#not by a long shot I love their relationship as a deconstruction on domestic abuse and cycle of abuse but idk how I feel about them going

[cowchickenbeefpork]

how it feels to not be the biggest loustat fan so far in iwtv spaces

[earlgraytay]

i saw someone saying that there isn't enough meta about katya goncharova and she's my queen so like

can we talk about how she's Above It All until she very much isn't, and the twist kind of deconstructs the male gaze that's been on her this entire time?

the dressing scene, the dinner scene, the applecart scene, they're all using (a horrible mishmash of Orthodox and Catholic) signals of Purity and Innocence

like FFS in the dinner scene Katya has the light from the old clock reflected behind her head in most every shot

what does this remind you of

yeah. this symbolism ain't subtle.

but we know from the applecart scene, the bar scene, and of course The Fucking Ice Pick Joe Hotel Scene (dear god that's going to haunt my nightmares forever) that Katya is no innocent, that her relationship with Goncharov is a projection of her relationship with her abusive alcoholic father, that she's tired of standing by her man, that she feels like the entire world (including Gonch himself!) is against her (and of course we all know Sofiya's reply to that, Classic Of Sapphic Cinema that it is), and that she wants more than the life she's given. She's just as complicated and flawed a person as Goncharov, and at the end of the hotel scene, we get this shot:

the halo's broken; the veneer of 'innocence' that Katya had is completely lost. it's inevitable now: Katya will betray Goncharov, must betray Goncharov, because now the entire world is against her, and this is the world she must live in. she can't escape through fantasies of What Could Be (either with Sofiya or Andrey)- she has to live in the violent, blood-soaked world that her husband created for her.

i've heard some people (mostly people who have only read synopses lol) get very confused why Katya betrays Goncharov and say that it's meaningless, but I don't think it is. I think she's desperately trying to create a perfect world for herself, a perfect domestic sphere where none of the violence of her husband's world intrudes- but the only way she'll ever escape is through the same violence!! and once she's realized that, she starts planning for a death, one way or the other. look at how she encourages Goncharov to wear a fucking tuxedo to the final confrontation with Giglioli's right-hand man- she's dressing him for his own funeral!

and then we get to the boat scene!!!

look at this! it's a shroud! she knows she's going to her own burial and she's dressed herself for the occasion! she doesn't expect to make it out alive!!! when she throws Gonch's gun into the ocean she knows he's going to find some other way to kill her, and yet she lives just long enough to have to sit with her regrets! it's absolute tragedy!

I love Katya so much and I'm so sad that more people don't poke around in her interior life; even a lot of the sapphic fic I've read is just "we're going to pair the blonde and the brunette". but she's as complicated a character as Goncharov himself and I really wish more people were willing to dig into what that means

[snickertoodles]

Megalist of Tropes and Themes to Tag Your Story With

If you’re prone to staring at your tags on AO3 wondering “what the hell do I put here?”, knowing you want to add a tag like “friends to lovers” or “found family” but not remembering all the popular tropes and themes everyone is into, this is for you. I basically spent an entire night on this so I hope it helps.

Notes:

I tried to keep it general and avoid really obscure tags no one would ever use.

This is made for AO3 and thus there’s a lot of fandom or fannish stuff in here. 

I didn’t include any “inappropriate” tags. Feel free to make your own list.

Romance tropes and themes at the bottom. (Not all of them have to be romantic, but if they’re generally associated with romance and there are very few gen fics with that tag, it went there.)

Under cut because I’m probably going to edit this often and I’d like reblogs to be up to date. Please suggest any ideas you have.

Genre: Action, Adventure, Apocalypse/Post-Apocalypse, Contemporary, Comedy/Humor/Parody/Satire, Coming of Age, Crime, Cyberpunk/Steampunk, Drama, Dystopian/Utopia, Fairy Tale, Fantasy/High Fantasy/Low Fantasy/Urban Fantasy/Isekai, Family, Friendship, Gothic, Historical Fiction/Alternate History/Period Piece, Horror/Slasher, Mystery/Murder Mystery, Paranormal, Philosophical, Poetry, Romance, Slice of Life, Supernatural, Surreal, Suspense, Sci-Fi/Science Fiction/Space Opera, Spiritual, Thriller/Psychological Thriller, Tragedy, Urban, Western

Genre (Fandom): Angst/Light Angst, Case Fic, Crack Fic, Crossover/Fusion, Dark Fic, Fix Fic/Fix-It/Deconstruction, Fluff/Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Podfic, Missing Scene/Gap Filler, Self-Insert, Shipping, Sickfic, Songfic, Whump

Length: Drabble, Ficlet, Flash Fiction, Short Story, Novella, Novel, Epic, One-Shot/Two-Shot/etc, Series/Duology/Trilogy/Saga/etc, Long, Short

Pairing: M/F - F/M - M/M - F/F - F/F/M - You get the idea. Also [Character] x [Character], Slash, Yaoi/Yuri (if people still use those...)

POV: POV Alternating, POV Multiple, POV First Person, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, POV Outsider

Ending: Happy Ending, Sad Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Ambiguous Ending

Diverse Characters: Gay Character/Nonbinary Character/Asian Character/Disabled Character/Autistic Character/Jewish Character/etc.

AU/Alternate Universe: (I do not have the time to list out Coffee Shop AU/High School AU/Canon Divergence/What-If/etc, I assume if you’re writing one then you already know to tag it lol)

Abuse

Adoption

Afterlife

Aftermath

Aged Up

Alcohol

Aliens

Amnesia

Androids

Angels

Animal Transformation

Anti-Hero

Awkwardness

Babysitting

Backstory/Origin Story

Band of Misfits

Best Friends

Betrayal

Blood

Bodyswap

Bodyguard

Bonding

Bounty Hunters

Bromance

Bullying

Canon Compliant

Character Development

Character Study

Childhood Friends

Children

Chosen One

College/University/Higher Education

Corruption

Criminals

Crying

Curses

Cute

Death

Delinquents

Demons

Depression

Destiny/Fate

Disability

Domestic/Curtainfic

Dragons

Dreams/Dreamscape

Drugs

Education

Ensemble Cast

Epilogue

Fanon/Headcanon

Father Figure/Mother Figure

Feelings

Feels

Fights

Flashbacks

Forgiveness

Found Family

Freedom Fighters

Frenemies

Future

Genderswap/Gender Change

Ghosts

Gods

Good Versus Evil

Gore

Grief/Mourning

Growing Up

Healing

Heartwarming

Heroes to Villains/Villains to Heroes

Holidays

Homesickness

Hospital

Hurt

I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping (A very legitimate tag.)

Imprisonment

Injury

Introspection

Illness/Sick Character

Immortality

Isolation

Jealousy

Kidnapping

LGBTQ/LGBTQ Character/LGBTQ Themes

Light-Hearted

Locked In

Loss

Love

Mafia

Magic

Magical Girl(s)

Major Character Death/Minor Character Death

Manipulation

Medieval

Medical

Melancholy

Mental Health Issues

Mentors

Merpeople

Mind Control

Military

Misunderstandings

Modern

Monsters

Morally Grey/Ambiguous Characters

Murder

Mythical Beings & Creatures

Mythology

Neighbors

Next Gen/Next Generation

Nightmares

Original Character/OC/OCs

Orphans/Orphanage

Out of Character/OOC

Parenthood

Past Lives

Peggy Sue

Pen Pals

Pirates

Platonic Relationships/No Romance

Platonic Soulmates

Plot Twists

Politics

Possession

Post-Canon/Pre-Canon/Mid-Canon/Bad Ending/etc.

Prompt Fill/Prompt Fic

Protectiveness

Rags to Riches

Rebels

Recovery

Redemption/Redemption Arc

Regret

Reincarnation/Resurrection/Rebirth

Rejection

Relationships

Religion

Rescue/Rescue Missions

Restaurants

Reunion

Revenge

Revolution

Rivalry

Road Trip

Robots

Roommates

Royalty

Sad

School

Secrets

Secret Identity

Self-Discovery

Self-Harm

Shapeshifting

Siblings

Single Parents

Slow Build

Soft

Spies

Spoilers

Substance Abuse

Suicide

Superheroes

Sweet

Sympathetic Villain

Teamwork

Team as Family

Team Bonding

Team Dynamics

Teenagers

Tension

Time Loop

Time Travel

Training

Trapped

Trauma

Travel

Undercover

Unreliable Narrator

Vampires

Villains

Violence

War

Weapons

Wedding

Wilderness

Witchcraft

Worldbuilding

xxx to Friends (Rivals to Friends/Enemies to Friends/etc.)

Zombies

ROMANCE TROPES

Battle Couple

Blind Date

Breakup

Confessions

Dating

Divorce

Dorks in Love

Drunken Confessions

Established Relationship

Eventual Romance

Falling in Love

Fake Relationship/Fake Dating/Pretend Relationship/Pretend Couple

First Kiss

First Love

Forbidden Love

Heartbreak

Idiots in Love

Long-Distance Relationship

Long-Term Relationship

Love/Hate

Love at First Sight

Love Confessions

Love Potion/Love Spell

Love Triangle

Marriage/Accidental Marriage/Arranged Marriage/Marriage of Convenience

Marriage Proposal

Mutual Pining/Pining

OTP

Pregnancy

Rarepair

Secret Relationship

Sharing a Bed

Slow Burn/Slow Romance

Soulmate/Soulmate AU

Tsundere/all of the other -deres

Unrequited Love/One-Sided Attraction

xxx to Lovers (Enemies to Lovers/Friends to Lovers/etc.)

[myhahnestopinion]

THE AARONS 2020 - Best Film

Believe it or not, there were movies released last year - 75 of them at the very least, as that’s how many I watched. That’s 30 less than last year, even though I spent approximately 300% more time inside my home, but I’ll cut myself some slack. 2020 may have been a loss, but there were still some real winners to come out of it. Here are the Aarons for Best Film:

#10. The Assistant

It’s a sin of omission: No name is spoken in the film. No crimes are labeled. The towering chair in the middle of the shot sits empty, and yet the dangerous jaw of the doorframe is unmistakable. Kitty Green’s office procedural is made more nauseating in its minimalism; loosely based on the Weinstein sexaul assault scandal, The Assistant counts on a viewer’s familiarity, not just with the broad strokes of abuse, but the minutiae that enables it. By following a junior employee, played by the always tactful Julia Garner, through a series of daily mundanities, Green’s film shifts the spotlight, questioning our collective culpability in creating toxic environments. Every act must be an act of rebellion, the film says, or else we are assisting.

#9. Happiest Season

Happiest Season hit a snag last year: what was set to be a landmark in wide-release studio rom-coms became another victim of a pandemic that pushed people apart for the holidays. The homey movie might have hit harder in its Hulu-Original release though, as a needed reminder of the power of patience during difficult times. Harper (Mackenzie Davis) waits too long after an invite home for Christmas to tell her girlfriend Abby (Kristen Stewart) that she’s not out to her parents, imploring they keep the relationship a secret for the time being. It’s an unreasonable ask, prompted by unjust circumstances. By honestly exploring that conflict in hilarious, heartfelt fashion, Happiest Season was the most wonderful time of an interminable year.

#8. Wolfwalkers

Wolfwakers doesn’t run in a pack with the output of other animation studios, despite sharing a similar gravitas to the best of the Disney Renaissance. The wild style of its swirling sensory colors shed realism for an immersive, uninhibited fantasy world. Formatted like a proper fairy tale, the film centers on a moral: as wolfhunter’s daughter Robyn gains the ability to transform into the animal at night, the film walks viewers through overcoming fear of “the other'' in order to identify the true monsters among us. The howl of its voice actors, backed by a repurposed single by singer Aurora, completes this captivating creation. Released on the Apple TV+ streaming service, the film can rightfully boast of being one of the best of the year, so there’s no need to buy a wolf ticket.

#7. Onward

Onward put Pixar back on a forward-thinking path after a series of skippable sequels. Like director Dan Scanlon’s previous effort, it’s a smaller-scale saga for the studio, riffing on a classic comedic conceit rather than voicing existential crises: in a modernized fantasy world, two brothers take a road trip to locate a mystical artifact that can bring their father back for one more day. The quest is Pixar at its most magical, tweaking traditional tropes and tugging at one’s heartstrings. Despite the pieces being present, the film circumvents the jealousy of “knowledge vs. natural talent” that fueled Scanlon’s Monsters University; its vulnerable, supportive, affectionate sibling relationship made Onward especially moving. 

#6. The Vast of Night

The Vast of Night plays on the vastness of imagination, tracking a young radio DJ and a switchboard operator through interviews that untangle the extraterrestrial events of their small town. In effect, the film is the Super 8 of the podcast world, plugging into the particular power of its medium by way of a retro-sci-fi adventure. For those on that wavelength, the atmospheric indie is an equally eerie and enticing beacon to the thrill of discovery. This audial focus doesn’t come at the expense of its visual format, mind you: the film’s hypnotic hold is only broken once - by the absolutely stunning construction of its midpoint tracking shot, one for the record books. 

#5. Tenet

A question of cause-and-effect: did Christopher Nolan’s newest blockbuster fall into my top five for the year, or was a new Nolan novelty destined to place there before the year even began? His filmography has been on a roll since its inception, and the director keeps that forward-momentum going with the twisty Tenet, a time-bending thriller about agents unraveling a temporal cold war. Any way you look at them, the innovative, physics-based action scenes astound. Meanwhile, the midpoint movement turns on wondrous, child-like glee. With this grand of a scale, it’s a shame that Nolan’s devotion to the big screen despite the pandemic hampered the release; it seems some of the director’s tenets are better than others.

#4. His House

The works of Jordan Peele will likely be at the forefront of a viewer’s mind during His House, but, make no mistake, the film has horrors all its own. It’s a similar set-up to Get Out: a South-Sudanese refugee couple endure the various racist micro-aggressions of trying to assimilate or accommodate to an unwelcoming environment, even before learning their government-mandated housing is haunted. While that’s the foundation, His House’s ultimate form is unexpected, linked not to the guises of progress, but to the guilt of the past. Its supernatural sequences are made more startling by the raw performance of stars Sope Dirisu and Wunmi Mosaku; they own His House. 

#3. First Cow

Behind every successful man, there stands a cow. Director Kelly Reichardt continued her career-long deconstruction of the Western last year in her best bittersweet concoction, First Cow. Pioneers Cookie and Lu seek the promise of the frontier in 1800s Oregon Country, sneaking milk from a wealthy land-owner’s cow to start an oil-cake business. The camaraderie is lovely, but that contract is a lie: the truth is a world in which only capital begets capital, where the rich are more concerned with having something than using it. Reichardt doesn’t beef up this drama with overblown conflicts, instead milking the minimalism to ‘udderly’ devastating results: they were the first, but we’ll all be waiting on that Western promise of prospect ‘til the cows come home. 

#2. The Invisible Man

Often, movies will ask viewers to look at their monsters as metaphors; sometimes, they’re just monsters through and through. The Invisible Man, an update on the classic Universal film, polishes up the original’s special effects, but makes its titular character much uglier. Bringing the invasive nature of invisibility to the surface, the film reinterprets the character as a domestic abuser, gaslighting his ex, Cecilia, from beyond his supposed grave. Elizabeth Moss makes it a must-watch, never letting the audience look away from the trauma and terror of that situation. It’s highly-disturbing horror, made more so by an ending that leaves viewers in the dark, and the craft is always phenomenal. Director Leigh Whannell clearly had vision since his very first film project, but after The Invisible Man, everyone will be saying, “Saw who?” 

AND THE BEST FILM OF 2020 IS...

#1. Straight Up

Straight Up? One of the best rom-coms of recent memory, and my favorite film of an odd year. It’s a fittingly off-beat premise after all: a young gay man and an equally-witty young woman, each struggling with intimacy in different ways, explore an unusual romantic relationship with each other. In a time when we were all cut off from connections with other people, Straight-Up reexamined internalized phobias and millennial malaise to forge new ones, uncovering the rare occurrence of a platonic ideal. With whip-smart dialogue, reflective filmmaking, and two star-making central performances, you will surely fall as in love with Straight Up as I did, and that is nothing less than My Hahn-est Opinion.

NEXT UP: THE 2020 AARON FOR WORST FILM!

[viralhottopics]

Panmela Castro: Brazil’s graffiti queen, delivering justice through the nozzle of a paint can

(CNN)“I was a victim, but that was a very long time ago.”

Panmela Castro casts her mind back to the day she was beaten.

Like her mother, like her aunts, like many of her friends, the Rio de Janeiro native had become a statistic within an epidemic of violence against women.

Castro remembers going to the police, but there was no law to back her up — at the time, domestic abuse was not a crime in Brazil. The incident was a private matter Castro was told, and no charges were filed.

She says psychological attacks had started shortly after she moved in with her partner. At the time she did not identify it as a form of abuse, but Castro claims the single violent incident was the final straw. She walked away, an act of defiance against Brazil’s cultural landscape, where countless women suffer in silence.

She had become a victim, but would not continue as one.

A trained artist educated at the University of Rio de Janeiro, Castro had been tagging walls using the nom de guerre “Anarkia Boladona”, but now she found herself painting more and more.

Castro recalls how her ex-partner would harass her when she left the house, but creating graffiti with fellow artists, who were overwhelmingly male, offered her a level of protection.

Unlike the calligraphy or macho symbols daubed throughout Rio, Castro’s work was feminine. Something of substance. Something empowering.

A relationship had ended but she’d found her voice.

Now Castro is helping a nation of women find theirs.

A global problem

Globally, 35% of women have experience physical and/or sexual violence in their life, according to the World Health Organization — and for 30% it was at the hands of their partner. In Brazil the problem was particularly acute, allowed to metastasize for generations, with no legal recourse for victims.

It took the case of Maria da Penha to shock policymakers into action. Da Penha’s husband had tried to kill her twice. In May 1983, he shot her in her sleep, leaving her paraplegic and hospitalized. A fortnight after his wife’s return home, he tried to electrocute her in the shower.

Tried and found guilty, he twice successfully appealed. Eventually in 2002 de Penha’s husband was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison, but walked free after serving a fraction of his sentence.

A two decade-long legal suit filed by da Penha finally resulted in a landmark ruling, taking the Brazilian government to task for failing to prosecute perpetrators of domestic violence to the necessary degree. In August 2006, Federal Brazilian Law 11.340./06, known as the “Maria da Penha Law,” was brought into effect by Luiz Incio Lula da Silva’s government.

Mural commemorating the 8th anniversary of the Maria da Penha law, Rio de Janiero.

The law was not a panacea. It resulted in 331,000 prosecutions and 110,000 final judgments in its first five years, according to the National Council of Justice of Brazil, per UN Women. However, in a country where 41,532 women were murdered between 1997 and 2007, and 10 women were dying every day from domestic violence, systemic abuse was never going to stop overnight.

The new law needed help reaching the people most effected.

Panmela Castro was at hand.

Outlier

The artist turned professional in 2005, and after the summer of 2006 began collaborating with organization Com Causa (“With Cause”), campaigning for women’s rights and publicizing the new law.

“It was easy for me because I knew these streets,” Castro tells CNN.

As a female urban artist Castro was an outlier.

“In order to be accepted you have to pay a high price, because it’s very difficult for women to get into those sorts of groups,” she reflects. “(Men) don’t like the idea of sharing power and being equals with women.”

Despite male graffiti artistsoffering her a form of protection when she was finding her feet, Castro maintains that even today she suffers psychological abuse and sexual harassment from her male counterparts at times.

“One of the reasons I was accepted was because I was good at what I did — internationally renowned … They were forced to accept me.”

There’s a reason Castro has been dubbed “Brazil’s graffiti queen.”

Her murals, low on words but heavy on message, are things of beauty. Often featuring portraits of women, they’re feminine without sexualizing the female body. Sisterhood is frequently suggested in her figures’ intertwined hair, while mythical characters like the goddess Liberty look out across Rio. The biblical Eve, “that unreliable and treacherous woman,” as Castro drolly refers to her, is a mainstay.

Through Castro’s work, women are occupying public spaces in Brazil, reclaiming the streets.

Look close enough and in the corner of one Castro mural you can find an allusion to “vagina dentata” — a folk tale in which a woman’s vagina contains teeth.

The message is clear: this woman bites back.

Spreading the word

There is a limit to what paint alone can do, says the artist.

“My graffiti is talking about justice, violence, women’s advocacy,” Castro says, “but it’s not (going) to make a real change.” Her art has, however, given her a platform to launch what has become her main pursuit: Rede Nami.

Rede Nami was started by Castro in 2010 as a way to educate communities on domestic violence by running workshops for mixed groups of 14-19 year olds, and others for women of any age.

After spending an hour discussing women’s rights, and sometimes sharing experiences of abuse, the group uses the rest of the workshop to create a mural visualizing the issue — it is physical evidence that citizens are taking a stand.

Children painting a mural during one of Rede Nami’s workshops.

“You can’t really entice people to just talk about their cases,” Castro says. “The graffiti is what makes them want to share. If it was just conversation, people wouldn’t come.”

Over 5,000 people have participated in the workshops so far, some taking place outside Brazil, while the initiative has received support from Amnesty International, Vital Voices and the Brazil Foundation.

Rede Nami has also created a program called AfroGrafiteiras, currently educating 180 Afro-Brazilian women about black feminism, gender and their own rights — as well as training them as street artists.

“All these themes help to fight the macho movement,” she adds.

Celebrity Castro

The initiative has brought Castro celebrity in Brazil, and she’s received numerous global accolades. Listed as one of Newsweek’s 150 Women Who Shake the World and noted as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Castro can be found hobnobbing with influencers including Diane Von Furstenberg, Oprah Winfrey and Jessica Alba, as well as Brazil’s most famous son, Pele.

She’s been commissioned across the Americas and in Europe by the likes of Nike, Hublot and Avon.

Recently one of her murals in New York featured prominently in coverage of the Women’s March on January 21, she says. A classic Castro design, it depicted two women joined by braided hair, with the message “Women’s Rights are Human Rights.”

Castro’s mural outside Urban Nation, due to open September 2017. (Image: Courtesy Urban Nation)

She describes a vast faade she has made for the upcoming Urban Nation gallery in Berlin (opening September 2017) as “one of my most special works.”

Performance art

In recent years, Castro has diversified into the field of performance art.

Carrying the flame of the Yugoslavia-born so-called “grandmother of performance art” Marina Abramovic and others, the new medium has allowed her to venture into transgressive territory in a way that her workshops cannot.

A post shared by My life for lovely stalkers (@panmelacastro) on Jul 10, 2016 at 6:24am PDT

For example, in a 2016 performance entitled “Por que?” (“Why?”), Castro — wearing an ostentatious Von Fustemberg dress — carved the title of the piece into her flesh. A similar bloody inscription materialized in “Gentileza Gera Gentileza” (“Kindness Generates Kindness”), when that maxim was etched into her back with a surgical scalpel.

Perhaps Castro’s most visceral act came in 2015. For the past four years she had been incorporating apples into her work, sometimes superimposing a vulva on the fruit, as an allusion to Eve.

Eve’s apple became a permanent fixture for Castro when she had one tattooed on her arm during a piece called “Ruptura,” performed as part of the “Eva” show at the Scenarium Gallery in Rio de Janeiro. The performance began with Castro applying lipstick, before being tattooed, having her head shaved by the audience, and changing into a sharp black suit. (Watch the whole performance here.)

Priscila Duarte, curator of “Eva” and consultant director of Rede Nami, described the performance’s intent: “Panmela breaks with the appearance of the princess girl, the good girl to marry and the exemplary daughter, to become another image that we can no longer define so much, but which I interpret as Renaissance.”

“When we talk about gender, we’re talking about freedom for people to deconstruct their status as women,” Castro explains. But gender, she argues, has become a forbidden word in Brazil’s classrooms. It means there has to be a clear distinction between her output as an artist, and her educational work for RedeNami.

“Most of the dialogue against women happens because people think that women have to be lower (than men). We think that women can be anything they want.”

Fortunately, the teenagers Castro educates, she says, are from a generation “open to learning and respecting women.”

“Before you’d have to fight for your rights, fight to be protected,” she says. “Today you fight to maintain those laws.”

Armed with a spray can and an indomitable persona, it’s hard to imagine Castro anywhere but the frontlines.

Read more: http://cnn.it/2mNrInF

from Panmela Castro: Brazil’s graffiti queen, delivering justice through the nozzle of a paint can