#also sometimes will roland is there similarly working wonders as a scintillatingly parallel role

[unproduciblesmackdown]

oh hell yes, had entirely forgotten those details about the novel & sure relevant...had definitely been thinking about how they both have their Veneers, of course meant to protect themselves & help them succeed, but with alana's being this energetic cheerfulness that doesn't necessarily mean like, chipper, much less constantly so, but more Always On & being glass half full what's next Optimism / Momentum (! always gotta be moving forward!! taylor!!!) & is also trying to be friendly & connect to others, with her ready to relate her own experiences to theirs & vice versa, despite the "normal" standard i guess dictating that if you do anything but go "wow that sucks" you Failed....while taylor's veneer is of course less outgoing & is really usually more about withholding the expression of negative emotions, while what people think about is this expectation of more Positive ones from them, which is more about the idea that taylor doesn't have the power to not try to "appeal" to people with Warmth or whatever....while alana as an isolated teen among teens Is trying to be warm and invite interaction, and we have that difference in her usual demeanor, but again this is seen as her doing things wrong / her trying to hide Her negative emotions / reactions with more positive ones is also not "right" b/c taylor's not "wrong" in their approach, alana being seen as having a cooler demeanor too wouldn't actually guarantee her success here....both have the issues of why they can't be more genuinely vulnerable in the first place, why their vulnerability is already made more vulnerable than others (also that alana being black could heighten this pressure to Be Warm, when a "lack" of that could be all the more scrutinized for it), why Anyone's sharing vulnerability is not facilitated / supported & not necessarily unpunished, regardless of how they put up any front / buffer against that. and very relevant and interesting that the novel perhaps writes her as, perhaps after seeing her as, "cold" as she's hurrying past any vulnerability (while the movie seems to approach giving her more sympathy from the start but also like dialing back her Whole Thing)

which then it's like, thinking of their Situations, school is supposedly not adversarial but yes it is, supposedly all about Merit, as grades & extracurriculars/other things recognized as Achievements, at least the latter of which we know alana is all about & recognizes herself as Succeeding in, though we know although this could be framed as like, wanting the competitive win of what looks good to college applications & the like, as evan accuses, that she does care about what she's doing & doesn't just consider herself to be looking for other people to acknowledge a Win....whereas taylor shakes up their environment right away via the "merit" as measured by success in business wins that thee boss recognizes & acknowledges, whereas an adversarial competition between the people trying to achieve is seen as what ought to matter to the point of being intrinsically equivalent to whatever Merit they have; taylor being this younger nonbinary intern who isn't aggressive & has skipped over "earning" whatever from employees is resented....thinking of a potential link too in if it's supposed to be resented like alana thinks she doesn't have to "earn" being liked if she's just on her own gotten these achievements she can cite, i know, wow....both ofc misfits, the good shit

definitely also thinking of that Momentum link, & both having the like, drivenness, ambition, Goals as important to them & something they're like set to pursue on their own. naturally alana's trying to succeed in the academic framework, presumably, where yeah extracurriculars can sure matter as like [uh oh college] is repeatedly made relevant for us, but also like as a kid Good At School is that whole huge overall thing you're Supposed to have going, so she can also just be interested in that in its own right, as taylor kind of is in being Good At Finance, in its own right wanting to see how good at it they are by just being here doing that, indefinitely. while caring at all about ethics also, pointed out as somewhat in opposition to this lol, your idealism is at war with your profit drive....while alana's relevance in tcp is first & foremost about idealism, of course, though characters & audiences can interpret how aware she is / motivated she is by her getting Anything out of it of course, popularity, image, an extracurricular to cite, her desire to connect, her desire to yknow Herself feel like she's succeeding in helping other people, when only now do we see her getting access to all these people's response to her efforts in apparent confirmation of that successful connection & helping....and that both characters are quite like, presumably very used to being on their own & so like, self-defined, -determined, -motivated, of course caring about connection & feedback but like again with the goals they've been pursuing on their own anyways so are set like, here's alana pushing ahead with tcp stuff & willing to handle it on her own if need be, taylor has to eventually have a tmc, they like to have friends, but they only Must have allies in terms of like, they never have all the power they need to avoid more total thwarting without it

also like, well wait i was gonna say this came from some like way early in development stuff so hardly necessarily fully counted as like applicable to the bway version as the main reference point here: wherever that too-official comment on alana's character was from yknow basically framing it as her personal failure to not have friends lmao, that she like fails to get why her approach hasn't succeeded in that realm, like nice resent that always....compared to taylor in their material where like as you said the Criticisms that taylor's a nonhuman nonemotion sicko robot happening a bit too often and not being apologized for or recanted, while also taylor has to claim that wendy, the most prominent understander that taylor has feelings of course (& user of that knowledge to hurt them as much as possible but whaddaya gonna do (nothing!! or else!!) she's gotta be wendy!), is that crucial copilot, wendy who also e.g. steps in when taylor's bestie says they don't have feelings & doubles down w/o apology thee end, & wendy being like "hmm that's right i didn't Manage you well enough. only for sicko business wins" Almost As Though the show that has wendy Managing the feelings of axe & the like, primarily how he gets to turn them all into the problem of everyone around him while wendy's job is to enable this by sabotaging those affected from just getting away from this & to also be in charge of being on speed dial to pat axe on the head if he's noticed he's sad about something....as though the show thinks wendy's role to taylor is actually comparable when mostly wendy hurting them on purpose is the cause of taylor lashing out, which then other non wendy people handle &/or else just suffer, & wendy sometimes giving taylor advice or being a business sidekick for a moment but it's more fleeting & peersish than wendy's life handling axe's shit, & wendy sometimes giving taylor driveby criticism b/c they thwarted Her & she'll say they're like axe, who btw she unconditionally supports & will bail on taylor to help never vice versa & nobody's calling axe a sicko robot & etcccc a bit of a tangent there to get around to "billions does think taylor's too Weird with their affect & feelings; this is Wrong, a Failing" such as that it's objective, necessary feedback that now & then someone says they're not having feelings being a person right & stalks off & while ofc taylor is a person with feelings & the show knows it, it just sure also seems to be like, yes, it Would be better if taylor was warmer & more emotive in a deemed "normal" way, people Would stop getting to accuse them of being a machine & be treated like that's Right by characters, arcs, lack of [what happens b/c they're wrong], comparative lack of [what happens b/c it was Right to notice taylor's feelings more accurately]....while of course alana's source material is different in many ways but her "failures" to connect compared to others do also go a bit More punished as it were, there's only so many characters & the teens are peers in [age basically, being in high school, degrees of extra isolation] but alana & jared are gone in the end & the [the Theoretical concept of Romance is intact] & [no Families have further fractured!] with which evan has some Resolution in the finale are, so far as we know, not particularly applicable to these two when (a) evan didn't regard them as romantic candidates, so far as we know & (b) what we heard about their families is that alana's grandma died & jared's parents don't know anything about him, which he prefers. & then also You Don't Need Friends They Disappoint You.gif applies all around lmao. & can only speculate about anything else, like how the rest of tcp went for alana, though we know the orchard that's crucial in this finale was reopened, & seems like alana would've been involved & seems less likely anyone else would've been. taylor walking into tmf alone....

well an effort to discern any key points as its own effort to wrap this up, for now, juxtaposition thoughts are eternal: yeah the difference in their demeanors while in both cases it's extra vulnerable people who can't show it, extra alone people who are used to having to Go it alone & can / will do so, they're strategic & focused on these goals & always wanting to be moving forward / doing more, we could of course compare like [characters who feel defined by some measure of Success & if they don't have the achievements to show for it then who are they, what are they doing, what now] perhaps lol in broader classic themes, similarly/relatedly/perhaps mostly restatedly lol that of course amidst these supposed more objective measurements of success it's like but what about the Personal motivation, which perhaps we want to resolve....criticism about their motivations & their efforts to realize goals, whether from other characters, or perhaps the story/material, or audiences, some like "this character criticizing them isn't considered accurate" vs when it more so Is, when there's this double standard at play scrutinizing this character on xyz basis vs others....both being these characters like succeeding on their own but of course being unfulfilled upon their introduction, pushing towards these goals along the path they see fit & willing to go it alone but knowing that's not ideal, even in terms of just strategy, characters we do of course get these looks beyond their most usual kind of relatively guarded / defensive modes, Performing, Achieving, Impressiveness, if i just keep [merit]ing it then surely [...? everything i want? what else could i do to pursue That?], being seen as intense, perhaps even both cold, despite the differences in affect....lone person continuously striving to Achieve while there might be people around going like "but have you tried being more Normal with it though" but if people need them to be "appealing" in that way and will leave them on their own, there they go, making it on their own some more just as they have been

thinking about those "the ways alana beck and taylor mason can be juxtaposed"

much to consider… first thing that comes to mind is the deh novel leaning hard on evan going “wow i always thought alana was so robotic and calculated… but maybe… she Is a person after all?” (as detailed here), compared & contrasted with multiple characters going “god taylor you’re such a robot, you’re not even human” and then never apologizing for or recanting it. and this is despite them taking very different approaches here, alana going for Smiling And Happy And Helpful while taylor goes for stoicism and emotional Neutrality. hm what else is there. i’m kind of stuck here actually. what are your thoughts on the matter