#did i say i love tony

[nnnn99999]

So I watched the warp effect (I am officially in my joongdunk era and I have accepted my fate). After stewing on it for a few days there is one aspect of this show that refuses to leave my mind. I am talking about the commentary on trauma and rejection explored through Jean, Kat, Alex, Captain and Tony. (All of the following is my interpretation of the show. I am not sure if some these were actually intended by the creator of the show or stuff I just made up in my head on my own. Because I have indeed done that before many times. Well this is what I got from the show whether it was intended or not.)

Jean had a traumatizing sexual experience with Alex, whereas Kat had a traumatizing rejection experience with Captain. Jean and Kat were in completely different situations, having completely different traumas that manifested in completely different ways. However, what remains the same is the fact that trauma changed them both as people. It changed the way they interact with people, and it changed the way they thought about themselves.

I believe that trauma, no matter how big or small, will change a person forever, sometimes overtly and sometimes so subtly that the people themselves don't realize it. And even if they manage to overcome that trauma and move on in life, those changes that trauma caused don't magically go away, they remain as a part of their personality. The show reflected this too.

Jean's change was very obvious, probably because till the end of the original timeline she was never able to get over her trauma. Her conversation with Kat on the rooftop of their school revealed how she lost her confidence because of her experience with Alex. Years later, it was through another conversation with Kat by the swimming pool that it was made obvious that she still hadn't regained that confidence. It was pretty obvious in the JeanKat bar scene too. Jean was never able to forgive Alex despite liking him in the original timeline, and she was never able to forget her trauma either.

Kat's change is also pretty obvious at first. She understandably felt extremely insecure and unsafe, fearing she will get attacked even though she knew Captain was in jail. It is this fear that pushes her more towards Alex and making her somewhat dependent on him. I thought it was pretty ironic that Alex was the one who caused Jean's trauma yet he is also the one healing Kat's trauma. Alex made Kat feel safe. And while I do believe that Kat did like Alex to some extent (she had been hooking up with him regularly for 10 whole years), the reason she wanted to date Alex was not because she liked him but because she felt safe with him. She was seeking security from Alex, not love. The result was that it became very difficult for her to bounce back to her previous carefree lifestyle despite still not wanting to be tied down by anyone. Even though she was able to come out of the trauma Captain caused her, her attitude towards men, especially unfamiliar men, had completely changed.

It is at this point in my essay that I must declare that Tony is my favorite character in this show. And it's not entirely because he is played by Joong. Tony healed a part of me that I was struggling with for a long time. That is why he has a very special place in my heart. It is because I haven't found a Tony in real life that I am still single. (Yes, I am pushing the blame of my forever singleness on a fictional character I just found recently.) (Yes, before that I blamed it on other fictional men I didn't like half as much as I like Tony.)

My most favorite scene in this show is the one where Jean rejects Tony after trying to sleep with him. The way Jean reacted after reliving her trauma, the way Tony immediately picked up on her discomfort, the way he tried to reassure her that they didn't need to sleep together despite having no idea what went wrong, the way this reassurance did nothing to comfort Jean. The rejection from Jean, especially after she had been the initiator of the whole situation, was surely very hurtful for Tony and also a huge blow to his ego. Yet, he had the kindness and patience to let Jean say everything she wanted to say to him. He also had the empathy to wish her well when he still had no idea what she was struggling with. I also love that he left immediately after instead of trying to stay and comfort Jean. She told him to leave, and he did. No questions asked. And he managed to do all of that while being in a very vulnerable situation.

I feel like I have to mention the CaptainKat rejection scene even though I really don't want to. It made me way too uncomfortable. Let's just say that the main reason Captain lashed out at Kat was that he couldn't heal his bruised ego. I will never understand how you could hit someone you apparently like enough to want to date them.

Moving on to another scene I really liked, the bedroom scene with Kat and Tony. Actually, Kat and Tony happen to be my favorite pairing from this show. I find their dynamics to be very interesting. I kind of want a Kat and Tony spinoff where it shows how their relationship progressed in the original timeline. Kat and Tony hooking up was to be expected after their first encounter at the bar. Tony clearly found Kat attractive, and he was clearly intrigued by her attitude (my man has a type and I don't fit that at all, so I would be single even if Tony was real). If he had not been pursuing Jean at the time, and if he had not been the loyal type, he would have totally hooked up with Kat. But if that had happened, Kat would probably not trust him as much. I refuse to believe Tony's respect for the person he was actively pursuing was unrelated to Kat's decision to keep sleeping with Tony.

Anyway back to the bedroom scene. This entire conversation was so interesting to me. At this point, TonyKat had been hooking up for a while and become quite close to each other. But their relationship was not exclusive and Kat was sleeping with other people too like she always did. And now Tony was starting to like Kat enough to want to date her and he wanted to let her know that. Tony's opening for this conversation was to ask Kat how many people she was sleeping with currently. Her answer was no one except Tony. I fully believe that if she did have other sleeping partners, the rest of the conversation would not have happened. Tony would have ended the conversation there. Maybe he would revisit this topic sometime in the future, maybe he wouldn't. But certainly their relationship would have progressed very diffetently.

Back to the conversation, Kat reveals that she stopped sleeping with other guys because they all always end up wanting to date. She keeps coming back to Tony because with him she can come and go freely as she pleases. This part of the conversation shows how much Kat trusts Tony. Later on in the conversation when Tony expresses his willingness to date her, she doesn't seem all that surprised. Nor does she seem wary of him. Which I find very interesting because in this very conversation she talked about ditching guys because they wanted more from her. I believe that the reason she is so chill about the whole thing is her trust in Tony. I think she trusts that he will always respect her decision no matter what. Which makes me very curious about what happened between them from their first hook up to this point. She seemed willing to consider the possibility of dating Tony. She even asked him to get her food. Which I found very interesting considering she refused to eat with Captain because it went against her hook up rules. So why do the rules not apply to Tony? What happened to make her like him so much? What made her trust him so much? And what made Tony like her so much in the first place? Because not that long ago he liked Jean, and he seemed to like her a lot. I really want a spinoff of their story. At this rate I will end up writing a fanfiction for myself.

This started as a discussion on trauma and somehow ended up being an exploration of the TonyKat relationship. Oh well. It is what it is.

[spookythesillyfella]

always there ... unchanging ...

★ original image under cut :

[russellshaws]

#nbd just choni mirroring one of the most iconic teen drama love confessions of all time

[oddvanilla]

Bbg you're the silliest goose ever

[whenthegoldrays]

Lady Gaga is so cool, she literally just does whatever she wants. Mainstream pop, then weird albums, an Oscar-winning movie/soundtrack, two jazz albums, now she’s apparently in her Dolly Parton era? Every time I hear something new about her I have to be impressed

[todayisafridaynight]

OH OH OH OH OH FULL NAME FULL NAME AKANE KISHIDA

I figured she was the one to get in touch first based on Jo knowing she wanted to see her son, but I have SO many questions about that... how does she know her son survived... how does she know Ichiban was her son and not Aoki... how does she know who Jo is and how to contact Jo... (<- tearing my hair out as we speak)

Anyway when you have the opportunity please view the gameplay footage...

obsessed how its addressed to Mr. Jo Sawashiro i dont know why that detail tickles me... thats cute..

chicken-and-egg kinda deal with Who Contacted Who first. like id ASSUME sawashiro'd get in contact with her first if he was feeling guilty enough about The Whole Situation and was willing to dig into arakawa's past imo, esp since akane wouldn't have any reason (or ability to) know who he was until after he joins the yakuza.. and i mean.. shes long gone by then.. tho that's assuming they got in contact early on and they didnt JUST start communicating within the past few years.

BUT EITHER WAY just gotta wait and see for it all to play out.. in three months <- still cant believe its coming out january 26th 👁️💋👁️

IM OBSESSED WITH THE GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE im soooo glad i was right in how they were going to handle the style change aspect (though i guess it wasnt a hard thing to predict but still..). I LOVE HOW KIRYU CAN ACTUALLY ROAM FREE THAT'S SO COOL i remember people kept speculating on how the gameplay was gonna go with how different ichi and kiryu's playstyles are and this is SUUCH a rad way to answer that question. my excitement is immeasurable and im gonna throw up

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: The Money Game (2.10, LWT, 1972)

"Incidentally, I've been looking up that fraud case Audrey was involved in with Freddie Larch, the time he got nicked."

"Oh, what about it?"

"Well, I think your friend's an even nastier piece of work than we give him credit for."

"Very likely. What's that got to do with Phil Horden?"

"Not much. Except nothing's ever quite as simple as it looks."

[milesworld96]

AND FOR THE WOMEN AS WELL, WWE AND AEW JUST KEEP ON FEEDING US😈

(In response to my other post with male wrestlers)

[enabi-seira]

I did it, I've watched season 2 ;-;

Some things still have me feeling uneasy, but I liked it. I still need to process everything though. Specially..., there are three things that I don't get:

If the branches die without the time loom, what was there before HWR build it? Agamotto?

Loki learned how to control time like he learned how to enchant people's minds? If so, he truly was more powerful than what he believed.

Does Sylvie's tempad (previously HWR's tempad) still work? Can she reach the citadel at the end of time? Can she go where Loki is now?

[bsaka7]

Match programme from Arsenal vs Luton as part of the 1945-46 Football League South, the first season of peacetime football since England entered World War II. The league continued in a regional format for one last season before returning to the pre-war league structure in 1946-47.

[legionofpotatoes]

extremely bad faith mandalorian takes, do not engage please i cannot stop hysterically laughing at this season and thus am incapable of level-headed discourse. these are just words I want to write down to see if they look as unbelievable as they sound in my head

my favorite telltale sign of the embarrassing s3 story optics is their like. genuinely hilarious ostrich-neck-in-the-sand rehash of past story arcs down to the aesthetic fucking beats. that's the shit sandwich that really gets me in this whole stank buffet. It is astonishing. Like there was genuinely nothing else they could come up with as to not upset the status quo of their fickle, marketable story limbo, and so they, and I cannot stress this part enough, ignored established character progression beats and just did them again. they just did them again. from the top, using shockingly similar payoffs, right in front of our own eyes. and I just sat there and ate it!!

din has to re-love his toxic death cult after clearly progressing away from their value systems cause he's cooler with that helmet always on. gotta keep the limbo going. his main north star, set up as his way out of said cult, gets recruited into it instead, completely defanging the possibility of interrogating the entire bedrock of trauma and insecurity that kept uncomfortably clashing with his expressions of love and humanity in the past. now they're all one big happy gel of a Cool Dude With Gun and Kid. gotta keep the limbo going.

at some point he also has to re-learn his droid prejudices to then re-unlearn them again, a couple of times even, for no discernible thematic reason other than to make him act like an ass to some type of botched working class allegories (??? the fuck is going on with droids this season in general??). gotta keep the limbo going.

grogu, meanwhile, has to re-earn a mandalorian piece of armor to re-reinforce his allegiance (and here I was thinking the rond would be a pulpy setup for some shot-dead-fake-out but how can chekov's anything exist in this mangled mess), cause mandalorian culture is a live service videogame of tiered ranks now, so the potential upgrades are conveniently endless. gotta keep the limbo going. speaking of their culture, he also, hilariously, has to then be re-adopted by din to re-reveal their paternal bond and re-dramatize their love. cause he's not a foundling anymore, see; he's an apprentice now! the words are different. that makes the emotional meaning reset also. I know this from film school. audiences have no object permanence, right? they're all fish? we're writing this show for fucking fish, right? like in the aquariums? gotta keep the limbo going.

and they just keep doing this. they will dress it all up with technicalities and loud Plot Noise but it is all emotionally the same exact shit that has already happened and it is making me feel insane. same exact payoffs for backpedaled setups that were already, for all storytelling purposes, finished and done away with. it is comical. they're telling nothing. non-stories and recursive sisyphean plotlines that reset primitive character arcs every five episodes like it's the most unmoored bermuda triangle-ass time loop in space. you cannot even really twist it into some type of harmless expression in lieu of episodic TV, or even something more campy, cause like. it does have a rapidly progressing plotline about big and overarching stuff, stuff that is holistic, linear, and goal-oriented, like retaking homeworlds and reforging their broken nation and fighting mr gideon man. it's not a weekly detective romp with B plots galore, not anymore at least. but the characters somehow start and end in the same spots they always were. like the big ole smoking fucking gun that that is.

it feels like the most clear-cut example of plot moving forward - at breakneck speed sometimes - while characters progress either backwards or just. like. sideways and then back again?? almost like dropping a teabag into an empty mug and calling it a beverage. I see the pretty taste-making ingredient sitting sadly at the bottom there, but where's the substance? what is this all for? to wank it to how cool mandalorians look when they fly? I mean they can be pretty cool, no argument there. but some of them could be cooler if they felt things deeply and that changed them, fundamentally. you know, how A-to-B storytelling does sometimes.

and I am achingly aware that I am aging out of this show's target audience, I know that. but the death by comparison within the same bloody show's adjacent seasons is just as harrowing. what happened. it just worked too good is what. a corporation responsible for telling a myth will never allow it to finish if it suddenly starts hemorrhaging this much money. grogu and din can't progress, even aesthetically, past their season 1 selves, no matter how much that same season's story was setting them up to. cause inscrutable sad dad and cute doll baby combo. we'll either throw away those story hooks or keep resetting them. keep the limbo going.

groundhog day-ass show. it's hysterical. I can't be normal about how mask-off blatant this all is now.

and to follow this up to andor of all things. really clinches it, you know. no notes. just no notes, disney. tens across the board

[cowboyhorsegirl]

Steve is most likely to end up in a lavender marriage and Tony's most likely to end up in a “married for tax/immigration/inheritance fraud” reasons.

They meet as married men and pine for each other hardcore and are also trying not to read too much into how their interest seems reciprocated and oh nooooo both Immigration/the IRS and the the Church/in-laws/DADT era army dudes or whatever are snooping around at the same time at each of their marriages and they have to be so good at being married at the people they are married to oh noooooo and they other guy doesn’t know why they are suddenly being iced out and maybe they were just imagining things? maybe it’s for the best with all these eyes around on them…

[superoscars]

we rewatched mr america last night and omfg tim's complete and utter dread upon hearing that gregg is at the townhall debate, he almost seems scared. tho i truly feel that gregg was only there to give the producers the shaggy da vhs he made and then ended up having to sit because the event started. i dont even think it would have devolved into fighting if tim hadnt brought up RUNNING THE VICTORVILLE FILM CENTER like how could gregg ever let that slide

[woulddieforloki]

au where all the avengers live together in the tower/compound and one day nat and clint discover fan fiction and they're scrolling through ao3 laughing at the summaries and the tags of fics about the avengers and they find a fic that looks??? shockingly accurate to their actual life??? so they open it up and it's like a thousand words or so and it's an actual thing that happened to them? like, almost word-for-word, albeit with a few minor embellishments? and it's an embarrassing thing that happened to them, too, which is even worse.

but whatever. it's a fairly mundane conversation. it could have been a coincidence. so they keep looking through the fics, and there's another one that's exactly like something that happened to them. so they decide to check out the author's page, and, lo and behold, ThorsNumberOneHater has hundreds of fics, and they're all pretty much exact retellings of embarrassing things that have happened to the avengers.

oh, on a completely unrelated note, did I mention that Loki lives with them?

[daydreamerdrew]

The Avengers (1963) #29

[phoenixcatch7]

I like googling things and getting uppity about them so have some more superhero I Did Not Expect That Timeline:

Iron man: debuted in 1963

Spiderman: debuted 1962

Captain America: 1942

Like cap was made during ww2, we been knew, but these are the big 3 of Marvel and it's bonkers to think there's a full TWO DECADES between him and Spidey. And iron man!!! Came AFTER SPIDERMAN!!

Never in a million years would I have guessed that. Spidey's legacy is older than Tony Starks, if only by a year. Bonkers.

Spidey was the first child hero, one who wasn't a sidekick (did you know Bucky was originally a teen sidekick?? Winter Soldier?!)

On the dc side of things Superman enters the scene in 1938, Captain Marvel in 1939, and Robin becomes the first child sidekick all the way in 1940. That's still - crazy, Robin is older than cap America by a good two years.