#overdone overplayed boring ITS BORING

[chipichanga01]

They’re making Jason Todd into muscley tiktok e-boy and I don’t vibe with it :/

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Hi, I'm working on a SPN fanfic right now and I was hoping I could get some character ideas from you. It's a destiel fanfic-I know you don't ship them anymore but I'm kind of stuck on what to do with John? I want him in the story because I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the way he plays Dean but I also don't want to write him in a repetitive way, I want to do the character justice and not make him all cringe. Got any ideas?

Hi! Yes, I'd be more than happy to give you some advice.

To me, John Winchester is such a fun character to write, full of angst ripe for the picking with Sam and Dean, ya know? And Jeffrey does such a good job bringing the character to life, I just hate reading fics where the the writers just make him the cringey, abusive, alcoholic, homophobic father, the obstacle needed to overcome for Destiel (or whatever ship) to truly be together, you know? I'm not saying that we shouldn't use the abusive parent trope in coming out stories because obviously those family dynamics exist in real life so of course many who have suffered through that trauma want to write about it to work through it and I do not begrudge them at all for that. But, the trope is overplayed and typically there isn't a whole lot of nuance to it so its kind of boring to read about all of the time, and when something gets boring, it gets cringey.

So my advice if this story you're writing is going to have some sort of coming out story feat. John Winchester aka Abusive/Homophobic Father of the Year, then try to add a little bit more nuance to it to give it a freshness so it doesn't feel so overplayed to your readers. No one likes carboard cut outs of characters, they want characters not caricatures (at least that's I want but you know depending on your audience, maybe they're ok with caricatures as long as they get their fanservice). So definitely, if you can, try and dive a little more deeply into the psyche of John Winchester. Really analyze his emotions, his motivations, his reasonings for why he does the things he does. If he's gonna be abusive and homophobic, think about why is he really those things? Is he abusive because he can't look at his kids because they remind him of Mary? Is this his own way of protecting them? Is he homophobic because he's a product of his time? Or is there a deeper reason behind it? Is it a means of protecting his sons from the harshness and brutality of living that life? Because while it is freeing and liberating to come out and truly be able to be yourself, sadly, the world is filled with bigots that won't see it that way, that are threatened by it and will enact violence because of their bigotry.

Me personally, if I were to ever write for John Winchester, I'd choose to stay away from the abusive, alcoholic, homophobic angle that so much of the fandom likes to depict him as. Like I said before, its overdone, boring, and cringey. And truth be told, I've never jumped on the band wagon of hating John Winchester. Honestly, when I rewatch Season 1, the episodes featuring him are always so enjoyable to me because he's so interesting. Sure, he's terrible for his sons, but digging into his motivations and how he thinks, in his own twisted mind, he means well and he's genuinely thinking that these means are what's going to keep his boys safe. So I don't know, if I were to write a coming out story whether it be destiel or sastiel, I'd kind of like to depict John as being supportive of his son coming out because there is an aspect of his personality there that does treasure his boys. Sure, it doesn't negate that he's a terrible father who has treated his children abysmally but everything that he's done in the show, it's never screamed at me that he's homophobic. I'm sure some Dean Winchester stans will come at me, get up on their soap box and try to tell me that we can gather that John Winchester was homophobic because of Dean's own homophobia and repressed feelings towards men, how he womanizes and fetishizes women, etc. He learned it from John. Or maybe, just maybe, John Winchester was not around a whole lot and Dean watched a lot of macho cop shows and things of that nature whilst spending endless hours cooped up in a hotel room. Or Dean Winchester actually is straight, I know horror of horrors for me to suggest something like that and I'm not really here to make an argument on that. If you want to yell at me and tell me all of the reasons why Dean Winchester isn't straight, don't bother because I don't care. SPN is done and over with and we all now have the freedom to characterize Dean however the fuck we want and we need to stop getting into such heated arguments about this. If you see Dean has a repressed homosexual, great I totally see how you would see that so you should write about it, I don't have a problem with it. But I also don't have a problem with him being characterized as straight either. I have written Dean as straight before and I've also written him as LGBT as well. I'm not more partial to any reading of his sexuality really, he's never been a favorite character of mine, most of the time I have to really fight my own dislike of him to even find him palatable. If I think of a story and I want to include him in said story, I'll characterize him in whichever way befits the story I'm writing. But the point is, in regards to John Winchester, I kind of went on a tangent there, but what I'm essentially getting at is John can be abusive, he can be alcoholic, but I would also find it interesting if amongst those things he was supportive of his sons' sexuality or at the very least apathetic to it.

But anyway, those are my thoughts/advice. Hopefully it helps and good luck on your story. If you post it on Tumblr, be sure to tag me, I'd love to read it.

[hellsbellschime]

its so annoying how in every teen drama ever the two girl best friends have to fight over a boy. like this isnt even necessarily a feminist statement but its so boring and overplayed and overdone can yall not come up with something new. like there are a bunch of other much more interesting things that they can be fighting about but they choose the blandest fuckboy every time instead

I completely agree, aside from being offensive it’s just goddamn boring. LOL, like when I was in high school, I actually developed a crush on my BFF’s boyfriend, and do you know what happened? I didn’t say anything and he became one of my other best friends and is to this day, because I’m not a fucking loon. 

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, six times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five (35.71% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nine.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

The pacing is a disaster, the story is weak, and if the style of comedy isn’t to your taste it can be very grating, but the central theme has at least some glimmers of genuine quality.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Gamora passes with Ayesha. Nebula and Gamora conflict. Gamora asks Mantis about her empathic abilities. Gamora passes with Mantis. Gamora and Nebula fight. Gamora confronts Mantis.

Female characters:

Meredith Quill.

Gamora.

Ayesha.

Nebula.

Mantis.

Male characters:

Ego.

Peter Quill.

Drax.

Rocket.

Groot.

Stakar Ogord.

Yondu Udonta.

Taserface.

Kraglin.

OTHER NOTES:

Nice of Ayesha to randomly exposition on the way her people are created, even though it is not relevant to the plot or anything else at all. 

Gold Ben Browder is the highlight of this film. Because it’s Ben Browder. And he’s gold.

The immature escape-from-the-Sovereign-fleet bickering between Quill and Rocket (with chimes in from Drax) while Gamora is the Token Female and Wet Blanket is just...chafing a really tedious cliche. 

Drax hanging out the back of the ship as they’re crashing is one of those things where the characters are so unrealistically indestructible it makes it hard to engage with the idea that they’re ever in real danger. That happens a lot in this movie.

Android prostitutes. Sigh.

Daddy issues. Never seen that done before. Thrilling.

First time I saw this movie I thought it was a weird choice to make the raccoon the main character of the B plot, but to be honest, Rocket is the best of the Guardian characters and front-lining him is one of the better choices of the film.

The whole idea that Quill was able to hold an Infinity Stone because he’s half god really fucks over the whole ‘the Guardians teamed up to withstand the power of the stone together’ thing. Like, nevermind, that whole climactic moment from the first film didn’t mean shit, Quill is a half-god.

Kraglin thinks that Nebula would be the type to buy a pretty necklace or a nice hat and this is just one of those weak, gender-stereotyped jokes that makes me annoyed at the lack of awareness in writing ALIEN CULTURES and also just, like, the basic ability to comprehend character personalities. I complained about this when I reviewed the first Guardians film, but honestly. Whether in throwaway lines or entire plot arcs, these movies are rife with gendered writing, more than any other films in the MCU so far, and that doesn’t make a lick of sense. ALIEN. CULTURES. GUYS. 

He’s playing catch with his dad and MY GOD, glowy god power should not be this trite and boring. 

This script has a bad habit of over-playing its jokes. You gotta know when to stop, y’all.

URRRGGH, the momentum of this movie straight-up dies every time the plot shifts back to Quill and his dull daddy issues. The imbalance between the A and B plots is staggering.

Gamora and Nebula’s conflict and eventual reconciliation is one of those few quality emotional beats in this movie; the recognition that the hate that has been engendered between them comes from the abuse they suffered at Thanos’ hands, and that they are both victims of him, not of one another. It’s a kind of insightfulness that is surprising, considering the cliches and under-developed arcs that populate the rest of the film.

Credit where it’s due for genuinely funny jokes that they don’t overplay: the Mary Poppins gag, Drax’s nipples, the giant Pac-Man.

Yondu deserved a better movie, man. I don’t know why the rest of this story is such a mess when the little slivers it gets right are so spot-on.

So, daddy issues. It’s one of the most overdone cliches in the history of storytelling, typically stemming from a very performative-masculine root (the father as the only/most important role model for his son, specifically in modelling manliness), and/or the old-fashioned patriarchal idea of the son as his father’s heir (and the idea that that makes the relationship between a father and son more profound than any other). Men love to write stories about their daddy issues, despite the fact that they’re rarely interesting or unusual or different to the billion other daddy issues stories that have already been told. As such, the fact that this movie is built around that same-old-same cliche is a fact distinctly to its detriment; that said, it’s also the one well from which it draws any spark of meaningful inspiration. 

The dot points above have already made it clear to which sparks of inspiration I refer; the Daddy Issues threads with Gamora and Nebula and their abusive father Thanos, and Quill’s realisation of the way Yondu ended up filling the fatherhood role in his life. Gamora and Nebula’s Daddy Issues are automatically fresher than the average on account of them not being dudes (Ant-Man had the same thing going for it, though that movie made a much greater strength out of it); that said, the fact that Thanos’ terrible parenting forms the backbone of the two sisters’ conflict and eventual unification is not what makes that slice of the plot work: it’s the sibling bonding, not the Daddy Issues. The sibling bonding is where the fire’s really at (again, enriched by the fact that the characters are female; funny how the under-representation of women (or any group) in media can make even small amounts of representation seem impressive just for existing), but unfortunately, that bond is pared down to the absolute minimum number of scenes possible for functionality as a subplot, and therefore we never really get to enjoy what it offers so much as we kinda point and wave at it as it goes by. Yondu gets a bit more play, both through the character’s own ruminations on his life/personality/relationships while hanging in the B plot with Rocket, and through Quill’s Daddy Issues whining in the A plot to which Yondu’s relevance provides the only saving grace. Still, Yondu’s place in the plot and in Quill’s life only gains narrative weight in the final act, leading to a cathartic denouement for the character, but not for the film itself. The bloated emptiness of the A plot with Ego is something which Yondu’s meaningful sendoff cannot retroactively undo.

I’m...trying to figure out if I have anything nice to say at all regarding Ego and all that he entails, but I’m not coming up with anything. A godlike character who is also kinda-sorta a literal planet should not be so devoid of interesting factors, and yet, here we are. With every overdone boring Daddy Issues cliche in the book, played straight. We’ve got ‘I never knew my father!’ abandonment-resentment! We’ve got father-son bonding (heavy Americana edition)! We’ve got the heir-to-my-empire, follow-in-my-footsteps schtick! If it’s overdone and boring, we’ve got it! The fancy special effects visuals can’t make up for the total absence of compelling plot (the first movie in the franchise also made that mistake, though it at least faked it on the plot front a little better), and the shapelessness of the story on Ego prior to the reveal wreaks havoc on the pacing of the movie; where the B plot has trajectory from the jump, the A plot just kinda wanders around, having nothing new or interesting to do or say, nor even any thoughtful ways to bring itself around to that aforementioned reveal (as with the first film, things just kind of conveniently happen and characters go places and say things at the opportune times; nothing flows naturally from one event to the next, cause and effect style. I am baffled that people think James Gunn knows how to plot).

Speaking of characters going places and saying things, this film also does a very poor job of utilising its cast in a meaningful way, which makes it kinda embarrassing that it’s called Guardians of the Galaxy as if the whole team actually matters. Much like in the first film, Drax is just an extra without any real plot or purpose of his own, no narrative or character arc to speak of beyond being a total douche to the new female character on the block, Mantis (the fact that the movie uses Mantis as a punching bag and laughing stock for the so-called good guys is among its more tasteless sins). Groot, meanwhile, was already more of a gimmick than a character, but that’s up to eleven now, and like Drax he could pretty easily be excised from the story without lasting effect. Gamora’s interactions with Nebula are really her only good fodder; her tangential attachment to Quill is incidental and has no personal relevance for Gamora, she’s just providing someone for Quill to bounce his inane misogyny off, because how would we recognise him without it? Quill being the centre of this plot does at least make sense this time (sleeping pill that it is), unlike in the first film where he was frankly pointless to the story; nevertheless, the drudging Daddy Issues cliche of this movie fails to make anything insightful or impactful out of Quill’s experiences. As noted earlier, Rocket is, bizarrely, the only character who feels like his story matters, and it’s his and Yondu’s character exploration that wins the prize as the highlight of an overall weak, spectacle-laden film that thinks it’s much funnier than it really is. 

It’s no secret at this point that I don’t care for the Guardians franchise, but it isn’t complete absent glimmers of good promise and creative storytelling. Unfortunately, it’s also largely overrun with lazy plotting and vaguely-connected strings of shenanigans that prioritise rapidly-staling comedic beats over any semblance of narrative cohesion or character development. A rocking soundtrack and a smattering of toilet humour does not a worthy film make; it’s not like I’m going in looking for some high-brow drama, I just prefer my entertainment to hang together a little better than this does, and it surprises me a bit to hear people sing the praises of something so very, very messy. Whatever. It did its job for Marvel’s bottom line, so I don’t expect they’ll cook up any quality improvements for the third film of the franchise, when it comes. I sure would be glad to be wrong, though. There’s so much potential they’re wasting here.

[bitchingandbloggging]

HOME!

FIRST DAY BACK!!!!!!!!!! SO my best friends Taylor and Elizabeth (Liz) picked me up from the airport at 9:30 am (lol i know, I picked the earliest flight to get out of Bmore) We ate, went to the movies and just hung out like in high school. We need to complain about this boring town and the boring people that lived here. I know, Miami isn’t boring but if you grew up here and never left, it gets boring and overdone. For Taylor and Liz, Miami is overdone and overplayed. They never left Miami so there over it. I left home and I have such a new found respect for home. Home is a utopia. There are so many races, religions, and ethnicities all together in Miami and everyone gets along. Everyone knows something about different religions and speaks a second language. Miamians are more open-minded than people from Baltimore. However, Baltimore has its good qualities too. BUT Miami is home. And I’m a MIAMI GIRL FOR LIFE!!!!

Bye!!