#MY BOYFS ARE BOYFS AND THEY HANG OUT AND GO ON DINNER DATES FREQUENTLY
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So. How do we feel about Jungkook going live at 4 am at his apartment with Mingyu to let him rest his head on his shoulder, hold hands and have a last drink and then turn the live off?
#googie 🐰#gyugyu 🐶#WHAT IN THE EVER LOVING FUCK#I GENUINELY WANT TO JUMP OFF A CLIFF I CANT PROCESS THIS SHIT#???????????????????#YA IM GOING INSANE#APPARENTLY GYU SAID THAT THEY’LL COME AND PLAY FOR REAL LATER SOMEDAY ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️#SIR WHAT ABOUT MY SANITY#IM FUCKING CRYING#also .... like. they were at jungkook’s place until 4 am drinking? and jungkook just randomly turned on the live?#oh wow 😭 feels like a fucking dream i can’t y’all#sorry to anyone new here i’m high-key insane about 97 liners#especially gyukook who also happen to be my ults 😩#KDJDJSJSKSKSK WINNING AT LIFE#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA#YALL I CANT#MY BOYFS ARE BOYFS AND THEY HANG OUT AND GO ON DINNER DATES FREQUENTLY
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Hello!! For the MTMTE requests (if they are still open!), could I get Riptide & Fort Max boyf headcanons with a human s/o?? Thank you so much, I freaking love your writing 💓💓have a great day! ❤��❤️❤️
Riptide
He forgets how small and squishy you are in comparison to him sometimes and you have to continually remind him since he keeps trying to lay on top of you when you cuddle. It wouldn’t be so bad except you literally can’t breathe when he smothers you like that. A good compromise is for you to lay back and let him wrap his arms around you as best as he can while nuzzling his face into your stomach. He’s also happy to lay back and have you sprawled out on top of him while you ramble on about whatever comes to mind.
Takes every opportunity he can to go swimming with you. If the planet you’re currently on has any sort of body of water that’s safe enough for you then he wants to visit it. He’ll take you cruising in his alt mode but he especially loves to float on his back and have you hang out on top of him like one of those floating bed things you told him about. The only problem with this is if something catches his attention he’ll sit up and send you tumbling into the water by accident though he’s always quick to apologize and make sure you didn’t swallow any water.
He’s very absent minded when it comes to showing affection. If he thinks about holding your hand, then he’ll hold your hand, if he has a thought about kissing you then he kisses you. It’s adorable but occasionally embarrassing as he doesn’t always think about his surroundings first. Megatron had been lecturing the both of you once, for attempting to see if Riptide’s alt mode could glide down the hall given the right push, but he had ignored him, instead fixating on your lips. Before you could think to stop him he had leaned in and pressed his mouth to yours, drawing back with a happy grin. Megatron had just sighed and walked away, so in a way it was a win since you’d gotten out of the lecture, but it was still an embarrassing moment, for you at least.
He gives you lots of little trinkets and gifts, things that he saw that made him think of you. These items range from a cool rock he found to some lost piece of ancient treasure that he just stumbled upon and was like wow neat bet the love of my life would like this.
Dates are very relaxed with him, he’s content with whatever you have planned, and likes it even better if you have nothing planned at all. Drinks at Swerve’s are his go to though movie nights are also another favored activity. Really anytime spent with you is a date to him even if it’s something as simple as napping together.
Fort Max
In public he’s a little more reserved when it comes to affection. He’ll hold your hand and he’s fine with you giving him a quick peck on the check but anything more than that makes him self conscious. In private though he’s much more free with his touch. He’s especially fond of cradling you to his chest or having you curl up in the crook of his neck and enjoys just stroking your hair when you two cuddle.
As of right now you’re only dating but he’s already thinking about asking you to be his conjunx, or to put it in human terms he would like to propose to you. The idea of devoting himself to you in such an intimate way is very appealing and he thinks blending your human marriage traditions with the conjunx rites would be a nice symbol of your inter-species relationship. He can’t wait to be able to introduce you as his spouse/conjunx to people it’s such a nice concept and he thinks about it frequently.
VERY big on romantic gestures, both big and small. He just wants you to know how much he loves and appreciates you and that means planning special dates and purchasing gifts that have a deep emotional meaning to them. For a long time he thought that he wouldn’t be at a point in his life where he could be this happy and this in love but you’ve helped him realize otherwise and nothing he can do will ever be enough to repay you for that.
He’s away fairly often since his job as the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accords requires him to travel. During these periods he calls and or face times with you as frequently as both of your schedules will allow and if he can then he sends you good morning and good night texts. The calls are mostly just him listening to you describe your day, even the most mundane story will hold his attention as long as it’s you telling it. His favorite kind are when you fall asleep in the middle of the call, lulled into slumber by the sound of his voice.
Domestic activities are seemingly mundane but doing them with you gives him a warm feeling in his spark. He doesn’t eat but he likes to watch you prepare your meals and then sits down with a glass of energon so that you can enjoy a sit down dinner together and talk about your day or whatever else comes to mind. Even cleaning is enjoyable to him when you do it together and he especially likes lifting you up so that you can reach the higher hard to get spots that are too small for him to handle.
#riptide#fortress maximus#fort max#mtmte#transformers#transformers x reader#transformers imagines#transformers reader insert#my writing#fort max just wants to settle down like please make an honest bot out of him sooner rather than later#he just wants to be sweet and domestic and disgustingly in love
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happy without you (park jimin)
genre: angst
word count: 1k
note: re-posted bc tumblr is being a bitch again and apparently new blogs can’t have their posts show up in tags
3 years
that's how long you and jimin have been dating for
you were there to hug your boyfriend when bts achieved their first music show win, fingers running through his hair as tears damped your sweater
you were there to hit down every insecurity the boy has had about himself, shutting up his protests of 'my cheeks are too big' with a firm kiss on his lips
you were there to witness his growth from an overly-enthusiastic rookie to an experienced artist, gaze confident as he steps on stage to face the deafening screams of thousands of fans
however, whilst you are infinitely happy for everything jimin and his team have achieved over the years, your boyfriend's ever-growing popularity both within korea and overseas have posed a few problems for your relationship
concerts and comebacks began to rapidly overtake jimin's life, leaving him with only one goal, to practice, practice, practice
almost everyday, he would stumble into your shared apartment either drenched in sweat or about to pass out, and would collapse on the bed, falling asleep in a matter of seconds without saying a word
and whilst you had your own career, your own friends to contact and hang out with
you missed the 5-hour-long conversations you used to have, laughing until your stomachs hurt and eventually falling sleep huddled together on the couch
you missed the midnight convenience store runs that would always lead to a long walk around the neighbourhood, ice cream bars in your hands and shoulders bumping with every step
and despite living in the same apartment, despite sleeping on the same bed, you still missed him
you missed your boyfriend
conversation between the two of you became scarce, your only interactions being a quick kiss in the mornings and a rushed 'i love you' thrown your way
you no longer asked him how he was doing, when his next break was
because the answer would always be the same
his life has become an endless cycle of practice, comeback, concert
and whilst that was taking a physical toll on your boyfriend, the mental stress that it placed on you was slowly becoming unbearable
at first, you had wanted to be a perfect girlfriend, supporting jimin in whatever he does and always being there when he needed you
and for a while, that's exactly what you were
you were always there to listen whenever he was frustrated about the one note he couldn't hit in their new song
your arms were always open for him to collapse into after a dreadful day of practice
you offered him countless encouragements, always trying your best to motivate him whenever you were down
but months later, you started to realise that it was never the other around
practice prevented him from answering his phone when you had a stressful day at work
his frequent overseas trips meant that it was impossible to contact him during the day
even your attempt at setting up a romantic dinner was ignored as he wolfed down the food that took you hours to make, trudging back to the bedroom with complaints of back pain
instead of offering solace, your relationship now gave you an abundance of stress, and you were beginning to feel more like a housekeeper than a romantic partner
and after a long talk with a good friend of yours, who told you that your happiness mattered the most, you decided that it is time to put an end to everything
which led to this current scene, with the two of you sitting on opposite ends of the dinner table, your hands fisted on your lap while his rubbed tiredly at his eyes
the constant flickering of jimin's eyes towards the clock served as a reminder that you had minimal time to settle things, and after a deep breath
'let's break up'
you watched with bated breath as the man in front of you froze, shocked eyes darting up to meet your tired ones with surprising speed considering his fatigued state
'...what?'
'i said, let's break up'
it was obvious that he has not expected this conversation, if his shaking hands are any indication, and it was only after a few long minutes that a word fell from his trembling lips
'why?'
it wasn't easy, telling someone that you wanted to break up in order to be happy, but your voice was surprisingly level as you replied
'at the rate our relationship is progressing now, i feel like we're getting nowhere. i understand that you have a busy career, but i also want to be in a relationship where i'm not the one putting in all the effort, and i don't think that with how hectic your schedules are right now, that you're ready to be fully invested in a relationship'
you heard a sniffle, and one look in your boyf-jimin's direction confirmed your thoughts that he was, indeed, crying, hands balled into fists on the table as a salty droplet rolled down his cheeks
'i-is there anything i can do to fix this? fix u-us?'
his voice was quiet, borderline desperate, but after a few minutes of silence, you watched as the initial intense look in his eyes fade to defeat as he comes to realise the irreversible state of your relationship
it felt like hours before he spoke again, eyes red and puffy
'i'm sorry for hurting you', he whispered, gaze sad as he took in your thinning cheeks, the dullness of your eyes that can only be caused by mental stress, 'if it'll make you happy again, then i'll let you go'
you felt your own eyes water as you reached across the table to take his hands in yours one last time
'thank you, jimin'
the feeling of sick relief washed over you as you stood up to retreat back to the bedroom
but that moment of ease was fleetingly brief, as jimin spoke up once again
'i love you'
suffocating guilt momentarily overrode every other emotion, and for a second, and for a second, you were tempted to turn around and hug him to your chest, telling him that it was all a joke
'i-'
after a moment of deliberation, however, you pressed your lips into a thin line, turning away from him
it was time to move on
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The Incredible, Radical Jessica James
• • • [spoilers below] • • •
In the middle of a blind date she doesn’t particularly want to be on, The Incredible Jessica James’ eponymous heroine squares off with her equally uncomfortable, male dinner friend/potential boyf/adversary.
They volley back and forth several brutally, “completely honest” questions.
After a few, he asks her, “How do you pay your rent?”
“I… work at a non-profit, in Hell’s Kitchen.” (Pride in her voice, though a somewhat knowing tone: yeah, I know. Very Brooklyn answer.) “I teach public school kids how to write and produce their own plays.”
“So… how do you pay your rent?”
She laughs.
Already – my Netflix ticker says this is barely 13:50 into the entire movie – the two biggest threads of the film come together: (1) an endearing, realistic romantic comedy starring Jessica Williams (that Dope Queen off The Daily Show who now does other stuff – namely, this) and rom-com’s staple dorky everyman Chris O’Dowd (because the thinking, even semi-straight woman[**] needs an IT guy); and (2) the female Bildungsroman.
If you’ve taken an English class any time since approx. 1980, you’ve probably had to learn and use “Bildungsroman” in an essay. It’s the coming-of-age novel, the story of growing up, an arc from innocence to experience. Except, as a pivotal cohort of feminist critics in the 1980s argued, the female Bildungsroman means “growing down,” a story of women being taught by society: Lower Your Expectations! Conform! Settle! The debate around what even is a Bildungsroman has wrestled with how gender-specific a story about maturing and (in essence) #adulting can be, given that women in Western society since the inception of the novel itself haven’t really had the options to leave home, discover themselves as autonomous, free, independent selves. The male Bildungsroman, in other words, is about the boy who grows up to be a man, and gets a job; the female Bildungsroman is about the girl who becomes a lady, and finds the right husband. Sure, there’s status and some freedom attached to that – class status and thus economic freedom, as the bourgieness of the novel excels at rewarding. But by and large, no matter how failed the male career, no matter how much the woman takes on a new career of domestic labor, the novels usually emphasize along these lines. Men achieve professional success; women aren’t left to be spinsters.
(A professor in my department, Jesse Rosenthal, pointed out how pervasive this narrative still is within even the most indie, “unconventional” of tales. His case study? (500) Days of Summer. As he recounted to a class on the 19th-cen. British novel, here’s a movie putatively about the romantic maturation of the male subject – a rom-com trajectory usually reserved for women [i.e.. He’s Just Not That Into You could never be She’s Just Not That Into You]. But Joseph Gordon Levitt’s problematic-nice-guy fairy tale, complete with problematic-indie-dream-girl Zooey Deschanel, isn’t his acceptance of a limited role in his next relationship. It’s a successful job interview. [roll credits])
So the fact that The Incredible Jessica James coupled, in several senses, these two plots wasn’t surprising to me. Less than 15 minutes in, and yeah, obviously, Chris O’Dowd is gonna get the girl, and Jessica is gonna get over her ex by realizing that she “deserves” this more mature guy. Her work is great and all, the story goes, but obviously what we want is Bridesmaids with a lady of color. Comedy + late capitalism’s precarity (Jessica, how do you pay your rent? Are you going to have to go live with your parents like Kristin Wiig had to after the cupcake biz tanked?) = love story. And bonus points for being about Instagram, and having a WOC lead where a white actress would have been five or ten years ago (slash even now): kudos, my friends. Kudos.
But… that’s not what happened. And here’s where this movie is radical.
Because The Incredible Jessica James is a female Bildungsroman [or Bildungs-Film] that subtly, cannily, definitively breaks the mold.
It isn’t a story about a woman realizing how wrong she is to be hung up on the wrong, bad boy, and thus the return to the family, to society’s right side of the tracks, to *herself* that is made whole again by giving up her rebellious adolescent wandering and waffling. Instead, TIJJ presents a heroine who goes through a series of rejections not of lovers, but of jobs [displayed on her wall: see first screencap]. It tracks her indefatigable efforts to make what she loves (theater) into a career, even a somewhat uncertain one. It’s about her slow realization – not the sudden “awakening” narrative that critics have ascribed to female/feminist Bildungsroman of old – that what she’s doing, working every day with kids, continuing to send out her resume, writing and reading and connecting with the public circles of her aspiring field – all that, is a career.
Take, for example, a crucial marker of James’s acceptance of herself, and of her status, as grown-up, matured, sufficiently adult that she’s no longer faking it til she makes it: she’s Made It. The blueish-purple jumpsuit spotted in a Brooklyn consignment shop, the kind that is explicitly labeled as male by the sewn patch of its previous owner, “Randolph,” tall enough for even the pretty tall JJ.
Working-class, second hand, male-identified uniform; natural hair in box braids; red lipstick and bright eyeliner. This is how Jessica meets her parents. But the music slides to an uncomfortable stop as Jessica gets off the Arrivals moving walkway: her parents are bourgie, sweet, stable, and utterly unlike her in spirit. This is the American middle-class dream – as authors from Frantz Fanon to Paul Gilroy to Ta Nehisi-Coates have written – that preys on Black people specifically, the double-consciousness of passing as it works in all its formulaic vapidity. Jessica’s younger sister, too, has bought into this dream: she takes one look at Jessica.
“You look like an auto-mechanic,” Jerusa (her sister) points out in a tone dripping with judgment.
“It’s cool, though, right?” Jessica beams.
“Yeah…” her sister nods, meaning the opposite. “I mean, you’re not going to wear it to the party?” [Her very normative, unironic, and uncritical baby shower.]
“… Nope,” Jessica deflates. Pretending this has been her plan all along.
Because this family isn’t ever going to be the place where Jessica can be anything other than stifled. The prim-and-proper group sits in the suburban family room late that night, merrily gooey-eyed over a romantic drama they’re watching on TV, whose dialogue (that’s all we overhear) is so utterly, sickeningly banal that Jessica doesn’t even enter the room. She hangs back, in the darkness. The entire setting – with all its race and class implications (and the sincere and moving subplot about the James family’s struggles with making their own rent, and how this continues to the present with Jessica’s public school kid whose divorced parents are fighting over custody, intertwines class and race throughout) – requires, in sum, the painful subjugation of Jessica’s self. A “growing down,” a compromise, as its definition of “growing up.”
Women of traditional Bildungsromane, Abel, Hirsch and Langland posit, “are not free to explore; more frequently, they merely exchange one domestic sphere for another. While the young hero roams through the city, the young heroine strolls down the country lane” (8).
Jessica James, by contrast, goes back to New York.
And back, at least superficially, to the romantic sphere of this rom-com. Where her jumpsuit is acceptable; where people like her appreciate thoughtful, empowering arts (instead of, like her mom’s Very White Book Club Lady friend wants, Cats). Where her lesbian best friend (that actress from Master of None) is the elective community James wants, not the family she’s contractually obliged to recognize in her blood. Where Chris O’Dowd is; where her career is.
So how does the movie wrap up the romantic plot without making this about Jessica’s successful “deserving” of the Right Man™?
(It’s worth noting, before we spoil the ending, that the Boone – aka O’Dowd – subplot of the movie focuses on his not being able to get over the right girl. He stalks his ex-wife, amusingly because it’s Chris O’Dowd, but I think the movie implies cringe-worthily and creepily too: the dude side of rom-coms, it seems, is bleak; not somewhere the film is especially interested in lingering, and neither really are we. He’s eventually ashamed of himself, and this humility is deliberately more endearing than his Every Breath You Take enactment was. Admittedly, we could get into the politics of who says they’re sorry at various points in the film, who asks for and who gives forgiveness, and the ways in which being placed in a position of forgiving is, in a way, simultaneously powerful and powerless. But Nietzsche and feminism is a debate for another time.)
What I’m especially struck by – and I’ve watched this movie myself and with my sister, and then thought about it again after it was praised by another woman I love who watched it an ocean away – is that TIJJ ends with Jessica.
The final two scenes are crucial here. The penultimate brings together the two guys; formally, the two choices of a Bildungsroman: forward, or back? Jessica’s ex, Damon, finds her backstage after the kids’ theater night concludes, and opens with how he “know[s] how much this means to” her. For a split second, I panicked: OH GOD, fuck, this is why we can’t have nice things. They’re gonna have this guy realize how great she is – because obviously the only way a guy can appreciate a woman is for him to be in competition with another man. She deserves better! I shouted internally. Don’t take him back: sure, you realized you were as responsible for the break-up as he was. So what! You can do better.
But they hug, they sigh, and he leaves. (At which point I breathed a sigh of relief.)
Enter Chris O’Dowd. (At which point I was back to, fuck conventionality. What a missed opportunity.)
Turns out, though, the movie saw me – and the Bildungsroman – coming a mile off.
Because Jessica – unlike Rachel – gets on the damn plane.
Jessica, after all, has been offered a huge job opportunity in the most novelistic of cities: London. But things are just getting back on track with Right Guy; but going is her dream, is her big break; but he, like Damon, just realized how great she is – he read her entire corpus of theatrical writing, and declared – #honesty – that he’s still coming to grips with her complexity, on the page and off; but; but; but…
But… she forgot to tell him about London. And in a sense, this is where swelling crescendos of orchestral joy began filling my head, because if this had been a rom-com like the others, if this had been a female coming-of-age story like the others, she would never forgotten about him. Ever. Not once. He would have been her one phone call; her best friend-par-excellence; her Person. Instead, that honor goes to Tasha, the semi-parodic self-involved best friend who always, though, has Jessica’s back.
And so when the clearly wealthy – loaded, because of an app that is explicitly about the formal gesture afforded by technology of Family, without the actual emotional or affective labor of having to talk to those totally different people who somehow raised you! – Boone mentions “frequent flyer miles,” we can anticipate an airplane that Jessica (by now we can say, of course) will be on.
“Just if you wanted to… bring someone with you… to show you around the town,” he hedges, just before the cut.
“How does that work? [...] Frequent flyer miles?”
Cut to Jessica – in the god. damn. JUMPSUIT. Pleased as punch, sitting in – oh yes, we can have nice things – not even economy seats. The nice seats.
At which point, the truly INCREDIBLE part of this movie becomes clear:
Tasha: Dude, I can't believe your boyfriend bought us tickets to London.
Jessica: Okay, who said anything about him being my boyfriend?
T: Wait. What are you talking about? This is like, the most romantic gesture I have ever seen.
JJ: Yeah, it's dope. But it takes more than a couple of roundtrip tickets to London for somebody to be my boyf.
T: That is so boss.
Shandra – the elementary school girl whose divorced parents prompted Jessica’s own reflection on her parents/childhood – returning to her seat: What is so boss?
T: Uh, Jessica.
S: Oh, yeah. Duh.[… I]t was really cool of your boyfriend to get me a ticket, too.
T: Hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. Sister. Just because a guy buys a lady a couple of roundtrip tickets to London does not make him her boyfriend.…
[a beat]
S: You know, I like your jumpsuit.
JJ: Thank you. Yeah, it's pretty bad-ass, right?
S: Hm. Yeah, it is.
They all exchange smiles, the camera zooms in for one final-close up of Jessica’s excited anticipation of landing for the beginning of – not her romance, but – her career.
COME ON! You’re telling me the final scene of this movie is a new affinity, a new definition of family, in which the white, straight, married couple form is reshaped into the female solidarity of friendship, while the child of that hetero dyad of yore is now the dark-skinned girl who herself is a budding author, having been mentored by Jessica, who is – onscreen – mentored by another strong, Black female playwright??? You’re telling me that throw-away moment in the corridor backstage with Chris O’Dowd that seems like the lead-in to a kiss is in fact his last appearance onscreen??? You’re telling me the movie, moreover, goes out of its way to stress – TWICE -- that whatever erotic/romantic relationship they’re in, Jessica didn’t accept this trip as the quid pro quo of settling down??? YOU’RE TELLING ME THIS NEW COLLECTIVE IS SO AWARE OF ITS MEMBERS’ QUIRKS AND FOIBLES AND SELF-AUTHORSHIP/FASHIONING THAT THE FINAL LINES OF THE MOVIE UNDERSCORE THAT JESSICA CAN, IN FACT, DRESS HOWEVER THE FUCK SHE WANTS, AND THAT SOME PEOPLE WILL LOVE HER FOR IT, AND FEEL THE SAME ABOUT THE THINGS SHE LOVES???
Get out of my face, TIJJ. You have *EXPLODED* the female Bildungsroman, and maybe the Bildungsroman full-stop. There is no return to the original society, no compromise, no settling. Jessica isn’t the one forced to the margins of the story by choosing either independence or submission: the family is.
For that matter, romance sort of is. Jessica has no “boyf”; Tasha has no (onscreen, stable, couple-form) gf, but neither is she a hypersexualized lerb. She masturbates on/off-screen, but it’s one of her quirks! She and Jessica go to a lesbian bar, where Tasha chats with several recognizably-styled queer ladies: but she is neither reduced to her own romance plot, nor denied any sexuality at all. She and Jessica, however queerly you read their relationship (and I don’t especially, but I see how one could), are the empowering couple of the film, supporting each other not just in romance but in their mutually-reinforcing careers.
This is a rom-com about aiming high, about finding a career not in, because of, or in spite of a guy, but because it’s the one through-line of the entire story. Jessica begins and ends loving her work, and the slow build of that love rewards her by the end. She has Made It. The fact that she probably goes home to an attractive dude who boosts but is not himself responsible for her career – sure, he gets her upgraded tickets, but her confidence, “forthright[ness],” and drive suggest she would have made it to London without him, no question, by whatever means necessary – is icing on the cake. Yes, there was a maturation narrative within the romantic plot (she learned to leap in her relationships; she also learned, as Boone did, to have realistic expectations of where both partners are at any given moment in a relationship). But this, the movie stresses, is not the end of the story. It’s a subplot within her story.
[gif from x]
I don’t think it’s unimportant, either, that Jessica Williams – a fine actress in this movie, entirely winning the screen – plays the heroine. By which I mean, I think it’s all the more radical that to play the romantic interest to gaze adoringly at rom-com’s Irish nerdboy Chris O’Dowd, the director/producers/writers picked a woman whose best-known appearances are in scathing condemnations of male privilege, white supremacy, and American patriarchal, racist, and just terrible norms in general. That such a woman is the new face – but I didn’t even get to talk about the fact that in a few scenes, Jessica J/W’s complexion is a little spotty, which made me (with a long history of struggling with the medical and psychological reality of being a teenager and then adult woman with terrible acne) want to cry with gratitude: this is what a heroine looks like?
Sure, Wonder Woman is fab, but damn I needed this representation so much – maybe more – than the superheroic, impervious demi-goddess from Themyscira. I needed a strong, self-loving, no-nonsense, tall, Black, not-quite-starving artist in Brooklyn, jamming with headphones in the concrete stairwell of her building, who proudly declares, “I’m freakin’ DOPE.”
I needed a new female coming-of-age story – especially in 2017 –, and, somewhat subtly but unquestionably, The Incredible Jessica James delivered.
***
{** I use “women,” “men,” “male,” and “female” throughout this piece to refer mostly to the historical categories of those identities/concepts. I also want to be clear that I’m not trying to gloss over this film’s missteps; rather, I’m trying to celebrate its major, but possibly missable, wins. Lastly, I know that in German Bildungsroman means *novel* of development/maturation, not *film*. Don’t @ me.
Thanks to Jesse Rosenthal (JHU) for getting me thinking about the basic understanding of the Bildungsroman in such concise, formal terms. For the debate about male vs./and female Bildungsromane, see – to name just some –, Abel, Hirsch and Langland (eds.), The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development (1983); Lorna Ellis, Appearing to Diminish: Female Development and the British Bildungsroman, 1750-1850 (1999); Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change (1989); Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (1987); and Susan Fraiman, Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and the Novel of Development (1993).
The Incredible Jessica James (2017), dir. and writer Jim Strouse; produced by Beachside Films/Netflix. S/o to casting, Kate Geller and Jessica Kelly. Thanks also to Springfield! Springfield! movie scripts for their transcription, which saved me time. }
#The Incredible Jessica James#Bildungsroman#women#coming of age#work#race#class#feminism#Jessica Williams#novel of development#narrative#films#movies#2017#mine#long read#female bildungsroman#heroine
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