#more like coward throuple

[dragons-socks]

Is this a throuple or just a couple and the attention whore they’re suddenly responsible for?

[richeeduvie]

Dp with princesa on face nacho in his lap and Lalo from behind 🙁😍

does dp stand for dickplay

[nny11writes]

You know what? I like your version more and that’s now exactly what happened!

Glimmer has a sixth sense when Catra is about to say something so incredibly stupid that it literally hurts her across space-time. If this was a film or animated thing every time Catra insists on something painfully dumb, you would see Glimmer glaring the background or a reflection or something.

This was probably one of those parking lot fights at a waffle house or a dennys or something. The starting to date and/or Catra insisting someone has to be the class clown, either works.

[herrinarte]

The ACOTAR fandom is so weird because what do you mean Tamsand isn’t one of the most popular ships 🤨 Tamlin is literally on Rhysand’s mind 24/7, either this man is massively insecure, gay as fuck for Tamlin or massively insecure about the fact that Tamlin ain’t fuckin him right now and could be with someone else so he has the uncontrollable urge to tell his ex-boyfriend to kill himself. How are people not saying this is gay????

And then there’s whatever the hell is going on with the bat boys. Fucking in the same room? What you just gonna stare at each other? go one step further and just do it with each other. Stop being a coward bro 😤✋

And Azriel choking Eris, uh it’s just floor play. Don’t worry it’s cool, they have a list of dos and don’t that they made when they got married.

How can you look at Lucien ‘fire in his blood’ Vanserra and Tamlin ‘literally a big ass beast’ and go no I don’t think they have had nasty passionate sex under under a cherry blossom tree 🤓 like huh????? They’re literally roommates. Lucien lost an eye for Tamlin. Tamlin felt more betrayal over loosing Lucien than Feyre. YOUR HONOUR THEY ARE IN LOVE

Then the Valkyries…um gay too. Lesbian throuple. Come on people get creative. The girls are kissing and cuddling and having beautiful sex and you are all boring.

I have never seen a fandom go so feral for dry ass ships in my life. Literally no other fandom would ignore the plethora of gay ships.

This is your sign to stop caring about what is canon and start being fun, cool and interesting xxx

[pharawee]

Favorite Kiss Game

Rules: create a poll with five nine of your all time favorite onscreen kisses, setting any standard for qualification you choose. Then tag more friends to join in!

I was tagged by @lurkingshan & @he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle. Thank you so much! 💜💜 I just had a look at my most recent gif folder because the moment someone asks me my favourites I forget everything I ever watched. These moments speak to me though or I wouldn't have wrestled photoshop for hours to turn them into gifs. 🙏

1. Sun & Q (7 Days Before Valentine) aka the artsy existential kiss.

2. Ken & Seiji & Japan (Deep Night) aka the "baby's first throuple" daydream kiss that was way better than what we actually got in the end.

3. Him & Nail (For Him) aka the "the production company is dead to me but these two ate" kiss.

4. Thanwa & Peak (Knock Knock, Boys!) aka the "they literally kissed in a closet and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" kiss.

5. Pete & Kenta (Pit Babe) aka the "this chaste little kiss changed my whole brain chemistry and I shall now sit here consumed with headcanons for the rest of my life" kiss.

6. Prom & Nont (Playboyy) aka the "kiss me like I'm my missing twin" kiss.

7. Achi & Ji (To Be Continued) aka the "fcking finally!!" kiss.

8. Sprite & First (Twins) aka the "this show doesn't even deserve FrameRyan GIVE THEM ANOTHER SERIES YOU COWARDS" kiss.

9. Wayu & Jao (Two Worlds) aka the "uhm didn't you just impale your leg in a death trap oh ok then good for you" kiss.

I'm tagging: @sanvees @sparklyeyedhimbo @bunnakit @zhouxiangs @bengiyo

and also (what's up with tumblr not tagging correctly?)

@visualtaehyun @leonpob @benkaaoi @markmybirds (please ignore if you've been tagged before or don't want to do this 💜)

[morallysuperiorlips]

4 (Oddly) Specific Types of Relationship Dynamics That Are GUARANTEED to Make Your Story More Interesting!

1.) Friends with Benefits to Enemies to Lovers: Let's be real. We ALL love a good enemies to lovers moment (it's easily one of my most loved tropes, hands down). But, a great way to really charge up that underlying hate that eventually flourishes into the perfect romance is by giving your characters a relationship before they became enemies...not just friends in this case, but friends with benefits. With that specificity, there's also a pre-existing sexual relationship that might really help in charging those negative feelings toward one another. Like, they were already intimate, and have seen those very private things about one another, but now they're fighting? Woof.

2.) Friends That Are Deeply in (Platonic) Love: No, I'm not talking friends to lovers. I'm talking friends that are just simply platonically in love. There's nothing sexual about their relationship, and there isn't really anything inherently romantic about it either, but they might show their love in ways that might traditionally be seen as "romantic." Intimate hugs, cuddling, saying "I love you so much," etc. I feel like I don't see this enough in written friendships and think it's wonderful for two characters to be so connected in a way that's not inherently sexual or traditionally romantic. GIVE US MORE PLATONIC ROMANCE!

3.) The Love Triangle...But They All Love Each Other: This is for my OT3/poly homies out there. This one made the list so I could scream it from the rooftops: IF YOU HAVE A LOVE TRIANGLE, MAKE THEM ALL BE IN LOVE WITH EACH OTHER, COWARDS. OTHERWISE, IT'S JUST AN ANGLE, AND THAT'S NOT FUN FOR ANYONE. The concept of a love "triangle" is so overdone, and now we're in a new era--show me the throuple. Show me them trying to get over their feelings for one another and they just can't. Show me the complications of it all. Show me how they come to terms with loving two different people. Show me how they make it work. Show me how they show their love for one another in their non-traditional way. Nobody will see it coming and if your readers are anything like me, they'll appreciate you for it.

4.) Close-Knit Established Couples That Have Already Gone Through the Wringer: It's kind of crazy, but I haven't read a lot about established couples that already have a past of their relationship bonds being tested. It's always about the fresh new couples on the scene, and while I'm all for it, I love a couple that's already gone through some shit and are already fortified against whatever else is coming their way. Of course, that shouldn't stop you from throwing them back to the metaphorical sharks again, but I feel like it will be substantially more interesting to watch a couple who has already fought for one another (and won) do it all over again. How to they fare in comparison to a fresh couple? Are they annoyed about it? Or maybe they find it amusing because "been there, done that"?

As always, GO WRITE SOMETHING TODAY! <3

[clonerightsagenda]

Finishing up the show! (As you saw, lol)

Episode 7:

Asriel: I fucking hate prophecies as plot devices. Me: same man

Technobabble? In His Dark Materials? Shut up about your capacitors

Hey, it was Mrs. Coulter's idea to beat Metatron, and now they're having Asriel and Xaphania tip her off. Stolen valor

"Brute physical force!" has been a family injoke for years so when Asriel announced he was going to defeat the angels with "sheer physical force" we all started screaming

"It's not just death down there" just reminds me of that tumblr post about how SFF invents Death 2: A Worse One

I've said it before but one more for the road... the witches look so silly

Well lads they did what I worried they'd do - focus a lot of time and energy on the war that explicitly thematically does not matter.

Why do Asriel's troops even have guns. Can you shoot an angel

Mrs. Coulter's control over the specters was vague in the books beyond that she played them like she plays everyone else, convincing them she could lead them to better prey. I do not know why she can now explode them with her mind

Serafina that bird skull is not flattering. And I say this as a skull connoisseur

God: *telepathically says shit* Mrs. Coulter: Another fucking man trying to tell me what to do

Metatron's leather suit??? Did he get himself confused with Metatton?

Mrs. Coulter didn't hit him with a rock : ( Also Stelmaria pushed them all into the pit instead of her. Kind of a bummer. Wondering what the metaphysical implications are of *her* daemon dying outside the rift rather than in it, though. Also my notes for this scene include the scribbled phrase 'cursed throuple'. I just thought you should know

Well God dying was appropriately anticlimactic I guess although I would have preferred if Will and Lyra weren't in the thick of All That

(My mom: Why aren't they going to the other world?? Why are they still in the war zone? My dad: Because they're stupid. Me: Don't blame them. It's not their fault. The TV show is doing this to them.)

Episode 8:

New scene of Lyra processing her parents' death - even posthumously they are still taking up screentime

You go to the land of the dead and through a war zone and into Eden and that PhD you met months ago just happens to be there. Wild tbh

Mary is a lesbian! Good for her! Does Lyra understand the concept of lesbians or is she baffled by this whole exchange

They cut the "The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake" line. Cowards

My mom: Will, do something about that bandage. He has gangrene. Me: He said she smelled bad but it's his hand rotting. (We then remembered they made the timeskip several months and were like... why does he still have bandages on)

Kirjava isn't black :(

Honestly the 'good' angels are coming off even worse in the TV version. yeah you did what we needed you to do so you're done now! We no longer grant you our grace to read the alethiometer because you're no longer of use to us! Go fuck yourself. Ironically her 'falling' does make her a used up and no longer valuable woman to them.... probably not the intended reading but here we are

Send help my parents keep calling the mulefa muffalettas

I joked that when Lyra said she was imagining what Will will look like when he's old he should've whipped out his phone and gone there's a snapchat filter for that

We then spent the last few minutes heckling Will for occasionally having all his fingers in some shots

I was already on the edge but just said "what the fuck?? what the fuck is that?????" for the ending with the like... based on a true story documentary text overlay for Where They Are Now. Why did they do that

[mariejordans]

I agree Jordan Marie and cate are the best most interesting characters if they're going to kill someone it should be Andre like you said he's useless and also unlikable as a person lmfao he ain't doing anything right. I love cate and I love villains so whatever way they go with her as long as it's believable I'm all for it. My thing with them killing more characters is because we're in the endgame now as in the boys probably has 2 more seasons to go and they're also going to start killing a lot of people like by the end I expect most of the main supes and at least half of the boys to be dead so as the gen v characters get pulled into that they're also going to start getting killed off but idc they better not touch Jordan and Marie I'm not kidding I already have hives thinking about stranger things maybe killing Steve in the last season I don't need this 😂😂😂😂

right EXACTLY jordan marie cate 🔛🔝

i genuinely didn’t expect them to pivot on cate’s character bc i really thought they’d stick with cate wanting to be good/wanting to be a hero, trying to earn her friends’ trust back, but i’m SOOO glad that they’re going the villain/anti-hero route. especially with marie and cate now on opposing sides and them basically being each other’s narrative foils, like i need them to go full on villain with cate like it’s just too good a set up for a really complex relationship between marie and cate.

*sighs* okay so my thing with andre is that he COULD’VE been a really interesting character. like, daddy issues, bisexual, doesn’t really care about being a superhero and lowkey in love with his best friend (the writers are cowards for not making the throuple happen) like there were so many ways his character could’ve been done, but then he ended up being a stereotypical nepo baby. it’s kinda like the writers put little to no effort in his character development and didn’t even try to make him likable 😭 he just constantly gets thrown around by the other characters, he slept with his best friend’s girlfriend, and he’s just kind of a dick in general. really the only thing i found really genuine and likable about andre was his love for luke, and to a certain extent, cate. but beyond that, he’s just not a very sympathetic character to me idk 😭

honestly, i’m not suuper attached to any of the boys characters, maybe it’s bc i always end up taking super long breaks between binge watching but if they decided to start killing off main characters, i think i’d be fine (except kimchie or starlight pls don’t touch them thx) but THEY BETTER NOT TOUCH MARIE OR JORDAN OR I’M STARTING A RIOT IN THE PRIME VIDEO BUILDING FR like you could even take cate from me just dont touch limoreau…

i’m gonna be honest, i kinda wish gen v was less tied into the boys and got to stand on its own more bc i really need homelander to stay FARRRRRR away from marie and jordan and cate. butcher too. but also bc i really liked the college setting but seeing as how we now know the entire college is a scam, it might completely move away from godolkin, which is a shame bc i loved the superhero college-sky high esque concept of it and i wish we had gotten MORE of it before we got into all the plot heavy stuff but…it is what it is ig 🤷🏼‍♀️

[narvin]

Perchance could we hear more about Sol & Cassie?? I'm always so intrigued by the posts u tag as them,, knowledge about The Guys would be thrilling (ESPECIALLY Sol I think its cool how you have distinctions for each of their regenerations)

okok forgive me if this is disorganized, I’m going thru the horrors. let’s seeee the basics are:

sol is a prydonian engineer who started out in temporal engineering and was eventually shuffled into weapons and battle tardis design. they’re in their third life when the time war rolls around and have gotten more and more entangled with the military, they’re out running test flights and consulting and being urged to get into command like a Proper Prydonian etc. anyway they’re captured in a raid right around the beginning of the hostilities before gallifrey has actually declared war and spend the rest of that life and their next in a prison camp. this starts their weird attitude towards their own other selves, cause 4 was never really able to properly settle into a new personality and never even really saw their own face clearly. even after being rescued and living several centuries 5 sees themself as being made specifically for war, having no real personality of their own, which is debatable. so yeah 5 rly throws themself into the war effort, ends up in a command position, loses a leg, gets commendations for it, eventually is working closely with rassilon. they’re terrified of him ❤️ and eventually become so disillusioned with his plans that they fake a crash with their battle tardis and leave gallifrey. they kinda hang out in their depression nest for many decades before eventually regenerating with a much more adventurous and avoidant personality. they meet cassie when their tardis is forced to land by a spacetime anomaly under the university of toronto (that’s real it’s down there)

the other thing with them is their bestie ferren who they met at the academy. he’s a xenoanthropologist and gets bullied for it a lot. but womp womp sol is already a commander when rassilon starts drafting civilians, and has seen firsthand what the daleks do to their enemies, so when ferren begs them to take him off gallifrey and then dodges his draft to live in the outlands it puts a huge strain on their relationship they’re extremely weird about it. sol still visits him but they mostly fight, ferren is kinda mean about the fact that they’ve changed so drastically since their 3rd life that they’re barely even his friend anymore, and they lowkey really think he’s a coward. so it stings when they leave without him! but yeah he’s questioned and executed when sol goes awol 💔 oops

anyway cassie’s deal is much shorter cause she’s not over a thousand years old, she’s an extremely burnt out grad student working in robotics. both her and sol have a whole thing about rediscovering that living is kinda fun sometimes, and it starts with her fascination with sol’s tardis. they have the standard adventures etc. but most importantly ship fucking hates her, it is not a mutual fascination. ship has never met a non-temporally active life form and she doesn’t understand or like them. eventually she’ll come around and then they’re essentially a throuple (sol and ship are a package deal)

I have like endless other thoughts on them but that’s the main stuff I think hehe

[a-problematic-writer]

Quick fire controversial takes to stir the pot (affectionately, I am not actually trying to start drama I just wanna throw out some random takes I have) 💚💚💚

Petra’s a bisexual. 100%. Like… look at them. That’s a bisexy if I’ve ever seen one.

This one’s less controversial but Petra’s a she/they. I don’t make the rules. Her and Aiden swap clothes a lot, fight me about it 💚💚💚

I prefer Lukrose (Lukas/Cassie Rose) to Aidrose! This actually came about because Aiden/Cassie Rose is actually not a new ship!! It’s been popular for quite some time! And it annoyed me and my friends to NO END (affectionately!) because Aidrose and Lukesse were the big contenders and we liked Aidesse. So we made a funny where Aidrose and Lukesse went on a blind double date and ended up becoming Aidesse and Lukrose. I’ll have to clean up that fic sometime haha!

Axden rules, actually, y’all are just mean. SO DOES LUXEL (Lukas/Axel)

I don’t like Soren 😭 He’s slimy and icky to me. Please, by all means, if you do please keep loving him wholeheartedly. I’m just unfortunately a hater.

In that vein, ivorren I agree was a thing. However, it is toxic yaoi to me. Ivor’s happier with Harper. We love a bi king and his bi queen.

LUKTRA SLAYS YOU GUYS NEED TO STOP SLEEPING ON THEM; I’LL START WAVING THEIR FLAG SO HARD JUST GIVE ME A REASON.

Axel and Maya would be SUCH a goated BROTP like she’s the vicious teacup chihuahua to his scary biker dude, y’know? If you get me, I love you. If you don’t, I’m sorry 😭

Jetra (M!Jesse/Petra) and Lukesse (F!Jesse/Lukas) slay so hard I need more content.

I don’t like Male Jesse 😭😭😭 there’s like legit no reason he’s fine but I can only see Remi Ratatouille when he speaks and I just don’t like him [m!Jesse], personally. There ARE exceptions of course! I love fan M!Jesse’s 🥰🥰🥰 but in the long run: Fem!Jesse is Best Jesse 🫶🫶🫶

No, this does NOT mean I like Cat Taber (Zionist L). I actually prefer fan voice claims better! Please, if you have any, send them my way omg…

Aidetra (Aiden/Petra) is so good I would like to dine on it everyday

STOP MAKING AIDEN THE VILLAIN YOU COWARDS. Lukas deserves to be one too 💚💚💚

THROUPLE ADMINS IS GOATED

This isn’t controversial but Stella TOTALLY used to hang out with the Ocelots and always had a big crush on Petra. Fight me. I think she and Aiden also dated briefly but that’s neither here nor there.

Dewey likes Aiden. Lukas is gonna die about it some day.

I think Aiden and Lukas being exes is just subtext at this point, not even a headcanon. They WERE TOGETHER, THEY DID BREAKUP.

No one in this game is canonically related. Ship who you want. This is coming from someone who’s a staunch believer in Aiden and Maya as siblings.

I actually don’t mind Jesse x Jesse. NOW AS A DISCLAIMER NOT IN THE SELFCEST WAY. I just mean like a lot of the time, I use Jesse variations to build up a sort of OC?? So like I see no reason they can’t be shipped together 😭😭😭

AIDESSE IS THE BEST SHIP EVER U CANNOT CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE ITS GOT EVERYTHING. IT CAN BE SO MUCH ALL YOU GOTTA DO IS BELIEVE.

[edmundofgloucester]

🦴📚🍬

bone: is there a piece of media that inspires your writing?

Honestly, every media I consume inspires my writing, but to provide a more specific answer, I started writing my current WIP because I watched Pirates of the Caribbean with my friend and I thought "I need something with these vibes but less racist and it's a throuple".

book stack: what's the last thing you wrote down on your notes app?

I'll really embarrass myself and give you two because the last thing I wrote in my notes app isn't writing related.

a) I wrote "I haven't met you yet, I'm Eli" and handed it to a friend of a friend in a club because I was trying to chat him up and I've decided I'm in my clubbing era now. Yes, inspired by the "he should be at the club memes".

b) In my writing ideas notes app, I wrote "Noblewoman has arranged marriage to powerful nobleman, in love with his brother, her child is brother’s child, uncle plays a fatherly figure to child". This one is kinda sad because it is not in any way shape or form an original idea; it was just a character concept I wanted to put in something someday.

candy: post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

oh God, i could be a coward and pick a random fandom but i'm going to pick the honorable way out and do a natpulley character because I feel like that's implied.

Ok, how about: of the Natasha Pulley cinematic universe adopted children, Six is probably my least favorite. I do like her! She has her moments! It's just that every other child feels more like an actual child to me.

[xxx-sir-pentious-xxx]

What characters do you think that would be a best partner to Pentious?

Mm lemme break it down

Rosie: Shes in his age range a bit more, has his ideals in a sense of proper grooming and behavior with a kick of snark and mischief.

Charlie/Vaggie: This has to be a throuple or else it collapses. Anyway their characters melt together well, Charlie has a huge soft spot for Pentious and Vaggie grows to really like him in a friend way. So its basically Charlie has a boyfriend and a girlfriend but those two are just friends that love her.

Emily: These two are very much character wise compatible, they would fit each others innocent caring natures. Theyd be soft and sweet together.

But that's all I'm saying. Obviously these cant happen because, Vivzi is a coward who folded because everyone liked Cherri, until the big letting a mfer get raped issue.

So to summarize,

Rosie, Charlie/Vaggie, Emily. Those are the most compatible characters for Pentious.

If youd like me to go down the entire catalogue of characters just in case I will, if you have a character in mind to deduce their worthwhile status for a lover I will look it over.

[powerpolyculeshowdown]

Hi! There's a non-xanon polyam ship I thought I'd write about and send to you and share since your blog's all about discussion of polyam in media.

The series The Big Bang Theory has a practically canon ship: Raj, Bernadette and Howard. Howard and Bernadette are married, Raj and Bernadette are ship-teased and Howard and Raj get a billion gay jokes.

They honestly are SUCH a throuple.

I have a LOT of problems with TBBT, a LOT. Toxic masculinity, racism, misogyny, queerphobia, ableism...

But it's entertaining and I still want to at least acknowledge this ship.

What's really dissapointing is that the series, like many, constantly jokes about characters being LGBTQ+ (Amy's bisexuality, Howard and Raj...) to the extent that it only isn't canin because it's "obviously" just jokes because gay so funny.

And it would have been so EASY to commit to the joke and ACTUALLY have LGBTQ+ characters. They wouldn't have had to write ANYTHING differently or hire new writers, literally just have the show exactly as it is... But make the gayness canon. Some good could have come out of that problematic show... But nope. And it is SUCH a missed opportunity.

And, back to Howard and Raj, them being a throuple woukd have worked REALLY well.

One of Raj's main traits was wanting love and hating being single, and his romances always failing. The 3 of them being together would have fixed that. He would have a fufilling relationship with a woman he loves and Howard, the character he's shown to be tye closest to. It's literally perfect. AND THEY ROBBED HIM OF IT-

It's rather frustrating that the writers were clearly lazy bigots, and couldn't bother to actually follow through on the jokes and rather blatant threesome subtext...

Anti-woke ppl often criticise representation bevause it's some huge deal and would ruin everything... But... It's not.

If they'd made it canon, it wouldn't have changed the characters or the dynamics at all, it wouldn't have been a big deal. The reason it's made into a big deal is because a lot of ppl think rep = entire character focus and narratives about issues, and don't understand "casual representation". Casual rep in TBBT coukd have existed, but tye writers wasted that opportunity. I could go on about how much Raj/Howard/Bernadette make sense and how it could habe been signgificant rep given how popular the series was...

Also quick shout-out to the lowkey non-monogamous vibes of Amy dating Sheldon and crushing on Penny (she literally imagined Penny/Sheldon fanfic in one scene) who's dating Leonard.

Anyway, so that's about it. Your blog is all about poltam ships and I wanted to share one I personally love tho I have a LOT of issues with the source material lol

i never expected big bang theory asks but i can see ur point and i think ur right the writers are cowards. thank u for rambling to me about this i love reading yalls takes on polyships and stuff

and hey maybe theres someone reading this who agrees w u and more friendship could blossom in powerpolyculeshowdown which is my new goal here tbh i want ppl to get along and have a good time

[filmnoirsbian]

Oliver Stone for the directors?

The only things I've seen by him recently are Natural Born Killers and Savages (I saw Scarface as a kid). I liked Natural Born Killers, it's fun. I would have liked Savages more if it was less racist and if they didn't try to make the throuple heterosexual about it like cowards.

[disappointingyet]

Design For Living

Director Ernst Lubitsch Stars Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Fredric March USA 1933 Language English, French 1hr 33mins Black & white

Dear boy, you can’t possibly be telling me Gary Cooper is in a Noel Coward picture

Ninotchka

Director Ernst Lubitsch Stars Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas USA 1939 Language English, a tiny bit of Russian and French 1hr 50mins Black & white

Garbo laughs! Stalin doesn’t!

Many of my favourite films are Hollywood comedies of the 1930s and ‘40s. Ernst Lubitsch is regarded by critics as one the best directors of the era* and he specialised in comedies but I haven’t seen many of his films and those I had seen had watched hadn’t sold me on his genius. In particular, The Shop Around The Corner, which I saw on the big screen, left me underwhelmed. But it seemed like time to give him another go…

The attention-grabbing thing about Design For Living is that it is a Noel Coward adaptation starring Gary Cooper. Slow-talking cowboy Gary Cooper? Yeah, that one. Gary Cooper as a Cubist painter living in a Parisian garret and involved in unconventional sexual arrangements? Uh-huh. In a comedy? Yep. 

It’s apparently a very loose Coward adaptation (I’ve never seen the play) but his spirit remains, even if all the characters are now American. George (Cooper) and his playwright chum Tom (Fredric March) meet Gilda (Miriam Hopkins), who does art for an ad agency – ie, unlike them, she has a real income – on a train. Soon, and unknown to George and Tom, she’s carrying on with both men.

Ah, yes, something important to say: this is what is known as a pre-Code movie – one made before Hollywood’s system of self-censorship (which lasted until the 1960s) kicked in. 

Anyway, the guys rumble what’s going on and tell Gilda she has to make a decision: But instead of choosing one of them, she moves in to sort them out on the condition that there will be no sex… What are the odds that that will stick? 

If an Americanised Noel Coward  play sounds like a classic Hollywood monstrosity, it turns out that this film is pretty funny and still a bit daring. And Cooper could do comedy: he’s opposite Barbara Stanwyck in Ball Of Fire, a Howard Hawks screwball classic from 1940 in which he plays a linguistics professor researching slang. My assumption is that Cary Grant must have been first choice for that film but Cooper is good, and he and March and Hopkins are an appealing trio (or maybe throuple?) in Design For Living.

Ninotchka is much more famous movie and one I’m 95% sure** I saw as a kid. The tagline was ‘Garbo laughs!’ – this was a big deal. I feel that Greta Garbo is somewhere between those old-time movie stars who are almost completely forgotten – Sonja Henie, for instance – and those who have endured more clearly, say Marlene Dietrich. Even if you’ve never seen a Dietrich movie – and let’s be honest, most people alive have not seen a Dietrich movie – there's a reasonable chance you have some sense of what she looked and sounded like, if only from parodies and drag queens. Garbo, on the other hand, seems like just a name now. 

Considering she’s playing the title character, Garbo takes a while to turn up in Ninotchka. We’re in Paris again and a trio of Soviet officials are in town to sell some jewels. News of this mission reaches the Russian Grand Duchess (Ina Claire) who was the former (or, in her view, still rightful) owner of the jewels and she sends her boyfriend Leon (Melvyn Douglas), a French count, to try to retrieve the stuff or at least put a spoke in the Soviet plans. Pretty soon, he has the three officials thoroughly seduced by Western decadence. So Moscow sends a much more hardline comrade to sort things out… and that’s of course Ninotchka.

The broad strokes of this kind of hardened yet naive Bolshevik were familiar until at least the 1980s: she’s baffled by fun, she asks the Count’s butler why he subjects himself to the indignity of being a servant and the old man turns out to be far more conservative than the count etc.

 But the film is smarter than that (and Garbo was a huge star known for dramatic roles.) So we get nuance – for instance, we learn that Ninotchka had been a frontline soldier in the wars that followed the revolution, something not possible in the US until this century as far as I can tell. I don’t think the film is disapproving of this. 

The film’s take on the USSR is fascinating. It was claimed by many Western Communists and other apologists for Stalin (so-called fellow travellers) that it was impossible to know how oppressive the regime had become until the death of Stalin (1953) or even the invasion of Hungary (1956) – but this mainstream Hollywood comedy from 1939 has a clear idea. 

‘The latest mass trials were a great success,’ reports Ninotchka. ‘There are going to be fewer but better Russians.’ That’s a pretty brutal joke even now, but kind of astonishing at the time. The working assumption is that anyone who has messed up and has to return to the USSR will be shot. The scene of a Moscow parade shows Stalin’s cult of personality in full effect. The Russians are in Paris as a part of a programme to flog off Tsarist-era treasures to feed a starving people. 

Ah, but this was anti-Communist propaganda, so they would have said all those things, wouldn’t they? But American anti-Communist propaganda, by and large, didn’t work like this. It wanted to show that the USSR was powerful, dangerous, its agents insidious, not (for instance) easy to derail with champagne and cigarette girls. Anti-Communists were constantly warning everyone to be on their guard (and, during the Cold War, waved through absurd defence spending). This film, instead, is suggesting that people like fun and anyone in a position to compare the two will decide that the decadent West is simply a better time than Marxist-Leninism.

There are three writers credited with the screenplay (although apparently Lubitsch also did some of the work): Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch. Reisch I know nothing about, but Brackett and Wilder wrote Ball Of Fire (mentioned earlier) and Sunset Boulevard together, among many other films, before Wilder went on to an even better partnership with IAL Diamond. Pretty much any film Wilder worked on will have some great lines, and this is no exception. (‘A Russian! I love Russians! Comrade, I've been fascinated by your five-year plan for the last fifteen years.’)

Ninotchka is a terrific movie – silly when it needs to be but often extremely smart, funny but also quite tough in its way. It does so many interesting things, like holding off on bringing on its star, and the politics are super-interesting. So, yes, I'm starting to understand why Lubitsch mattered.

*One time and one time only I was invited to the Christmas party of Sight And Sound, the most serious-minded non-academic film magazine there is. My main memory of the evening is lurking uselessly on the edge of an intense conversation about Lubitsch, knowing I had nothing to add. 

**The tiny bit of doubt is because the story was reworked as a Fred Astaire-Cyd Charisse musical called Silk Stockings. I may well have seen that too, but my memory is of a black & white film, not a musical – so Ninotchka. 

[fierylittleniece]

🦁 my favorite ships

From @theeclipse

//Are these my favorite ships from fandoms or favorite ships for my OCs? I can kinda do both since I have the time.

OC Ships (These are just some or else I'd be talking for HOURS):

JohnnieXLucifer: Johnnie is actually an OC inspired by the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia. I think it's a really perfect pair to have her accidentally fall for the man who tried to make a deal for her soul. It's very much an enemies to lovers situation.

RoxyXBen Reilly: This one was full of angst because I used to have a verse where Roxy dated a Peter Parker who passed away. Seeing Ben was like getting a second chance but also a completely clean slate because Ben was a completely different person.

DarrenxMayday Parker: A longggg time ago I had a partner who played Mayday. She was probably the first person I ever got to use Darren with and they were just so cute together. Just two kids in love with family members who knew each other from crime fighting.

Normal Fandom Ships

Marvel Shame Column:

Stucky: As a Cap 2 Groupie, I will not be explaining myself.

SamBucky: As a Sam Wilson groupie, I will not be explaining myself.

Black Hill: I should be able to explain this one. Yet I can't. They're coworkers. It's just too good.

Shuriri: A new one that is just very very cute. I hope we get some more content for this in the comics or something. I'll take table scraps at this point.

Amerikate: This one is much bigger in the comics and we'll likely NEVER see it in the movies. .

Carhodey: Another comic one that I think is tasty and deserves a little hintage in the movies. Not likely but a girl can dream.

Thororo: *screams* That is all.

Claire Temple and Matt Murdock: I do not know why this has no ship name. There was tension here and I guess I'm the only one who saw it that way.

DC:

WonderBat: The cartoons really seal the deal on this one for me. There's something about Diana being the one constantly trying to break past his broody boy shell that scratches an itch in my brain.

Harlivy: Sometimes healing is dating that hottie that has similar hobbies as you (doing crime in Gotham) and that's beautiful. A wonderful ship truly. So nice to see something that started off as a crackship in the fandom bloom into fully canon.

Star Wars:

FinnxRey: I wanted this. I wanted this so hard. And I got...NOTHING

FinnPoe: We all wanted this. Everyone liked this. And here we are. We were fools.

Weird Fandom Ships (Under Read More because I talk for a longggg time.)

Disney Ships

TianaXMulan: No I cannot explain. In like 2009 there was this massive community of people on YouTube who would edit Disney princess characters together like they were in love with all sorts of music and whatever. I honestly think this foundation of YouTube edits is what transitioned into all those Rise of the Tangled Brave Dragons edits that plagued the 2010s. Anyway there were a LOT with Tiana and Mulan and it just felt right.

TianaXSteve Rogers: Similar vein of Disney content but later. After the 2012 Avengers movie came out the Disney Youtube editors were shipping these cartoons with the live action Avengers. Hilarious but I genuinely think they would've had good chemistry. When I started rping as Tiana on Tumblr I did have some really good threads with a Steve Rogers rper who I don't think is active anymore.

TianaXCharlotte La Bouff: I promise these are not all Tiana ships but the Tiana ships are the ones I remember so vividly in my fandom life. This one is so good and honestly I'm fine with them in a throuple that has Naveen in it too. I think Tiana just deserves all the love she can get her hands on.

OUAT Ships

Swan Queen: I stg I was robbed. All OUAT ever did was piss me off and spit in my salad. You wanna talk about enemies to lovers you COWARDS? COPARENTING POTENTIAL? ABC WHEN I FIND YO- I have only once exception to my love of this ship and that one is below.

SwanFire: listen JUST please. I'll never forgive ABC for this one. Neil was the most interesting original character and they just fridge my man like that. There was so much potential for forgiveness and growth with these two. And they just REFUSE to let good men win.