#framing behaviour

[manderleyfire]

– What's keeping us apart ain't even real, your daddy, his religion, it's got nothing to do with us. – It's not just his, it's mine too. I've got the same spirit in me, why don't you see that?

Alice Englert and Walton Goggins in Them That Follow (2019), dir. Dan Madison Savage & Brittany Poulton

[engagemythrusters]

The fact that his brothers thought Fives was losing his sanity while they had no good concept of what delusions are… had to be so fucking. heartbreaking for them.

[palaceoftears]

Something about these two scenes being in the same episode makes me feral

[itsstede]

That post credit scene for episode 3 is so simple yet hopeful and moving. Just a view from underwater towards the surface, towards light and air.

Towards life.

[happyk44]

Because he was raised primarily by Gosha and didn't have any friends as a kid, Legoshi doesn't always recognize canine instinct and behaviour for what they are in him so when he and Jack first start becoming friends there were moments when he would apologize for being himself, behaving like a dog, and Jack would just stare at him for a moment before doing the exact same thing like it was no problem.

[kujo1597]

I'm never going to get over "The Bands Break Up" and the fact that Stormer has a framed picture of herself and Kimber on her bedside table that she sighs at wistfully.

[things-methinks]

FilmCooper should actually stop making videos on serious topics. He has a lot of shit takes on sensitive matters. There's this intense "guy who paints his nails to seem progressive" energy. I don't think he is a horrible person per se, but he is not as nuanced as he tries to come off as. Saying Justin Baldoni should have just "sucked it up" because he asked an important question to keep himself safe from injuries? Man, you should sit this one out. And the comments about Chappell Roan releasing statements telling people to stop stalking her as "statements after statements" "like 30 posts" is very weird from someone who bends over backwards to defend women because he is the only doing "some research" and looking at stuff from a different angle. Honestly, if being wrong multiple times in the expanse of one video was a tournament, his video would be the top contender.

[majorbaby]

i love margaret and "the nurses" is an amazing ep but i started laughing this time when poor little meow meow was crying because the subordinates she's always bullying never turned the other cheek

[dellamortte]

i love gabriel lorca so much …. like i am deeply, unhealthily obsessed with him… he’s just my little guy…. my blorbo…. i need to put him a glass jar and shake him around vigorously

[itskeej]

*Snakes an arm around your waist from behind and pulls you into a hug.*

My perfect dear. Having fun are we?

*Presses kisses against your head*

You and your art are both rather phenomenal. Thank you for being yourself.

ghfkjhKHKGJKJGFDDGF,,,,,,,,,!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a,

UM THANK YOU FOR being here................. >///>

[sir-adamus]

the Cat deliberately lured them to Herb's too - right after poking Ruby's trauma button about the hopelessness of the situation with Salem, stranding them in the forest close enough that the group would stumble on Herb's place

and then waiting for Ruby to be at her lowest in the smoke before interrupting, making it look like they were 'saving' the team from Herb while accusing him of having gone rogue and in need of ascension to cover the deception

really playing the long game throughout here

[aingeal98]

So many deeply stupid arguments are emerging from people who are supposed to be more enlightened than conservatives and tankies like it's genuinely brain breaking.

It's "Support the lesser evil" when it comes to American politics and voting a man complicit in funding and aiding genocide against someone who would continue to do so but with more open racism, but it's ignore the lesser evil argument when it comes to Hamas or the Houthis. You have to call them evil terrorists and if you acknowledge any context or even analyse their motives you are evil and support them because they only exist to hurt me personally and they want nothing but western blood. Ignore how Israeli leaders have more blood on their hands than all of Hamas combined. Ignore the active genocide. Ignore the Houthis (who yes are evil) explicitly saying why they chose to do a blockade and how the west can stop it. You can't acknowledge a lesser evil in this situation because they're brown and not part of our civilised western democracies. It's evil vs evil but one is actively committing a genocide and one is trying to push governments into stopping it.

"But the Houthis are evil! They don't care about Gaza!" The West did not bomb the Houthis because they're evil. They don't care about the Houthis antisemitism or anything else they do to Yemen. They bombed them because the Houthis hijacked ships in order to disrupt trade, and have stated that they have done so in order to stop the genocide in Gaza. Because all the West cares about is it's capitalist system and violently enforcing it. Bombing them instead of trying to stop the genocide means that in this situation you have handed the moral high ground to the fucking Houthis. In this specific situation aka the genocide of Palestinians, the Houthis are the lesser evil to the democratic west's Trump. Congrats to the governments who took part in that. Great look.

"You can't afford to play purity politics against Trump!" You are demanding that people who are having their family murdered as we speak shut up and vote for the man who is arming and supporting the fascist who is doing the killing. You are saying their families are acceptable sacrifices to save your own skin. There is no good option here but the smug righteousness makes you disgusting to me. At least acknowledge what you're actually asking for instead of being a complete moral coward.

"Silly leftists, Bibi hates Biden!" Yes! He does! And yet Biden will still grovel and tank his own support and bypass congress to send arms to a fascist who hates him and wishes he was Trump, because Biden's support for western imperialism is stronger than his own dignity as well as his concern for his voters. How is this an actual argument I've seen people make. Netanyahu hating Biden doesn't mean shit if Biden won't stop licking his boots and trying to prove he can be just as supportive of fascists as Trump!

Biden did a lot of good with domestic policy and with Ukraine. He and his government are also supporting a genocide and if you deny that at this point there is no hope for you to be considered a serious person. People understand why Trump supporters insist he did nothing wrong and people understand why you do the same for Biden.

Like just. Cop on.

[captainclickycat]

Can we just retire the phrase “boys will be boys” forever please? Please? I’ll pay cash money to get rid of it.

[divinekangaroo]

Was thinking a bit deeper on @deadendtracks query https://www.tumblr.com/divinekangaroo/740003125539307520/i-clipped-this-from-your-post-because-its-easier?source=share

Snipped for sex talk, and also to spare any disinterested parties my naiveity on complex matters such as: subaltern/Orientalism/exoticism/Othering/ethnic talk etc

In hindsight I think I answered that query as a ‘possible authorial intent’ - speculatively, to subvert the usual gangster trope by displaying macho-ish behaviours (sex! whores!) but flipping motivation and outcome.

But there's also something else that's been churning away at the back of my head, the term subaltern. "the most powerless people living within the socio-economic confines of imperialism" -- and this imperialist overlay that often assigns the devious, deviant, dark, scheming/conniving/machavellian/feminine characteristics to the subaltern man, too, because it is exotic.

I haven't properly structured an argument around this; I feel a lot of T's approach to sex has that almost woman-coded thing to it, as signifiers of an even-further-disadvantaged man. It nags at me and feels that this also ties into this subaltern, semi-'Orientalist' / exotic layer he has as 'lower than the lowest class' / 'actually so low class he's outside of class' Romani character -> less of a stereotype, more of a conscious consideration of "if you have nothing, you will use everything you can, and sometimes that includes your own body, and guess what here's the bind: that kinda puts you even *lower* in the hierarchy, because women are lower than men and only women use their bodies that way!"

Gut instinct, barely unpacked: there's an imperialist/cultural/ethnic trauma that feels like it can't be detached from Tommy's sexuality/approach to sex any more than the hints of childhood trauma or abuse can be, either. Especially when you consider childhood as his closest time still connected to the living Romani culture, as opposed to by the time we see him on screen when his interactions with his culture are static and based on childhood/broken memories. I was initially put off by the Romani layer because it felt like a stereotype - gangs followed ethnic lines so let's just apply an ethnicity that's ~exotic~ - but the later series re-frame the earlier approach into something that shows it was almost never intended to be a representation of the culture but rather, more like Tommy's particular (distorted, damaged) view.

----

But then also answering the personal side of the question RE: Tommy's character. What does it mean for a person/individual to be so transactional and detached from sex yet participatory towards it?

This gets a little more headcanon-y:

T started having sex or being sexualised (seeing/experiencing sex) really young in a less than affectionate way - more like, here is a thing that must be done for some other action to happen (or be diverted).

Because of this, I can’t ever see him permitting himself to perform that ‘hungry to totally surrender his control and desires to someone else’ role so frequently given to him in fanon. What happened with Tatiana was an exception, not a rule. It’s nice to read for various reasons, but I'm unlikely to personally lean into this take. Not to say he's dominating or must be fully in control during sex, either, just that I think he'd avoid leaning into surrender because it'd be like losing total control of a transaction and becoming far too vulnerable.

Despite that I do feel he has an urge for connection/intimacy, I think he struggles with actually connecting deeply with people, reading sexual cues/flirtation or the like. In some ways, he connects too deeply and therefore holds back? I did have thoughts along the asexual line. He likes certain people, and he mostly enjoys the physical act of sex, and these two things can overlap to ‘I would like sex with this certain person’, but there’s a big gap between the two. Deep connection is unrelated to sex. Can't read flirt cues to the point he leapfrogs straight to the 'do you want to fuck?' almost as an abstraction because he can never decode the in-between steps?

Notwithstanding any deep connection, sex is still considered/framed as duty and obligation. His approach with Lizzie in S6 as case in point; he is conscious of his role and considers it a thing that must be performed to satisfy that role. Even S5, it feels like a 'seal the deal' sex exchange; he knows she likes it, she just told him so and that it's important to her, so all right, he's going to let loose.

This difficulty with 'is this connection? not sure?' is one reason why I think he is mostly about family (he can take connection for granted and has had a really really long time to build it). He also has a surprisingly large *respectful* but superficial network (he knows the right behaviours but rarely gets personal), very few close friends (honestly is this just Alfie? Maybe, once, Freddie and Barney? even Johnny Dogs and Uncle Charlie are subordinate). Which lends itself very effectively to leadership, to be honest, but also loneliness: again it feels like he's performing connection.

I really struggle with picturing him feeling much physical attraction without consciously focusing on it. He seems to spark for people (or maybe situations/dynamics - classy women?) not their physical, and when I’m in headcanon mode, it’s familiarity that builds his fondness for certain aspects of a person's physicality, rather than their physicality attracting him initially. So either he wants sex (release) and it's not really relevant who with, or he wants the person and sex is acceptable/better with that person. And there's a conscious switch in his head like, "ok now paying attention to physical attraction because must have sex" or "switch it off not important right now"

[mariocki]

Shadows of Fear: Return of Favours (1.6, Thames, 1971)

"And then they got this funny idea. About you. And this room. Almost as if they could read my mind. Anticipating my intentions. Did you hear?"

"What intentions?"

"I thought they told you on the phone?"

"Oh, yes. They thought you'd killed me. But you wouldn't have the guts. It's all dreams. Pathetic lies. I've been living with them for years."

[jessiesjaded]

there's always a fair point to be made about people becoming fans of something from a country or culture they don't belong to and then being entitled and not understanding different little cultural contexts and it's always good to think about that and keep that in mind when you're in that position and yeah! You should try to learn and listen when you're the fish out of water! but it will never stop being bizarre to me when i see people just totally towing the line on bizarre shitty ideals because supposedly that's just whats normal in X place, okay? like yes I do enjoy a lot of Asian dramas, no I don't think it's okay to act like an actor having a drug problem or even just. yk. smoking weed for fun is a disgusting and heinous person? I don't think they should have their careers wrecked? Yes, a lot of countries have deeply entrenched colourism but that doesn't mean I'll shrug off a pop star saying dark skin is ugly or wrong because I fuckin well care about all the people who have dark skin hearing that bullshit? like yeah cultural ideals exist but sometimes they're WRONG. and BAD.