#like on the one level. its absolutely just patriarchal bullshit and the entire idea is gross as hell

[mamawasatesttube]

ohhhggnnh when will i learn not to ever look at the timkon tag... ohhgnnh my foolish thoughts of "maybe i will see pretty art and get in the mood to keep writing!" foolish foolish FOOLISH

anyway um. i think shovel talks are a fucking terrible trope and i wish they would die off already <3

[zankivich]

Corona Diares pt 2: An Arrangement Sequel

a/n: Hello. Something must be in the air. OR, you’re all trapped in your houses and paying my pics more attention than when I actually wrote them lol. Either way I felt inspired to write this and would LOVE to point out that I planned this entire chapter out before the the S + C bullshit was even a thing. I quite enjoy this. I love talking about mental health. It’s so serious and so underrepresented and so poorly represented. I wanted to show a black woman dealing with it and one way, not the only way, that a partner can be supportive during that. If you like it let me know. And if you have ANY ideas for this series please please please share them with me because this was the last idea I had. K bye! 

WARNINGS: Depression, discussions of mental health, a very worried husband just wanting to love his wife

*Shawn’s point of view*

After the first month, he notices a change. When they can no longer go out to the store to shop anymore and have to get everything delivered. No more throwing random things at her to build dishes around. When she can’t go to get her hair done, or go on friendship dates with Ti. She gets a little down, not as energetic and bubbly as is her nature. Even the level of sass she seemed to whip at him with incredible comedic timing was at odds. It’s not that he’s not enough for her, it’s just that all the other parts of her life outside of him seem to dry up. There’s not much managing to do, beyond giving their artists a break. Her world domination halts when the world does. And what he’s left with is a rare and devastating vision. A depressed y/n.

At first he’s not super concerned. The whole world was turned upside down. They were witnessing history on a day-by-day basis. Who wasn’t a little sad?! At first, she just takes a little longer to get out of bed. So, he cooks them breakfast after his morning workout. But then she starts to zone out for shorter and then longer periods of time. One day he notices that for an hour during a movie, she just stares out the window. Barely blinking. Never moving. Just sat still. And then come the naps.

“Babe, I have a headache. I’m gonna go lie down for a little while, okay?” She murmured, placing her hand on his shoulder as she stood up.

He peered up at her with concern.

“Of course. You want me to make you some peppermint tea? We can watch movies in bed if you want. I’ll rub your back.”

She smiled a smile so small it barely touched her face. It was nothing like the beautiful wide-toothed grin he fell so deeply in love with.

“You’re incredible, but I think I just need to lie in the dark for a little while. I’ll feel better and then we make some fresh gnocchi for dinner.”

Her gnocchi was one of his favorites. So, of course he nodded and kissed her fingers as she slipped away. He tried his best to stay quiet the rest of the day, sticking to the other side of the house as he played guitar, or video games, or piano. As the day grew later, he went about prepping the potatoes for the gnocchi. He cleaned, scrubbed, and pierced the potatoes before placing them in the oven to bake. He even went about setting up the pans, olive oil, salt. Anything they might need. He grated the parm himself.

When the potatoes had but about ten minutes left to go, he finally made his way upstairs. Their bedroom was dark, the light outside the hallway even turned off. He flicked it on as he stepped quietly inside on raised toes. She was on her side of the bed curled up in the entirety of their comforter. Her bonnet was missing, something he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before. He wasn’t nervous yet though, so he just assumed it had fallen off in her movement.

“Sweetheart. Hey, I went ahead and got everything prepped for dinner. I thought we could listen to some records while we cook? Maybe open a bottle of wine if you want.”

Her eyes opened. And she looked near him. But she was completely and utterly away. Like her body was a shell and she’d fallen within the depths of herself, hidden away and unwilling to come out. She took one look at him and shook her head before rolling to the otherside of the bed.

“I can’t.”

“Oh...Okay. Well how about I do the cooking, give you a little more time to rest. I’ll come get you after.”

“No Shawn I...I can’t.” She whispered.

This is where the worry started to creep in. Let’s just say he was very good at worrying.

“What is it? Is it your head still? Maybe you should take something.”

“I just...You gotta leave me alone for now, okay? I need to sleep.”

And that was where things started to shift. Because she sounded broken. Not sick, not hurt, but just absolutely broken. Like she might cry if he asked her again, might completely break down and never come back to herself. The most surprising piece of this new territory that he found himself in was that...she didn’t want him near. In a relationship where every pain, every fear, every insecurity thus far had been comforted, if not cured, by the presence of the other, for the first time in his marriage, his wife wanted to be away from him in the midst of her sadness. This was a phenomena he knew nothing about how to manage

He goes back to the kitchen and busies  his hands with gnocchi, in part because he had nothing better to do, and in part because he thought he might freak out if he didn’t. Silly him for thinking the concentration on the physical could do anything to silence his mental. At first he wondered if it might be the virus, and that was a terrifying thought all on its own. y/n had made it clear from the jump that their celebrity would not be an excuse for privilege in the face of death caused by oppression. They had not been tested for the virus when half the industry had without symptoms. Even in Canada where healthcare was far better, she was more concerned with donating to others. But she wasn’t exactly showing symptoms, and she didn’t really seem sick. More than anything he couldn’t shake the loneliness in her eyes. Like he could hug her for hours and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. That wasn’t a virus. That was something else.

So as the fear of the virus hitting the love of his life ebbed, what remained in its place was a sort of terror about the unknown. And he tried to be positive, tried to imagine the next morning when she’d come bounding down the stairs singing a song beneath her breath and looking for eggs for breakfast. However, Shawn couldn’t shake the idea that his wife was experiencing something new entirely, something that she herself may have never navigated before. And he simply may have no idea how to help her out of it. He was scared shitless.

*Three Days Later*

She hasn’t left the room once. In the middle of day two he had insisted on taking her temperature. She wasn’t even ninety-eight degrees. No dry cough. No trouble breathing or wheezing or anything. She was physically fine in the technical sense. But God was she far from fine. On the third day, he was so terrified he didn’t know what to do. So, he reached for the blanket and tried to wiggle it away from her. The result was catastrophic. She just absolutely fell apart. She cried and cried and cried until her cheeks were soggy, until her eyes were red, and all she could do was stare at him in helplessness.

“Why? Why are you doing this to me?” She cried at him.

He had never seen her so quiet. So timid. So dull. It was everything that she wasn’t, and it shook him to his very core.

“Please. Y/n I love you so much. Y--You’re scaring me, sweetheart. I just want to help. You’ve been lying in bed for three days now and I’m trying to help. Just tell me what you need, and I’ll fix it okay? I need you to tell me what’s happening.”  

She shook her head and rolled onto her back, legs curled awkwardly beneath themselves. He sees a tear pool on the apple of her cheek and then spill over and down the side of the face he hadn’t kissed in days.

“Don’t you understand? You can’t fix it. They’re dying Shawn. They--they’re gonna die.”

“Who’s gonna die?”

Her face crumpled then and she covered her mouth as a sob let loose that cracked into his chest and tore open his own heart.

“All of those people. Who can’t afford to stay home from the restaurants, from the grocery stores. The people who got fired and can’t afford rent. The people without homes, without safety nets. They’re gonna die. Because we allowed them to. Because we created a system that needs their death to remain sustainable. They’re gonna die. And then we’re gonna die. And it’s all gonna be for nothing. The protesting, the political statements in interviews, the canvassing door to door. It will mean nothing under eradication.”

This wasn’t pessimism under a patriarchal, racist system. This wasn’t y/n on her soap box complaining about the white man, or teaching him about the intersections of oppression. This was something different entirely. This was like watching the love of his life suffocate. He was literally watching her worry herself into a frenzy.

“Y/n, you have to breathe. You’re not breathing.” He mumbled crawling deeper into the bed to get beside her.

She shook her head vigorously back and forth, the tears pooling into puddles on their bed.

“I can’t--I can’t see my way out of it. It’s like... it’s crushing me from above and below. Like I’m sandwiched between it. T--there’s no light. There’s nothing.”

“Okay, okay just uh--give me a second to think...Can I lie down next to you?”

She shrugged more than nodded, but he took it for what it was and crawled in next to her. His thumb wiped at her cheeks, chasing away the tears as she worked to breathe. Her chest rose and fell in rapid succession. And all he could do was reach out and place his hand slowly over her heart, his lips falling to her ear. Everything was measured, intentional, because he didn’t want to scare her anymore.

“I used to have panic attacks as a kid. Listen to the way that I breathe. Try to match it. Don’t focus on getting it right, just do your best. I’m right here, okay?” He whispered. “Your body knows how to breathe. You just have to remember.”

He took a few deep breaths, slowly in and out against her ear. Her heart was hammering, and he knew that before they addressed the existential dread, he needed to calm her heart down. He was glad that in that moment her hand wasn’t on his chest, because she might feel the way that his heart beat just as fast. He was terrified, not of her, but for her. He knew this was the “in sickness and health” part of the deal, and more than anything he just wanted to be good to her. He didn’t want to see her suffer. So despite the crippling fear of getting it wrong, of saying the wrong thing, he had to try. He’d do anything for her.

“Find something to focus on.” He offered still breathing in and out in exaggerated slowness. “I--It can be the ceiling, or anything really as long as it’s not moving. Sometimes it helps. You’re doing good. It’s gonna be okay, babe.”

At first she just flounders. Y/n was a woman good at most things with an ease and precision that could make him feel insecure at times. In this moment though she just couldn’t seem to get the hang of it no matter what she did. Every moment she didn’t succeed only seemed to ramp her heart rate up further.

When she chooses to look at him, to use him to focus, he almost cries. But instead he smiles at her. And he keeps breathing with her. And slowly, slowly, slowly, she floats back down to him. And she sort of just collapses on his chest in a mangled heap. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It’s okay.” He whispered kissing at her hair. “I’m right here, my love.”

And she falls asleep again there. With him holding her. He’d rather it be that way. He can only hopes she feels the same

***

He puts out a call on instagram and twitter. He doesn’t name names, but he asks some of his friends if they were experiencing anything like y/n, or if they knew how to help loved ones who were. The next day, he lets her stay in bed just because it breaks his heart when she cries. And also in the hope that he could do a little digging to get her some help.

He’s on an instagram live playing guitar and staring off into space with a blunt in his mouth when the chat starts going crazy.

“What’s going on guys?” He asked, reaching to scroll past the words.

He just kept seeing the words GAGA over and over again. In hindsight it may have been obvious, but he was a bit of a dumbass...and stoned.

“Gaga? What does that stand for? Is that some sort of internet slang I’m already too old to understand?”

He pulled the phone closer to his face and finally saw someone who said: No dumbass. Lady Gaga is in the chat and she wants to speak with you. Woops.

“Holy shit.”

It takes him honest to god ten minutes to figure out how to get her into the video. His fans make no qualms about laughing at him while he does it either. Eventually she’s there and it’s like the first human connection he’s had in days. And he can’t quite explain it but there’s a part of him that wants to cry.

“Hello Lady! I hear you like to be called Lady, is that okay?” He asked.

She smiled through the tiny image on the screen and gave a slight nod.

“Lady is perfectly fine. Your wife calls me Lady all the time...Actually she likes to call me lil Lady. She’s the only one who gets to call me that though.”

“Sounds like her. I’ll stick to Lady then. H--How are you doing right now? Thank you for joining me here.”

“Of course, of course. You know I saw what you posted on twitter the other day and I’ve just been thinking about it so much. I wanted to give it some genuine thougth before I responded, and then I saw you were going live, so I thought I’d give it a shot.” She explained. “It’s hard isn’t it? I’m healthy and I’m safe and I can take care of my family, so I’ve got nothing to worry about. But uh people are dying. And people don’t have the same resources we have, so I just kind of feel like a piece of shit most days. Like I gotta do something ya know?”

He takes a breath so deep it stuns him a little. His fingers still on the guitar and he just looks up at the ceiling and nods. She gets it. Maybe better than he does. Definitely better than he does.

“I do. My uh--y/n. She said the other day that it’s like we allowed it to happen. We as in society, the big ‘we’. And we did in a way. It’s in who we vote into office, who we confront about their world views, who we question and who we don’t. It kind of feels like a culmination of what a lot of us have been saying for a long time. And nobody would listen. Nobody would change. And so this is the card we’ve been dealt.” He sighed. “But you’re right. It’s not gonna be me, or you, or any of the assholes in office. I--It’s gonna be the people we were fighting alongside the whole time. The people without a fanbase, or the ability to write a check. So what the fuck do we do?”

It’s the wildest thing. He’s talking to Lady Gaga, but she’s got no make up on and she’s sitting cuddled up on her couch in glasses. And he’s at home in his studio. The only place where he makes sense. And they’re talking through the hurt together. It’s a collective hurt that seems to permeate through the screen. But at least they can wrestle with it together.

“I think we have to be willing to put ourselves on the line. We got to stand up and offer what we can, because it’ll always be more. And not like the bullshit sing a longs ya know? Like dollars, and pushing of the political agendas, and more dollars. That’s only way we get out of this, all of us, together.”

She’s kind of a genius. The way she spoke reminded him of y/n and the way she would talk sometimes. It was the kind of way of speaking that made you know she could change the world. And it only hurt his heart all the more that she was in such a space.

“Can I ask you a mental health question?”

“Oh of course?”

“I know that you’ve been open with your own experience andI guess I was just wondering… well first how you’re doing in this moment? And then I have someone close to me who’s really struggling under the weight of all of these things we’re talking about. And I don’t really know how to help them, but I really want to.”

She took him seriously which was nice and listened empathetically in a way that didn’t make him feel so alone.

“Absolutely. You know it’s--it’s hard to get out of bed some days. And some days I don’t. For me personally, channeling my energy towards finding funding and aid for people has been helpful. I’m an italian girl so I want to fix shit immediately ya know?” She giggled. “So I’m doing okay today, and I’ve learned to be happy with where I’m at, to try not to push myself towards something I don’t have. Is your loved one okay?”

He could feel the part of himself that was being pulled towards the stairs to get to her. He could still remember the whine she let out when he asked her if she wanted to shower that day. His heart hurt for her and because of her, as it belonged to her.

He shook his head softly and she frowned back at him.

“She--They haven’t gotten out of bed in four days now. N--not really eating. Cries a lot, and they’re really not a big crier. I just wanna make it better, but I guess I don’t know how.” He mumbled. “It’s hard to tell ‘em it’s gonna be better when it feels like that might never happen ya know?”

She nods and suddenly it’s like a huge therapy session for him, which only makes him feel a bit more like a piece of shit. But he’d do anything if it meant she felt better.

“Let me guess. You tried giving her space? Thought maybe she’d snap out of it?”

He gets the feeling she knows exactly who he’s talking about it and the pretenses sort of melt away.

“Yea. It’s kind of driving me crazy though. We’re not really the distance type.”

“Of course.” She smiled. “I can’t really explain what’s going on in her head. It’s different for everybody. What I can offer is only a suggestion if what’s currently happening isn’t working. Just go lie next to her. It might not be today. It might not be this week, but there are moments in and out of it--kinda like a fog? And in those moments of clarity, Shawn? There is nothing worse than finding yourself alone. I can promise you that.”

He nods, hanging onto every word that she speaks. In all honesty the genius of women had never gone unnoticed to him. It was a part of what always made him realise what an idiot his father was.

“Look, still get up. Work out. Shower. Eat. But when you can...be there. And let me know if that helps. In the meantime I think I’ve got a bit of an idea, would you mind if I sent you something?”

“Absolutely. Send away.”

The second the livestream ends he makes his way upstairs. She’s sat on his side of the bed this time, which makes him wonder what’s going on in her head. It’s clear that she’s awake, so he climbs in slowly after her. But this time he doesn’t press, doesn’t beg, doesn’t coax. He simply goes back to plucking at the strings of his guitar. And the reality is that nothing happens. He honestly doesn’t know if he helps even in the slightest. But he’s there. And that’s all that he could offer. He just hoped it was enough.

***

Day six she snuggles into his side for the entirety of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. She’s asleep, but it’s a win.

Day seven she lets him open the curtains for a while.

Day eight she asks him if they can take a bath. He gets a little overzealous. Pulls out the bubbles and the bath salts and the bath bombs. In the end, when she takes her bonnet off for the first time, her curls are flattened and stuck together. He asks if he can wash it for her. She pauses but tells him she’s afraid she won’t be able to get out of bed again to rinse out a deep condition. So they make a deal to sit in the tub long enough for the conditioner to penetrate, and then he rinses it for her. She spends a long time with her head pressed against his chest, bubbles popping into thin air against their skin.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered, tears welling up again. “‘M so sorry.”

“Shhh. I love you more than life. I’d do this every day. I don’t need an apology okay?”

The bath drains her. He gets her into a robe and she crawls immediately back into bed. There’s no time to detangle her hair for her. She goes to sleep and lets her curls mat against the pillow. He doesn’t stop her.

Day nine she comes downstairs for lunch. He makes her soup. She finds an old loaf of bread and drizzles olive oil over it before broiling it. It’s the first cooking she’s done in days and he beams with pride, he’s sure of it. They get her hair detangled together. She cries at the puff of hair that comes from the comb. He holds her for a while and then helps her back up the stairs.

Day ten is a movie on the couch.

Day eleven she walks around outside with him.

It sometimes feels like the tiniest of steps, but every day seems to get a little bit better. She cries and sleeps and still seems to think herself into a frenzy, and yet he gets to see her slowly come back to herself. It’s not until two full weeks after the first incident that she finally talks to him about any of it.

He was in the bathroom shaving and she walked in on socked feet wearing one of his sweatshirts and apparently nothing else. He could still only beam at her like crazy. It was practically in his DNA to be smitten by that woman.

“Hi.” She whispered to him in the mirror.

“Hello. I like your sweatshirt by the way.”

She smiled. The first smile he’d seen in weeks. And it drove him giddy. So giddy he slipped and cut himself like an idiot.

“Ah shit.” He mumbled touching at the cut.

“Are you alright?” She asked him and reached on her toes to touch his shoulders.

He couldn’t quite explain the intimacy her touch brought. Or how starved he’d felt of the feeling. Truly the thought had never occurred to him in the past few weeks. Despite their active and frankly adventerous sex-life, a day hadn’t gone by when he thought about anything but her wellbeing. So why, oh why was he ready to fall to his knees and cry for her off the touch of a goddamn shoulder?

He nodded shakily. “Just a knick, sweetheart. You look...you seem--you know? Good today. Better than the past few days.”

“Yea I--I feel different. Good different.”

“Yea?”

She peered up at him. “Yea. But maybe I should let you finish up here. I could make us some eggs and toast maybe? I--I don’t think I’m ready for much else.”

“Eggs and toast sound great. I’ll be right down.”

“Okay.”

She nodded to herself like she needed the confirmation that she could do it before turning on her heel.

“Y/n?”

“Yea?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

***

“I still don’t really know what happened. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.”

He reached for the hand not occupied with playing with her eggs and squeezed.

“Did you ever have depression or anxiety before? Maybe to a lesser degree?”

Y/n snorted. “Depression? Anxiety? In my mother’s household? I love her dearly but black mothers aren’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat to therapy. My mother had one goal, to keep a roof over my head, and she didn’t make room for much else. We didn’t have time to be sad.”

He frowned. “Darling that sounds...honestly kind of terrible.”

“Maybe. But it’s the reality I grew up in. Depression has always been a white folks thing.”

“Well last I checked depression doesn’t know color, babe. And I think the fact that you lied in bed for two weeks means that there’s something bigger at play here.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. And he knew she was back by the way that eyebrow told him every word that would come out of her mouth before she said it.

“You know you’ve gotten bolder since you married me? I don’t like it.” She whined.

He chuckled softly and reached to push her dish out of reach. She’d taken to playing with the leftover scraps so that she didn’t have to look him in the eye, but he desperately needed her attention.

“If anything I’ve only fallen more in love with you. And I just wanna understand. I wanna help. If that means getting you to understand that you, my beautiful, intelligent wife are not immune to depression and anxiety, then I’m sorry we’ll simply have to work through it. I’m only interested in what’s best for you, you know that.”

She bit her lip and squeezed his hands, intertwining their fingers across the table. Her mouth dips into a frown as she finally reflects on her emotions.

“I just kept thinking about it. I mean constantly. I--I couldn’t stop. And it...made me sadder than I’ve ever been in my life.” She whispered. “Even now I’m imagining bodies. When I close my eyes that’s what I see. And I don’t know their names, I don’t know their faces, but I can feel their pain. And it is absolutely insufferable. It’s like this big, huge brick. And I can’t move it. I can’t get rid of it. It’s just there. All the fucking time.”

“That sounds terrifying baby.” He sighed holding onto her tighter. “I--I’m so sorry that you’re feeling this way.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do? See a therapist in the middle of a pandemic? Whine about my sadness while we live in a mansion and fucking cook all day while healthcare frontliners are pulling twenty-four hour shifts, and people can’t afford their bills? I don’t do this, Shawn. This isn’t me.” She sniffled.

He let go of her hands and wiped at her tears instead. This felt like a moment best spent with her cheeks in his palms anyway.

“Hey, having money doesn’t mean you don’t get to feel. In fact I think you’re the person who taught me that. What you’re feeling right now is nothing less than a product of your empathy and your willingness to care for people you’ve never even met. You need to be fucking kinder to yourself, do you hear me? It’s my wife you’re talking about.” He smiled. “We’ll get you whatever you need. But we will get it, and you don’t need to feel bad about that. I promised you the world didn’t I?”

She sighed and took a deep breath to calm herself, always feeling quite silly when he held her face that way. It’s why he did it.

“I do remember something to that effect.” she said dryly.

“Good. Now perhaps I could kiss you? It’s been quite a while for me.”

“It has...You may proceed.”

“Thank you, your majesty.” He chuckled and kissed her silly at the dining room table. “Hey I think I have an idea to balance how you’re feeling and still get you the help that you need.”

“Oh god. Every time you have an idea it always ends up with me having a damn heart attack.”

“I’ll keep the paddles near by.”

“Not funny!”

***

*y/n’s point of view*

Leave it to Lady Gaga to try and save the world. And leave it to her to reach out to Shawn and ask for your help when you couldn’t get out of bed. Women really do it all.

She called on a Sunday. She said she was sick of the instalives and the donation swipe up buttons and the rally cries that we were all in the same boat. She wanted to use her privilege, her money, and her big ass mouth to really get some change made. But she couldn’t do it alone. She had three people helping her thus far and they’d raised twenty million already. But, the reality was that the pandemic was disproportionately impacting black and brown bodies. If the thought of the pain and the death was really getting to you, this was essentially your shot to make some good out of it.

So, you went all out. Tyler Perry gave ten million up front. Normani donated five hundred thousand. Michael B. Jordan gave a million. Chadwick added two. Oprah heard Tyler gave ten so she gave fifteen. The messaging was simple. Our people are hurting, it’s our responsibility to help the very communities that no one else will. Besides, Shawn and you were putting up another ten million yourselves. Excuses were minimal.

Every one of your artists joined in on the One World: Together at Home, including the big man himself with the piano you bought him for your anniversary. It really was an amazing experience. That didn’t mean you were fixed though. Usually work in the midst of anything going on in your life was your MO, but you couldn’t manage to kick this one. There were still days where you just needed to sleep and sleep and try to forget the world was in turmoil. And the hardest part is seeing him lean over to your side of the best and whisper in your ear asking if there was anything he could do. There was so rarely anything he could do.

There’s a therapist. Black. Female. Located in Toronto but she was raised in Alabama. Shawn finds her when you don’t get out of bed again. It’s the most stern your husband had ever been with you, and even that was full of devastatingly warm gooiness.

“You need to talk to someone. And I understand that it can’t be me. I understand it needs to be someone who gets it and who can connect with you in all the ways that you’re hurting right now. So we’ll set up the zoom calls on the tv in your office, you can close the door; we never even have to talk about what goes on during your sessions. But, baby I...I can’t watch you just be in pain like this. Not anymore, okay? So you’re going to therapy dammit, do you hear me?”

And that’s the story of how you got a therapist for the first time in your life. Men. So dramatic.

***

Permanent taglist

@simpledomain @liliane106 @thecurlsofgod @kamahriii @sinplisticshawn @lifeoftheparty74 @xeuphorically-moonstruck@euphoric05 @daijanicole @bruhh-whateven @learning-howto-be-myselfx3 @decewill @goldiean @bitchacho25 @bruhh-whateven @justbeingoceana @loveylangdon @iloveshawnieboi@justbeingoceana @september-lace @valedictorian65 @disaster-rose @dimestorebieber22 @MixerMani @qcoachcartier @kamahriii @sinplisticshawn @lifeoftheparty74@justbeingoceana

Arrangement Taglist:

@moonlightmendes22  @cottoncandyshawn @iloveshawnieboi@shawnsblue

@claredolphinbear24 @peterbrokenparker @blackharry@shawnwyr @speakingofmari @moniehp @softmendesss@ydolansss  @chonmnds @MixerMani @kitykatnumber  @lanallaa@palhacomendes @mendesficsxbombay @moniehp @alessiaase

[cinemorg]

Captain Marvel (2019)

Part 1:

By the standards of superhero movies, Captain Marvel is not a very good one, so I don’t think there’s much here to appreciate. It follows a similar formula to more entertaining Marvel films but it feels like an imitation. There’s little effort to explain what exactly is happening in the plot or why you should care. Maybe empires are fighting against each other? Maybe there’s terrorism? Brie Larson is supposed to be some kind of trained super weapon, but her powers are kind of unclear (vaguely Superman-like but I don’t think the audience ever learns what her weaknesses or limits are). Do we even see all of her powers in action? Hard to tell, because until the very end of the movie she’s forced to suppress them almost completely, only using them to irritate her mentor and break a jukebox. There’s a plot twist at the end where you learn that a barely present alien who seems evil because he has a Cockney accent has a surprise motivation, but by that point it’s hard to be very concerned about it.

A major draw of Disney-Marvel movies is its likable protagonists and moments of levity, but Larson has only the barest amount of natural charisma, so the sassy personality the script forces onto her falls almost completely flat. This is especially true during scenes when she’s talking down to other characters who don’t even know what’s happening, let alone have any ability to react to it with wit and poise. Her inability to control her emotions is also apparently supposed to be one of her character’s defining traits, but the only emotion she ever expresses is like...a low level of anger. More irritation, really. Actually there is very nearly no emotion shown in this film at all, except for a bizarre scene where Captain Marvel is sitting by a window with her best friend after reuniting with her after a long absence, and her friend tries to get on her case about coming back after several years away and expecting to be welcomed warmly. That...might be an ok scene if it hadn’t already been established that her absence was due to alien abduction and brainwashing. It’s not like she ran off to Tibet to find herself, or went on a years-long bender, or anything else where she might have had any agency. It’s not exactly selfish to get kidnapped. My impression was that it was a late-stage addition, maybe shoe-horned in because someone noticed this ostensibly feminist film was not otherwise going to pass the Bechdel test. In any case, it’s an eye-roller. Lots of those.

That brings us to...

Part 2:

Captain Marvel really wants you to know that it’s aware of feminism, and the way it tells you that it’s aware of feminism is by misunderstanding it so thoroughly and proudly that you absolutely cannot ignore it. It plays like it was written by an aging politician who recently heard that girls play sports now and thinks it’s a good opportunity to “connect with a younger demographic.”

Without going too much into feminist intersectionality, I will say that this movie’s most serious error is in its heavy investment in the completely outdated idea that feminism is primarily about allowing women into historically male-dominated spaces such as sports and the military. This is wrong. The goal of feminism is not to incorporate more people into our violent, hyper-competitive patriarchal social structures. The goal is to shift social paradigms to emphasize cooperation, peaceful solutions to conflict, and greater empathetic understanding in our diverse modern communities.

This is a war movie that declines to even question the value of war, only going so far as to suggest that genocide is probably wrong (bravo, very brave). Captain Marvel is 100% down with macho posturing, emotionless violence, mass destruction, and hunger for military valor. Her friends and allies seem to feel the same way, and we all get to laugh and sigh as an innocent teen girl expresses her admiration for Marvel by encouraging her to go into battle and use her superior firepower to kill as many people as possible. It’s gross, stupid, and irresponsible. Many men feel trapped, alone, hopeless, and ashamed their entire lives because this is the kind of story they’ve been told about what it means to be strong and courageous and prove their worth. It’s a crisis-level failure of our culture that we value men based on their ability to dominate their antagonists and subjugate the weak, and the very last thing we need to do is to extend that merciless mindset to women as well.

Beyond that, remember when I mentioned eye-rollers? We learn about Marvel’s struggles with misogyny largely through brief video montages of 1.) men discouraging her and making inappropriate comments in her presence (gasp!), and 2.) her as a girl literally falling down and getting back up several times throughout her youth while she races go-karts, plays baseball, and trains to be a soldier (wow!). There’s a scene where she’s beating people up and when she really gets going, Just A Girl by No Doubt starts playing. Actually there is a lot of 90s music here (nearly the only way the audience is ever reminded that the movie takes place in the 90s), but all of it is radio hits, which conveniently excludes all music by Riot Grrrl bands who were making extremely important anti-patriarchal feminist music during exactly the same era. Annette Bening plays a god-like “Supreme Intelligence” who rules over a vast interplanetary empire, and even though I think she’s supposed to be an advanced supercomputer, she seems to feel irrational human emotion and engages in pointless bullying. The plotline involving Marvel’s best friend (which has only a threadbare connection to the comics) could possibly have been constructed in a way that added diversity to the cast in a serious way, but her friend comes off more as a Magical Negro type than a fully imagined character. It’s just so much lazy, amateurish bullshit and it’s exhausting.

So uhh how wild is this movie? This is not wild. No ma’am.

[thatgirlinthephilippines]

Playing Nice

    Sports….uhhhhhhhhhhgggggggggggg. Am I right? I don’t get it. I know that’s a pretty generic statement, but it’s my reality, and it is insane how much people don’t understand or accept that conceit. It’s something that baffles and confuses sports fans to the point of indignant anger. “But its America’s pass time!” “ This only happens every four years!!!” “It’s the super mega championship sports extravaganza festival to which you are contractual obligated to care about!!!!!!!!!!!!! USA. USA. USA. USA.” Barf. My lifelong lacking of national pride aside, I think for most sports fans what’s frustrating is that there’s no real reason why I’m not interested. Some people look at a ball and see a world of possibilities, I see potential embarrassment and exertion. Put a professional display of athleticism in front of me and I will watch diligently, for a few moments. Inevitably though, I will drift away to distant thoughts, occasionally being snapped back by the inordinate amount of screaming and jovial movement of the crowd around me. It’s just how my brain works. I can’t focus on humanities various interactions with a ball.

     This lack of obsession was not loss on my father, who, for all intensive purposes, is an American Football fanatic. His team: The San Francisco 49ers. His god: Joe Montana. Highly despised traitor and disgrace to the game of football: Jerry Rice. Offense: moving to the ever despised and vile rival The Oakland Raiders. I was raised with the simple truth that we were a Niners family and with that came certain expectations. Game day is sacred, burgundy and gold is the greatest color combination known to man, and The Oakland Raiders and all of their fans are horrible people. (I suspect this last credo is a little racial tinged, but I’ll save that gem of social commentary for another post.) Regularly, my birthday was postponed so that we did not have to disrupt playoff season, and one special year I got a birthday / Superbowl party. Every 8 year old girls wildest dreams come true! If you think that’s sad, you should have seen the collective toddler scale tantrum thrown when is was revealed my cousin’s engagement party, planned months in advance, would be on the same day as a playoff game, determined essentially the day before.

     It may seem insane, and it one hundred percent is, but that’s just the way things are in our family. This is also incredibly mild compared to some. If you want to understand real fanaticism look to football (AKA soccer, and yes I am going to be the pretentious American that uses the name literally the entire rest of the world uses.) Being in Chile for the world cup was a next level sporting experience. I grew up going to games, and despite my short attention span for ball maneuvering, there is something very fun about the fury of a game day crowd. I have seen people cheer, scream, fight, and even riot over their team, but I have never experienced the level of emotional investment that Chile showed me during the World Cup. After a win, the streets were filled with songs and insanity, but after a loss I was shocked to find grown men listlessly wandering the streets straight up sobbing. The only time I had ever seen that level of emotion over a game was the last time the Niners lost The Superbowl and I honestly thought I would see my dad cry for the first time in my entire life. It didn’t help that he had installed 7 new TVs for the event and had to witness the crushing defeat from every possible angle.

     I am usually pretty good at comforting people in pain, but I honestly have no idea how to console someone distraught over their team not getting a ball past a line more times than their competitors. It’s just not in my wheel house. Weirdly, this is a pretty large disadvantage, as many humans seem to be of the opposite end of the empathy spectrum when it comes to strategic ball movement. It’s particularly crushing when, as a teacher, I am expected to engage with my students athletically. As you can tell, I don’t like watching sports, but I fucking hate playing almost all of them. I enjoy two sports, swimming and yoga. One of those is not a sport, and both of them involve me alone, cut off from the world, and zero balls. So, when my coworkers came to me and said we were going to put on a two day sports tournament you can imagine my full on ass clenching terror. This is essentially my worst nightmare. For two days I would have to summon the strength to endure HOURS of people bouncing, tossing, and smacking balls for points. Insert epic eye roll. I am a professional however, and I endeavored to complete this task with respect and gratitude.

     So, now that we’ve made it this far, I feel I should talk about the inherent sexism of sports. YAY! The fact is there’s little respect for female athletes and certainly none on par with the reverence men receive. Professional sports industries were created for and are dominated by men. There is not a single women’s professional sports league that comes even close to the level of fame and respect that any male league receives. Its shitty, and sexist, and not really a reason I hate sports, but it certainly doesn’t incline me to give them a little slack. Everyone else might be inclined to let this slide with a slight shrug and a what can we do about it attitude, but to me they’re all buying into the same patriarchal bullshit we’re always fed. I joke a lot about balls and fanaticism, but I need to point out that this is a real sticking point for me. This is the lens through which I view the world and it’s very hard for me to ignore that view just to let go and have fun.

     It was with all of this swirling in the back of my mind, and after nearly a full day of sports overload, that I sat down to watch the girl’s basketball tournament. Or, I should say, the one and only girls basket ball game we were going to get because the boys took too long. So, all the girls teams were combined into two that would face off for the revered title of champion. (smile and nod at the totally logical lack for respect for female athletes.) So ok, Basketball! Woooo. With the basket, and the ball, and dribbling and …free throwing? I have no idea how this game works, but I didn’t know how American football worked for the first ten years of my life and I still managed to enjoy going to games. How hard could this be?

     Very. Fucking. Hard. See, basketball is not really considered a girl’s sport here. It’s very popular but primarily as a pass time for boys. They take it very seriously, and are very good at it. Girls, on the other hand, rarely ever play, and that was the case for every single one of our female learners on the court, save one. A tomboy. Or trans man as we would say in the states. She (preferred pronoun) was amazing. ( I assume, she was amazing because she is male presenting and her outward masculinity gave her access to the boys club and thus the court. Fascinating, but this post is about me and my unyielding judgement of the world. So, I’ll  leave my conjectures on trans culture for another day.) One awesome athlete, however, does not distract from the spectacle of a bunch of girls trying their best, but inevitably being really bad at basketball.

     While the boys were playing there was a seriousness in the room, and apt attention was payed to every play. Once the girls took the court, however, the room was filled with waves hyena like cackles and insult tossing. To be clear, majority of the players were absolutely terrible at basketball, and I understand how that can be funny. I was left with this nagging feeling though that it wasn’t just that the girls didn’t know how to pass a ball well, or dribble properly. Rather, I felt that the sight of females on a court was such an absurdity that it could never be taken seriously. I know I am probably projecting a lot of my world view on all of this, but I guess that’s my trigger. I know that the boys were laughed at for every one of their sports blunders, and while that should ease my tension I think it only adds to it. Why is failure so funny? Why do we need to acknowledge that failure so intensely, and with mockery? And knowing that girls are never really afforded the opportunity, let alone encouraged to play basketball, why do we find it acceptable to mock their every blunder with such gusto? It’s maddening to me and it left me so angry I was ready to grab the ball and punt it out of the gym, despite years of blunders and embarrassment that proved I would never be able to complete such a task. So, I seethed. For 20 minutes I just tried to let it go, and I think that’s the hardest part of working in another culture. Letting it the fuck go. On a daily basis I have to tell myself, “Not my culture, not my call.” It’s so difficult sometimes to set aside what you truly believe are injustices and accept the world your in not as flawed and broken, but different and evolving.  

    At around minute 15, my fist were clenched in fury and I was moments away from grabbing the mic and making a teenage movie level declarative speech about inclusiveness and accepting one another, but with more screaming. Despite my rage lens though, I came to realize that while they never get to play elsewhere, and they may not be as revered as the boys for their efforts, my school was giving these girls an opportunity to throw a ball at a hoop. Also, this was a qualifying game and the winners would move on to throw that ball at another hoop, in a district tournament. That there were two trans students on the court and no one questioned or mocked their involvement and cheered just as loudly for their achievements as the rest. Most importantly, maybe I was being a bit of a judgy bitch. Everyone around me was having a blast and captain downer over here, sitting alone carefully outlining her verbal assault, was probably overreacting. Or maybe I’m right and the world sucks and people are terrible. It’s a toss up really.