#idk each day I hate it more and more

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

“Oh don’t pick apart the rwrb movie and critique the fuck out of it gay people also deserve cringy movies, why can only straight people have cringy cheesy bad movies?”

The thing is than they don’t

I also criticize those movies regardless of if they’re straight or not. If it’s bad it’s bad regardless the genders involved in the romance.

I will pick apart the rwrb movie, because it’s BAD, it’s a shit movie, and you can’t change my mind about it. Not only is a horrible book adaptation, it’s also just a bad movie in itself, several plot inconsistencies than if I never read the movie I just wouldn’t get? Why does Alex make his speech before even consulting Henry and then the king tries to make Henry deny it and hide it, even tho Alex already confirmed it? Half the e-mails didn’t appear or became lines the character just say instead of write (like history huh), so what exactly is leaked? Why are there so many emails leaked when they don’t even show half of them in the whole movie? Why is the media calling them “the Waterloo letters”? Where does Waterloo come from? The complete erasure of queerness? I have a whole post about it but I really really don’t get it. Why is Alex such a shallow character in the movie??

He hates Henry for no reason other than a bad first impression, which wasn’t even that bad, he said than he needed to get out of there, while in the book he’s telling Shaan to get rid of Alex, and even then, that’s not the only reason Alex dislikes him in the book. Alex has apparently no real personality, and neither does Nora or Pez or Bea etc Henry is fine, they didn’t completely butchered him like they did with Alex but even then, well I’ll blame this one for the lack of time.

If I criticize any piece of media at all, it’s because it’s bad. I’m not a hater, I try to see things they way they are, for example there were scenes I enjoyed, like what they did with the phone calls and messages between Alex and Henry (as if they were in the same place), and the delivery of “my life is the crown and yours is politics and I will not trade one prison for another” is immaculate.

No movie is free of mistakes and bad stuff, I also critique my favorite movies, like for example dead poets society is one of my favorite movies yet it still had questionable stuff, like the whole thing with Knox and Chris and Charlie’s racism.

I feel like real reviews should have both the good and the bad, since there’s always something good, I always try to find something good to say, regardless than if I completely hated it, there must be something I enjoyed.

It just really annoys me when people act like you can’t hate on the movie because it’s queer, or the other way, when people hate on the movie because it’s queer. This also happens with the book. People love it for the wrong reasons and they hate it for the wrong reasons too.

BY THE WAY

This is no shade to the actors, I think they did an amazing job (when they casted Nicholas as Henry humanity peaked on perfect casting)

And this is criticism while having in mind the time they had to show such a character-driven story, but I think than making it a movie was the first bad choice they made, I feel like it would have worked so much better as a mini series, like Daisy jones & the six

[itadooori]

well. i started thinking about the dynamic between s2 gi-hun and sang-woo (last seen in this post). then i blacked out and all this got drawn

[bullagit]

due to personal reasons i am now firmly on team “i hope aziraphale does change heaven for the better actually (going on the assumption that his return is as straightforward as it seemed etc” 

like if the alternative is just this ohhh he’s so NAIVE and SOFT and so WRONG and he’ll have to LEARN A TOUGH LESSON etc etc nonsense then yeah 1000% go for it babe knock it out of the park

i hope choosing hope and kindness pays dividends. i hope the soft traits that made other characters continually disparage and underestimate him and his intelligence turn out to be his greatest assets bc i kinda don’t give a shit about a “toughen up it’s the only way everyone else knows better” life lesson for this character

(which like honestly a lot of the rhetoric is dismissive of the fact that persistent goodness in the face of an existence of disparagement takes great strength and that at the end of the day aziraphale has always been able to stand up in his own way)

[casscainmainly]

I was thinking about this panel from Batgirl (2024) #3 again, and how I was puzzled at the choice of "faith" for Dick. The others in the issue more or less make sense - Barbara's will, Stephanie's heart, Bruce's pride etc. reflect Cass' perceptions of her family, and what she prizes in them. But "Dick's faith" is not as intuitive as the others. To over-analyse this panel for a sec, I'm going to take a look at Dick and Cass' relationship through the lens of faith (in the sense of belief/trust), and what that might mean for what they value in each other.

Bruce Wayne

One of Dick and Cass' first significant interactions is Batgirl (2000) #29, during the Murderer/Fugitive arc. Here, Cass expresses guilt for "doubting" Bruce, for losing faith in him. Dick replies, "we all do." Of course the "all" includes people like Babs and Tim, but it's significant that this conversation takes place between the two of them. They are the two people who arguably have the most faith in Bruce - both, but particularly Dick, staunchly refused to believe he killed someone. The doubt still comes in, though.

Cass and Dick do a re-enactment of the murder, ending in Dick declaring that Bruce couldn't have done it. Alfred thanks Cass for helping Dick overcome his doubts, but I would argue that Dick helps Cass overcome her doubts, too:

Here, Cass looks to Dick in the midst of her own uncertainty, and probably reads the assurance in his body. The re-enactment allows both of them to find solace in each other's faith. Faith and doubt become important parts of their relationship, particularly because they both recognise each other's similar faiths in Bruce.

In Nightwing (1996) #81, we get another example of how their relationship is closely tied to their perceptions of Bruce.

Cass laughingly tells Dick that both him and Bruce will never learn what they "can't change about each other," and Dick responds, "I wouldn't change a thing." Cass' smile to me indicates that she understands and appreciates what Dick is saying - while it's not exactly the same, her relationship to Bruce (especially pre-Horrocks) also centres the deep trust her and Bruce have in each other. Like in Murderer/Fugitive, this little exchange reflects their faiths in Bruce.

This faith in Bruce translates into faith in each other. Right after this exchange, Dick asks Cass for help:

This part is SOOO precious to me. For two characters who haven't interacted that much, there is such trust evinced here. For Dick to so openly ask Cass to help, for Cass to so readily reply; it's an implicit trust in each other's abilities, and an instinctive knowledge that they will help each other out. This trust is the foundation of the Dick-Cass relationship, and in my opinion underscores all the beef that follows.

Heaven and Hell

I've talked before about how Dick functions more as an ideal in Horrocks' run, and I still believe that, but in a 'faith' context this hallucination is also interesting. In Batgirl (2000) #46, Cass inhales a drug and hallucinates her devil/angel selves. Her devil self says: "Ah, yes... Dick[...] brave and noble and kind... They're all rotten to the core. Everyone is. Even you!"

What these lines reveal is that a) Cass had an extremely high opinion of Dick and b) Dick, to Cass, represents some kind of reflection of herself. Finding out he's rotten unlocks the fear that "even [she]" is rotten. Dick and Cass is fundamentally a relationship of reflection: in Murderer/Fugitive, they reflect each other's doubts or faith in Bruce, and here Dick reflects Cass' growing doubts in herself. When she begins to doubt Dick, she similarly begins to doubt her own humanity and capacity for good.

The Dick-Cass Beef

Now we get to everyone's favourite Dick-Cass topic, Batgirl (2008). Dick is definitely OOC here, and there are behind the scenes reasons why Dick is the one to distrust Cass, but in this doubt/faith reading Dick being the distrustful one actually fits.

Their relationship began with sharing their doubts/faith in Bruce. Now, at one of Cass' lowest points, they're sharing their doubts in her.

Cass wants to kill Slade + David Cain, thus reneging on her vow never to kill. In other words, she has lost faith in her own redemption: "I am not a detective. Not like the man whose symbol I am privileged to wear." She's distancing herself from Bruce, saying she's "not like" him and distancing herself from the bat symbol. Though her inner monologue refers to this journey as making up for her wrongs, it's clear that deep down, she doubts they will take her back after she kills again. Dick is, in a lot of ways, an external manifestation of that doubt.

In both Dick-Cass fights (#1 and #5), Cass doesn't reply to any of Dick's accusations. Her silence implies she agrees with him:

"Nightwing is right not to trust me." Once again, Dick's faith in her reflects her faith in herself, which at this point is nothing.

But Dick-Cass relationship doesn't end here. In the wake of Bruce's disappearance/death, Cass and Dick make up in Batman & The Outsiders (2007) #14, putting aside their differences to "fill the void he left". Once again, their relationship revolves around their faith in Bruce + the bat symbol; in the wake of Bruce's absence, and the doubt that engulfs them, they band together.

Dick trusts Cass' network, and Cass trusts Dick to lead it. Even after the entirety of Batgirl (2008), when push comes to shove (and with Bruce gone), they still have faith each other.

Do You Really Believe That?

Most of this post is about Dick as a reflection of faith for Cass, since a lot of these issues are from Cass' perspective. But Cass bolsters Dick's faith in himself, too, in Gates of Gotham #4:

I've written about this issue a bajillion times, but it is just so good and so important to how I understand Dick and Cass. Firstly, this scene parallels the scene in Murderer/Fugitive, with Dick and Cass in a car discussing their doubts and fears. Except this time Cass, instead of Dick, is driving; this time Dick is the one looking for reassurance.

Dick expresses doubt in his abilities to protect Gotham as Batman. Cass asks, "do you really believe that?" Belief is a central part of this run, with the main villain operating on false beliefs, and Dick working through his own beliefs about himself and Gotham. Cass being the one to help him highlights the centrality of faith in their relationship -like Murderer/Fugitive, they look to each other for reassurance, for trust.

This run is a lot about Cass and Dick coming to terms with Bruce/the bat symbol - for Dick, it's proving he can handle the mantle, and for Cass it's overcoming her exile to Hong Kong and choosing to stay in Gotham. These choices are made outside of Bruce (who told Dick not to become Batman/told Cass to give up Batgirl). This conversation in the car is them affirming their faith not in Bruce, but in each other.

Conclusion

"I am[...] Dick's faith." Maybe it's the fact Dick's faith has been shaken before that makes her say this. Dick and Cass have gone through periods of doubt in Bruce, in their ability to wear the bat symbol, in each other, and in themselves. But they eventually come back to that foundation of trust, that faith that threads through their entire relationship. Obviously Brombal probably didn't mean any of this, but it's a fun look into what makes Dick and Cass' relationship so hard to pin down, and so uniquely special.

[beanghostprincess]

Luffy not knowing about Zoro promising Sanji to kill him if he ever ends up losing himself makes me go feral because that's something they can only know about. Because Zoro's respect for life and death goes beyond anything, and Sanji knows he understands. Sanji knows that if somebody has to kill him, it's him.

And I don't even think it's because Sanji assumes Zoro's opinion of him is hatred and it would hurt less for him to do this, but because Sanji knows only Zoro would be able to treat the promise as it is. Because he would put Sanji's wishes before any feelings he has for him. It's not that Zoro doesn't care, but I think he respects people's ideals and decisions to the extent of being able to kill Sanji if he so desires.

That being said, he'd do it if there's no other way to fix it. If it's either dying or living as an emotionless machine, which is the same as dying for Sanji, Zoro would fulfill his promise. And there is just... Something about Luffy not knowing. Their captain. The man they're devoted to the most as if he were their God. Luffy doesn't know. It's something only the captain's wings are aware of and the thought of these two keeping this from Luffy until the end is just insane. Not even trying to make it romantic here, but the bond and respect these two have for each other is crazy.

Maybe it's the poetry of it all, too. Somebody like Zoro, who has looked at Death in her face multiple times and said "no", ending Sanji's life, who wants to give in to death to not experience a fate worse than death for him.

[whattheskyknows]

Was toying with the idea of planning a despair disease fic and it's turned into an entire chapter 3 rewrite,,, I don't know how this happened??

[heirfox]

Sometimes I need the yaoi to be toxic and sometimes I need the yaoi to be happy. In this case I've been listening to Maroon 5 and

[hythlodaes]

something good.

[itspileofgoodthings]

ALSO I am learning how to teach very introverted students, something my natural skillset as a teacher does not help me with.

[aetsiv]

am i anything but a bunch of lyrics and characters compiled into one person

[nintendont2502]

spending more than a few days around your family and no one else truly does cause a certain type of madness. and baby they call me the joker

[badendinggamer]

Me, an aro/ace person: *makes Echo aro/ace*

Also me: *proceeds to make a doomed yaoi crossover-ish crackship with cyclock(a bad end friends oc) cause I think there dynamic would be funny*

(There ex's before echo kicked brud's bucket)

When your in a "weirdest pairing of ocs" competition and this is your competition (idk what the shipname would be):

Nah I just find it funny I made this a a thing and for all the people that started to follow me once I got into sprunki are probably a little confused

Ngl most of my bad end friends stuff on my au is for my ask blog HINT HINT PROMOTION LOL

This reminds me how I do need to draw Cyclock's boyfriend, Caleb (oc owned by one of my friends) at some point. Tho I do enjoy Cyclock x Echo astetically speaking (and funny lols reasons)

Even funny when I get into some of my bef lore with the sprunkis

(I would also like to confirm despite his looks cyclock is 17...kinda basses on the fact a lot of my male classmates have had beards and mistakes since sophomore like holy fuck guys-)

[nomidreams]

god i finally watched new episodes my honest reaction is jgiwoaoKzmxmkwkakkak

[motleyfam]

when you say outsiders do you mean the book i had to read in like 6th grade for requires reading or is it something else? bc i remember that book was Great but also Not what i wanted to do over summer break

I do mean that book, and the 80’s movie, and now the musical which has rekindled my obsession

[hacksawboy]

some of us r sane and the rest of us spend 5 hours drawing their tf2 ocs

i was gonna do more but um. no. not right now. another day mayhaps.

anyways i finally finished vampire medic and i also designed scene scout which was an idea i never talked about but ive had in mind for a bit xD yeah i hope u enjoy :)

[batsplat]

oxley bom pod was talking about the friendly atmosphere in the paddock today and they brought up vale as someone who would make himself hate his opponents in order to beat them. they mentioned biaggi before saying vale didn’t need to make up a reason there lol, and the gibernau, stoner, lorenzo, marquez. thought it was interesting to hear them say that especially since oxley specifically had a particularly close working relationship with vale!

got around to listening to the podcast rather belatedly + had a chat about this general topic that helped me organise my thoughts on this a bit. I transcribed the most relevant comments - probably some small errors because of cross-talk and like... I'm a fast transcriptionist but can't be bothered to properly do it, here:

O: One is because racing is so fucking complicated now. [...] They've got so much to do, so much pressure - to have the negative energy of anger and hatred is actually - B: It's a waste. O: It's a bad thing, you're just wasting your energy. I mean it depends on the character, okay - B: So maybe Vale was the last who really needed to hate somebody to give him - and now even Vale invites Casey to his ranch to ride with him. But he really needed to - It was not difficult for him to hate, but he - Some riders he really looked for a reason to hate them even more, because then he could dig deeper in himself - because he was just a happy chap - in order to beat them. O: Max Biaggi. B: But it was easy to hate Max! That was not very difficult. Sete Gibernau, basically he needed to try - O: Casey Stoner. Sete Gibernau. Marc Marquez. B: He hated Vale probably before Vale hated Casey! But that's another podcast. O: Yeah, I think so. No, definitely, definitely, definitely. [...] Some people - they get fired up by hating other people, and that's fair enough.

so yeah. I mean, qualified agreement, I guess? they're definitely right about casey hating valentino before valentino hated casey lol. if valentino ever really hated casey at all. which is not necessarily a mainstream take, so it's nice to hear it!

I also agree with this general take about... y'know, the creeping professionalisation of the sport and how that affects how likely you're going to get fun drama. goes beyond just hours spent looking at data and also about... having a bit of a life, having time to actually form a personality. and as I've said before, it's the fans! clickbait news + social media featuring partisan fans, who aren't just going to read every statement but also react to every statement like it's life or death shit. pecco and jorge have gotten push back for some incredibly, deeply, ridiculously mild comments these last couple years. they HAVE to phrase everything they say as inoffensively as possible while still getting their points across, and even then they'll generally be jumped. like, forget valentino, how do you think casey would have fared in this current media environment? up against a fanbase as partisan as valentino's - or marc's nowadays? not well is the answer! I think to some extent you can get away with this stuff more depending on people's perceptions of you, so marc and increasingly pedro will generally be fine... but on the flip side, the pecco's, the casey's, the jorge x2's of this world... everything they say gets read in the worst possible light, but now everyone's just so much louder about it

but this ask was more about valentino than the current landscape, so I'll get back to him. I do think it is a bit of an issue if you frame it as a completely either-or issue - at the end of the day, most competitors will probably motivate themselves through their enemies at least a little. pecco definitely uses negative emotions to fire him up, people criticising him and the like. casey absolutely used them, often directed at valentino. all the comments from the haters to fire them up right, to show everyone how wrong they are. on a psychological level, there is not something *fundamentally* different between using your rivals or the fans or the press to motivate yourself - it's still the same underlying motivational process (and indeed the podcast references lawson's distaste for the press). casey signs off his first every grand prix win by saying how nice it was to beat a spanish rider sponsored by the circuit, like are we calling that pure love for the game? he and mostly martin and to a somewhat lesser degree pecco do share a tendency to... believe the world is out to get them, and use that to fire themselves up. idk if casey strictly needed to do that or if it was just ingrained at a young age and became a stable self-perpetuating way in which he viewed the world but also, it doesn't really matter, right. maybe in both valentino and casey there is a pure unpolluted soul who could have enjoyed winning just for the sake of winning, but in practise it's clearly more complicated than that. as has been recently discussed in quite some depth in this parish, late 2007!casey was getting sympathetic interview write-ups that described his mentality as informed by 'bitterness and rejection'. including bitterness at valentino, who at that point in time was not meaningfully reciprocating any of that stuff!

so I do have a bit of a bone to pick with this idea of 'the last guy'. valentino didn't 100% motivate himself by hating his enemies, the blokes after him didn't do so 0%. I think of the aliens casey is probably the most similar to him by this metric... some are definitely less inclined to do so. lorenzo's a bit of an odd case where at times it felt like he was better at making other guys hate him than necessarily hating them himself... complicated guy but I think he actually really did want to mostly fuel himself in a positive manner, except then for various reasons both external and internal he needed to also draw a bit more from. the darkness. marc is more likely than either valentino or casey to just fight to win for the sake of winning... then again you do have cute little incidents like misano 2019 where marc - off the back of two back-to-back last lap defeats - miraculously happened to find an extra bit of motivation through a spat in qualifying after duly harrying the yamaha's all weekend. again, it's a question of degree, right. marc is just inherently less restless than valentino and less inclined to think the world is out to get him than casey, which are all contributing factors

with valentino, I think I disagree a teensy bit in terms of framing more than I do in substance. first off, not to be a broken record on this, but obviously all of these feuds were very different, involving very different emotional landscapes. I don't think it's correct to say valentino needed an enemy to fire himself up, but he did always need something. some mission to dig his teeth into, some way of making the whole thing exciting. of making it fun! I'm not all that convinced of this happy-go-lucky characterisation of valentino - a lot of the time he had to go to an awful lot of effort to keep himself entertained, and when that didn't work he could get pretty miserable. he needed to keep himself stimulated, he needed to stop himself from feeling lonely, he needed to give himself a purpose to work towards. hatred did help him in a motivational sense, and he's talked in his autobiography about how anger has made him ride faster. it's useful... up to a point. it's just not a uniform thing across rivalries

my sense is that it comes down to two things. 1) he needs something to motivate himself and get excited, be it a rival or whatever. and 2) he needs some distance from his rivals. motivating yourself through a rival is not quite the same thing as motivating yourself through an enemy. for instance!! casey was only really his enemy once they were no longer on-track rivals - it was unrelated to actual competitive calculus, and was in some ways more about casey than it was about valentino. when valentino did that shit to casey at laguna 2008, he's not like... mad at casey. he doesn't hate him. he's gleeful at least in part because of how obviously pissed casey is, but he doesn't hate him. because he doesn't need to hate casey to want to beat him! casey is already so considerable a challenge that beating him is reward enough in itself - he's this super tricky puzzle for valentino to work away at... and when he comes up with the answer at laguna 2008, he's delighted. he doesn't really hate jorge in 2009 either - dislike, yes, hate, no. he's already plenty stimulated by the challenge of beating his feisty young teammate... he doesn't need anything else. he gets through 95% of the 2015 season with barely any animosity with his title rival - there, he would have seen it as distracting from his primary mission of winning his tenth in a way that was entirely disconnected from any particular rival. he also runs into the problem that it feels like any psychological warfare feels like it's getting aimed more at marc than jorge - but that's entirely accidental, he isn't TRYING to fuck with marc in the middle of the season. why would he!! and jorge refuses to be fucked with on the track because he's just never in the same postcode as valentino, and valentino isn't attempting to fuck with him off the track. he's barely even doing like,, mild mind games, like they're quite actively friendly the entire year

(I do sometimes think you can do a bit of displacement here where you don't necessarily need to hate the person you're actively fighting to get the job done - cf marc at misano 2019, also... tbh casey 2011-12 kinda had that vibe where he was getting all that energy out of his system in valentino's direction and could then keep things civil with his actual title rival. there's a LITTLE bit of that 2015 even pre phillip island but mostly valentino does have a more early 2008 'we move in silence' vibe or whatever that pecco tweet read. this is the restlessness thing, right - he kinda needs to fill his brain with SOMETHING)

which brings us to the second element: needing some distance. zero problem with biaggi, which is kinda the training wheels feud in that it takes a bit of a life of its own before valentino REALLY was intending it to. he's a kid (literal eighteen year old) who's kinda snarky about biaggi in the press and biaggi takes it EXTREMELY poorly and confronts him about it and it kind of spirals from there. with casey + jorge, valentino ensures that they never GET too close. I do think there is an element of... y'know, not wanting to be close friends with the guys who are your title rivals, because it's harder to beat people you care about and deprive them of the thing they want most in the world. which I actually think is pretty normal!! valentino's problem is that on a few occasions he has ended up in rivalries with blokes he was at some stage close in - and either he preemptively withdraws as with marc and... ? probably...? melandri...? - or the relationship deteriorates and then blows up as with sete and also marc. the 'preemptive withdrawing' bit does suggest a degree of self-awareness with regards to his own competitive process - and as has been previously argued in this parish, valentino's relationship with marc developing as it did was in large part due to his competitive situation 2010-14. the two of them falling out was probably always going to happen if they were competing, the two of them falling out that badly required valentino's stint in the competitive wilderness to let him lower his guard to such an extent

so that's the argument in broad strokes. yes, valentino can use enemies to motivate himself - he certainly enjoys having rivals, he enjoys fucking with them, he enjoys figuring them out and measuring himself against them and also a little bit of competitive edge. that doesn't mean he needs enemies per se, or certainly he wouldn't have seen some of his rivals in quite such extreme terms (casey in particular of course felt differently). he did need SOMETHING to motivate him... rivals, definitely - enemies, perhaps. and he also needed a bit of distance from those he was competing against. which post-sete he tended to preemptively enforce, except that one time when he didn't, and when it wasn't preemptively enforced it did have a tendency to blow up rather spectacularly. so in essence, you still end up at the same conclusion, right - valentino did get a lot out of having enemies, did motivate himself with them, did need to beat someone. but the working process is a bit different as I see it. sometimes making enemies is about emotional regulation, y'know. feuding as a healthy outlet for competitive tension. as it should be