like stocking, like all the ninja men in the series do lmao.

Fubuki and Tatsumaki are, like, the only ones wearing dresses and they can because they use psychic powers anyway. Fubuki doesn't even show ANY skin, ever! She just happens to have big b00bs! Kamaitachi is the other one wearing a "skirt" but it's similar to what Japanese martial artists would wear, too.

So, again… all this sexualization we are talking about is not even happening anywhere except in Murata's covers and some promotional art. ONE is famous for treating ladies very fairly, even if Murata tries very hard to exploit the sexy out of every single of the ladies ONE creates. All these ladies have their own agenda and personality that have nothing to do with being pretty or f*ckable. In fact, in-universe, no one ever mentions if the heroines are beautiful or sexy and no one ever talks about liking them for those reasons (except for Lilly and Erika who are gay for Fubuki and Tatsumaki respectively, amazingly enough no hetero characters mention it). I think the first time we've ever seen a relevant character talking about dating another relevant character is when Suiryu told Saitama and Suiko to date (but Suiryu is the resident h0rny fuckboy of the series, if someone was going to say something so stupid for all the wrong reasons, it was going to be him).

For being an adult series, a seinen that parodies shonen tropes and all, OPM is seriously very tame in the sexy ladies department. For this series, the sexy is just a luxurious accessory, just one more little thing. It's always pretty weird when people get so angry and disappointed about a new sexy girl cover or a couple of compromising panels, like they don't know what to expect.

 "He only draws that way to please the h0rny fanboys" Murata IS a h0rny fanboy himself and draws shit that appeals to him as much as he feels he’s allowed to insert in the series. Please remember he's the insane fanboy that reached up to ONE to beg him to continue One Punch Man and offered to make a manga adaptation to promote OPM.

From the moment Murata started drawing OPM, the tone of the manga was set and never changed: lots of blood and guts, comical and non-comical nudity, irreverence, sexy angles, Genos ripping his shirts off, ninjas in body suits that rip like they are nylons… people in shirts, tanktops and dresses so tight you can see all their muscles, boobs and even belly buttons whether they are men or women or otherwise… h0rny chapter covers, stupidly h0rny monsters…

Just reading the manga to the point where Genos and Mosquito Girl first appear, you know what you are in for with OPM. I don't know what some fans are expecting to see in OPM next, but I'm going to take a wild guess here and say: you should expect more of the same.

 At the end of the day, the manga is Murata's work with ONE, and if he likes drawing h0rny ladies more than boys, that's how things are! This is just 2 guys with their passion project. I don't expect of them the same as if there was a bigger team with a big budget behind the series, like it happens with many games and shows. In this last case, I would be a lot stricter about all this, because with more resources you're expected to do better things.

[mostweakhamlets]

genuine question: why is staged cringe?

I want to preface this by saying that I loved Staged initially. I thought it was a super cool concept with actors I’m fans of. I still think that it is a really cool concept! I think it’s great that these actors hatched this idea of acting from home over video chat. I love it when people are experimental. I love it when people break the status quo with art. 

However, I think that this is one of the downfalls with Staged. There’s so much potential there, and you really notice how much of that was squandered when you start noticing the things about the show that don’t sit right with you. At least, that’s how I felt. 

It really is a matter of, “I feel like this show aged poorly. For the love of God, make series two different.”

I have a lot to say about this, so I’ll put it under the cut and in sections haha

Superwomen

This was my biggest peeve with Staged. I felt like the women (mostly Anna and Georgia) couldn’t just exist. It felt so unnatural and so forced. Like “Look, these women are just any women.” 

I know that Georgia Tennant already has this sort of public image of being this super productive mom (which I have more feelings about but won’t go into it here). I think that’s awesome! But Staged hammed that up. I know that it was supposed be a satire version of her, but come on. She’s Supermom to the point that her husband is incompetent? That he really can’t make dinner for his own children? That he has to just reheat something she made that week? 

We see Georgia as the perfect woman—helps a friend with childbirth, writes a book, she apparently does all the cooking and cleaning (judging by how surprised she looks when she notices all the laundry folded and put away when she returns from the childbirth), and is the perfect mom and wife. And I know that she had little screentime, but why couldn’t we see any actual flaws? Why does she have to be Supermom every time we see her while her husband seemingly dicks around on Zoom all day? 

And then there’s Anna. She’s much more private than Georgia is irl, so she doesn’t already have this crafted public persona. We see less of her in Staged. The Tennants have more of a story than she and Michael do. And with that time, they really made sure to make… smart. I guess you could call it that. 

It felt like there was an attempt to make her smart when she had all this information about—what was it? Italian fascism?—on the top of her head. But it definitely felt “smart” in the way that men often think people are “smart.” They can just regurgitate facts rather than actually say anything constructive. It felt like she had just played Trivial Pursuit a lot or binged watched every single episode of QI. I’ve no idea why they felt the need to just awkwardly shoehorn that in when there are so many other ways to show that a woman is intelligent. 

It makes me wonder what the creative team thinks of women—at what point is a woman valuable in front of a camera? Could a character like me, who doesn’t know a lot of trivia or isn’t an exceptional cook or can be a birthing partner, earn screentime in a production by these men? Are women allowed to be flawed beyond “Haha yeah I’m eating cake while watching yoga videos” and agreeing to put recycling in someone else’s bin? 

Is there an oversaturation of the male ego in Staged? Kinda. It was all about three men’s shit show while girlfriends and wives stood in the background as flawless house partners. It feels like that bland brand of feminism that’s like, “Women can do anything! And that includes compensating for their male partner’s shortcomings!” 

Covid Insensitivities  

Back in March, we were all different people! We thought we saw a light at the end of the tunnel. We were watching TikToks and staying home and supporting essential workers. But things got very much worse. As an American, I’m terrified of what’s going to happen in my country alone. Much of the world has been hit hard, and government leaders all over are proving to be incompetent. 

But early summer/late spring was a different time. And when they filmed Staged, they had a Covid subplot with Michael’s neighbor. At the time, it felt fine. But now it feels icky, in my opinion. It feels wrong for rich people, safe in their homes, to craft a storyline where a fictional woman has Covid, and “It really affects me, Michael Sheen. I’m worried about this.” 

At the time, I felt like, “Is this really the angle they should have taken with such a serious global issue?” And now I feel like, “This is definitely not a subplot they should have gone with. Oh my God, I physically cannot watch Michael Sheen fake crying while on the phone with a doctor.” 

Their hearts were probably in the right place, but it aged terribly. I really hope that they don’t return to subplots like that in series two.

Which brings me to my next point: 

The Oh So Relatable Lives of Celebrities

The Covid-neighbor subplot felt wrong for another reason: it felt like a misguided attempt to look relatable to an audience who is probably a bit more exposed to the virus than these people sitting in their massive homes. 

I won’t go into this much because I don’t see it as a major issue. Again, at the time it felt fine. We thought we were all in this together, and these rich people really did get the common struggles: dealing with childcare, being cooped inside all day, etc. 

But again, things changed. 

I’m honestly tired (and a bit bitter) of seeing rich people trying to pose as having the same set of problems the rest of us do right now. Sure, it must be hard to raise five kids right now. But when this is over, the Tennants get their nanny back irl. Yes, it’s hard to stay inside all day with little outlets. But Michael Sheen irl 1) has actually been acting quite a bit during this, as we’ve seen now, with plenty of press and 2) has a huge garden and a magical little park he could always walk to. 

I can’t help but feel bitter as I sit in debt, unemployed, watching very well-off actors get irritable over lockdown. 

In General 

In general, Staged was fun at the time. It was cute, and I enjoyed watching it when it came out. It was during the “hopeful” stage of the pandemic, as I like to call it. Loans payments and rent payments were paused. Eviction was illegal. People who could, stayed home and watched TikToks. But now we’re in a different stage. 

A lot has happened, and a lot of places are refusing to shut down states/countries again for the sake of the economy. People are starting to realize how little their individual livelihoods matter to our governments. There are tense elections all over the world. There’s no relief being provided for people who desperately need it. 

I think that the sort of quirky Covid stories like Staged aren’t going to be necessarily enjoyable right now. Really, the last thing I want to see is rich people pretending like they’re struggling in their huge homes and with their presumably unlimited resources. 

I’m really holding my breath with series two. I hope that they go in a different direction than they did last time, or it’ll be a completely tone-deaf show to me. 

Like I said, there is so much you can do with a setup like Staged, but I think that they dropped the ball so many times that it just feels like someone else should take over this format. 

I’d completely understand if people disagree with me. These are just my criticisms of the show.

[b-rainlet]

Gotham for the fandom ask thingy.

(I ran here so fuckin fast you have no clue)

Hello anon! :D I will answer this now, so you don't have to wait any longer but also....this would be very nice to answer through gifsets...(maybe when I am feeling up for it).

For now, have this:

(It's not proof read because I just sat at this for several hours and I don't wanna look at it anymore).

Favourite Male Character

You mean...besides the obvious answers?? :D

Ngl, it's S2 Jerome. I love that little twink with his parental issues and his tragic backstory and I wanna see him happy. There's a reason I have a bunch of AUs where he ends up having a family (mostly in the form of Lee as his Mother) and gets some actual help instead of being ostracized for being a mentally ill person snapping after years of abuse.

(This also ties into my very strong feelings regarding the fact that nobody actually helps the people at Arkham. And I don't mean the main villains there, I mean all the inmates who get treated like shit and are left behind on the regurlar (remember in S2 when Arkham was about to explode and nobody was talking about evacuating the inmates???? I do).

Other than that, one of my faves is also Jonathan. Which may be a little surprising because I barely talk about him but he was my favourite character throughout the show and he had way too little scenes.

(Kinda telling that the characters I latched onto are both helpless teens who were fucked over by the people who were supposed to protect them and can both trace their villain origin story back to Jim Gordon not caring enough about them lmao).

But the cast is big and varied enough that I actually like everyone? Butch, Zsazs, Penguin, S1 and 2 Ed, Jervis, Harvey, Jim......I like them all!!

(Special shoutout to 514A too, he was soft and baby and I wanted to keep him safe and sound really desperately).

(Another special shoutout to Barnes!! I didn't expect to like him when I first saw him, given he looked like he was gonna be mean and stoic and all, but I ended up really liking him and his story!)

Favourite Female Character

Let's just pretend Ecco doesn't exist for this answer ajdkaskaslj.

I fell in love immediately upon seeing Ecco but all! the women! are so!!! good!!!!

I especially have a soft spot for the side characters. I mean, upon first watching I got attached to Alice (even though she only features in two episodes lmao), and also Kristen Kringle - who isn't talked about much within Fandom, but she was pretty and her and Ed were actually quite cute but then she had to die for him to become the Riddler which was...pretty much telling us from the beginnning 'The woman here die to advance the men's plots'.

Barbara was also a big surprise to me because I figured she'd be the female love interest and nothing more but!! her and Jerome were the best thing in S2 and also the most entertaining thing about the Maniax Plot. (In several ways, I think I had the most fun watching this show during S2 , it was just. Good).

Also upon being in this Fandom and thinking about certain characters a bit longer I also really like Vicky Vale. And Montoya. And I wish they had kept both around for longer.

(I also wish they wouldn't have made Vicky a love interest for Jim. Or Sofia. No love interests for Jim except Lee and Barbara please).

Also Selina!! I love both Selina and Tabitha with all my heart - which may also be surprising because I barely ever talk about Tabby but I contain multitudes aklskddsm, and while I like sharing my horny thoughts about Ecco, I also love to think about Tabby and daydream about her being happy and exploring her (and Selina's) issues with showing weakness and affection and their strong loyalty regarding people that they trust.

I just.....women. Women good.

(Women also deserve to have more character than just being somebody's love interests and I have enough wips that completely sideline the guys to focus on the woman instead lmao).

Least Favourite Character

I don't have many characters that I hate??

I generally tend to instantly love everybody unless they are specifically made to be unlikeable. (I also spite-like characters who are hated for petty reasons, I just have a lot of love in my heart and not much energy for hate lmao).

But there were characters who annoyed me while I was watching.

For one, I think Gotham has a variety of super entertaining villains, but the main villains of each season tend to be....boring.

Safe for Strange they all kinda fell flat for me. Theo. Kathryn. Ra's Al Ghul. His Daughter. Mostly because their plotlines were less exciting than stuff like Jerome's carnival or Mother and Orphan's Hotel of Horrors.

Or their motives seemed a lot less understandable than the ones of the other Batman villains who pretty much always come from a place of suffering and abuse and break/snap under the pressure that's put on them (continuing this take of Gotham creating its own villains by leaving behind - mentally ill - people that need help, which I think is very true to most - if not all - Batman villains).

And then you have some characters that simply suffer from the fact that the show was cut short - which is pretty much any and every S5 character that had way too little screentime, but in this specific case means Jeremiah.

Because I disliked Jeremiah a lot while watching.

Without wanting to step on anybody's toes, him and Nygma are probably the two characters on this show I ended up disliking the most.

Mostly because Miah felt like a very cheap copy of Jerome and to this day I think it was a bad idea to replace Jerome with him, since Jeremiah - to me - seems like a super flat character.

Maybe if we had gotten him without meeting Jerome first, just having a Joker character introduced in S4, maybe I would've adored him, who knows.

But in comparison to Jerome...no. Just no.

(I will spare you from any longer rambles, but I think if you follow me, I talked about the ways Miah is lacking for me before).

My made up version of Miah though? I love him.

With Nygma it's even worse because I adored him. I instantly liked him. I was 100% behind him right up until the godawful Isabella plot happened and then it just all went to shit so quickly, I couldn't stand seeing him on screen anymore.

It's surprising that I didn't stop liking Oswald but to me, Oswald pretty much stayed the same while Ed became all bitter and hard and I just miss dorky S2 Ed you know?

It actually got so bad, I completely turned my back on Nygm/obblepot as a ship because I was so severly disappointed and I barely talk about Ed because I just can't stand what they did with him.

(Another victim of bad writing).

Favourite Ship

I'm just gonna stick to canon ships because I don't ever shut up about my Fanon ships so you probably know which ones I love the most :D

There isn't much romance going on within Gotham if I think about it - apart from Jim - which I definitely prefer. You wouldnt guess it from my blog, but I am not a fan of too shippy stuff because in most cases it just means sex scenes and I can live without those. I want action! Blood! Dead People! Not a two minute make-out session between two bland characters!

I gotta admit that Ed and Lee have some cute scenes and I would definitely ship them if I didn't dislike S4 Ed so much (S2 EdLee tho?? Yes).

Also I thought Jim and Lee was okay and Baby Batcat was quite cute at times but mostly I don't care about the canon ships.

I do ship Barbara and Jim though :D

I remember right before they hooked up in S5 I was like: 'I wouldn't mind if they got back together' and then went 'yay!' when they did and I wouldn't have minded a little more 'Will they?? Won't they??' between those two and them just having the mother of unhealthy relationships on this show.

(Also Jim/Barbara/Lee poly relationship but we can't have everything).

Favourite Friendship

So many good relationships on this show!

I need to rewatch the show soon because I probably already forgot about most of them but from the top of my head: Oswald/Butch and Oswald/Zsazs

Which were both then done dirty lmao. One by having Oswald be overly petty (one of the few times I was like...Pengy...wtf...) and the other by passing up the obvious opportunity to have Zsazs find out who really killed Falcone and just...letting Oswald and Victor never interact again. 

Then of course Ivy and Selina which also gloriously fell apart. Just like Ivy and Oswald. 

(Gotham isn’t the best when it comes to maintaining friendships). 

And the biggest and most grandious friendship of them all: J Squad. 

(Who have too little scenes together honestly and then also simply fell apart after Jerome died. Consistency who?)

Favourite Quote

I don’t know, I don’t have many quotes in my head from the show. Me and my niece mostly reference: “Yeah, that’s a spoon.” - “IT IS ALSO A FORK!!1!!!”

Also: “Gotta Go! Gotta Go! They’re after me and the Scarecrow!”

(There are some dialogue blurps I have written down somewhere because they are inspriration for gifsets but in order to be able to just recite some of them from Memory, I would have to watch this show way more obsessively). 

Worst Character Death

I don’t even gotta say anything do I? :D

But I think the character death that actually made me cry was Jerome’s first death. I clearly remember crying because...he just wanted recognition! And praise! And instead he was used as a pawn and betrayed by someone he idolized and he was only 18! My poor little meow-meow!

Seriously, the only things that make me cry on this show: Jerome’s first death, any and all mention of Bruce as a baby - told by an emotional Alfred, any and all Bruce/Alfred interaction at all and Solomon Grundy. 

This made me so happy you have no idea Moment

I seriously need to rewatch this show, it’s been so long :D

But I remember being pretty excited for the J Squad Team Up - because I was like ‘If I were Jerome I would definitely work with Tetch and Scarecrow since they’re also in Arkham atm’ and then he did!!

And I also distinctly remember in S3 that I was close to falling asleep right when they scene came on where Oswald realizes his feelings for Nygma and let me tell you - it caught me so off guard, I was awake instantly lmao. 

(I knew that people shipped them but I was so used to mlm ships being popular when they only have a handful of scenes and are platonic friends that I didn’t expect them to actually have a possibility of being canon). 

From then on I was super pumped for them to deliver on that ship but well....we all knew what happened asnksnndk. 

Saddest Moment

Aside from the already mentioned scenes in the character death column, the scene where Bruce leaves and Selina runs to the airport. I always liked Selina but she wasn’t a priority character of mine (much like Bruce isn’t) but then that scene happened and in an instant, I felt super protective over her. 

She is now my baby. My daughter. My beloved wife. She deserves everything and most importantly she deserves better than Bruce Wayne. 

(Coincidentally that was also the scene where I decided I don’t care much about Bruce asldjkjlj. I absolutely adore early seasons Bruce though). 

Favourite Location

There are so many different locations, I don’t think I can adequately answer this with my spotty memory :D

But I always loved the few episodes where Alice features, because I love how her scenes are shot so probably the little carnival Jervis prepares for her.

Also!! Jeremiah's church!

Or Commissioner Loeb's secret house (Especially the Attic).

There are a lot of cool locations, I gotta gif some of them soon :D

[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats #20 | Squalid Motels and Desperate Gals, courtesy of Kim Christy

This review contains mild spoilers.

When I first heard of Kim Christy, I knew I had to delve into her work. Here is someone who was involved in the drag scene in the '60s and went on to direct and produce pornography from the '80s onward. She's also a trans woman director (and occasional actress), which is not just unusual in golden age pornography but even mainstream cinema today. Unfortunately, figuring out where to start was a challenge. There's a very good interview with her on the Advocate but which doesn't really delve into her directing work. So I did the highly risky and ill-advised move of scanning through the titles in her filmography and trying to pick out ones with interesting sounding premises. Even this was a challenge, as a lot of her movies sounded like they didn't have a terrible amount of story. (A good many of them also had certain slurs in the title, which are unfortunately common in trans pornography.) So out of the crapshoot of movies I picked, I can't say I really got to the bottom of what makes her work interesting or even gelled to most of them, but hopefully I can convey what makes the ones I did take to interesting.

To start with the most slight, the two Divine Atrocities movies are basically a collection of sex scenes. There's a theme of dominant women running through them, but otherwise there isn't much tying together in terms of staging, aesthetics and the like. The segments have titles like "The Leather Lass Tamer", "Rubber Rampage" and "Ms. Degradation", but truth be told, nothing here is terribly shocking. So there isn't a lot to either of these movies, but if you're watching it for those reasons, they're enjoyable enough. A few of the segments feature trans performers, and I did find that Sulka had a nicely imposing screen presence in her scene, and while Sugar Nicole briefly threatens her partner with her "big black cock", I did like that for the most part the movies don't discern between these scenes and the ones with cisgender performers. In the eyes of Kim Christy, there's room for everyone in this great sexual melange. Also notable is the threesome scene with Janey Robbins, who (after likely reading Dan Savage's column) tells one of her partners, "If you don't find a different way to fuck me, you can forget it, I'll have to find somebody else", and in the first time in the history of civilization, gets mad at her male partner for not climaxing quickly enough. "You always say it'll only take a few minutes. Time is the only thing I can't replace, and it always takes too long."

A bit more substantive narratively but less interesting is Momma's Boy, with a premise that you can guess based on the title. Tantala Ray presides over a brothel set during an indeterminate period, where she presides over her girls and also her son, who mysteriously became a deaf-mute at a certain point of time. Why did her son become a deaf-mute? Will we ever find out? Spoiler: it's incest. Tantala Ray does have a weird enough screen presence to make her parts watchable, but this has none of the charge that, say, Taboo brings to the same material. (It's worth noting that Ray in this movie, looking like a debauched queen of Mardi Gras in one scene, is a camp villain while Kay Parker plays her role straight in the other movie.) As it's shot on video, the movie is not very nice to look at, and the dirt cheap production values make it unclear whether this is supposed to be a period piece. Some of the dialogue is amusing ("Oxford?" "Guess again." "Princeton?" "Try Biloxi Tech, my sweetie."), and there is some old timey music and one of the clients wears an ascot at one point, so it's not a totally squalid affair. (It's classy, see? He's wearing an ascot.) As the son, Jerry Butler does a cringe-inducing lisp, but I did chuckle at his last line.

A bit easier to recommend is True Crimes of Passion, where Janey Robbins plays a private detective (cheekily named B.J. Fondel) who invariably bungles her investigations and winds up in sex scenes with the people she's supposed to be investigating. "Out of the fog and into the smog" begins the overwrought voiceover, which truth be told doesn't compare to the likes of Chandler but I guess the effort is nice. The first case involves her investigating the wife of a minister whom her client suspects of infidelity. Surprise, surprise, it turns out the wife has a girlfriend with whom she has dominant sex. Thanks to Robbins' investigative prowess, she gets found out and forced to join the proceedings and ends up getting her client, a Dan Quayle looking motherfucker in a cowboy hat, captured as well, which leads to an incredible burn.

"The lord will punish you for this."

"The lord already has, he gave me you for a husband."

Also, when Robbins is forced into cunnilingus, she says over narration, "Oh Christ, I'm not even sure I've seen one of these things up close", and yeah, okay, Janey.

The second scene is probably the most notable as it features Christy as a performer. Robbins visits her friend to investigate a death threat against her friend's brother (also Robbins' ex), and the twist can be deduced when you start wondering why a seemingly minor character gets an unusually large amount of screentime. The scene features a trope that likely isn't terribly sensitive by modern standards, but I get the sense from that Advocate interview that Christy isn't too hung up about such things and one must concede that the film is a product of its time and genre (and within that context, there's a lot worse out there). The last scene has Robbins spying on her neighbour in hotel to get some industry secrets, which leads to some really awkward dialogue about champagne and then a threesome involving her client and mark. Like the work of Yasojiru Ozu, this scene breaks the 180-rule, but I guess if this is your thing, you might enjoy it. At the very end, the mark just gives up his secrets to the client. The secrets of male bonding sometimes elude me.

Easily the most accomplished and enjoyable film from Christy that I watched was Squalor Motel. It combines the sexual variety of the other films with a sense of camp and grounds it in a distinct, memorable location. There isn't much more "plot" than the other movies, as it's basically about a motel concierge doing her job over the course of a day, but as it follows her bumping into a variety of (usually horny) guests and finding herself in amusing (and unfailingly sexual) situations, there's enough of a narrative through line that it feels like a "real" movie where the other movies strained for similar effect, and the movie uses a soundtrack of icy synths and jazz that sounds like imitation Angelo Badalamenti to give it all an alluring vibe. I'm gonna make a wager that David Lynch would have liked this movie. Look, I have no idea what his viewing habits are or what sends his motor running, and the thought of him jacking it furiously to this or any movie is not something that brings me pleasure. But this shares some of the campy tone and surface qualities of his works, and I also wanted to leave you all with that image.

Why does the motel have its own house band (to whom people try to listen to while they engage in all kinds of sexual congress)? Why is Jamie Gillis made up like a vampire and trying to sell marital aids? Why does the one guest's blow-up doll turn into a real person (and prove, uh, extremely vocal during their scene)? Why is the owner wearing a pig mask and a tutu while he spies on his guests? Why is everyone laughing at the newlywed? Why is the one scientist with a Hitler mustache and his shrill-voiced assistant conducting experiments (read: having a threesome) with Tantala Ray? And how are most of these things taking place in the mysterious Reptile Room in the middle of the motel? With an extremely winning Colleen Brennan in the lead role (sporting a pair of thick glasses, a Lucille Ball updo, and a big, toothy smile), we'll have a pretty good time finding out. Like a lot of hardcore movies, this is pretty episodic in structure, but its distinct atmosphere gives it a nice sense of momentum as it drifts from scene to scene.

With its nice production design (and the fact that it seems to have actual sets, rather than being shot in what I assume are people's homes like in the other movies), Squalor Motel feels a bit more upscale and lavish than the average porno. While I don't have any budgetary information handy, I do know that the production had an assistant director, Ned Morehead. To what extent he contributed to the movie's DNA I can't say for certain, but the directorial effort of his I watched, also produced by Christy, had many of the same qualities. Desperate Women starts off feeling pretty stylish with its spraypaint style opening credits (although it loses a bit of style when it misspells star Taija Rae's name as "Taja Rea"). Taija Rae plays a reporter who ends up wrongfully convicted for a murder and thrown in brutal women's prison presided over by the sadistic Tantala Ray, who seems to get her jollies from spying on her prisoners as they get it on or abusing them with the help of her dimwitted guard. During such incidents, the guard frequently ends up ejaculating on her uniform as a source of comic relief. (One such scene ends with a shot of a photo of Ronald Reagan.) I must however disclose, without revealing too much about the shameful inner workings of my hopelessly degenerate mind, that the denouement of scene involving Ray, her guard and Sharon Mitchell did not leave me unmoved. Mitchell plays a prisoner who befriends Taija Rae, and it's worth noting that despite being one of the best actresses in classic porn, she's saddled here with an atrocious Hispanic accent and at one point sings a bit of "America" from West Side Story.

By porn standards, this is actually quite well produced and has a relatively sturdy narrative. (I must however note that one scene has a blatant ejaculation-related continuity error.) Women in prison movies tend to be pretty squalid affairs in general, at least in terms of production values, so this doesn't feel too far off from the real thing and offers more explicit versions of the same pleasures, while its sense of humour gives it a nice campy quality. Tantala Ray especially delivers in a pleasingly over the top performance as the teeth-gnashing villain (the camera often frames her severe face in wide angle close ups), and say what you will about Sharon Mitchell's accent, I did like seeing her pop up in here. With all the flamboyance and excitement around her, Taija Rae almost becomes a supporting character in her own movie, although I must confess that I found her character's hopeless naivety pretty cute. ("I didn't wear rubbers, it's sunny out".) With a fun cast, a firm handle on the genre's pleasures and a groovy soundtrack, this is a pretty good time.

[starpeace]

perhaps one Din Djarin for the character ask? Also all your opinions on the other characters are extremely valid <3

my blog is just a scheme to trade opinions for validation so thank you for participating 💛 and for suggesting din! he’s so good

1: sexuality headcanon

hmm i guess bisexual? definitely would ship with both men and women

2: otp

i’m still on my din/cal nonsense and when we see cal kestis in the finale you’ll see. you’ll ALL see. no really i just think they’re neat and i will row this ship myself if i have to. my din/cal tag contains Good Content from talented people whose minds i have poisoned

3: brotp

i hope he has more screentime with boba and more good good mando solidarity. also just din with literally anyone who has kept their word with him. i just need people to be nice to him you know!! he’s straight up not having a good time

4: notp

din/ahsoka bad because ahsoka sucked in this show so you’d have to be real desperate. uhhh i can’t imagine any scenario where din being shipped with an imperial or ex-imperial would go well

5: first headcanon that pops into my head

still love the post i made abt how din is actually a nerd and loves learning things. that wasn’t a joke i stand by that. the niche language knowledge? the indepth knowledge of weaponry and ships including how to fix them himself? the attempt to teach his son science? he’s going to be one of those dads who’s very invested in his son’s learning and learns alongside him

6: favorite line from this character

“he means more to me than you will ever know.” who isn’t still losing their mind over this

7: one way in which I relate to this character

okay so i’m a christian and i know my experience is nothing like din’s, and i do try to avoid drawing comparisons because i’ve never experienced being part of a religious minority or one that functions in any way like din’s people. BUT it does mean a lot to me to see a character who’s so overtly religious and who has it actually affect his worldview rather than the usual very one-dimensional depictions of religion in fantasy/sci-fi worldbuilding. from both a personal and an audience perspective i just think that’s neat

8: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character

not exactly secondhand embarrassment but secondhand anxiety. the scene where he has to take his helmet off hits SO hard it literally makes my skin crawl i feel so uncomfortable. i have never seen someone so visibly losing it without being able to say or do anything

9: cinnamon roll or problematic fave?

he’s Good

[aion-rsa]

WandaVision Finale Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains WandaVision spoilers.

After eight near-perfect episodes, the story of WandaVision has concluded with a finale installment that sticks the landing on all fronts, including multiple cinematic battles, several heartfelt goodbyes, and a long-overdue moment of agency for a heroine who has so often been denied a choice in her own future. 

But while “The Series Finale” is a deeply satisfying coda to what is probably Marvel’s most emotionally satisfying outing to date, it leaves us with more than a few questions about where these characters go from here. Let’s break down what happened in the WandaVision finale, and what it might mean for the Marvel Cinematic Universe going forward.

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Wanda Transforms Into the Scarlet Witch

Thanks to Agatha’s pronouncement last week, we already knew that Wanda was the legendary Scarlet Witch but in “The Series Finale” we see her fully embrace her chaos magic, right down to an amazing contemporary riff on her traditional comics costume. (That headpiece! The cape! We love to see it!)

There’s even a return of the mind control visions we saw her deploy to such great effect in Avengers: Age of Ultron. What can’t this Wanda do?

Granted, we still don’t know what all this power now means for her character in a larger sense, but to be fair, neither does she. Wanda’s abilities as displayed in this episode are fairly tremendous, as she uses witch runes to neutralize Agatha, wipes her mind, and brings down the Hex she’s built around Westview, freeing its residents. 

In the episode’s post-credits scene, however, her abilities appear to have grown even further, as she’s able to take in a scenic lake view even as her astral self is also busy reading the Darkhold, right down to making its pages turn on their own. 

This is a move we’ve seen Stephen Strange pull before, but according to Agatha, Wanda is even more powerful than the Sorcerer Supreme. So….what else will she be able to do? That seems to be what she’s trying to find out.

Westview Returns to Normal (Sort of)

During her (quite frankly pretty badass) battle with Agatha, the older witch frees several Westview residents from Wanda’s mind control, forcing her to face what she’s done to the townspeople in her quest to build a perfect life. The simultaneously angry and desperate crowd of Westview residents – who look like nothing so much as a suburban take on a horde from The Walking Dead – confront Wanda and reveal a bit of what it must really like as a person who lives under the town’s spell.  

The most harrowing victim is certainly town queen bee Dottie, who comes to herself long enough to beg Wanda to allow her to see her daughter, or perhaps write her into the larger storyline as one of the twins’ friends. But we also learn that Wanda has been projecting her grief and pain into Westview’s nightmares, forcing them to suffer right alongside her, rather than providing a peaceful, perfect escape. 

What Happened to Agatha Harkness?

At least one resident of Westview won’t be returning to normal, however. After Wanda defeats Agatha by scattering witch runes around the Westview Hex to neutralize her magic, she uses her own power to wipe Agatha’s memories and essentially turn her into nosy neighbor Agnes, the WandaVision “role she chose,” for good. 

Your mileage may vary on whether this is an acceptable ending for Agatha – a character who was, admittedly, often monstrous, even though she was right about the way that society is all too willing, even eager, to vilify powerful women out of fear (and often just because it can). On the plus side, since nothing lasts forever in the Marvel Universe and Agatha Harkness is a pretty powerful witch in her own right, there’s every chance this character will reappear down the road. After all, Agatha was Wanda’s mentor in the comics and she tells Wanda here that her magical expertise will be needed in the future. 

We Said Goodbye to Wanda’s Kids (Or Did We?)

As products of the Hex, young Billy and Tommy Maximoff’s fates were always going to be tied to it, so in choosing to break the illusion, Wanda also accepts that she’ll have to say goodbye to her sons. In one of “The Series Finale’s” most heartbreaking scenes, she and Vision, knowing what’s coming, tuck the boys in for bed one last time, as the red glow of the shrinking boundary line edges closer to their house. 

Wanda also thanks the boys for choosing her as a mother. Reader, I cried. Plus, this basically confirms that Billy and Tommy aren’t entirely constructs of Wanda’s imagination. They’ve come from somewhere, and possess something like souls. How that all happened is anyone’s guess – here’s your entry point for Mephisto, folks! – and it’s something future series can explore, but it’s certainly the way I’d prefer to read it. 

But, since the last thing we hear on WandaVision is also the voices of Tommy and Billy shouting to their mother that something is wrong, it seems pretty likely we’ll see some version of these characters again. There’s precedent in the comics after all, and finding her lost boys is a pretty powerful narrative throughline to carry over to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. 

What Happened to White Vision?

Paul Bettany’s dreams of essentially working with himself are realized, as Vision and the White Vision come to blows in the skies of Westview. But despite the epic battle between the synthezoids – or, synthezoid and Mind Stone-fueled recreation of that same original, as the case may be – physical combat isn’t the most compelling, or even interesting part of their encounter.

Instead, it’s philosophy. Yes, you read that right. Upon realizing that the two are too evenly matched for either to emerge victorious, Vision decides to engage the White Vision in a thought experiment about their shared existence, and whether either of them is truly the man (robot?) they claim to be. The two end up in a sort of pseudo-philosopher’s debate about The Ship of Theseus, a thought experiment centered on issues of identity and meaning, and what makes a thing real. 

This is surprisingly deep stuff for a Marvel property but the conversation contains tantalizing hints about what we could expect as we head into Phase 4 of the MCU. After all, it will likely contain stories full of magic, mutants, and transformation of all types; this is simply WandaVision giving us a metaphorical anchor to hang onto throughout. Well, that and providing a way to bring Vision – or some version of him – back for good, as Westview Vision restores White Vision’s memories and gives us all a reason to hope that he and Wanda will one day be reunited again.

Was the Vision in Westview Real? 

Yes and no. The Vision that lived in Westview and shared a house with Wanda wasn’t physically the Vision we’d previously seen in the Avengers films. He was a flesh and blood construct, created by Wanda’s power, informed by her grief memories, and born from the piece of the Mind Stone that lives inside her. (This makes sense, given that the rise of Wanda’s magical abilities was connected to her initial exposure to the Mind Stone. As Agatha puts it, the Scarlet Witch is forged, not born, and for Wanda, that crucible was her time with Hydra and the Infinity Stone that served as a sort of cosmic gasoline on her sleeping abilities that might never have stirred otherwise.) This Vision represents Wanda’s hope and sadness, but mostly her love. 

And, as a result, even Westview Vision doesn’t greet his oncoming demise with sadness, or even fear. Instead, he reasons, he and Wanda have been here before twice already, forced to say goodbye before their time. And since their relationship has survived before, there’s every reason to believe it will again, and they’ll find their way back to one another.

Monica’s Powers, the Skrulls, and Captain Marvel 2

Unfortunately, thanks to everything else going on in “The Series Finale,” Monica Rambeau doesn’t have a ton to do here. However, she does get a straight-up hero moment, where she throws herself in front of a bullet (or four) for Wanda’s kids and reveals a heretofore unseen ability to phase through objects and slow them down. She also frees the real Ralph Bohner, and happily helps send dirtbag SWORD director Tyler Hayward to prison. 

Happily, however, despite her limited screentime in this episode, Monica’s MCU future looks bright. In the mid-credits scene, she’s approached by a Skrull disguised as a SWORD agent who takes her aside and reveals she was sent by a friend of her late mother, Maria’s. And that friend, who is most likely Nick Fury, would like to see Monica – in space. 

We’d all basically assumed that Monica, who is Maria’s daughter and clearly has some as-yet-unprocessed resentment toward Carol Danvers, would be a significant player in the upcoming sequel Captain Marvel 2, but perhaps there’s an even broader future in store for her, as part of the SWORD-like organization Fury and the Skrull named Talos formed at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home. 

Who Was the Fake Pietro Maximoff?

Sadly, the character played by Evan Peters in WandaVision was not actually Wanda’s brother Pietro ported over from the FOX X-Men universe like we all hoped. So, yeah, unfortunately, that means mutants technically still do not exist in the MCU, and that’s a problem another movie or series will have to address.

While trapped in his self-described “man cave”, Monica discovers that the Fake Pietro is really just Ralph Bohner, the mysteriously absent husband Agnes was constantly complaining about throughout the season. Agatha kept him under her spell using an enchanted necklace, and when it was removed his real identity returns. Whether the fact that Agatha’s punishment to live as her Agnes identity involves being really married to Ralph is unclear but in Westview, anything is possible, I guess.

Wanda’s Future and Doctor Strange 2

Wanda has long been confirmed as a major player in the upcoming sequel Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but we haven’t known how exactly she would fit into this story, having never exactly met Stephen Strange before. But since the WandaVision post-credits scene confirms that the new Scarlet Witch is determined to learn more about her powers, it seems that will change fairly quickly. The only question is, how?

Stephen Strange has served as a mentor to many magic users throughout Marvel Comics history and could certainly be someone that Wanda seeks out to help her access and control her new abilities. But, given that she’s also currently DIY-ing her knowledge of witch history with a magical item that is basically subtitled the “book of the damned” it’s also very possible that she and Strange will end up at odds over the Darkhold’s existence, her possession of it, or both. Plus, there’s that interesting wrinkle of her still hearing the voices of her construct children that shouldn’t still exist outside of Westview thing. Time to explore the multiverse, anyone?

The post WandaVision Finale Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3bl8T3d

[prettytragcdies]

Rules: Pick 5 shows, then answer the following questions. Don’t cheat. Tag some people. Tagged By: gentleheartcd

DALLAS

Models Inc.

Desperate Housewives

Nip/Tuck

E.R.

Who is your favorite character in 2? HILLARY MICHAELS OFC.

Who is your least favorite character in 1? Kimberly Cryder - The Wicked Witch of Weststar. The Winger Tramp, Holly Harwood, and Vanessa Beaumont are all very close seconds, though.

What is your favorite episode of 4? When Julia thinks Erica died in the plane crash.

What is your favorite season of 5? Hmmm, this is a tough one. Am I terrible if I say season eight?

Who is your favorite couple in 3? Honestly, I preferred the friendship of all the women tbh. And by all, I mean everyone -- not just the original six.

Who is your favorite couple in 2? It was more like Hillary and screentime tbh.

What is your favorite episode of 1? HA. HAHA. You expect me to choose just one. That’s funny. There’s too many to choose from, because this show is literally that brilliant and iconic. Basically, if it’s a Sue Ellen focused episode, add it to my endless list.

What is your favorite episode of 5? Again, it’s a tough one. Is On The Beach too predictable? Honestly, sign me up for a good Elizabeth or Susan focused episode.

What is your favorite season of 2? Season One, because that’s unfortunately all there ever was.

How long have you watched 1? It first began ruining my life way back in 2002 when I was thirteen years old.

How did you become interested in 3? I was intrigued by the commercials for it, because it’s the type of television genre that appeals to me. Also, I was already a fan of Nicollette Sheridan from Knots Landing and Marcia Cross thanks to Melrose Place, so I decided to give it a watch.

Who is your favorite actor in 4? It’s legit a tie between Joely Richardson and Jessalyn Gilsig.

Which do you prefer, 1, 2, or 5? I will never love another show more than I love DALLAS. It’s as simple as that.

Which show have you seen more episodes of - 1 or 3? I’ve seen every single episode of both shows, but DALLAS has a lot more episodes, so yeah...

If you could be anyone from 4, who would you be?! Everyone’s lives on this show are so messed up that it’s not even funny, so I guess I’ll just go with Annie McNamara.

Would a crossover between 3 and 4 work? I mean, it’s possible. Desperate housewives and plastic surgery? I can see it.

Pair two characters in 1 who would make an unlikely but strangely okay couple? I mean, it’s been teased about a few times, but Bobby and Sue Ellen? Haha, I don’t know.

Overall, which show has the better storyline, 3 or 5? They both had their fair share of pretty great storylines over the years, but I just feel like E.R. was better at it in the long run. I mean, things didn’t really feel repetitive, and there weren’t love triangles everywhere and stuff.

Which has better theme music, 2 or 4? I love them both, but I’m going to have to go with Models Inc. It was instrumental, but it was also catchy in a way that I could listen to a lot. That’s probably why it’s one of my ringtones. The Engine Room’s The Perfect Lie is definitely on my Spotify playlist, though. Make me beautifullll.

Tagging: magicandmayhcm, justicescreaming, flyingupward, thcreyoullbe, thestcryofus, thrownstiletto, kiissme, mayfqir, vqndekamp and anyone else who wants to consider themselves tagged.

[jancys-blue-bayou]

Yeah so Stranger Things 3 was painfully bad

Yeah yeah big negative post about ST3 coming up. Just... holy shit, my expectations weren’t exactly high but jesus I didn’t think it’d be this bad. Wow. Mindboggling to think it was made by the same dudes who made season 1, it feels like a different show. Some of the worst writing I’ve seen in a long while, parts of season 3. This got very long because it was very bad so it’s under the cut. Starting with the few positives and then away we go...

Of course there were bright spots, I thought what we got of Jancy was generally good (just wish there had been more of it. Just like... more lines between them, a few moments could’ve gone on longer...like after the awesome hospital fight scene jesus just let them fucking desperately embrace and profess their love for each other, it was awesome how they relentlessly kept going at the monster to save the other but can we please just have a few more seconds for a comfort moment after?) I liked how they handled the fight btw, apart from the Oliver Twist comment yeah yeah heat of the moment but still felt OOC with that loa a blow. Nancy and Karen scene was nice and um... well Max and El bonding was nice. And um... Mr Clarke! And I kind of dig Murray.

My main issues with it:

- The product placement. Jesus Christ. Okay, ST has always been a show with noticeable product placement. But it’s gone from things like a Coke can prominently on display on a table in s1 (El crushing it with her mind) to literally having a straight up ad for Coca Cola in the middle of a tense scene. That’s the big offender that made me go wow you’re really doing this to yourselves huh, there are many others ofc (everything at the mall ofc, Slurpees being in hyperfocus for a bit, and a lengthy talk about Burger King. These smaller things one by one wasn’t the worst but all combined jesus it was too much, all added together and then bam the Coke commercial was wow... Congrats on the like 80 sponsorship deals and esp the new ST themed arcade hall by Coca Cola hope it was worth completely selling out for.

- Relatedly, the original fucking song. Holy christ talk about jumping the shark. That was the oddest, cringiest, weirdest shit I’ve seen in a long time. Gaten’s a great singer don’t get me wrong, but there’s a time and place for it and an original song stuffed into the middle of the tense climax of the season is not it Duffers. Just a blatant cash cow, hoping to bring in more money via the song.

- Robin. Sorry but holy cow what a Mary Sue. Hey here’s this super cool girl who’s cool™ and funny™ and super smart™ and NOT Nancy (like they seriously for real said in a scene, they actually for real had to pit Robin and Nancy against each other for no reason). And she conveniently has these specific skills needed for the plot (which she gets involved with for no real motivation other than having nothing better to do, lazy writing). Said skills were so over the top unrealistic it completely sucked me out of it. To start with, this random girl in small town Indiana in 1985 speaking French, Spanish and Italian um... does Hawkins High have the most amazing language department or what? Very un-american in that case... and okay then, her knowing those languages wouldn’t help jackshit with understanding Russian. Russian is a notoriously difficult language to learn and it is not related to the Romance languages at all, Robin knowing those languages and oh, having “a good ear” bc she’s in band (?!??! what?!) wouldn’t help her at all. Having the alphabets on the wall and listening to strange words in a foreign language she has no understanding of would never work. No way for her to understand what is she’s hearing, what letters are in the words just, nothing. It’s completely ridiculous. The good thing is she’s a lesbian, crushing Stobin that made me LOL. Btw, I don’t get what age they were writing her as? She’s still in school but later says she and Steve was in the same class, and she knows who Nancy is but Nancy, who is still in school, doesn’t know her even though presumably they’d be in the same year at little Hawkins High? Was it just sloppy writing or what?

- Too. Much. Plotting. What happened to “this season is about the characters” um there was just so much plot stuff and action sequences and barely any character driven moments at all. Those intimate moments that made s1 amazing. Generally regarding plots felt the Russian plot was messy and not well-written also what happened to the US government as the big bad? Unless they’re setting up a big Cold War thing for s4. And felt the zombie thing was wasted, could’ve been used differently like I’d have thought it’d be used like the MF spreading it’s influence over vaster areas and being harder to keep track of etc.

- Too little Will. Will’s whole thing with feeling left out etc was just dropped halfway through it felt very undercooked. His arc was just dropped wtf.

- NO BYERS FAMILY INTERACTIONS WTF. The sequence in the first episode when Jancy has overslept and Joyce wipes the lipstick off Jonathan was cute (but could’ve been even cuter I’d have preferred a short fluffy Jancy moment here just as they wake up before they realize they overslept, bc we didn’t get much pure fluff, and then it’d been awesome if Joyce would’ve just called Nancy into the house to mess with them). But like... that’s kind of it. For the Byers family. Talking to each other in the whole season. When they partnered Jancy with the kids many thought awesome we’ll get Byers bros talking and teaming up (and Nancy and Mike) but there was just nothing. Not even a family hug after the battle at the mall, just Joyce hugging Will, with all this tightknit little family has been through you telling me Jonathan wouldn’t join in?

- No Will and El bonding wtf? SUCH a wasted opportunity. They’ve built this unique awesome connection over s1 and s2 and now in s3 would finally be able to bond normally for real and... nothing.

- Turning Hopper back into an even bigger jerk than he was at the start of the show, neglecting all his character development. What was the point of the whole El and Hopper thing they devoted so much time to in s2 if Hopper’s back at it with the yelling and all now? And jeez his constant whining to Joyce about every man she interacts with holy christ that got annoying. Generally Hopper was such an annoying asshole this season I was so tired of him by the time he “died”.

- TOO MANY CHARACTERS. Jeez, I know I’m on about it all the time but jesus christ there is way way too many characters in this for 8 episodes which hurts the narrative and screentime for interesting characters is just... yeah.

- Speaking of screentime, did we really need that many identical generic fight scenes between Hopper and the Russian guy? Jesus Christ it’s so boring watching fight scenes like that, so repetitive (compare to the hospital fight scene which was dynamic and awesome). Also regarding screentime did we really need to devote so incredibly much of it to Steve and Robin being comedic relief while drugged? Yeah yeah mix light and dark and all that but jesus christ at that point in the narrative shit has hit the fan lean into the dark.

- Totally expected of course but still, the furthering of Steve Memeington. My god they actually had him literally call himself daddy... christ.

- The Billy and Karen/all the other middle age women remains gross and bad in a billion ways. Also completely pointless for the plot, they could’ve come up with any other way to get Billy to the factory. And what did it give Karen in development? Just the realization that yeah I’m tired of my husband but I’m not leaving my family and I’ll stick with him just ‘cause? Okay but did we need her almost sleeping with a kid a year older than her daughter for that? Icky. Also the editing of the scene where Billy hits her was so weird. Also that was weird as fuck.

- The ending. Okay christ my main gripe with this is because of a point above: No Byers family interaction at all! Joyce and Hopper talk briefly about her thinking about moving once or twice but she never talks about it with her kids... obviously she did in the timegap but we need to see that to build to the thing. Having no Byers interactions the whole season and then just oop we’re moving is so weird. I’m also not sure if Joyce’s motivation for moving (her bad memories of Hawkins) would be enough. For sure an argument for it, but an argument against is the one Hopper presents to her (and though he’s not around still there’s still a support system around them there, especially for her kids which she loves above all). Speaking of her loving her kids above all, she knows they love their friends/girlfriend/boyfriend to bits, have walked through fire with them and are each others support system as mentioned, would Joyce really just uproot them from that? There’s also some purely practical things that stuck out to me immediately: the timeskip for the epilogue makes it so they move when the schoolyear is already well under way and Jonathan has started senior year, feel bad for Jonathan there in a number of ways. Also, how the hell did Joyce manage to sell her house and what did it fetch? Her rundown house on the outskirts of a now infamous town with an incredibly bad rep? Even if the buyer bought it for the land the land doesn’t look special, just find it hard to believe she could get much for it. And where did they move? Where did she find a place? And work? Did she have something lined up or? I guess we’ll see.

- Oh and speaking of work, that was another thing that was just dropped, the mall killing downtown and the protests just fell out of the story. But, with what happened to the mall wouldn’t business come back to downtown (possibly reason for Joyce to want to stay if Melvald’s going out of business was another reason to move).

- Sorry but Mileven took way too much space.

- Again, no Jonathan and Will actual brothers bonding. But a whole lot of Steve and Dustin meme fanservice wank.

- Erica is just the sassy black girl trope non stop the whole season and nothing else and it’s so grating and... I was gonna say disappointing but I had no faith in the Duffers regarding this. Just because a bit character becomes a meme doesn’t mean they need to become a main. *cough* Steve *cough cough* Sorry.

- Last but not least, the woobiefication of Billy. Uggggghhhh. Disgusting. And having Max cry over him WTF?!?!?!?!?! staaaaaaahp.