#bad reviews is Buddie coded prove me wrong

[starryeyedreader0]

“I can’t lose another boy that’s not even my boyfriend”

If that ain’t the most Buck Buckley lyric that’s ever been written my GOD Sabrina

[violetrance]

I'm seeing a lot of people annoyed that Klance shippers are downplaying that recent Allurance moment in the clip & to compare it to the bonding moment is a reach etc. So I feel the need to explain/clear up why that moment is possibly hinting at A LOT, and why so many people are making a big deal out if it.

1. Lance has a crush on Allura. This has been known since day one, it is obvious. He has a clear infatuation with her and it has been shown throughout the course of the show. So some people immediately assume that he will end up with Allura. That’s fair, because what we’ve explicitly seen in canon is that he likes her. But what about Allura? We’re always talking about Lance’s feelings towards her and they’ve had some nice, genuine moments together, but she still as of now has not showing any romantic interest in Lance. If you compare her growing development and interactions with Lotor, they are very different to what she portrays towards Lance. Every time Lance makes a move on her, she’s either turned off or has no reaction to it. Now I’m not saying she can’t develop possible feelings for him as they go along, but it’s been five seasons going on six and we still have seen no indication that she feels that way. Which brings me to my next point.

2. In the most recent clip, Lance is clearly acting flustered towards her, saying ‘We make a great team.” But what is Allura’s reaction it? Nothing. She literally just brushes it off and says “Let’s go Lance.” So they can proceed with their mission. It’s obvious, even now, that Allura is not interested in Lance like that. Also, going back to my first point. Yes, Lance does have a crush on Allura, you can tell he genuinely likes her. That’s normal, it makes sense. But why does that make everyone immediately assume they’ll end up together? Crushes are apart of life, they come and go. Unless he’s in love with her and she feels the SAME WAY towards him, there can be no established relationship. Lance has literally said in his vlog, that even though Allura is great he’s not ready to settle down just yet because there are plenty of fish in the sea. Well???

3. No matter what you choose to believe, that scene and the scene Lance has with Keith during their bonding moment are meant to parallel each other. It’s just the truth. But you need to analyze the blatant contrast of the scenes and how they’re set up, the aftermath too to understand their impact. It was purposeful, it was done to show how Allura and Keith feel towards Lance, but how he feels towards them too. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, the bonding moment was meant to be intimate, it was romantically coded. It literally parallels a scene shared with Hunk and Shay only a bit before, it’s PURPOSEFUL. If Lance says “I think we make a great team.” to Allura to show affection, what is making people believe that he didn’t do the same thing towards Keith?? If you compare Allura and Keith’s individual reactions to these moments, you will blatantly see what the show runners are trying to display. 

Lance blushes and get’s flustered towards Allura, claiming they make a good team. Her response is not really acknowledging the advance like she usually does, but instead continuing to go about the mission. 

Keith and Lance are holding each other’s hands, exchanging soft smiles and looks basked in purple mood lighting w/ slow music in the bg. Lance claims they are a good team, Keith smiles obviously happy. When Lance says he forgets the bonding moment, this intimate moment between them. What is Keith’s response? He’s offended, says that he held him in his arms like that’s supposed to change something? Not to mention how impatient he was to get Lance out of the pod before. Are you really trying to tell me he didn’t develop a crush on Lance after that moment??? Don’t even get me started on s3 and other past moments that further proves this. Also the head writer of the show literally saying Lance pretended to forget the bonding moment because he wasn’t emotionally ready to face it?? If that was just a platonic moment between two buddies, would they really make it that deep? No, not at all. 

Lance using those lines as a way to show affection towards both Allura AND Keith, literally shows he has feeling for the both of them. He has shown the same infatuated expression for Allura towards Keith before. They are literally similar to each other in many aspects, so he has a blatant type. Jeremy has hinted at his milkshakes bringing EVERYBODY to the yard, meaning he most likely is not straight. He’s said that something happens between two characters in terms of LGBT rep. So that means a relationship, who has been basically confirmed to have an end game romance? Lance. And if he has feelings towards both Allura AND Keith, you can basically do the math towards who he’ll possibly end up with. 

The only difference between them is: Allura does not have romantic feelings for Lance, but Keith does. Now I’m not saying this about Allura to pin her as some sort of bad guy, because this is normal behaviour. You do not always have to reciprocate someone’s feelings, she still obviously genuinely cares for him as a person and a friend regardless. But it is obvious, that she does not like him like that.

3. To go further, there was a newer review for season 6 that mentioned Allura and Lotor’s closeness and growing relationship has more than one consequence over the course of the season. It leads to some REVELATIONS for another character, which feels like a natural step forward on their personal journey. It’s extremely obvious they are talking about Lance. The creators also emphasised that his personal journey has something to do with respect, and rather than being a ladies man and obsessing over flirting etc, it’s about being a good team member & appreciating a person. 

Unless they’re mentioning something else, I would not be surprised if the consequences coming between Lotor and Allura’s growing relationship, is Lance’s one sided crush on Allura. Allura likes Lotor, Lotor likes Allura, it’s obvious that they have feelings for each other. Their interactions are probably the most blatantly romantically coded I’ve seen on this show. Last season you could tell this affected Lance a bit and he was kind of having trouble coming to terms with their relationship. This season, I do genuinely believe that Lance is going to officially move on from his crush/infatuation w/ Allura. He is not very fond of Lotor, but if he sees or knows how Allura feels about him, that perspective will change. He cares a lot about Allura, he wants her to be happy. Lance is the type of person who will go out of his way for others so they can be happy or comfortable, even if it affects him. We’ve seen this side of him more as the seasons go along, because he’s starting to mature more. That’s why he supported Keith so much when he became the leader, even though it was difficult for him. That’s why he comforted and supported Shiro a lot last season, even though he was probably afraid/nervous since he’s been changing so much. 

Him accepting the fact that Allura has feelings for Lotor instead of constantly flirting with her or being jealous, will be a step forward for him. In the end, she’s just a crush not the love of his life. There are other people out there like he said. If they do decide to make him confess his love for her though, it would not make any sense for his personal journey. It would not help him grow as a person, because in the end she still would not have romantic feelings for him. So he’d probably get rejected and be forced to move on anyways. Also if the consequences for Lotura and Allura’s relationship is different, I honestly do not believe or hope that they don’t, write her character to turn around & jump ship to Lance if she gets her heart broken. I personally do not think they will make her character that way, because she’s had so many different love interests but so far she’s only found a connection with one. Her immediately falling in love with Lance if everything possibly falls apart with her and Lotor, would be poor writing in my opinion and be very cliche. Allura and Lance are both strong characters, and they deserve to be written as such in terms of their characteristics. Lance making the decision to put his crush on her behind him so that she can be happy and he can grow as well, will be a really amazing and important lesson for kids especially watching.

4. This is just my opinion on the parallels of those scenes and where I possibly think Lance’s storyline with Allura is going. Honestly all that I’ve written could be wrong, because we have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. But if you look at this from a realistic stand point, it just makes the most sense. I also don’t like seeing people downplay Allura and Lance’s relationship because it is very sweet, but at the same time to assume that they’re going to end up together just because Lance likes her alone is unrealistic. And people might think I’m being Klance biased or that I shouldn’t be assuming Allurance’s relationship if I don’t ship them. But you don’t have to be a shipper, to see the probable direction that this show is going in. All of the facts and info are right in our face, we just need to pay attention. The show paralleling those two scenes, is showing us something really important and it isn’t a reach to assume so. Not to mention, this is not the first time they’ve paralleled scenes in this context towards Keith and Lance. It isn’t an accident anymore, it never was, everything that they’re doing is intentional. 

[jockpersecution]

The Great Forgetting, James Renner

This is my first wholly bad review! I thought this book was really, really bad. I really like conspiracy theories, sci fi that seems like it’s just set in present reality until you get farther into the book and realize it’s off, and I liked the idea of the “gradient” - introducing people to the theory slowly, waiting till they accept progressively one more-out-there idea to introduce the next. It went so so wrong……

Spoilers below, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it anyway.

• My first HUGE problem was the RIDICULOUSLY inappropriate relationships. Sam, who’s a COCSA /& CSA survivor, is 13 and her abuse is still ongoing when she first gets with the protagonist, Jack, 17 at the time. She’s removed from her abusive household and  then is still with Jack at 17/ 21. And then, when they find Jack’s best friend Tony about to kill himself, Jack…gives his gf and bff permission to fuck to cheer him up…? So their weird relationship of them both sleeping with her continues for a while. Tony says that Sam doesn’t like how delicately Jack treats her because she was abused- and there’s then a scene where Jack is thinking about how badly he wants to scream at her aggressively when he doesn’t like what she’s saying. He doesn’t though- he just tells her to shut up and pulls her to kiss him. For a while, I thought maybe the author was trying to write him as a flawed protagonist. By the end though it seemed clear the reader is supposed to like him and care if he lives or dies. Two other main relationships - between Jack’s sister and Mark (said to be abusive but not for this reason) and with Cole also had this age gap. Always with the woman as the younger one. Interesting, Renner! This being presented as acceptable was what condemned this book to me - it made it so, so hard to read.

• The only character I found likeable (Cole) also gets with a 13 year old girl as a 17 year old at the end (I had hoped he would be gay, too - he seemed slightly coded as such and is constantly called a fag and such by the Hilariously Homophobic Right-Wing Old Man) and then dies

• The men who control the world-brain-control devices are revealed to be Jewish holocaust survivors. So you get those conspiracy theories in there.

• I really wouldn’t necessarily mind using the names of real celebrities and scientists - that could add to its setting in the present. But saying these real people (Hawking was the main one) pioneered the mind control scheme is a bit sinister, I know I wouldn’t like my name used this way

• Boiling water doesn’t get rid of the flouride. This one is googleable.

• I’m guessing the writer took some notes from Gran Torino in building the Loveable Right-Wing Old Man. The jaded Vietnam war vet who uses anti Asian racial slurs but really is a good person and really doesn’t hate Asian peoples - rescues an early teens Vietnamese girl who’s being prostituted, hides her in his apartment for an extended time, until another man breaks in to rape and kill her - at which time Loveable Old Man kills this guy.

• Here’s a short example of the obnoxious writing style and subtle judgements the author interjects

“She was round but not unattractive. Dark hair. Dark skin. She was forty-five. A Navajo. Full-blood. One of the librarians from section twelve. Biographies.”

• “She sat and he offered her the pipe. It was marijuana, or like marijuana in the way a freshly picked berry from the forest is like store-bought fruit. This was uncultivated, wild pot. It smelled of damp earth and time. If history had a smell, thought Sam, it would smell just like this. She held in the smoke and then let it out slowly like he’d showed her to do when they were kids.”

I don’t know if the author is trying to prove to us that he HAS in FACT had sex and smoked weed, but what is this? Weed is in fact better when cultivated, is not native to the area of Alaska and can probably not be grown outside in that area, and is never going to smell like “damp earth and time” holy fuck this is corny. Also I love wild berries, but the best berries are fresh home-grown berries. Author should go to the farmer’s market.

• This one is nsfw but I have to include it. Keep in mind Jack (21) is dating Sam (17) & Tony (21) is his best buddy. Super creepy & consistently the type of relationship represented in the book, and while I expect sex scenes in novels I don't expect weird sharing kinks in sci fi thrillers.

“Jack hugged his friend.

‘Get off me before you give me an accidental boner,’ said Tony.

Jack backed away and Sam swam to Tony and hugged him. Then she laughed. "Not a moment too soon,” she said.

Sam looked at Jack. She was seventeen now. A young woman who’d kicked off her fears in the years since the county fair and that scorching August in her when they were kids. There was a question in her eyes, and they were so close in so many ways she didn’t need to voice it. Jack nodded, smiled, and drifted on his back toward the beach. Sam turned to Tony and slipped her legs around him. She leaned forward and brushed her chest against his.

'What are you doing?’ He whispered.

'Making you feel better,’ she said. She took his right hand and placed it on her left breast. Then she moved up his body and placed her mouth on his. His lips were softer than Jack’s. Almost feminine. He broke away to look for Jack, but he was stepping out of the water already, giving them privacy. 'It’s okay,’ Sam assured him.

In a moment Tony was tossing her clothes away. And then he was inside her, she was around him, and when he came, he bit her lip and she moaned softly.

They took Tony back to Jack’s dorm at Miami U and later that night the three of them climbed under the flannel blankets of the narrow bed. Tony kissed Sam as Jack spooned up to her from behind.“

rating: 👎👎👎👎👎

The first part of the book was intriguing! Even though the book let me unsatisfied, it did really pull me in for a while. Unfortunately I didn’t care at all about any but one of the characters - I was either very neutral or actively couldn’t stand them. The writing felt clunky at times, but if I’m being generous I can say it may just not be the style I prefer. The things I explain above just put the nail in the coffin and move it beyond simply very mediocre.