#polite society spoilers

[fallenrocket]

One thing I absolutely love about Polite Society is how the fight choreography, score, sound design, cinematography, and more serve both the protagonist and the progression of the plot. All of these elements are the film aren't just cool aesthetic choices. They're reflective of how Ria processes her entire life through the lens of an action movie. It's her life that has smash cuts, slow-mo during her sickest moves, and dramatic close-ups. The score we hear is her own internal soundtrack--I loooooove the scene where the score ramps up with so much tension when Ria learns that Lena and Salim are engaged, only for the music to drop completely as we get the other characters' view of this extra-ass girl's reaction to this news. This movie is Ria's world.

And because Ria is imaginative, obsessive, and dramatic, we don't know how reliable of a narrator she is. I have no idea how much of any given fight in the movie actually happens. Does Kovacs really grab her leg in midair and swing her into the trophy case? Does Lena really smash her face repeatedly into the glass of a framed picture? Do the other wedding guests really become an army of henchpeople for Ria and her allies to take out? Not a clue.

This means that, when Ria suspects that Salim is up to no good and vows to stop him at all costs, it's easy to assume that it's not really true. This could've been a story about a teenage girl with an overactive imagination wanting to "save" her older sister from marriage because she's afraid of losing her. It could've been a story about a teenage girl with big improbable goals refusing to accept that her older sister is getting married, because if Lena "gives up" her dream of being an artist, what does that say about Ria's dream of becoming a stuntwoman? And to be sure, those themes are definitely in the film. But it could've easily been a story where Ria needs to learn that she's created an imaginary threat that she can kick around and beat up because she's scared to face the more grounded reality of the emotions she's experiencing.

The stylistic choices in the film already get us halfway there. We're primed to sympathize with Ria and root for her, but not necessarily to accept her views as objective reality. We see how she magnifies things, cinematizes them, injects everything around her with drama and heightened stakes. And so, speaking for me personally, it's such a trip to realize that Raheela and Salim do have an evil plan, that Ria's distrust in them and over-the-top meddling/snooping pay off. Furthermore, once Ria learns the truth (along with the audience,) her wildly imaginative nature makes it harder for others to believe her and easier for Raheela to undermine her. Of course Ria is just getting carried away again, of course Salim doesn't have a secret lab where he's performing reproductive experiments on potential brides, of course Raheela didn't threaten Ria while she was having her legs waxed. Silly girl!

It's just so masterful, the way almost every element in the film works together--first to let us inside Ria's head and show us who she is, then to misdirect from the twist, and finally to back Ria into a corner as people refuse to believe her. Absolutely chef's kiss!

It's a bummer that we had to wait so long to get season 2 of We Are Lady Parts, but without the long hiatus, I'm not sure we would've gotten Polite Society, so I can live with it.

[cakemoney]

obsessed with every single character in this movie. raheela's comically villainous smile. clara and alba's readiness to commit crimes. lena's signature headsmash move. and the mom with the chair. this movie truly has everything that i want. the way ria's escape plan includes buying easels and paints and acrylics for her sister. eunice coming in at the end seeing this teenage girl's youtube channel and going "nice let's get brunch". not to pit two queens against each other but i feel like this vibrant campy celebration of girlhood is exactly what i felt like was missing in barbie. and the SOUNDTRACK

[novelconcepts]

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They��re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

[skyworms]

hey so after this chapter do we get to craft a therapist ability outfit? I think Giroda needs it.

[short-wooloo]

The thing that really jumped out to me about Transformers One was how relevant Megatron and his "burn it down" view is in the current day

I see it so often, young (often leftist and/or communist) people who declare that the only solution is the destruction, at best not thinking about the innocents who will disproportionately suffer from it, and at worst deliberately ignoring the suffering, or worse declaring the death and suffering to be "acceptable losses"

(Spoilers under the cut)

And we see this in the film, Megatron has won, Sentinel Prime is beaten, injured, has been exposed as a fraud, and lost any support he had, but it's not enough for the newly christened Megatron, the only thing satisfactory to him is total, unnecessary destruction, he brutally kills Sentinel (there's something there to be said about revolutionaries declaring themselves judge, jury, and executioner), Murders Orion in the proccess, and has the proto-Decepticons start indiscriminately firing in order to "burn it all down", endangering the lives of other bots-including his fellow miners!-in the process

But this is fine to Megatron, because to him the goal makes it ok, "the ends justify the means"

But "the ends justify the means" always leads to a dark place, and that is what "burn it all down" is at the core, the willingness to sacrifice so many innocent people for a hypothetical

But there's another way Megatron feels very similar to the "burn it all down, damn the collateral" crowd

The way both deem those who prefer reform over destruction to be a traitors or just, if not worse, than what came before, real life "burn it down" types tend to hate reformists and realists (ie normie libs) more than the fascists and racists

And lastly, there is the Tyranny

We all know Megatron's story, what he will becone, a Warmonger, genocidal towards non Cybertronian-especially organic life (who wants to bet in the sequel Megatron's solution for dealing with the Quintessons is to Slaughter them to the last?), a mass murderer, destroyer of worlds, and above all, a Tyrant

That is where his revolution leads (oh hello russian/french revolution and civil war/napoleonic wars, I didn't see you there), because Megatron sees violence as the only answer, violence will be his only answer, violence is what keeps his followers in line (Starscream), and if he successfully comes out on top of the coming war with the Autobots, violence will be the only means he'll remain on top, because that's the only reason he's there in the first place

The "revolution, burn it down" types of the real world already have a nasty pro authoritarianism streak, between their dictator worship and belief that they know best and everyone who disagrees needs to shut up/is a traitor and must die (but leftistly), why would that change if they get their wish of violently burning it all down?

[videoworm]

they r diagnosing Tuvok with

bc he keeps remembering his real life while under some kind of psychic drug thats supposed to make him obedient and a good worker in a fake life they constructed for him.

It gives him great emotional distress. its not just mermories popping up this life hes living also just feels very wrong. and basically makes him unable to go on with his 'normal' daily life

They want to do "engrimatic resequencing" (aka technobabble for "mess with his memories on a surgical level") on him to "treat" his condition 💀

[popiellart]

Tell us ur DUNC thoughts pal! <3

what can I even say about DUNC other than i fucking love it!!! i've been a shameless dick rider for denis villeneuve ever since Sicario, and I went to the cinema to see DUNC and DUNC 2 which. one thing about me is i hate cinemas. i didn't even go to the cinema for scorsese or yorgo lanthimos or top gun 2 so you know it's serious

the visuals are straight up incredible, the casting is peak, the material is handled with a lot of what feels like genuine love and passion, the lady going ham on the arabic yodeling on the OST is a queen, and in general wrt dune fans watching DUNC, I imagine that's how people who like Tolkien felt when Peter Jackson's LOTR came out

i can't wait for the conflict between the matriarchal eugenicists with milking machines and the patriarchal eugenicists with breeding tanks

which is what the books are really about. oh, and i guess the galactic jihad also happens, so that's fun

[anarchomitsumi]

look at my leftist bro we're never making it out of the capitalist mode of production

[angrymac]

good morning

[theelectronicstranger]

Polite Society is Crazy Fun! (Spoilers)

          I just watched Polite Society and I really wanted to talk about right now, so I won’t be doing a deep dive of the film itself. This is going to be more of just an off the cuff discussion of the film. If you want to see the movie, then I genuinely and wholeheartedly recommend it. I think it’s a fun watch. I also really like how it doesn’t really explain to you anything about their culture and who they are. It just assumes that you can follow the story and figure it out yourself.

Anyways, Polite Society is about two sisters: Ria (Played by Priya Kansara) and Lena (played by Ritu Arya, who some of you may know from the Umbrella Academy). Lena just recently quit art school and now she’s just kind of stuck at home, depressed, and not really knowing what to do with her life because she feels like a failure after quitting art school. Meanwhile, Ria, the younger sister, is an aspiring Stuntwoman. She idolizes this stuntwoman named Eunice Huthart, who she write emails to throughout the film. The two get along really well and they even support one another’s aspirations and dreams; Lena even helps Ria record her stunt videos. However, that changes after they go to an Eid Soiree hosted by Raheela and her son, Salim, who becomes more involved with Lena after the soiree.

At this first half of the film, I was really sold on the idea of Ria feeling that her sister has kind of left her alone. She feels abandoned (maybe even betrayed) by her sister, so she decides to try to break them up and to try to find reasons why Salim shouldn’t be involved with her sister. Ria is kind of having a crisis of identity. She’s looked up to her sister her whole life and seeing her sister go through this traditional route to marriage, where she meets a guy then they’re set to be married in a month with approval from both parents, is scary because she’s always seen her sister as living proof that she does not have to go through the traditional routes her family and community has set up for her. Lena decided to go to art school and DID go to art school despite her parents’ disapproval; to Ria, Lena was somebody to be proud of and to look up to. However, after being with Salim for a month she changes; Lena even gives up painting after Salim proposes to her, which Ria gets really mad at because she felt that her sister giving up on painting meant that she’s kind of given up on her dreams and decided to regress to the traditional norms.

In my opinion, this first half could be another movie in itself. I was so convinced that this movie was going to be about how Ria was slowly going to figure out that Lena was happy in her position and that she can start anew with Salim (I did not watch any trailers before I watched this by the way. I just thought it looked interesting). She doesn’t even really try to get to know Salim; she just assumes that he’s evil because in her head, he’s the one stealing her sister from her (I get it though because they are getting married after a MONTH of dating). There’s a scene where Ria is talking to Salim in the gym. This would have been a good chance to get to know him but she’s too preoccupied with her scheme, which was to hack into his laptop and get some dirt on him.

After failing to find dirt on him, I was convinced that Ria was just this girl that has an overactive imagination, who can’t seem to see how much Salim makes her sister happier. In the beginning of the movie, we see Lena sulking in bed and just being depressed.; she doesn’t really know what to do with her life.  Salim kind of takes her out of that situation and that failing mindset that seems to just put her in a hole of depression. So far in the movie, Salim just seemed to be a nice man. Someone who fell in love head over heels with Lena and wanted to take her out and see the world with her. HOWEVER, the second half of this movie really changes that perception completely.

(SPOILERS)

In the second half of the film, it is revealed that Salim and his mother, Raheela, are just using Lena for her womb, so that Salim can inseminate a clone version of his mother, Raheela, into Lena. Lena would then give birth to the clone version of Raheela, so that she could start over her life. I know that sounds batshit insane, but I think the movie makes it work. At first, I actually thought this was Ria’s overactive imagination making her see the lab but once it finally settles in that it’s the truth of the whole movie, I think it works as a good villain story for Salim and Raheela as well as a good plot twist to this movie. The movie also gives us hints to Salim’s ulterior motives.

There’s 3 big hints to this that I’ve seen. The first being how fast Lena and Salim’s relationship development was way too fast. In just a month they’ve decided to get married. Sure, this could be explained away by arranged marriages in their culture, but I still felt that it was set up so the audience would question it. Ria definitely questioned so it added more tension between her and her sister. An addition to their fast romance was the fact that Lena gave up her art is now intent on moving to Singapore with Salim. Sure, it was already a big red flag but after the reveal it became even worse. The second one being the gym scene where Ria asks what Salim likes about Lena. Salim struggles to find an answer and settles for “She’s kind” then he’s immediately cut off. At first, I thought Ria cutting him off was a sign of how she was too preoccupied with bashing this guy rather than actually getting to know him but after the reveal it shows that he doesn’t really care about Lena. The third hint is the dead ex-wife of Salim. In the reveal of the dead ex-wife something felt odd.  After the evil plan reveal, this hint becomes even more sinister because we can now assume that she died trying to give birth to the clone of Raheela.

What I really liked about the reveal was that there was no more pretenses. I don’t have to worry if Ria just has an overactive imagination, and I can now just get behind that everything we see in the movie is real.

I know the reveal is kind of the make it or break it moment of this movie. I know that for some people it really takes them out of the movie because they might have liked what was being set up in the first half of the movie. Some people think that it becomes way too ridiculous after the reveal. I, on the other hand, disagree. Yes, I think that the first half of the movie is different than the second half, but I don’t think it’s completely different; I think it’s just the façade of normalcy being broken. There were still over the top fight scenes in the first half and Ria’s schemes were also in that first half, so the ridiculous aspect of the movie was still there. What’s change is that after the reveal you don’t have to think of the fight scenes as the imagination of a teenager, but you now have to take them at face value. I think that the evil plot reveal really helps those ridiculous and over the top scenes make more sense within the world of this movie.

Stuff I liked about the movie but didn’t mention them as much because I was too busy on the plot (This will be incoherent):

- I really like Ria’s friends. I like that they have a secret handshake. I like how they helped her out even though she mistreated them. Theres also this one scene with one them, Alba, where she’s dressed up as a guy in the male locker room and the faces she was making in that scene just made me laugh so hard.

 - I love all the fight scenes in this movie. My favorite was between Rian and Lena because they just go at it so hard. Lena just bashes the fuck out of Ria’s face at one point. I also really love all the fight scenes when they were dressed for the wedding because the dresses helped with the flow of movement in the shots, and they were just fun to watch.

- I also really like the slow reveal of the sinister plot. I liked how in the scene where Raheela forces Ria to get waxed, where she reveals her more sinister nature, looked a lot like a lot of old spy films where the villain has the protagonist laid out on a table and there is some danger a foot. In those spy movies, it’s normally a laser or a saw that’s about to cut through them, but in Polite Society, It’s Ria getting waxed against her will.

Sorry for this almost 1600-word thing. If you’re still reading it then thanks!

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

just went to see polite society (directed by nida manzoor aka the creator of we are lady parts aka one of the BEST tv shows of the last ten years lol) and it was honestly so much fun!! so many hilarious moments and some legit amazing action!

[agentbeeswrites]

Polite Society is the best movie I've seen since Everything Everywhere All at Once.

At it's heart, it's about the relationship between two sisters who are very close. The older sister gets engaged after a short courtship, and the younger one becomes obsessed with stopping the marriage.

The younger sister, Ria, is in high school and wants to be a stunt woman. Her family is Pakistani and not keen on her interest turning into a career. Ria's derision at the idea of going into a traditional profession, like becoming a doctor, is palpable in a way that made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, she's not very good at stunts. But she is getting better at martial arts (according to her sister).

Nearly everyone in this movie knows how to fight. It's just an unspoken thing.

Ria has two best friends (Clara and Alba) who are ride or die. They are so all in on her schemes that it is absolutely hilarious. And boy does Ria scheme in her attempt to derail the relationship building between her sister Lena and Salim, the rich and handsome doctor.

Clara and Alba are friend goals.

The movie has a great soundtrack, excellent costuming, writing, acting, and pacing. It features a number of wuxia-inspired fight scenes that are well choreographed. (A lot of people are saying that this was inspired by Tarantino, but he was inspired by an entire genre of film -- wuxia, and I don't want to give him credit beyond his homage to it that was the Kill Bill movies.) Bollywood overtones are there in the colors (especially in all of the scenes surrounding the wedding), a very good dance number, and some plot elements. Probably more. I admit that I haven't seen a lot of Bollywood films. They do tend to run long.

Did I mention that the acting was fantastic? Because it really was. Priya Kansara is fantastic as Ria. And shout out to Nimra Bucha for being an amazing villainess. I know she just played one in Ms. Marvel. Speaking of, I have to give the Ms. Marvel tv show a lot of credit for teaching me more about Pakistani culture. I feel like it let me enjoy this movie even more because I understood some of the cultural norms and religious holidays.

If you're looking for something entertaining at the theater, then you really can't go wrong with Polite Society.

[arthur-morgans-last-journal]

I am deep in youtube theory videos and came across the whole Jimmy Brooks/The Strange Man thing. Please don your tinfoil hats my friends that's what this post is. Also, spoilers for both RDR and RDR2.

If you don't know, Jimmy Brooks is someone you meet during the mission "Polite Society, Valentine Style." Jimmy recognizes Arthur from Blackwater, and you have to run him down and catch him. He ends up falling off his horse and you have to choose whether or not you'll save him. If you don't save him you lose honor, but if you do save him he gives you a pen and his voice is one you might hear during Arthur's last ride depending on your ending.

Jimmy doesn't show up again in the game, but there's some speculation/theorycrafting that he's a test from the Strange Man, a character we don't see in RDR2 but who shows up as a stranger mission in RDR, where he gives a similar sort of morality test to John. The Strange Man doesn't explicitly show up in RDR2, but you can explore his house in the bayou, and there will be a poem there about Jimmy Brooks which will read one way or another depending on what choice you made at the cliff.

If you accept that Jimmy is some kind of moral test from the Strange Man--and for such a grounded series there sure is a lot of wierd shit in these games lmao--one thing that has a kind of lovely poeticism to it is that the pen Jimmy gives you if you save him can be sold for a total of $10. It's otherwise unremarkable but. BUT. $10 is also the amount of money Eliza and Isaac were killed over.

I don't know that it exactly means anything--maybe it lends more creedence to the whole strange man is death thing or god or what have you--but I do kind of love that regardless. This totem of your first moral choice in the post-prologue game, this stupid little pen, can also act as a sort of reminder on subsequent playthroughs (when you know about Eliza and Isaac) to be good, to not be the kind of person that would kill a woman and child over $10. Arthur saved Jimmy Brooks, he has the capacity in him. He can be good, he even wants to. And if he ever needs $10 so badly, he can sell the pen.

I actually have a lot of other thoughts about that moral choice and its placement in the game but I'll save that for another post. I don't actually think the strange man is very important in the RDR2 game at all but the way Eliza and Isaac hang over it IS and you don't even know until chapter 6 AND if you choose the right dialogue options lmao.

[griftermp3]

though at first glance the difference between the amount of canonically queer shadowhunters in tmi and in tlh may just appear to be a reflection of shifting irl norms in including lgbtq+ characters in fiction, i believe that not only is it a subversion of beliefs about the early 1900s saying that queer people had to live in secret, but also a commentary on the way that the progress of time does not always equal the progress of belief, especially after the rise of conservatives into power. one must bear in mind that in 1903, the shadowhunter with the most power over the Clave was Consul Charlotte Fairchild; in 2007, it was rogue shadowhunter and known blood supremacist and bigot Valentine Morgenstern. In text, we can see the reflection of these two time periods (1903 and 2007) as Anna and Ari able to dance together on the dancefloor in view of everyone with little issue, and Alec Lightwood kissing Magnus Bane in the view of everyone to lots of shock and surprise. In this essay I will

[corellianhounds]

Something else I didn’t like about Plazir-15’s established society was the idea that guns are prohibited but the leaders purposely make the appeal to have a “good guy with a gun” show up when there is a violent problem and then praise them for being exactly what the situation needs once the violence spills over into the crowded general public

[4filen0tfound4]

Also I love what my reactions 2 spiderverse r I went from praising the animation and storyline and depth of the characters to thinking ab how there can't be a righteous form of government because that itself is contradictory