#i have a big problem with this whole 'romanticizing the villain' bullshit

[thehollowprince]

I read this thing by Michael's actor saying he's a tragic figure & I had to laugh, because it's such peak white boy interpretation, of Michael as tragic because everyone "uses" him as if he isn't grown (he's not a child lol) and bemoans the witches viewing him as evil, despite him being the Antichrist + was excited about "killing their entire fucking coven" before they even knew him. Yet stans eat it up + cheer on witches dying yet also say they're obligated to ~redeem~ Michael lol

People bring up Michael’s tragic childhood and how no child deserved that, but they swoon over him slaughtering the witches, even the ones who never even met or harmed him, and some were most likely teenagers at most. And he talks about “saving” the world but he could’ve ended capitalism and exploitation of resources but naw, apocalypse time. Also, his edgy little “all humans are evil motherfuckers” line that his fans love is so eye roll inducing 🙄 yet he just needs luv right?

I got these yesterday and I’m sorry that it took me so long to get to them, but I was at work when they arrived and then I had a dentist appointment.  But now I’m all rested up and ready to tackle this.

It’s funny you should mention this, especially how many months after AHS: Apocalypse ended, because I’m pretty sure I haven’t posted anything about it since, but that’s alright because I’m always ready to stand by my opinions.  No, the funny comes from my best friend, who I got together with a week or so ago (the first time we’d been able to get together in about a month) and she was telling me about how she had to use the tag filtering function on Tumblr for the first time and the tag she blocked was Cody Fern.  Apparently one or more of the people she followed just suddenly became a Cody Fern appreciation blog and did that horrible stan thing where they waxed poetically about the actor and the characters they play, no matter how horrible.

And that was one of the things I didn’t get through the season.  Why so many people were so damn thirsty for this character?  I mean, had they never seen a pale, white twink before?  Was Slenderman suddenly a sex symbol?  It baffled me.  Especially considering how the character of Michael was introduced into that season, as a knock-off Lestat.  I mean… that wig and the velvet jacket?  (Shudder).  I mean, to each their own, but I still didn’t get it.

The other stuff, though; the woobification of the villain/antagonist of a series isn’t anything new, especially if they’re played by even a moderately attractive white man.  (Note: he doesn’t even have to be attractive)  This is something I’ve seen for years across multiple fandoms.  I’ve even made posts about it before, and complained about how disturbing it is that women (because fandom is overwhelmingly female) are so quick to put down any and all female protagonists in the name of wanting to fuck whatever pasty white guy is the villain.

Just within the show of American Horror Story we have literally every character that’s been played by Evan Peters (another guy that girls scream about how attractive he is but I just don’t see it).

But then we also have things like

Kylo Ren

Damon Salvatore

Klaus Mikaelson

Kai Parker

Theo Raeken

Stiles Stilinski

Severus Snape

Loki Laufeyson

And these are just the examples that come to me right off the top of my head from the shows and movies and books that I’ve seen/read.  I’m more than positive that if I were to branch out into other fandoms I’d find the same exact thing with just a different character.  The sheer amount of people that will stan a mediocre white guy yet completely ignore (and often villainize) any POC hero is astounding.  Just going off of the list I have above, we have characters like Scott McCall and Finn (from Star Wars) that are completely brushed under the rug to make way for either the sidekick or the actually antagonist of the story.  I’ve seen thesis-length metas about how they were really the villains of the story and that the true heroes were these other characters that they coincidentally wanted to bang (in this case, Stiles and Kylo).

People, it’s alright to like a villain.  I have plenty of villains I like and even sometimes root for, but to do so by twisting the character and turning them into the hero of the story (therefor making them totally OOC from their actual incarnation in the show/book/movie/etc.) just screams that you want to fuck the actor.  It’s not that hard to just make thirst posts about the actor (as cringy as some of them are) as opposed to tearing down every other character in a fandom in an effort to make the villain you like “redeemable”.

I know I got away from the point of the asks and the topic of Michael Langdon, but I just see this happen so often that they all sort of blur together for me.  Sorry anon(s).

[cregla]

Could you elaborate on the problem with Mafia AUs?

Yeah, sure. However, I didn't sleep so my English may be a little more bad than usual.

Before explaining why a Mafia!AU is something really fucking terrible, we need to know what Mafia really is. (Unfortunately, some of the links I can provide you are only in Italian, but they should be easily read with google translate)

Okay, so usually people outside of Italy are introduced to the Mafia by movies like the Godfather or other tv series or comics which portray Mafia as being a crime family, but with honor. Which is, well, complete bullshit. Mafia is fucking terrifying.

Mafia hasn't got honor. All those lies about "respecting the family" and having a "code", as if they're crime knights who won't harm children and innocents? Yeah, lies. Mafia not only harms innocents, but they do it in the cruelest ways - children aren't safe from them, they are taken or killed as revenge against their parents. People die because they see the wrong thing, because they ask for the wrong things, because they are related or in the same place of people who try to stop Mafia. People die because they seek justice, or they're just trying to do their job, and can't or don't want to pay them. And people die even if they're part of the family, if they go against its will.

Mafia isn't just "crime." Mafia is a lifestyle - if you are born in it, good luck leaving the family. You don't. As soon as you become a "Pentito", as soon as you try to go away, it's over for you. Even if you survive it, everyone will turn on you. Your family will turn on you, your own mother will turn on you. Family matters to Mafia as long as it's loyal, otherwise you're not family - you're a traitor and a future victim.

And Mafia isn't gone, isn't just something you find in a movie - it's still pretty present and it's a big problem, especially here in South Italy (mostly in Sicily and Campania, but it's in the whole Nation). People still suffer from it, people still die from it, people still try to escape from it. It influences the lives of everyone - it has its hands in every single part of Italy, it's in the Government, it's hidden everywhere. They've just become more subtle about it, so we can "forget" that they are a problem, but they're still here.

Now - as I said in my notes, I'm all for "write and let write", if you can call it like that. But you also need to know what are you writing about. I'm not against Crime Families!AUs, as long as you're creating your own family, your own rules, so you can decide what is right and what is wrong (heck, I read villains!au !) . And I'm not against real Mafia!AUs - the problem is? That they're usually romanticized. People use the denomination "Mafia" because it's "cool" and they either write something that isn't Mafia at all, or they romanticize the hell out of things that look "cool" only because they really don't know what are you talking about. It's offensive to the victims of the real Mafia, to those who are living in this country and suffering from it, and to be honest, even to the CCs since you're basically putting them in those shoes. Like, at least when people write it in other fandoms they're using fictional characters - in Mcyt, even when they use the "personas" or the "characters from the smp", they're still using at least the names of real people, at least. And I realize that usually the intention is good, out of innocent ignorance - which is why I don't go around screaming at the writers, but still, I'm fucking tired of seeing them all around like this.

So TL;DR Mafia is very fucking terrible, and not like in the movies, i'll link the movie that I watched when I was a kid and made me realize what Mafia really was, please if you want a Crime AU don't use Mafia, thank you. Hope that this was understandable.

[persepholline]

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

[jcmorgenstern]

@superohclair oh god okay please know these are all just incoherent ramblings so like, idk, please feel free to add on or ignore me if im just wildly off base but this is a bad summary of what ive been thinking about and also my first titans/batman meta?? (also, hi!)

okay so for the disclaimer round: I am not an actual cultural studies major, nor do I have an extensive background in looking at the police/military industrial complex in media. also my comics knowledge is pretty shaky and im a big noob(I recently got into titans, and before that was pretty ignorant of the dceu besides batman) so I’ll kind of focus in on the show and stuff im more familiar with and apologize in advance?. basically im just a semi-educated idiot with Opinions, anyone with more knowledge/expertise please jump in! this is literally just the bullshit I spat out incoherently off the top of my head. did i mention im a comics noob? because im a comics noob.

so on a general level, I think we can all agree that batman as a cultural force is somewhat on the conservative side, if not simply due to its age and commercial positioning in American culture. there are a lot of challenges and nuances to that and it’s definitely expanding and changing as DC tries to position itself in the way that will...make the most money, but all you have to do is take a gander through the different iterations of the stories in the comics and it’ll smack you in the fucking face. like compare the first iteration of Jason keeping kids out of drugs to the titans version and you’ve got to at least chuckle. at the end of the day, this is a story about a (white male) billionaire who fights crime.

to be fair, I’d argue the romanticization of the police isn’t as aggressive as it could be—they are most often presented as corrupt and incompetent. However, considering the main cop characters depicted like Jim Gordon, the guys in Gotham (it’s been a while since I saw it, sorry) are often the romanticized “good few” (and often or almost always white cis/het men), that’s on pretty shaky ground. I don’t have the background in the comics strong enough to make specific arguments, so I’ll cede the point to someone who does and disagrees, but having recently watched a show that deals excellently with police incompetence, racism, and brutality (7 Seconds on Netflix), I feel at the very least something is deeply missing. like, analysis of race wrt police brutality in any aspect at all whatsoever.

I think it can be compellingly read that batman does heavily play into the military/police industrial complex due to its takes on violence—just play the Arkham games for more than an hour and you’ll know what I mean. to be a little less vague, even though batman as a franchise valorizes “psychiatric treatment” and “nonviolence,” the entire game seems pretty aware it characterizes treatment as a madhouse and nonviolence as breaking someone’s back or neck magically without killing them because you’re a “good guy.” while it is definitely subversive that the franchise even considers these elements at all, they don’t always do a fantastic job living up to them.

and then when you consider the fetishization of tools of violence both in canon and in the fandom, it gets worse. same with prisons—if anything it dehumanizes people in prisons even more than like, cop shows in general, which is pretty impressive(ly bad). like there’s just no nuance afforded and arkham is generally glamorized. the fact that one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, I will admit, does not help. im not really sure how to mitigate that when, again, one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, but I think my point still stands. fuck you, killer croc. (im just kidding unfuck him or whatever)

not to take this on a Jason Todd tangent but I was thinking about it this afternoon and again when thinking about that cop scene again and in many ways he does serve as a challenge to both batman’s ideology as well as the ideology of the franchise in general. his depiction is always a bit of a sticking point and it’s always fascinating to me to see how any given adaptation handles it. like Jason’s “”street”” origin has become inseparable from his characterization as an angry, brash, violent kid, and that in itself reflects a whole host of cultural stereotypes that I might argue occasionally/often dip into racialized tropes (like just imagine if he wasn’t white, ok). red hood (a play on robin hood and the outlaws, as I just realized...today) is in my exposure/experience mostly depicted as a villain, but he challenges batman’s no-kill philosophy both on an ethical and practical level. every time the joker escapes he kills a whole score more of innocent people, let alone the other rogues—is it truly ethical to let him live or avoid killing him for the cost of one life and let others die?

moreover, batman’s ““blind”” faith in the justice system (prisons, publicly-funded asylum prisons, courts) is conveniently elided—the story usually ends when he drops bad guy of the day off at arkham or ties up the bad guys and lets the police come etc etc. part of this is obviously bc car chases are more cinematic than dry court procedurals, but there is an alternate universe where bruce wayne never becomes batman and instead advocates for the arkham warden to be replaced with someone competent and the system overhauled, or in programs encouraging a more diverse and educated police force, or even into social welfare programs. (I am vaguely aware this is sometimes/often part of canon, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s the main focus. and again, I get it’s not nearly as cinematic).

overall, I think the most frustrating thing about the batman franchise or at least what I’ve seen or read of it is that while it does attempt to deal with corruption and injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system/government, it does so either by treating it as “just how life is” or having Dick or Jim Gordon or whoever the fuckjust wipe it out by “eliminating the dirty cops,” completely ignoring the non-fantasy ways these problems are dealt with in real life. it just isn’t realistic. instead of putting restrictions on police violence or educating cops on how to use their weapons or putting work into eradicating the culture of racism and prejudice or god basically anything it’s just all cinematized into the “good few” triumphing over the bad...somehow. its always unsatisfying and ultimately feels like lip service to me, personally.

this also dovetails with the very frustrating way mental health/”insanity” or “madness” is dealt with in canon, very typical of mainstream fiction. like for example:“madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.” yikes, if by ‘push’ you mean significant life stressors, genetic load, and environemntal influences,  then sure. challenge any dudebro joker fanboy to explain exactly what combination of DSM disorders the joker has to explain his “””insanity””” and see what happens. (these are, in fact, my plans for this Friday evening. im a hit at parties).

anyway I do really want to wax poetic about that cop scene in 1x06 so im gonna do just that! honestly when I first saw that I immediately sat up like I’d sat on a fucking tack, my cultural studies senses were tingling. the whole “fuck batman” ethos of the show had already been interesting to me, esp in s1, when bruce was basically standing in for the baby boomers and dick being our millennial/GenX hero. I do think dick was explicitly intended to appeal to a millennial audience and embody the millennial ethos. By that logic, the tension between dick and Jason immediately struck me as allegorical (Jason constantly commenting on dick being old, outdated, using slang dick doesn’t understand and generally being full of youthful obnoxious fistbumping energy).

Even if subconsciously on the part of the writers, jason’s over-aggressive energy can be read as a commentary on genZ—seen by mainstream millennial/GenX audiences as taking things too far. Like, the cops in 1x06 could have been Nick Zucco’s hired men or idk pretty much anyone, yet they explicitly chose cops and even had Jason explain why he deliberately went after them for being cops so dick (cop) could judge him for it. his rationale? he was beaten up by cops on the street, so he’s returning the favor. he doesn’t have the focused “righteous” rage of batman or dick/nightwing towards valid targets, he just has rage at the world and specifically the system—framed here as unacceptable or fanatical. as if like, dressing up like a bat and punching people at night is, um, totally normal and uncontroversial.

on a slightly wider scope, the show seems to internally struggle with its own progressive ethos—on the one hand, they hire the wildly talented chellah man, but on the other hand they will likely kill him off soon. or they cast anna diop, drawing wrath from the loudly racist underbelly of fandom, but sideline her. perhaps it’s a genuine struggle, perhaps they simply don’t want to alienate the bigots in the fanbase, but the issue of cops stuck out to me when I was watching as an social issue where they explicitly came down on one side over the other. jason’s characterization is, I admit and appreciate, still nuanced, but I’d argue that’s literally just bc he’s a white guy and a fan favorite. cast an actor of color as Jason and see how fast fandom and the writer’s room turns on him.

anyway i don’t really have the place to speak about what an explicitly nonwhite!cop!dick grayson would look like, but I do think it would be a fascinating and exciting place to start in exploring and correcting the kind of vague and nebulous complaints i raise above. (edit: i should have made more clear, i mean in the show, which hasn’t dealt with dick’s heritage afaik). also, there’s something to be said about the cop vs detective thing but I don’t really have the brain juice or expertise to say it? anyway if you got this far i hope it was at least interesting and again pls jump in id love to hear other people’s takes!!

tldr i took two (2) cultural studies classes and have Opinions

[nonbinarysasquatch]

Paula Needs to Get Over Josh!

This episode is a rollercoaster emotionally and it’s hard to figure out how to approach talking about it.

Let’s start with Paula:

I don’t see any of the characters of this show as villains but if season 1 *did* have a villain, I think I’d say it was Paula over Rebecca. But Paula isn’t a villain. She’s a lonely and bored mother and wife, looking for something to make her life feel more magical.

As Scott pointed out earlier in the season, Paula has in the past found other things to obsess over like her “vampire novels” which probably means Twilight (since Paula expresses her love for Twilight.) Paula loves and eats up that sort of unhealthy, over idealised romantic crap so when Rebecca Bunch shows up, acting out the sort of unhealthy behaviours she’s probably been reading about her entire life, she latches onto her, developing a codependency.

You should never lose sight of the fact that this show is a satire. It can be easy to forget since the show mostly doesn’t ram you over the head with it. It expects you to be smart and already aware of the tropes it’s deconstructing. 90% of the reviews I’ve seen of this show that aren’t positive are from people who took everything on a surface level and failed to engage with the show on the level it wants you to.

Can you hate Paula in this season, knowing that she represents real women? I can’t. But, still, she is deeply frustrating, especially as she berates Rebecca for failing to appreciate all the work she’s put in for her love story with Josh.

And this brings us to Darryl. The character most closely paralleled with Rebecca on this show. Darryl cares about Rebecca and Paula and he knows how much they mean to each other. So he goes to Paula, not to tell her that she’s being terrible but to remind her of how important her friendship with Rebecca is.

Darryl, meanwhile, is getting along with White Josh well. I think there’s something interesting, when we see Rebecca and Greg’s very different reactions to all the romantic stuff at Philip and Jayma’s wedding reception and Darryl’s reaction is most similar to Rebecca’s but in a less idealised way.

Rebecca and Paula make up at the end and Paula finally lets go of Rebecca’s love life, resolving to just be a good friend, even telling her that she should be open with Greg about her feelings. I’m looking forward to gushing about Paula in season 2.

Elsewhere in this episode is Josh struggling with his unhappiness with Greg and Rebecca being together. Josh doesn’t want to marry Valencia. Why does he ultimately promise that he will propose? I think he does care about her and we would like to do that for her to make her happy but ultimately he should cut her loose because he can’t bring himself to even buy a ring.

Valencia’s scheme to get him to propose at the wedding reception is bad but she’s not wrong about their relationship. Rebecca was never the problem. Josh and Valencia just aren’t a good match. Josh doesn’t take his life seriously. He wants things to be easy and simple. Big high five to Valencia for finally breaking up with him. He was never going to do it.

I see Josh as someone who does want to do the right thing and make people happy but he doesn’t know how to make those decisions, so he allows the women in his life to make his decisions for him. But then he resents that. Josh is upset that Valencia doesn’t respect or understand him and while he’s not wrong about that, he’s not holding himself accountable for having strung her along for so long.

Back to the theme of idealised love stories, we get more insight into Rebecca as we find out about her childhood love of a Disney-esque film she loved called ‘Slumbered’. This approaches the fact that society as a whole feeds children from birth with a lot of unhealthy, unrealistic crap about romance or as Heather accurately calls it “the patriarchal love narrative.”

And this is something I definitely have a lot of feelings about. I am unapologetically a hater of soulmate narratives, the concept of one true love, till death do us part etc etc. It’s all the product of the heteropatriarchy and none of it is healthy or realistic.

But that doesn’t mean that romantic love is bad or that sentimentality is all bad. But I think people would be a lot healthier and happier if they kept their feet on the grounds and didn’t inflate their romantic relationships to be bigger and more important than they can possibly be. It creates expectations that no one can live up to. They are fine within the confines are stories but real life doesn’t work like a controlled narrative.

Which, really digs into a big part of why I love this fuckin’ show! Because I don’t think the message of this show is that romantic love is bad. It’s that… shitty, idealized romantic tropes are bad and not a healthy basis for your own personal relationships.

So, I’m a bit Greg in this episode… but not really. Greg’s behaviour in this episode, in my opinion, is not driven by hating sentimentality but being afraid of it. He’s afraid that he’s going to get hurt so he puts up a fake bullshit mask and gets himself drunk so that he doesn’t have to engage with it.

Rebecca, on the other hand, comes down to Earth and realizes that trying to force what is a very new relationship into something idealistic isn’t healthy. So she goes to Greg and is honest about caring about him, with no expectations or presumptions being presented. And Greg fucks it up. He says… she’s cool.

I think ultimately, Greg isn’t a good place. Rebecca isn’t either, of course but Greg hasn’t even begun to admit he has a problem. Should he have told her he loves her? Well, he should’ve been honest with her, that’s for damn sure.

And so Aunt Myrna sings the song from ‘Slumbered’ and Josh and Rebecca run off to have sex on the hood of Josh’s car. With Rebecca back within the confines of the patriarchal love narrative she feels safe enough to finally tell Josh, “I moved here for you.”

And the season ends, not with romanticization but instead a focus on Josh’s face and his discomfort at this revelation.

The Songs:

After Everything I’ve Done For You (That You Didn’t Ask For): Look, I’m going to say this a lot but, Donna Lynne Champlin is amazing. A perfect climax to Paula and Rebecca’s relationship in season 1 as Paula reveals the extent of her obsession with Rebecca’s love life and the things that she has done to keep it on track. The fear and pain on Rebecca’s face at the end is so hard to see.

One Indescribable Instant: Lea Freakin’ Salonga! Who better to get perform a Disney princess song that a former Disney princess? And obviously, Philip and Jayma’s wedding and Josh and Rebecca having sex on a flying carpet plays into Lea Salonga having performed Jasmine’s singing voice in Aladdin. And man, it 100% feels like a Disney princess song from the 90s.

Episode Rating: 9.5 out of 10.0.

That gives all of season one an average rating of: 8.92.

[synrgetic-blog]

🔥🔥🔥 go off (tm)

 prompt: Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.                                     status: sporadically accepting

(disclaimer: this is my generalized opinion and not an attack on any specific person  or an idea/franchise.)

🔥  purple prose doesn’t make you a good writer.  krp has a godawful mindset where in the more purple prose someone puts in their writing, the better deemed they are as “quality.” purple prose isn’t inherently bad, but when people start to sacrifice the smooth communication between the muns via their writing and sacrifice the actual PLOT in the thread just to write some utter, illegible bullshit shat out from some 19th century thesaurus just to sound intelligent and “”””poetic”’”” (it isn’t), then we’ve got a problem. 

think of purple prose as adding diamonds to accentuate your appearance. one or two diamonds are fine, they make you look sophisticated. however, what happens when you pile a shit ton of diamonds onto yourself in order to look refined? you don’t look elegant, you don’t look aristocratic. if anything, you just look gaudy. it’s the same with adding purple prose into your writing. minimally crafting your words for an eloquent, poetic feel is fine. however, when you beat your writing to death with a thesaurus and exchange mundane words for something more scientific/academic (saying thorax instead of chest, saying esophagus instead of throat, etc.), not only does it throw your writing off but it just sounds so odd in terms of context?  again. purple prose is fine as long as you have it make sense and as long as it doesn’t overdo your writing , sacrifice plot and development of the thread, or becomes so ineligible that your partner can’t understand what you’re trying to convey. roleplaying is a form of interactive writing.  roleplaying is interactive storytelling. roleplaying requires cohesive writing in order for both muns to smoothly allow the thread to transition. therefore, the actual content in threads shouldn’t be sacrificed for purple prose, nor should the mun be blatantly confused on what their partner is writing.  there’s a lot more i can say about [ie. stop making three paragraph metaphorical descriptions about how your muse is some sort of greek god and only add one fucking sentence to the actual plot and timeline of the thread] this but i’d rather just keep this rather short and move on.

🔥krp serial killer muses are so fucking cringey and badly written.  everyone tries to make their serial killer (and villain muses in general) the next (heavily romanticized) t*d b*undy and throw away blatant realism in order to make them seem like “a big bad” and “superior” over everyone else. everyone’s so hyper-transfixed on making their muse seem so cruel and vile, they think slapping a shit ton of cheap gore and making their muse kill a hundred people in one night makes them a rounded out, believable serial killer when all they’ve done is make a cardboard cut-out, one dimensional stock character to satisfy their serial killer fetish. making your muse sign out their name for every kill they make doesn’t make them cool, and it’s even more ridiculous when the mun goes about and says their muse never (and can never!!) be caught despite their muse signing their names WITH THEIR OWN BARE HANDS, leaving obvious traces of themselves (weapons, clothing, etc.) behind, and have their muse  parade about telling the whole word that their serial killers and proud. 

🔥on the flip side, krp has a problem with stock characters in general.  while roleplaying is a hobby and i respect that, ¾ of the muses in this community can be (and continuously are) boiled down to boy/girl/neighbor next door with a sweet lovable personality, will never disagree with other mun’s muse in order to avoid conflict, and is a sweet lovable lil’ ball of fluff uwu. people need to stop making cardboard characters solely crafted for the purpose of shipping and give their muses actual personality traits. yes, your muse can be kind. they can be “““““soft”“““, they can be casual. but what makes them different from everyone else? (just being arrogant or having some tragic backstory about how their friend/parent/partner died is also overdone) what makes them unique in terms of personality? what makes them believable? what makes them relatable? (crying over netflix rom-coms doesn’t count.) good characters come through not just backstory, but how the muse interacts with the world around them. 

[canaryatlaw]

Alright, so today was overall pretty good. Alarm went off at 8 am and I didn’t want to get up, but of course I knew I had to. So I got up and finished getting my stuff together (like putting the rest of my toiletries I needed to use in the morning into my bag) and soon enough the car was here and I was off to the airport (we’re not like, fancy or anything, my parents just hate driving to and from airports and happen to be very good friends with a guy who runs a limo company). Ride was a little slow with traffic, but we got into the actual terminal very quickly, which was a godsend because that can be such a nightmare. I was flying out of the super tiny “delta shuttle” terminal that has a total of like, 6 gates, and is in just about every way better than the other terminals. I got checked in right away, I got through security right away, no line for either. I was planning on grabbing a breakfast sandwich from mcdonalds or something, but they just had a snacks shop and a little counter service place that served food, and I had some time to spare so I ended up getting french toast from there (partially because the prices were ridiculously inflated and that was actually cheaper than the breakfast sandwich I would’ve wanted). The flight ended up being like ten minutes behind schedule, but we still got off the ground fairly quickly. I looked at the airline magazine as I always do for their sudoku/kenken puzzles, and then became very frustrated when I had filled in all but 4 squares in the “hard” kenken puzzle and there was *clearly* an error in the game because my answers were right, dammit. I’m petty enough that I actually wrote in the magazine “these answers are right, this puzzle is wrong” so the potential next person would know I didn't just fuck up the puzzle, lol. I completed the easy kenken in a total of like 1 minute, then did the hard sudoku, but got bored and gave up on the easy sudoku. I then pulled up the video I had downloaded for the child defender fellowship thing I’m doing and watched that session, since I’m in class for when they do them live, so that was good, and took about an hour. After that I read Captain Canary fanfiction for the remainder of the flight, which thankfully wasn’t that long and we got in right around 1. I got my bag easily enough and actually got an uber within like two minutes (it’s usually this big process where you have to request them and then they can come from where they're waiting in a special parking area that takes them like 11 minutes to get to you and that’s super annoying. Got home right at 2, did some basic cleaning and laundry for a while just so my room isn’t in a total state of disarray (there’s at least some semblance of order at this point). Then I could’ve done some of the work for my classes that I’ve been blowing off, but instead decided to watch last week’s Arrow episode but I wanted to know what happened lol. It was an okay episode I guess, nothing really special to it. Idk how I feel about the whole Diggle being GA now, and it tempts my suspension of disbelief that pretty much anybody wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a different person. The new dynamic with the team is kind of meh to me honestly, and I didn’t find the villain particularly interesting. Can we have Black Siren back now, please? so yeah. finished that and left for class, which was colder than I anticipated, which was very unfortunate but I survived. Class was good, I like my professor so much, she’s just this awesome legal aid lawyer who’s like “I’ve been around long enough that I see right through your bullshit and I’m just gonna tell it like it is” and I appreciate that lol. There was some amusement when it was discovered the opinion she wanted us to read was actually a short 2012 decision, not the final 2016 decision on that case, which was significantly longer. It was pretty amusing really. But yeah, overall good class. Came home, again, way too cold, and started watching Supergirl. I actually really liked tonight’s episode. I feel like it was very well done on all levels, the storylines worked very well together and I love Sam getting integrated with their friend group (even if I know it’s only gonna lead to angst down the road). I just like Sam so much as a character, lol. I liked the religion plot a lot though, and Kara kind of realizing how much this meant to her and how she’s been away from it for so long. The end season with Ruby singing (minor side note, I appreciate that they made her a pretty, age appropriate singer, not an incredibly prodigy or something. it makes it all feel that much more realistic, to be proud of your daughter even when she’s not a superstar in the making) which turned into Alex breaking down about Maggie was pretty rough, and since we know where this is going it really just makes it that much worse. Next week is gonna be a rough episode for sure, but hey, it happens, But yeah, overall I really liked the episode and thought it was very well done on all sides. After that I basically started getting ready for bed and ready tomorrow, which concludes my day, though I have a few more reflections from my trip I’d like to share. I think it helped me a lot to see my sister in person and to see she is physically okay, because I hadn’t seen her since these problems have come to light and I was just so scared for her. Of course she won’t talk to me about it, which I can’t blame her for, I definitely didn't want to discuss it with my parents when I was her age and in that position (and no I’m not her parent, but I serve as a kind of quasi-parent sometimes). So there’s that. The other thing was when I was talking to my dad on the phone when I was walking to class, and he was talking about traveling back and forth between NY and Chi, and he said “well, it’s only one more semester” which is obviously inferring that he’s operating on the premise that I am definitely coming back to NY after graduation, but I remain....conflicted on the matter. As I’ve said before, I have a tendency to romanticize being home when I'm not there, but when I actually am there it’s not like that, and this trip was no exception. I don’t want to hurt my parents, but I also don’t want to end up in a job that I have no interest in and doesn't allow me to pursue the goals I’d like to achieve with my life. I think getting a job with a nonprofit in NYC would be ideal, because I would be close enough to see them frequently, but also far enough away from that environment that is not always healthy for me to be in, and hopefully actually doing the work I want, working for a nonprofit and not for the government. Pretty much all of the Long Island options are government positions, which I’m not crazy about. Oh well. Anyway, I’m done now so I’m gonna go to sleep. Goodnight my peeps. Hope you had a rockin’ Monday.