#the woman stealing people's songs was worth an episode by herself

[theblackdragon-studios]

Helluva Boss S2 E7 Reaction Notes

I finally watched the latest episode of Helluva Boss, and I wrote down my thoughts and reactions during. Here they are.

Warning: Contains spoilers to the episode

Thoughts as I watch:

-I wondered what Mammon’s voice would be…Cockney was NOT on my list of expectations. Wow. XD (Edit after rewatch: I think it’s actually Australian…thickly Australian. I could be wrong but it sounds either Cockney or Australian now I rewatched it.)

-Huh, Fizz and Blitz were fans of him when they were young…

-Only in Hell does anyone actually WANT to be a clown. XD

-Weird how Blitzo is so weirded out by Mammon’s pitch about working with him…though actually Blitzo really wanted to run his own circus, so maybe that’s why.

-I love how obvious this guy is. XD The jabs being made at corporate bosses here through this asshole’s whole character so far…they’re terrible at lying, yet people believe it anyway

Blitzo is all of us that caught onto the bullshit. XD This episode is so great already.

-Going for the jugular with that “women just aren’t funny” line. XD 1.) the show is by a woman. And 2.) …yeah. Most of them really aren’t funny to me. XD I know that probably wasn’t the joke (women comedians aren’t funny…), and we obviously aren’t supposed to like him, but yeah.

But also the “written by Vivienne Medrano” credit, AKA Vivziepop herself I think. That was great. XD

-“it’s not weird. You’re weird!” “It’s not exploitation” Exactly what Hollywood says now to anyone being critical of their stuff. Seriously, first South Park and now this…bravo adult comedy people. Just bravo.

Also playing an electric guitar version of “Carmen” I think it is. XD Even more clever, as that song was about how shady and manipulative that woman was if I remember right.

-…weird to hear adult Blitzø’s voice on his teenage self. Though I guess he went through puberty already. lol And I think Fizz’s adult voice is partially because of the fire accident.

-And now taking a jab at the entitled fans out there that aren’t giving constructive criticism and are demanding things then being all butthurt when they’re rejected. Finally an episode I fully get the social commentary on. lol

-$69.99 Subtle. Very subtle. XD (and “no refunds: if you don’t like it, it’s your fault”)

-I LOVE Ozzie here. You go man! Yeah he has his flaws too, even as a demon…but he is so sweet and so honest with Fizz it’s great. I also love the message here about both being a perfectionist…and being a people-pleaser. Destroying yourself to especially please someone that doesn’t give a fuck about you…because you think that gives you your worth. Especially after his accident… I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I’ll see where things go.

-Asmodeus calling Blitzø…somehow the most bizarre thing on the show yet. XD And how Blitzø is perfectly chill about it. Well I know for one, Blitzø knows about Fizz and Ozzie’s relationship and is happy his friend is happy…but I think this is also more evidence Blitzø wasn’t that upset at being picked on by Oz, and instead by being called out by his ex-friend, ex-girlfriend, and Stolas acting ashamed of their own relationship (which is transactional only he thinks…)

But he is at least a little polite when talking to Ozzie. lol So that’s nice.

-…the horse thing. He is STILL on the horse thing. Oh my gosh.

-Vivzie and her team are treating us to so much great stuff lately! First Stolas and Ozzie working together, and now Blitzø and Ozzie. This is comedy gold! Also Ozzie’s happy smile at the end of that scene when Blitzø said yes. Why are all these bird demons so cute? XD

-First, I still love Ozzie’s theme music (it’s the song from his debut episode) and second, cool to see his less flashy, public appearance in other parts of hell look from that first episode he’s in too. It looks really good on him.

And it’s cool seeing a Deadly Sin icon being more subtle outside of his ring. Makes me wonder what Bee looks like when she’s trying not to steal the show.

-Eh spoke too soon on Blitzø and Ozzie teaming up. Ozzie left, but I understand why.

-More jabs at Hollywood and their harmful treatment of their stars through Mammon calling an already incredibly thin Fizz fat

-Huh that rock music…I know I’ve heard it in the show before. I think this IS the Greed ring’s music…but I can’t remember.

-I figured one rescue and hug wouldn’t fix everything…but Fizz clearly no longer hates Blitzø and vice versa, and they are friends again it looks like. But I wonder if Fizz still has anxiety about Blitzø being at a performance of his…or maybe he’s just suspicious because Blitzø has always been openly critical of Mammon and these shows.

-“Smile inside and out”…I’m surprised Fizz doesn’t have depression like Stolas…

-Interesting how the background demons in this scene are just silhouettes. I don’t know if that’s to emphasize how he’s this colorful entertainment prop and toy for them and they represent real world fans…or if it was to save on work load

-Ooh these girls (the twin performers) look like they’re from the Envy ring (Leviathan’s ring) by the fish-like look of them

-I used to find Fizz annoying…but seeing him in the last episode and this one, he’s more like Moxxie. Too nice for this world when it comes to one-on-one conversation with the way he was so polite to those contest participants

-Oh yeah! Mammon said women aren’t funny. XD Ha! I thought that was just a joke for the opening, but he actually called back to it

To be honest I didn’t think any of their acts were funny though. Just cool acrobatics and talented crafting

-More “clearly the money-greedy corporate bosses don’t care about you, their stars, or anything but what sells”.

-I know people will still find reasons to hate this episode, but I find it hard to think of anything they could hate without really reaching for something

Actually…they’ll probably complain that Mammon-who is fat-is an asshole and they made him fat because of it…when really, I think it represents the greed thing. He’s supposed to be the stereotype of those fat business men in old cartoons and movies. But as a jester. (Edit: And because spiders have big abdomens)

(Edit after looking through the Helluva Boss tag seeing the nitpicks and complaints: Called it. And a few other things they really zeroed in on just to find something to hate about this. 🙄)

-Giant hellhound background character…was not expecting that. XD

-Fuck…they didn’t have to include that moment with the sign language. But they did…that’s so sweet

Though seeing that kid’s horns…I wonder if their horns also act as their ears? Because his are broken… or maybe he’s mute, not deaf, but Fizz still signed back (despite being exhausted, miserable, and wanting to win this and go home I bet) to show that kid deaf or not, that he took the time to learn for demons like that kid. (Edit: I rewatched it and the kid only had one broken horn in the later scene he’s in. …and I forgot Fizz’s horns are also broken but he can hear just fine…so ignore this theory from when I was watching…)

-…oh my gosh. The entitled fan is back now. This is absolutely commentary on both Hollywood and the Twitter freaks. So good.

-Entitled Fan remembers Blitzø too? Huh.

-Mammon’s 8 eyes…NOW all the webs around the place make sense. And all I can say is YES. Perfect design for the demon of GREED to have spider themes to him. It makes me think of Slughorn from Harry Potter, who was envisioned as a spider spinning his web representing his habit of collecting and exploiting the success of graduating students.

-Fizz making excuses for a shitty boss…also way too real...

-Again…seeing the twins’ performance, clowns must mean something else in this world. That wasn’t funny. It was cool though.

-Ozzie’s back! Yes! He’s so sweet to Fizz…and getting stuck in the door. XD

-Fizz is every famous person that is losing popularity to new things…the ones that cling onto it desperately instead of bowing out with dignity and what they have left…

-I know how Fizz feels here too…feeling he only has all the good things he does because of his fame...he thinks because he doesn’t look as great without it, that he’ll lose his relationship with Ozzie…

But man this couple is so healthy with each other. They try to be very private and secretive (and fail) which is straining, but they communicate with each other and they don’t allow for room for any misunderstandings…I hope we see more Bee and Tex too in the future (Bee might need a new VA if Ke$ha is still dealing with things or too expensive to hire) but these two couples will I hope play a part in Blitzø and Stolas’s drama with how they’ve shown they are in love with low-class demons as well…

Though Goetia are very different from the Deadly Sins…they isolate themselves from the lower class, while the Sins thrive on their company since they feed off their energy or it helps business and stuff.

-Oh my gosh, another Fizzmodeus song! Yes! And the adorable dance…man…I love these two! 💜

-Thank you, Blitzø! The entitled fan guy has been asking for it! And yes. You tell Fizzmodeus off for being hypocrites. XD He has every right to be mad after they bullied his friends. XD

-Oh man I see why the broadway version on Beetlejuice is Fizz now! That was an amazing song! Also Ozzie helping him. XD And getting…a bit more excited than he should. Hilarious. And Blitzø’s part helping too! This trio was awesome!

-The way the cheering kids track plays when Mammon appears in front of Fizz. XD I didn’t notice that until now.

-Yes! Get him Ozzie! Fight! Fight! Fight! Two Deadly Sins in their full power forms! Yes!

-Oh my gosh, the con artist Imp saying ‘I say I say’ again. XD He keeps showing up!

-Ozzie’s animal sound effects…so cool! And the twisting, lashing tails…I love how all-out they go with him being a mix of three animals! Cause Asmodeus apparently is described as having three heads (hence the two shadow heads in his mane) and this design shows that so well! I love it!

-Yeah I think Fizzmodeus being open will help a lot in several things. Including upper class demons getting their heads out of their asses about this stuff.

-This final frame is perfect! XD

Basically I loved this episode. It was so fun and I loved the worldbuilding seeing the leader of the Greed ring, and of course Fizzmodeus being adorable as always! 💜

I do think clown has a different meaning in Hell…but we did only see some of what they did. Most of the humor for me was definitely in the social commentary stuff. And as this is a show for adults…that is what you expect. Jokes about adult problems and mature themes. I got exactly what I was expecting from it.

[holeybubushka]

The author of 303 confirmed he wrote a ton of Talder flirtation that didn’t end in the script. Okay. That fits with the widespread speculation that Talder will not be made canon.

But why did he say there are plenty of episode to come? Plenty more episodes for the editors to cut Talder moments? I wish the writer didn’t say this because I would prefer no hope, thanks.

Also, I realize I am latching onto Talder mostly because this season is not that good. Some facets are excellent, but the whole timeline is on fastforward, where every interesting concept gets dropped as soon as it is introduced. And character moments are often left aside (Scylla the notable exception). So yes, I’m going to be invested in this silly ship cause the show doesn’t have a lot else going for it at the moment.

[bluebellravenbooks]

A Great Distraction Masterpost

January has been gloomy as heck, so I thought it may be a good idea to put together a list of things that I read/watched/played since the beginning of the pandemic that managed to keep my mind off things. (I'm a doctoral student with anxiety and a 5-second attention span, so if this worked for me chances are it's Good Stuff.) Hope this helps!

Steven Universe

Set millennia after a kinda-failed alien invasion, this is a story of a half-human protagonist with a big heart who has to deal with the consequences of this long-ago war and learn what it means to be human.

The trope of a peacekeeper hero, excellently executed. Goes from cute to cute and rather dark, but still hopeful. Nice songs, lovely animation, interesting characters; you can tell that the storytelling goes from the hearts of the people who made this. This is a generally uplifting story; however it does have some discussion of war, mental illness and parental death, so tw for that. Also depending on where you live, this may be a bit difficult to track down across the streaming services... That said, this is undoubtedly one of the best shows I have ever watched.

Hollow Knight

You are a tiny badass with a sword and a mysterious past, travelling across a derelict kingdom and trying to make sense of what happened to it. And the more you learn, the more you suspect that you are here for a reason...

A 2D platformer game, doesn't require anything fancy from your laptop - not even a mouse. Previous gaming experience not necessary either. Beautiful visuals (I mean it!), a huge world to explore; exasperatingly difficult, which makes for a great distraction. I do have to warn that the plot of this game revolves around an infection, although it's not very reminiscent of Covid. As a plus, you get to kick its ass in the end!

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Four great nations are at war - have been for some time, actually, and things aren't looking great. The discovery of the Avatar - the peacekeeper with abilities from all the nations - offers a glimmer of hope; however it doesn't help that the Avatar is eleven years old and has spent the last century frozen in an iceberg.

Truly, a classic. I love the trope of the peacekeeper hero - both Avatar and Steven Universe explore it beautifully. Just like with Steven, I have to mention a tw for war, but this being a cartoon it's not explicitly traumatic. A great place to start if you're not into cartoons yet.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Murderbot is a half-organic, half-robotic being, serving as a security unit on interplanetary missions. It's much more sentient and independent than its company believes - but all it wants is for the annoying humans to leave it in peace long enough to watch one more episode of its current show. However when things go south on a mission, Murderbot has to deal with much more reality - and human interaction - than it would like.

Very fun and quick read; the narrator's voice is just excellent. Much less bloodthirsty than the title suggests, but still a tw for injury and death. (Not too much though - I hate gore and I was perfectly fine reading this.)

Folk of the Air by Holly Black

Elfhame is no place for humans - well, normal humans, anyway. Jude Duarte was brought up here with her sisters, and she is hell-bent on proving her worth in the fairy court she has come to call home. Few are happy with that, or believe that she can make it - but even Jude herself wouldn't have guessed where the political turbulence would get her.

Very well-written; politics of the fairy court stand to logic and offer plenty of exciting plot twists. True to the title, some characters can be rather cruel, so tw for violence and parental death; however most of the plot revolves around politics and not explicit physical trauma.

Cartoon Saloon films: Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, WolfWalkers

Some of the best modern animation plus Irish mythology. Each of these films explores a different myth/historical period, but they are similar in the magical atmosphere; I recommend each and every one of them. The plots being different, I won't list all the tw's here; there's nothing particularly gruesome going on, so just have a look at the plot description before watching to check for sensitive topics.

Gravity Falls

Dipper and Mabel are sent to a cabin deep in Oregon forest to spend the summer with their great-uncle. Sounds like a boring holiday - however it turns out that the town has more weird secrets than residents, and even their great-uncle seems to be hiding something...

Very cartooney, so the style might be a little off-putting at first - however I loved the plot, especially when the overstory started to pick up. This is a great exploration of family and what summer should feel like when you're an adventurous kid. Will probably get you into cryptography.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Adora grew up with the bad guys. That is, of course, she thinks they are the good ones - until one day she escapes from the camp and sees much more than she bargained for. Oh yes, and apparently some magical sword wants her to be a hero. Now on the side of the rebellion, she has to protect her new friends, deal with the old ones, and try to figure out what the heck is going on.

This show is fun, very diverse and full of positivity without trying too hard. For me it was a joy to watch something with a lot of strong female characters without having the dark gender issues discussed, not even once. (I mean, it's still important to have shows that explicitly discuss this - but a show where characters are just happy in their identities, no questions asked, is something I didn't know I needed.)

Carmen Sandiego

The young woman who calls herself Carmen Sandiego has a rather unconventional occupation. She was brought up in a school for thieves - but when she glimpsed the outside world, she realised that things weren't as simple as her teachers said. Now she uses her expertise to track her former schoolmates - and steal back their loot.

This is probably the most young-age-oriented item on my list, so there's not a lot of drama going on, and some plotlines are rather simple. That said, this series is good fun, I still found the story and the characters compelling, and the animation was really good as well. Honestly, seeing what modern 2D animation can do is a treat.

These things - and many other - helped me stay sane during this year; I found out that stories can be fun shameless escapism and really deep and satisfying at the same time. Feel free to add to this list - and I will keep it updated as well when more good stuff comes my way.

[migleefulmoments]

Abb/y has something to s/ay

Let me premise this by reminding everyone that Abby -like Trump-doesn’t “get” comedy. They literally do not understand jokes, punchlines, or humor. So a satirical show about the Hollywood song writers falls flat. Her time away did nothing to sway her conspiratorial aspirations or her misogynistic hatred of Mia. She watched Royalties not once, but twice... not to enjoy Darren’s creativity and performance, not to support the celebrity she stans, and not even to crack up at the humor, no she watched twice because she was looking for confirmation bias. She wanted to document all of the ways Darren wrote his CrissColfer truth into Pierce’s life and she obsessively listened to all of the diss-tracks he wrote to attack his wife.  

Let me also premise this by saying I loved the show. I thought it was funny and the songs are so damn catchy.  The lyrics are quintessential Darren- funny, very clever, and raunchy.  

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R/oyalties, the Tale of Two Shows with a Heaping Side of Meta

ajw720. So I just finished watching R/oyalties for the second time, this time solely focused on the meta.  Look, we all know, the show is not good, it was not well written and the short format didn’t help as there was no option to develop character or plot.  But D knew it would not be good, he apologized for it back in January 2019.  And I think the effort he put into acting was the effort it deserved. Ok.

But his songs were genius.  As were the videos, hence why i call it the tale of two shows.  It truly was like watching content made by completely different people. I concur with MH, D is “intensely talented.”  And the part of this show he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into, the songs, are evident of this.

But this is a post about that Heaping Side of Meta. I think D, knowing that that show would not be made in the manner he envisioned, instead used it as a vehicle to make some bold statements and parallels with his career and public life.  Shall we begin?  And please, unlike the perfect song, this is not a perfect post and after the second round of watching i canceled my Quibi subscription and never plan to look back, so please feel free to add. I know some of these have been pointed out but I thought it was valuable to have one post.

One idea to inpsire the song?  A tiny FROG on a dime.

D’s shirt 1st seen in Episode 2: “It is hard to soar like an Eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys”

And of course “Call me Goldilocks bitch”  Remind you of something?

How about the entirety of Episode 3 when we are told that an artist is completely the product of the team.  That no matter what the artists expresses they want, it doesn’t matter because the Label/manager/publicist/on camera agent/legal will always have a say. And how it will play in America or the Foreign market are key metrics of how the product is produced and presented.  I love the line of the songwriter that tells P/ierce and S/ara to “get out while they are young.”  Or the line by one of her team “we don’t want something different, we want something the same that is different.”  And in the end P&S simply took one of KK old songs and reworked it, making something different that is not different and her team loved it.  

And of course, the line that was an utter slap in the face to the most over praised “director” of an indie band video ever when D reminds her of the real director in his life, the man set to direct major motion pictures, “you know who would be perfect to direct? C/hris.  C/hris would shatter this.”

Not much in Episode 4, but the gorilla suit in my opinion was mocking of a certain MMR video where we watched Swiller and a banana in a song about a gorilla.  Images I never need to see in my head again.

Episode 5, a gem, I am still so fucking proud of D and how he mocked her throughout the entirety of the episode.  New lines I love of that amazing song he wrote about her (in addition to those i posted previously here) “Some people say I’m a  genius, which comes from the greek word for Latin, and other people will say, alright in fact i’m a fuckin’s genius” “I’m not saying I’m a god, but I’m not saying I’m not a god.”  Mocking at its finest made all that much better by the band’s name “Switchback Jacket” that D describes as “butt rock emo” that is performed by a band that doesn’t actually sing, they are just the public image.  He literally told us that what we see is an image created for the public and that it is completely fake.  And he used his beard to make this statement. Just brilliant.  I cannot praise him enough for this, stealing her moment in the sun and making her look like an utter fool, telling us just how narcissistic she is.

Also some wonderful lines from that episode that are beyond telling:

“Power, it felt good to remind Kevin that I hold power over him. You always want to be the one with power”

“p/ierce wouldn’t know where to take a shit if I didn’t tell him.”

“she is like my wife except we don’t have sex and we are friends.”

“alright boss, I am ready to record that song, but where should i take a shit?”

“You will do anything to succeed.”

Episode 8 starring “Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild” an episode used to shine a light on how absurd it is that people believe D&PBB lived with platonic roomie B/enny for something like 4 years.  3 grown ass adults, all of whom have money to spare lived together in a relatively small house for four years.  It is pure comedy that anyone would believe that this is normal.  But hey these are the same people that explained away the infamous arm around her while at an awards show with D looking on:

And the cherry on top of this episode, the inclusion of C/huck (for some background, see my post here).

I really like the one bit of dialogue between P&S, where D pretty much tells us once again that M will use anyone to get what she wants:

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe just maybe, I don’t like where we are now? There were a lot of really great things about the way things were.  Things that are worth preserving.  Not that you just take and use and through out.”

Episode 9 had some really impactful lines:

“you think i wouldn’t steal for my career? You think I wouldn’t lie?  I would do anything.”

The Neils being the nameless individuals, nothing more than a number, who are the ones who actually create the product.  And then the song, some of the translations are D telling you how he feels, because sometimes i think in terms of his public image he is just a Neil trying to escape the cage that has been built around him:

“I dream about getting away, I have been locked up in this cage wishing i could make my escape. I hate that I need you.”

And finally Episode 10, where we learn the Neils get no credit and no royalties. This reminds me of a script C wrote that never saw the light of day but suddenly the next season of AHS had the same theme as his script.

And that is all i got, if you have more please add. I think the fact that D took what he knew would be a mediocre project and projected his voice and story throughout it was pretty genius and a smart way to utilize this vehicle, that was clearly payout for so many that have used him for years and to shine a bright light on the truth.

elicc  The “perfect song”’s performer is called Bailey Rouge, a clear link to TLOS.

He is a genius.

ajw720   @elicc damn, that was on my list and I forgot. And we all know who Red is inspired by, so seems fitting Bailey Rouge would get the perfect song.

ajw720. Just adding one more I thought about putting in my original post but admittedly think it’s a stretch. But maybe not? Just adding here for fun.

When Theo tells P to bottle up all his romantic feelings I couldn’t help but think of a certain chapter in a book

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Oy Vei! Abby didn’t use her time away getting any therapy or perspective.  She hasn’t learned any lessons. I have no doubt she’s been reading just as much as she did before and she’s speaking to Cassie, Flowers et al all day. It’s really sad. It’s sad that she can’t see how silly she sounds, what an asshole her version of Darren is. If she could restrain herself even a little bit it might come off less unhinged because turning every single moment of Royalties into some crisscolfer wet dream reeks of desperation. 

Abby hates Royalties. In last week’s “Dear D” she had the audacity to say 

....Fans that are beyond devoted and mainly because of the way you have treated fans with respect and a level of caring that far surpasses the majority of public figures.  And while I am not enjoying the show itself, the music shows how diverse you are as a writer and how you can virtually write for anyone or any genre. The songs are fantastic.  Memorable.  And really fun.  

She knows the the Langs wrote the show and Darren wrote the songs but what she can’t seem to comprehend is that Darren IS Royalties. Everything in the show is Darren’s.  

Staying in the closet would be less painful than trying to express oneself through a short-form satirical comedy.  Can you imagine trying to express your devastation and pain through Kick Your Shoes off or Break It In? 

“I’m the king of the hard fuck....pile drive the bed like a young buck...if you like feathery shit thats pretty cool but I don’t need that...people say I fuck too soft, saying that I can’t please a woman” 

BTW Abby- “call me goldilocks bitch” isn’t a reference to TLOS it’s a reference to Goldilocks and Three Bears because because he fucks perfect, not too soft, not too hard. It’s much more believable that he is referring to a random nursery rhyme than it is to believe he is referring to a children’s book his lover/husband/boyfriend wrote 8 years ago. You might love the book but Chris has moved on and written new things. 

Darren wrote funny lyrics. I loved Kick Your Shoes Off because it’s written by a man whose watched his wife and female friends wear painful shoes for the same of fashion even though its painful as fuck.   

“Yeah, I’m a bad bitch so don’t be mad bitch. I turned the room into a catwalk like a sad bitch. I can’t feel my toes in these stilettos. when I walk out my roomate says you’ll regret those....Beauty is pain but oh I look amazing.  You won’t hear me complaining but oh my instep (inside?) is screaming...kick your shoes off (kick em off) ooooooo I do what I want..(Kick em off) ooooo Hey I can’t walk in these, blisters start to bleed now both my feet are swollen. Kick your shoes off (Kick em off).....It’s like i feel so good when my shoes are on, but like i also feel sooooo good when they are off” 

Abby’s convinced I am So Much Better Than You is straight up about Mia because Mia is in the video. She listened to it on repeat the day after it came out. In her “Letter to D” last week she said 

Especially after you made an effort to mock her for the entirety of Tuesday when her episode aired (and for the record I am still really, really proud of what you did with that episode and how you handled the roll out, that is the fighter I admire and that inspires me.  I listened to I am so much better than you on repeat on my drive home from work yesterday).   

Good Lord  The lyrics are as silly as all the other songs: “My mirror wants to bone me (but it can’t because it’s a mirror)” How did Abby miss the obvious TLOS mirror/ Halloween costume reference here?  

“You keep doing push ups while I get buff eating mac and cheese (with overpriced lobster and truffles because I’m worth it)”  

“Some people say I’m a genius (which comes from the greek work for latin) Some other people will say yeah I’m right I’m a fucking genius (I’m not saying I’m a god but I’m not saying I’m not a god). 

“And even when you sneeze, God blesses me, he blesses me. And even when you sneeze, god blesses me, he blesses me, he blesses me”

“I’m am so much better than you at everything”. 

She believes Darren would be- and stay- married to a women that he publicly ridicules and attacks. I don’t get why she thinks that is something admirable . 

She thinks Also You is referring to Ben living with them.  Where to start with this one? She says

“Episode 8 starring “Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild” an episode used to shine a light on how absurd it is that people believe D&PBB lived with platonic roomie B/enny for something like 4 years.  3 grown ass adults, all of whom have money to spare lived together in a relatively small house for four years.  It is pure comedy that anyone would believe that this is normal.  But hey these are the same people that explained away the infamous arm around her while at an awards show with D looking on”

I’m gobsmacked.  Also You is about Polyamory. She doesn’t even understand her own theories if she thinks that is the message Darren wants to share about Mia and Ben.  In no world would someone try to proclaim their wife was cheating on them with a live-in houseguest by writing an episode called Poly Amorous and the Unicorn Guild.  Also, someone needs to explain cuckholding to her because her theories about Ben and Mia make Darren a cuck.  

OMG I just realized that Darren is a cuck and Royalties proves it.  He hired Kether to be his costar in Royalties,...Kether is in You’re the Worst as Lindsay.  Lindsay cuckholds her husband. Bam! mic drop.   

Why isn’t Perfect Song about Mia, you know, if we are playing confirmation bias “No one is as good as you because you're my perfect song” 

[deanothecheynosaur]

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Part 3 (2020)

**SPOILERS**

Ok, I have already completed the season, but I'm still gonna break it down episode by episode and give my thoughts during in retrospect. If you have not seen Parts 1 or 2, I recommend you start there.

Chapter 21: The Hellbound Heart

So, Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) is trying to get Nick Scratch (Gavin Leatherwood) back out of hell and separated from Lucifer (Luke Cook). If you had forgotten, during part 2 Sabrina found out that Lucifer Morningstar was her biological father, and they trapped Lucifer inside of Nick. She enlists Roz (Jaz Sinclair), Harvey (Ross Lynch), and Theo (Lachlan Watson) to help. Besides the fact that their all besties, I have no idea what help Harvey or Theo would be. Theo is at least loyal and listens to reason. Harvey just goes off all the time. Roz is the most useful with her "cunning." Anyway. Before they figure out how to get to Hell, Mrs. Wardwell (Michelle Gomez) comes back to Baxter High with a new obsession with Dante's Inferno. But she's not possessed by Lilith (Michelle Gomez) anymore; Lilith is too busy defending her title as Queen of Hell. Also, props to Michelle Gomez. She flawlessly played two very different characters this season. Meanwhile, Zelda (Miranda Otto) and Hilda (Lucy Davis) are trying to save the coven because their powers are all fading. They aren't sure what to do with the remaining students or what to tell them. All of their powers are a gift from Lucifer, but he's not really in the position (or the mood) to be giving them any powers. Down in New Orleans, Ambrose (Chance Perdomo) and Prudence (Tati Gabrielle) are on their mission to find her father. When they come up short, they turn to Voodoo Priestess Mambo Marie (Skye P. Marshall) to help them with a different kind of magic. Dorian Gray (Jedidiah Goodacre -that is quite a name-) helps Sabrina and friends to get into Hell as long as they bring him a magic flower. They go in without any real plan, as you do. Seriously. Not even a map. Wtf. Luckily, they walked into the Shores of Sorrow and met Caliban (Sam Corlett), who told them to follow the river of blood because "all blood leads to Pandemonium." That's the capitol city of Hell I guess? They have lots of fun on the way, and when they get there, Lilith says that Sabrina has to deal with the Kings of Hell for her, but Lucifer tells Sabrina that she has to take the throne for herself. It has to be a Morningstar. Well, she does, but the Kings aren't convinced. Then our friend Caliban shows up again, naming himself Prince of Hell, and challenging Sabrina for the throne. It is worth noting that Caliban is ridiculously hot. And generally shirtless. Sabrina accepts the throne to get Nick out of Hell. Which is problematic for a lot of reasons, but most of all that she decides to do this BEFORE separating him from Lucifer. So she's just gonna keep Nick/Lucifer tied up in the dungeon until she finds another flesh acheron to hold Lucifer. What could go wrong?

I really expected it to take longer for Sabrina to get to Nick, but considering the very twisted maze part 3 went down, getting to Pandemonium is pretty minor. Also, Sabrina's whole "I'ma do what I want and not tell my aunts so they don't stop me" is getting old.

Chapter 22: Drag Me to Hell

This one is a little less convoluted. Sabrina finds out that one of her duties as Queen is to drag souls to Hell. Specifically souls who have made a deal with the devil. We can infer from this that the only people who go to Hell are those who have sold their soul, so it would be far easier to not go there than some people in the real world would have me believe. The first soul, a cute old man who wanted to be chess Grand Champion, Sabrina decided to show mercy and sent him to heaven. Didn't go over super well with the Kings of Hell. Also, Sabrina is now a cheerleader at Baxter High. They call themselves the Ravenettes. There's a dance team from my high school called the Raiderettes, so that confused me for a sec. Lots more singing pop songs then actual cheers though. Reminds me of the Jailhouse Rock scene in Riverdale. I digress. Zelda has decided to reopen the academy and that she and Hilda were going to teach. Hilda was more voluntold. Agatha (Adeline Rudolph) doesn't really respond well. Prudence and Ambrose discover that Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle) is in Loch Ness, which is apparently super magical and can bend time and space? Idk, but I was highly disappointed that we didn't see Nessie. They see him at the very end of the episode looking like Mr. Bean at the end of the live action Scooby-Doo movie. They take him back to Greendale and use him to hold Lucifer so Nick can be free. Because what the world needs is Blackwood and Lucifer together. Back to Brina. Her second soul to collect (apparently this is a daily task for the ruler of Hell but she only does these two so there's a plot hole) is the ice cream man, Jimmy Platt (Matty Finochio). He tells her that he would like to extend his contract again by eating the heart of an innocent child. Sabrina confronts Lucifer about this later, apparently it didn't have to be a child, just an innocent soul. Adult virgins, beware. Sabrina tells Jimmy no (obvi) but Jimmy has already hidden the kid. So now she has to find this kid and collect his soul before the end of the day or there will be a coup in Hell. Sabrina wisely decides on just Roz to help her with this one. Roz is also the one who warns Sabrina against transporting herself into a freezer with no more information, but as per usual Sabrina goes anyway. Jimmy put warding sigils on the walls, so she's stuck and powerless. Luckily, Lilith knows what the fuck she's doing (as opposed to Sabrina who only thinks she does) and saves Sabrina. Sabrina takes Jimmy to Hell, but nobody is impressed. Caliban officially challenges her to find the unholy regalia- the three most powerful infernal objects, starting with Herod's crown.

This is a pretty typical Sabrina episode- she's way in over her head, but she either doesn't realize it or won't admit it. I'm never quite sure, but it seems like she genuinely doesn't know. I also don't remember if it's this episode or the next, but Harvey is suddenly feeling under a lot of pressure to have sex with Roz. But it never shows Roz being pushy about it, so idk wtf is going on in Harvey's head (besides convincing himself he's over Sabrina).

Chapter 23: Heavy is the Crown

For this one, Sabrina enlists Ambrose to help her find the crown because Ambrose is the most well read warlock ever due to his permanent house arrest. It's in Riverdale. They use a special compass to find it in a maple tree that the Blossom's use for syrup. If you've seen Riverdale, this probably has more significance and is less surprising. They steal the crown (somehow without realizing zombie King Herod is still in the tree). Sabrina wants to destroy it, but Ambrose wants to tap into its power to help the coven. Unsurprisingly, this does not work out well for them initially because Herod follows the crown and would very much like it back. Zelda is failing at getting respect from the students at the academy, and there's weird Lucifer beetles crawling in ears and controlling people. In other news, a carnival came to town! Obviously this has something to do with the larger plot because otherwise it would be a side note. Harvey, Roz, Sabrina, Nick, and Theo are all going together. Theo wants to invite the new guy, Robin (Jonathan Whitesell), because Theo is crushing hard. Robin is nerdy cute, I guess. I did think it was cliche to give the queer guy green streaks in his hair though. Harvey says tells Theo to invite him as part of the group, which Theo does, and Robin agrees. They all go to the carnival: Roz, Sabrina, and Theo ignorantly happy, Harvey struggling with his masculinity, Nick struggling with his ordeal, and Robin just happy to be there. Roz "sees" the carnival ringmaster as a satyr (or a faun depending on your preference for Greek or Roman deities, but they do tend to prefer Greek in this show), but she decides she was imagining things. Mrs. Wardwell talks to the fortune teller Circe (Lucie Guest) to try to find out what happened to her during the three months that Lilith was using her "skin suit." She doesn't get any concrete answers because that's not how fortune tellers work, Mary. Harvey stumbles across a snake charmer dancer woman in a tent full of pervy dudes and is almost entranced. Hilda goes to the carnival with her bf Dr. C, who proposes. Idk why she needed to throw her cotton candy on the ground during that, but I'm also on a sugar detox, so... Prudence and Ambrose are cleaning up Blackwood's mess by putting a living doll spell on Judas and Judith to hide them and putting his weird time warping monster fish egg thing in a fish tank. Yeah. No Nessie, but a weird egg. It's fine, I'm not bitter. Back at the carnival, Sabrina and Nick get attacked by Herod (who stole his crown back from Ambrose but knows it was Sabrina stealing it initially). Ambrose saves them, but Caliban pops in, steals the crown, and wins the first round of the challenge. At the very end, we find out why the carnies are important: they're pagans who worship the old gods and trying to resurrect The Green Man to rid the world of flesh since the Satanic witches have all but lost their powers. There is more than one voodoo practitioner, idk why they're not considered more of a threat because they're much more independently magical. They need a virgin to complete the rebirth, and that's why Robin (dun dun dun) was hanging out at the high school. Our potential virgins are Theo, Harvey, and Mrs. Wardwell.

I chose not to believe that Robin was actually bad because I want Theo to be happy. I chose to believe that even if he was using Theo, Robin was just trying to take his virginity to prevent him from being the sacrifice. Also, Sabrina is basically trying to force Nick to be normal even though she compared his symptoms to PTSD. Girl stop. He needs a sec.

Chapter 24: The Hare Moon

Zelda and Hilda have decided that the coven needs to celebrate the hare moon for the coming of spring to bolster good will. Sabrina isn't enthused (maybe because it requires her singing a song of summer into the forest to release a rabbit). Lilith tells Sabrina that they need celestial power to restore their strength, so she goes to Dorian, who has an angel trapped in one of his paintings (as all art collectors do). Sabrina drains some blood from the angel for her coven, but leaves in the process because she hears some screaming. Then she stumbles upon Nick and some sex demons doing BDSM. She's less than thrilled, especially since Nick low-key blames her for it. And Dorian has drank 90% of the angel blood, but they can't take anymore with killing him. So Hilda suggests using the little blood to make an oil mixture and take a moon bath under the hare moon (rub oils all over your skin and lie outside under the full moon) to absorb the celestial energy from the moon. During the daytime ceremony, they meet the pagans. Things don't go well. Zelda makes a bunch of petty insults, Hilda pisses off Circe, and Nick kills me the snake that bit Dorcas (Abigail Cowen). Circe puts a curse on Hilda to become a spider, and

[hamliet]

The Soul Eater: Dafan Mountain’s Dancing Goddess

Ah, the Dafan Mountain arc--or, a crash course in MDZS’s themes. 

In the anime, Dafan Mountain is a scene that lasts one episode; in the novel, it’s several chapters and our first significant look at many of the characters. Besides changing Wen Chao’s death, Dafan Mountain was probably the scene most changed in adapting the novel into the donghua. In the donghua, the ghost hand was behind the stone goddess's possession, and L’il Apple the donkey is the creature caught in the nets; in the novel, both of these are changed: the goddess is something else entirely, and the nets accidentally catch people. 

In my opinion (as with the Wen Chao change), it’s a good adaptation decision for the donghua to have made--the arc in the novel serves as a sounding point to symbolically summarize the whole story, but it doesn't work very well in a truncated visual medium which anime/donghua, by its nature, is. The donghua’s beginning was already disorienting (deliberately so, because we mimic Wei WuXian's experience being disoriented after being reborn in a new body, but perhaps a bit too much so), so having the previously established mysterious ghost hand play a role in the Dafan Mountain scene makes the story more succinct and easy to follow for viewers, as does having us fear for L’Il Apple whom we’re already attached to, as opposed to characters we don’t have time to get to know. 

That being said, you do lose some of the beautiful symbolism of those chapters that is present in the novel. As a warning, what follows will have spoilers from the novel as translated by exiledrebelscans. 

Dafan Mountain was an arc I appreciated more when I reread the novel, because I like missed a lot the first time around. It basically foreshadows the novel's major twists and turns, and also introduces the story’s major themes--society creating monsters, the sins of the fathers passing on to the children, and the butterfly effect/unintended consequences--quite explicitly. 

Let’s begin by looking at the worldbuilding background and setting in which the goddess goes on her rampage. The story brings up classism pretty much right away, noting that the there is a small cultivation clan that plans to night-hunt on Dafan Mountain, and that:

Society asks people to earn respect, but sets them up to fail by providing incredibly difficult/near impossible stakes for them to be able to earn the kind of respect the more “highbrow, affluent” clans (yes, it uses those words) enjoy. The idea of society setting impossible standards is something this arc and the story as a whole deconstructs. Because what happens next is that Jiang Cheng, the leader of the YunmengJiang Sect (one of those highbrow affluent sects) refuses to allow the smaller sect to night-hunt. The people complain, noting that it’s not really fair, but at the same time, they have no power by which to oppose him. 

In addition to keeping the smaller sects from interfering with Jiang Cheng’s plan to have his nephew, Jin Ling, earn glory in Dafan Mountain, he buys him hundreds of deity-binding nets that are noted to be extremely expensive--and the nets also catch some of the people in the smaller sects by mistake. It’s significant symbolically that nets that are noted to be an extreme show of wealth are what catch poorer people up, and trap them. Society traps them. 

Not only does society trap them, it gives those with power all the power to free them, or not. It’s not really on the poorer sects to try and earn approval; they almost certainly can’t earn approval. It’s up to the larger sects to decide to give them respect or not, and they don’t. Jin Ling doesn’t treat them as though they matter--he doesn’t even set them free. He views them as an inconvenience because society offers him no reason to respect them (and he’s a bratty teenager) 

Aaaand enter Jiang Cheng, Jin Ling’s uncle who set all of the nets up. He teaches Jin Ling this attitude, of people having to earn respect but not giving them much actual chance to do so, on a far more personal level, thereby showing that society’s rot is far more insidious and also nuanced than just “wealthy people suck.”

Also of note: the story will later show us that Jiang Cheng is literally reenacting his greatest pain onto his beloved nephew. He was never able to earn his father’s approval, nor his mother’s, and noted as much to his favored adopted brother Wei WuXian that his father “just doesn’t like me. He doesn’t like my mother, so he doesn’t like me.” Still, Jiang Cheng repeatedly drives himself to extremes trying to earn his father’s approval--and he never gets it. By ordering Jin Ling to succeed and earn his respect or else (even if it’s a more empty threat than not) he’s passing down the sin his father passed onto him. 

Jiang Cheng is also not considering the consequences of his own words. He loves his nephew and just rescued him, so the audience likely knows this is an empty threat--but words still have consequences. Every action, and speaking is an action, has an effect and sometimes we can’t control what the effect is. Jin Ling will later almost lose his soul in the battle with the goddess, purely because he wants to prove himself and chooses to fight the goddess on his own instead of sending up a signal to ask for help. And Jin Ling even directly tells (a frantic) Jiang Cheng that this was his fault: 

Next, let’s look at the goddess herself and her symbolism. The goddess was originally just a hunk of rock that happened to look like a dancing woman. And yet years and years of worship turned the slab of rock into an actual monster. 

The story isn’t condemning of the people, though--it’s not surprising nor wrong for people to want to find meaning and beauty around them. The problem is that things get out of hand, and people lose control of what they’ve created, and lose what the truth is as stories spread and spread. What society teaches is unreliable, in other words, and rumors and truth aren’t easily distinguished. It’s also worth noting that the dancing goddess’s myth is passed on through several generations, so again, it’s the stories of the parents passing onto their children (and later harming them). Once you start something, you can’t control it--it has unintended effects. The goddess is a symbol for society itself: people decide it has value and by doing so they create a monster that eventually consumes the desperate people praying to it. The rich trap the poor, the ‘righteous’ thing it do changes depending on who society has determined the villain is, and either way it consumes innocent victims (lots of innocent people will die in the wars in MDZS--whether it’s the Sunshot Campaign, the aftermath, the Nightless City Massacre, the Siege of the Burial Mounds, or the corpses that attack a cave). 

If you’ve finished the novel (or most of it) you’ve probably realized where this is going symbolically.

To return to the concept of empathy for the people in the mountain, who could not have known what would happen, it’s also worth noting that the soul-consuming begins with the goddess consuming the soul of a scared man seeking refuge from a storm, a man who desperately wants to matter:

The entirety of MDZS rests on two men who were scared and desperately wanted to matter: Wei WuXian, and Jin GuangYao. The people on Dafan Mountain who lose their souls to the goddess symbolize both of them (since they are foils) in that they didn’t consider the consequences of their actions and wound up losing themselves. Wei WuXian goes half-mad at the Nightless City and is later literally torn apart by his own creations....

... which for what it’s worth are noted at the beginning of the Dafan Mountain arc to still be in use, yet they are not working against the goddess, because for all Wei WuXian’s inventions, he could not control everything, and in the end lost control of himself as well. But of course Wei WuXian had a helping hand in that, because Jin GuangYao is the only character who throughout the story knows exactly what society is--a monster--and manipulates it to steal away what he needs it to steal away in order to maintain power. By the end of the story, his own crimes--the dead body of the sworn brother he killed--is what kills him. He thought he could control it, but he couldn’t. Yet Jin GuangYao is a victim too, and the story repeatedly emphasizes this (and does a fantastic job at it--he’s very hard to hate). 

The parallels and foreshadowing for both Wei WuXian and Jin GuangYao’s stories continue with a description of how the other people lost their souls: 

As we later find out, a marriage that is not what it seems later is a major twist in the story. Jin GuangYao found himself trapped in a wedding to a wife he found out just before his wedding was his sister--and whom he’d already gotten pregnant. The father who had scorned and hated him was tolerant of him and approved the match, his bride’s mother told him it was a rape and she didn’t want her husband to know his daughter wasn’t his daughter, and honestly, he was too scared to rock the boat and it’s hard to fault him. As a result he winds up losing himself even more, killing his son and later his wife. This description is symbolic of Jin GuangYao trapping himself in a wedding that would really just lead to ruin and death, not what he meant at all. And it winds up hurting the people who genuinely cared for him--his innocent son, his wife/sister, Nie MingJue, Lan XiChen. 

Wei WuXian, too, in his desire to help Jiang Cheng get revenge on the Wens, will later wind up hurting and almost destroying the Jiang Sect despite that never being his intention, when he loses control. And there’s direct foreshadowing of that here as well: 

The father's sacrifice parallels Wei WuXian’s sacrifice of his golden core for Jiang Cheng, and also Xiao XingChen’s sacrifice of his eyes for Song Lan (but Yi City will be its own meta). All of these sacrifices are noted to have drastically unintended consequences that actually wind up harming the relationships they attempted to maintain, though none of the sacrifices could be called anything but beautiful love. Xiao XingChen’s blindness is exactly what enables him to be tricked into killing his best friend, and Wei WuXian’s inability to tell Jiang Cheng for fear of offending him only leads Jiang Cheng to believe he is motivated to cultivate demonically because of arrogance. As a result Jiang Cheng starts to lose himself to pettiness and revenge, and Wei WuXian to his worser instincts as well--isolation (he’s always felt lonely) and to his martyr complex. Greed and the need to keep getting stronger are things that destroy Wei WuXian in the end (before he gets a second chance), but also are still destroying Jiang Cheng. 

And with that, let’s transition to the resolution and aftermath of the battle with the demon goddess. 

The goddess is provoked into attacking by Jin Ling, and it’s fairly karmic as well. Jin Ling expresses how hurt he was by Wei WuXian (who did not know who he was) taunting him for not having a mother, how hurt he was by a careless, ignorant word. And it’s Jin Ling’s careless, ignorant words that lead to one of his fellow disciples losing their soul. 

Society repeats its mistakes and does not learn (the fact that society is still using Wei WuXian’s creations is certainly a sign of this--though like everything it’s nuanced). And Jin Ling himself almost loses his soul as a result of trying to prove himself, but Jin Ling and the other disciples are repeatedly examples of hope in the story, hope that the novel’s conclusion will emphasize in its message that while society repeats itself, there is progress, and we are able to see Jin Ling and the others moving on from the hatred and prejudices that consumed the older generations. (We also see Wei WuXian, Jiang Cheng, Lan WangJi, etc. moving on, but the younger generation is even less encumbered by society’s poison). Society might not learn, but Jin Ling does. 

But who saves Jin Ling in the novel from losing his soul and in the donghua from losing his life is also massively important thematically, and for foreshadowing: the Ghost General, Wen Ning.

Wen Ning uses the chains he has been kept in for thirteen years to tear apart the goddess/society. The chains we will later learn were put on him by Jin GuangYao, a person turned monstrous thanks to the cruelty of society, who kept him imprisoned for years and years. Wen Ning is loathed by society his entire life: firstly, when the Wen Sect is in power, for being weak and a stutterer, then for being a Wen even though he helped the opposite side (which directly foils him with Jin GuangYao as well, since both were more or less moles), then as a monstrous fierce corpse who was used to kill people. 

But he saves Jin Ling--and all of them--by destroying the goddess. And Wen Ning will later save Jin Ling again in the novel’s climactic scene, at a temple to another goddess.

And, of course, there’s Lan WangJi, who plays an important role in unraveling the hell of Dafan Mountain, because his later canon romance with Wei WuXian is incredibly thematic in how it provokes characters to change their perceptions of society, and its his love for Wei WuXian that encourages both of them to grow to a place where they’re able to dismantle society’s presumptions. 

From the very beginning of the Dafan Mountain scene, we find out it’s Lan WangJi who destroys the deity-binding nets and sets the trapped people free.

When Wei WuXian uses his signature flute-playing to summon Wen Ning and save them all, Lan WangJi sees him for who he is. He doesn’t recognize Wei WuXian because of his technique, though--as Wei WuXian notes, hundreds use his techniques--but because of the song he plays, a song Lan WangJi wrote and--unbeknownst to Wei WuXian--only ever shared with Wei WuXian. It’s through seeing a moment of his own vulnerability, through love, that he recognizes the person he loves has come back to life. The song is aptly named “WangXian” in canon, because their relationship is key to the story’s themes. Lan WangJi, so stringent and too by-the-rules, is encouraged to break from society repeatedly for Wei WuXian, and Wei WuXian is encouraged to think more about consequences through his relationship with Lan WangJi. 

It’s also interesting that Jiang Cheng similarly recognizes Wei WuXian, but because of his technique and tries to force him to reveal himself via whipping his soul out with Zidian--but it doesn’t work, so he can’t confirm it until later. And what gets Jiang Cheng to release Wei WuXian to Lan WangJi is a topic the story does address head-on: the fact that the relationship between them is gay. 

Homophobia is something bystanders brings up when Jiang Cheng is certain Mo XuanYu’s body is inhabited, as it is, by Wei WuXian, and it’s something Wei WuXian seeks to use to get both Jiang Cheng and Lan WangJi (whom he hasn’t realized recognizes him) to release him by teasing him that he’s not attracted to Jiang Cheng but is attracted to Lan WangJi. Wei WuXian would rather depart from society all together, but that’s not what the story aims for even as it does take down society. Connection is important, connection keeps us going, and isolating himself has always been a flaw of Wei WuXian’s. 

Of course, Lan WangJi is in love with Wei WuXian, though no one but his family knows this--but it’s when Lan WangJi slowly stops caring what people think about that aspect of him that he and Wei WuXian are able to get together, and so begins the first aspect of Lan WangJi breaking with societal expectations for the person he loves. He also offers some words of wisdom fitting for the events that have just happened: mark your words. Watch what you say. It actually does matter. And for MDZS, that a significant factor of what helps topple some of society’s rules and encourages people to grow towards empathy is WangXian--a gay couple who marry each other--really does matter. 

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 3x05-- The One Where a Nazi Gets Punched

One recap down, two to go. Think I’ll be able to write them before the next ep airs? I doubt it. 

The episode opens by confirming Maia’s gone from RBL: Her name’s no longer on what used to be her office, her documents are being shredded, and all her personal belongings are in a box.

Marissa decides to pick a fight with an associate over Maia. “If you didn’t like Maia, you could have just come out and said that,” Marissa says. Uh. I don’t think Maia got fired because one associate didn’t like her but okay Marissa. The associate insists she’s not happy because she didn’t like Maia, she’s pleased that the zero-tolerance policy is being enforced consistently.

I do wish people would stop saying “Maia’s been arrested twice” because one of those arrests was in no way her fault. Every time anyone tries to use that as an argument, it makes me want to defend Maia even though I totally believe the partners had reason to fire her.

“Maia didn’t use drugs,” Marissa, who faked a drug test on Maia’s behalf, insists. Alright Marissa.

The whole 22nd floor starts to bicker, and Julius goes to inform the other partners that Marissa is stirring the pot. “She’s only stirring the pot because she feels that Maia was made a sacrificial lamb to the fact that the partners don’t want to pay for true financial parity here,” Diane says in defense of Maia/Marissa. Does that mean Diane wants to take whatever pay cuts and struggles come with paying true parity? Or does that just mean Diane wants her goddaughter to be able to get ahead?

To pay everyone the same amount at each level (which I’m not convinced actually gets at the root of the problem if they don’t put measures in place to make sure performance evaluations and opportunities are also awarded equally) would cost the firm $800,000 a year. That’s less than I thought, if only because whenever the partners are personally liable for something it’s always at least a million a person and when they bring in a big client it’s always like 35 million dollars/year in billing. And didn’t they pay off lots of the women Reddick assaulted with at least 800k?

Adrian is very right: this strategy would also raise the lowest performers to the level of the highest performers (within their job title), and then the highest are going to want more, and then the problem resets. How do you determine who the highest are, and which of the highest threaten to leave and which stay no matter what, and so on.

“Maybe we should consider it a human resources issue,” Julius says. Maybe? MAYBE? You’ve got associates fighting while on the job and internal documents circulating and you’re only NOW thinking to involve HR?

Julius wants to hire an expensive sensitivity trainer to talk to the associates instead of paying them more. Sounds like something the partners need more than the associates. Also would that go over well? I’m imagining the associates being like, wait, they have money for this but not money to pay me fairly? And now they’re telling me I need sensitivity training to cover their own asses, as though I just decided to pay myself less? If they do this sort of training in conjunction with an actual fix, sure, whatever, they may need it just to deal with the infighting. But alone? Noooope.

This conversation gets interrupted by an assistant telling Adrian that Judge Dunaway is wondering why he’s not in court. “An associate” is there and Dunaway wants to know why no one else has showed up. None of the partners knew anything about a motion in this case, so they suspect Maia of trying to steal their client.

I think Maia could try to steal a client, but I don’t think she’d ever think to do it.

They put Maia on their biggest case? Just Maia and Lucca and the partners? This sounds wrong.

Maia’s not returning Diane’s calls. I think it’s pretty clear that Diane wants the best for Maia, but I can totally see why it might not feel that way to Maia. She’s not handling this in the most mature way, but I’ll cut her some slack. She was just fired, after all!

Lucca and Jay are in the middle of nowhere, poll watching. Lucca worries this assignment is punishment for stirring up the salary drama (though idk how anyone other than Jay would know to tie it to Lucca!) and I don’t think she’s wrong. She’s a fucking department head and they have her out poll watching?

Maia isn’t the surprise co-counsel: Blum is. That makes way more sense, but also, UGH. I’m over Blum.

This case is interesting but I’m still going to write it up as “Case stuff happens” for the most part. Its premise is more interesting than its execution. I kinda just want to Google what kinds of suits are pending against real life genetic testing companies.

Blum got on this case because of documents he stole from Diane’s office. It is very possible RBL has worse security than Alicia’s apartment building.

Maia’s got a new job at something called Consult-a-Lawyer, a phone helpline that charges clients by the minute (and makes sure each call takes many minutes). This seems terrible.

Lucca and Jay talk with their Republican counterparts; they disagree but can at least talk about their disagreements. Also, none of them are really there to be poll monitors; they are there to try to sway the election results by fighting to selectively enforce rules. I’m sure they’d take issue with that phrasing but that’s what they’re doing.

Marissa’s noticeably grumpy at work and tells Diane it’s because her “best friend” was fired. Marissa says and does so much stuff that no one else could get away with; this is not a proper way to conduct yourself at work-- especially towards the people who are on your side.

Diane is reaching out to other firms on Maia’s behalf. That’s privilege at work right there.

Diane tasks Marissa with watching Blum. She also confuses Marissa and Maia, which is weird since only one of them is her goddaughter.

I am SO OVER Blum. Why is he so loud?! When I watch these episodes first thing on Thursday mornings, the last thing I need is his maniacal screaming.

Marissa is unimpressed with Blum.

OH MY GOD MAKE HIS LOUDNESS STOP. I just don’t care. Just gonna let this next bit with the song play while I change my sheets, because I have nothing to say about it.

And then I did laundry, went on two trips, and visited a bunch of bookstores and now I’m back, three recaps behind.

I didn’t even get to the credits before I stopped writing!? Me of three weeks ago, what were you doing?! (The credits are 17 minutes in, to be fair.)

He’s so loud! So! Loud!

Some sort of white (male) supremacist group shows up at the precinct Lucca and Jay are monitoring.

Diane and Liz meet with the sensitivity consultant, who has them do an exercise as a test. It’s one of those games where you take a step forward/backward if a sentence describes you. Neither Diane nor Liz wants to participate, but the game ends up working on them: turns out they both like singing, Prince, Roma, and Hannah Gadsby. LOLLOL I believe every one of those things.

I don’t know what Lucca thinks Diane will be able to do to help with the white supremacists, but she probably doesn’t suspect Diane’s going to have her unwittingly help #Resistance.

Case stuff happens. It involves Blum singing. Go away.

Jay calls Naomi with the story about the Red Jackets, while Diane’s #Resistance buddy (what is her name? I’m going to have to pay more attention because she is “The Young One Who Does Computer Things” to me, but she’s been in enough episodes I should probably learn her name) gets the Red Jackets fired.

Case stuff happens. Blum puts another actor on a stand as a witness.

Marissa comes to visit Maia at work. At this job, Maia actually has to do work and gets negative feedback when she doesn’t do work well, so as happy as she is to see Marissa (and the Sunglasses of Badassery), she can’t chat long.

Maia is not as happy to help with work related things. In fact, given that I’ve seen the next two episodes (and the end of this one), Marissa reaching out to Maia about something work related may even make Maia feel like her work friends never really cared about her.

Marissa also brings Maia a list of three firms where Diane’s put in a good word. “Diane doesn’t care about me,” Maia, who got the only two jobs she’s ever held because of Diane, insists. Sure, Maia. But I won’t criticize her too much-- she WAS just fired.

Marissa loudly informs the entire Phone-A-Lawyer office that it’s “not fine” to work there. I love Marissa but she lacks self-awareness, like, all the time when she’s not undercover.

Maia’s supervisor isn’t pleased Marissa’s shown up during work hours. She asks her to leave, but does help out with the case.

“If you don’t call them, I will,” the woman in the cubicle next to Maia interjects, offering Maia some much-needed perspective. Maia’s been through a lot, but it’s still clear she’s not someone who has ever had to worry about money.

Lucca calls the police on two of the Red Jackets (they’re sex offenders) just as Naomi’s news van shows up.

Naomi and Jay are a couple which surprised me but, you know, I don’t hate it. Actually, I think I like it.

The judge Adrian is sleeping with does him a favor in court. This relationship? I don’t think I like it.

Diane and Liz regroup about the sensitivity consultant. Liz doesn’t think she’s worth the money, since no sensitivity game will ever solve racism (she’s right-- I don’t know that I think they’re completely useless but they are never going to get at the root of the problem). Diane suggests midyear bonuses instead; Liz points out they’ll know they’re being bought off.

Then something magical happens: Diane and Liz start SINGING! It’s so fun. It’s also a great character moment. We’ve never seen Diane have a female peer at work she could just be herself around, and this strengthens the Diane/Liz friendship that’s driving a lot of the season.

A sex scene quite rudely interrupts the wonderful duet.

If anyone’s written anything on Judge Hazelwood, I’d love to read it. I’m intrigued by her use of power but I think I need to read someone else’s take to fully understand what the writers are (attempting to) do with her.

“Your head is like a sculpture. I want to cut it off and put it on my desk,” is a VERY DISTURBING LINE.

Maia’s using her mom’s maiden name again-- smart. And she took Diane up on the interview offers-- also smart. (Yes, I’ll call her privileged for even having those offers, but I don’t take issue with her using connections. I don’t care if she’s privileged; I care when she lacks self-awareness about it.)

The job won’t start until November, which makes Maia angry. She sees this as Diane trying to fuck her over, when really she’s been offered a job 30 seconds after introducing herself because Diane’s recommendation means so much. Maia TURNS IT DOWN, even though it’s a promise of good work in six months and the best lead she has. Unless there’s going to be something in the contract about how she cannot accept another job if one comes up in those six months before she officially starts, WHY? WHY TURN DOWN GOOD WORK AT A TOP FIRM JUST BECAUSE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU COULD DO BETTER? YOU’RE WORKING AT PHONE-A-LAWYER.

And this dude gives her so many chances-- he even says to let her know if she winds up being available.

Her only question is whether Diane knew about the late start date. The interviewer thinks so, and Maia takes it as a personal insult. Oof. You know what most low-ranking people who are fired for drug use get? Here’s a hint: it’s not interviews at three top firms with the highest recommendation from a well-respected name partner.

NOTHING about this reaction from Maia is out of character for her. I just have no patience for it.

Adrian and Blum collaborate in one of the more interesting scenes they’ve done with Blum. He’s loud and devious, but he’s not stupid. And watching Adrian understand and go along with Blum’’s strategizing-- setting the stage for him to normalize all of Blum’s other, more illegal antics as appropriate workplace behavior-- is fascinating.

Naomi is polite when interviewing one of the Red Jackets, but she refuses to shake his hand. I like that moment.

Jay punches one of the Red Jackets after the Red Jacket antagonizes him. The Republican poll monitor sees the whole thing, but decides to say nothing. (The point, basically, is that we can find common ground with people we disagree with, and that only CERTAIN people we disagree with are actually the enemy.)

A riot breaks out and we see only a little bit of it before Jay starts monologuing about his belief that Nazis should be punched. Dunno to what extent I agree (slippery slope, etc) but I do know I’m not going to waste any time being outraged over one of them being punched.

More case stuff happens.

Lucca, Jay, and Naomi share beers after the riot. They’ve all emerged from the riot safely. This is a nice scene; I love watching these characters just hang out. Apparently Jay had a crush on Lucca for a little while, which I find kinda cute as long as it doesn’t go anywhere beyond that (SO OVER WORKPLACE ROMANCES ON THIS SHOW).

Maia calls Lucca, but Lucca can’t get any reception so she decides to be 2x14 Alicia and find a high spot on top of a car. Her phone still gobbles the call, though. Maia takes this, too, as a personal insult.

Diane calls Maia and Maia refuses to answer. Oh, Maia. If I got the sense she wanted to do this without help-- kind of like s7 Alicia not wanting to answer to anyone-- that would be one thing. This just sounds petty.

Oh goodie! We get MORE BLUM in the future: he’s now working with RBL on the Second Helix case for the near future. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Maia’s packing up her apartment now that she can’t afford the rent, and another firm Diane set her up with tells her the soonest they can interview her is in a month. Well, at least she’s still trying. She throws her phone on the floor in frustration, and I do feel bad for her. Just, like, not that bad.

Lucca shows up at Maia’s door, since Maia’s now not answering her phone. Lucca explains her day and why she wasn’t near her phone-- and her reasons are, of course, valid-- and Maia just doesn’t care. You’ll remember that Lucca doesn’t have friends and that when Lucca shows up for someone, she’s all in. Maia, who is actually friends with Lucca, has not picked up on this (or is not willing to acknowledge it). Lucca offers to get dinner (and to pay), and to spend time away from her baby after a stressful day. She says she feels awkward about how things went down at work.

Maia doesn’t just decline the invitation or say it’s not a good time. She says she and Lucca were “work friends” and shuts the door. Well, that’s harsh. I don’t really fault Maia for feeling detached from her old workplace or awkward around her old work friends, or for needing time to herself. But wow, this is a phenomenally awful way to treat a friend. (And not that I need to pile on more, but Lucca and Marissa have both been FAR more supportive of Maia than Maia’s ever been of them.)

[siramay-the-showgun-dragon]

Demencia Theory- Not What She Seems

hello my villainous fans and random scrollers by I am from the villainous amino and I am about to show you a theory made by my friend M. with the help of me and a few others to show you a side of dementia you do not seem to see, so before I show it heres a link to M’s original theory on amino:https://aminoapps.com/c/villainous-4971691/page/blog/demencia-theory-not-what-she-seems/8BWv_8mvCmujakwpQx6kxLZvbMaxp5L6LbghR now lets begin

Oh, Demencia, you childish, hyperactive ball of enthusiasm!

With your evil chaotic-ness and your enchanted feelings for your boss, how could you ever be more than the silly thing that meets the eye?

.

.

.

We could think of a few ways.

The following theory is brought to you by the amazing minds from the  Villainous Theory Chat! Those that were involved with this theory include: Notdepresso, Siramay (hey that's me :D), Snivy, and Lynxi!

(And me but eh)

I'm almost tempted to say "forget about all of the other theories about Demencia you may have heard of before" because, this. is. insane.

We Villainous theorists believe that Demencia is....

A Podemos Bailar agent. 

Y'all:

Now before you start shaking your heads, hear us out.

Yes, she acts like she has an evil agenda.

Yes, she's the practical personification of chaos.

Yes, she's absolutely head over heels for Black Hat

And yes, she's just so darn silly and maybe even annoying to some.

And doesn't she play it off so well?

Demencia is always at the max with all of these qualities and they never waver.

Her imperfections are too... Perfect.

But oh, is it an amazing disguise.

Who could possibly realize they're being fooled when they are too busy laughing at the fool?

As we all know, Demencia annoys and bothers both Black Hat and Flug with her obsessive and destructive qualities, to the point where they try to avoid her at all costs. Notice how it's always Demencia who approaches them and that it's never the other way around unless the two are absolutely forced to?

The woman has a ridiculous amount of free time to herself; finding the time to teach a bear and a handful of robots a song, destroy thousands of dollars worth of products, draw her Demencia Tips, attempt to romance Black Hat, make puppets, learn guitar, etc.

With all that free time and privacy... Who really knows what Demencia can and will do?

This disguise, this face she has made for herself is perfect. She is free to stalk her subjects right in front of them and not be questioned for it except for the occasional, exasperated "what does sHE THINK SHE'S DOING!?"

And this is just the minimal tip of the iceberg.

There's so much more.

Demencia's bizzare behavior truly doesn't raise any real questions because everyone within the manor is so used to it that something as odd as messing with a computer to creating your own "advertising" short without anyone's knowledge to it is seen as Demencia being Demencia.

This lizard lady could do almost anything without ever being truly interrogated for it.

She has trained her prey to not be scared of her as she walks right up to it.

Another thing to note about Demencia's behavior is her job at Black Hat Organization. As stated by Flug in the Anniversary short, Demencia handles all hero extermination. This, however, is only to his knowledge. We have no evidence other than Flug's word and a possibly staged picture to prove this. We've yet to find anything stating that a hero has died at any particular time.

In fact, we dont even know if this is really Heavy Punch's cape from the Evil Conquest episode.

cape?

Bish W H E R E ?

(And don't try to tell us it's because it's a kids show, Gravity Falls, a DISNEY production, managed to sweep in 2 paragraphs full of hidden jokes within the same screen pan without drawing too much attention from the younger audience) (besides that there are to many dark and demonic jokes in villainous for that to be a reason also just look at the episodes on mojo jojo and rob) ((this bold is me))

But this all pales in comparison to what's truly incriminating about Demencia, and the answer is found buried within this fandom's favorite bookmarked tab: Podemos Bailar.

Now, I made a post the other day about what we discovered is going on in that right side scrolling of commands on the website: http://aminoapps.com/p/56jwha

What we discovered is that two people are interacting over that animation loop. One person is telling another how to decode a specific piece of an audio file in order to get a message while the other is actually inputting the commands to do just that.

We can firmly assume that these two are our last two dancing agents.

Now how does this tie in with Demencia? Well, it has already been established that Demencia knows how to create her own codes and sneak them into BHO's production videos as we see happen in the very first short, The Perception of Evil, in which a code flashes on screen saying "Demencia Was Here".

Funny enough, a short was released a few months back called "Demencia Wuz Here". And my what a controversial short this one is if you see it like we do.

Let's break it down:

So Demencia left a hidden code for someone to decipher that referenced an advertisement short that didn't even exist yet. This means that the short was a premeditated thing and not just something done at the spur of the moment for some pickles.

What's also good to note is that there was no reference to King Wazuq's Glove before ((well like that one end frame but nothing else in like actual videos that what I think he meant)) this episode and the outer Demencia doesn't appear to be the type to search for information that deeply for something she wouldn't even know she'd need months before hand.

Unless... The heist was staged.

What we also see in this short is Demencia being able to hack into The Defence Departments, high security, Area 52 cameras in order to capture her stealing the glove. A very difficult task I'd imagine for an empty-headed lizard girl. But... She really hasn't proven herself to be all that has she?

Another thing to note is that Demencia created this entire short on her own. 505, Flug, nor Black Hat knew of this until they walked in on her but, once again, do nothing to stop her. It's just Demencia being Demencia.

Also, have any of you noticed that Demencia is the only character in Villainous so far that labels herself as an agent?

Oh, but this only goes deeper.

Not only is Demencia a Podemos Bailar agent, and not only is she working as an undercover agent amongst villains, she is also the agent telling the other what commands to input on the Podemos Bailar website.

She is telling her true co-worker exactly what to do to find a code she has hidden especially for him in her "advertisement" short.

But how can we be so sure that it's her?

How can we be so sure that it's that video specifically?

Because, if you click and drag the I See All picture into the Google search bar, you will find a link to the website's assets page. With that page are a series of links to different parts of the site. One of those links holds the exact audio file from the "Demencia Wuz Here" short...and it is the only short there.

The short Demencia made without anyone's knowing.

The short that she aquired impossible information for.

And the short she specifically designed and planned from episode one to reach out to her last comrade for and betray her villainous coworkers.

I mean, just look at her body type and compare it to the yet-to-be-found female Podemos Bailar agent! They're a practical match, thick ((EXTRA THICC note I hate using that word)) legs and all! And there is no way that giant next to her is Flug!

Also, another thing to consider is, if neither of these last two agents are on the villainous scene, then how have they been aquiring photos from within the manor? Flug's notes about 505's creation and the picture of the organization's plans to go to Japan are prime examples!

 (another thing about that japan plan pic is that in the same episode it was released with we can see dementia reading that EXSACT same magazine that's in the picture! the clues are hiding in plane sight and no one is any the wiser!)

The evidence is stacking here people, and we the Villainous Theory Chat truly believe that it's only going to become more suspicious as time goes on.

This also means that there is a secret audio code that we need to find in the "Demencia Wuz Here" video. All we need to do is follow the steps she's given us on the site in order to find it.

There is a spy among us and she is clothed in green. (A sheep in lizards clothing)

I hope you enjoyed reading our idea!

Happy Villainy!

and that's his theory he has others to I might post here but if you like this then go to the villinos amino and join are theory chat! and if you are against this theroy tell me why and we at the theory chat will try to debunk you debunking this unless your right BUT YOU GOT TO OPEN YOUR EYES DEMENTIA IS NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS, SPREAD THE WORD or not black hat might be listening and we don't want to blow her cover! but I would like to see more talk about this

so I'm siramay and remember keep claim and drag-on

[rkevent]

MGA SEASON 4: EPISODE 2 STARTS NOW!

It all starts with a quick replay of all the best moments of the first episode, highlighting the most impactful contestants and their auditions. Instead of the image of the outside of the building as people hurry in to audition, this time it shows the special stage. The first panel filtered out most of the nation and now who is left are only the most interesting people for our CEOs to pick and choose from. Whoever makes it through will take one exciting step into the world of the music industry-- but who will make it until the end?

Hopefuls enter one by one into the set and sit on their designated seats. The chairs on the left are assigned to all the odd-numbered contestants, while the ones on the right are for the even-numbered ones. Most hurry to their seat and wait for the recording to start. Some hum to the song they are about to perform, others close their eyes to calm down their nerves. Upon stepping into the studio, Kim Junmyeon can’t help but exclaim in awe at the sight of the five empty chairs saved for the CEOs’ arrival.

Some of them take the chance to chat with each other, the cameras all around the set capturing everything. Joo Haknyeon looks like an excited puppy when Kim Hyuna sits next to him. “You’re sitting beside me –– wow! I’m such a huge fan of you! You’re so pretty!” Bae Joohyun and Ji Changmin talk to each other on their seats, as well, but as people who already knew each other.

Once all the contestants arrive and are properly seated, the eager expectation to see the CEOs finally comes to an end. They walk in order: Baek Jiyoung, Hyun Bin, Tiger JK, Katie Lee and So Jiseob. “Wow, whoa, they look like royalty,” Kim Doyeon says from her seat. It’s not everyone who gets the chance to see them all in the same room, though most would probably prefer if it weren’t such a life or death situation like this. Lee Daehwi is seen grabbing Jeon Somi’s shoulders, the one sitting beside him. “Oh my god, oh my god, it’s really happening, isn’t it?”

To start off the show, Hyun Bin picks up his microphone and scans the contestants in front of him before speaking. “Hello, hopefuls, and welcome to the second episode of the Mnet Global Auditions.” He moves his chair closer to the table before proceeding. “You’ve made it here after an intensive round of auditions that eliminated most of those who auditioned to be here. Still, our panelists analyzed every piece of information you gave us to pick the best ones suited to be shown on TV. But, this is not simply a variety show. This is your time to show you have the actual talent to stay, not just the charisma to charm, or any unexpected skills that won’t help you very far in this journey.”

His voice is as impactful as his image, but the man doesn’t seem to want to waste anyone’s time. He quickly grabs the first file on the table, changing his gaze to the one beside him. “Jiyoung-ssi, would you please call our first contestant?” The woman smiles at the file before shooting a glance towards the boy at his seat. “Contestant #4001, Heo Hyunjoon.”

Although his number is one to remember, the boy is really only known for his young age. He walks up to the stage calmly, but the pressure is as strong as ever. He’s the first one to go, and all eyes are on him. “I’m Heo Hyunjoon, 15 years old and master of the wink. I’m shooting arrows to capture everyone’s heart.” And so, Hyunjoon pretends to use a bow with his arms, but instead of shooting an arrow he winks at the judges. Joo Haknyeon, from his seat, grabs onto his chest as if being shot. Animated hearts fly away from his eyes as they should. His song choice seemed a bit weird at first, but after ‘Gashina’ starts playing, we see the boy has changed the choreography for a cute style instead-- a better fit for his image.

Lee Jaehwan is next seen showing off his vocal ability, and, soon enough, it’s Kim Junmyeon’s turn to enchant the public once again. “Hello, my name is Kim Junmyeon. I-… wow! I’m the good-looking singer hopeful, please help me improve and look after me well.” The camera focuses on Katie Lee’s smile before changing to So Jiseob’s unamused stare. His voice is sweet, even if the song was a bit unexpected. The male proves his worth of this much screen time with his continuous change of charming expressions. Once he gets back to his seat, one of the cameras captures him automatically checking himself out on his phone.

The first female of the round takes the center stage, Kim Doyeon. She calls herself the tall contestant, and a cut depicting her audition form shows an impressive listed height of 173cm. The girl’s a dancer like many of the contestants, but her long limbs are a clear advantage for the art. After her, it’s Jin Longguo’s turn, who is seen singing while playing his ukulele. His face is as expressive as they come during the performance but, after he sits down, the editors show us different shots of him staring blankly at the other performances. Maybe we found this season’s stone-faced contestant.

Jang Moonbok doesn’t hold back on styling himself and, for this episode, his long and luxurious hair is seen in waves. The addition of wearing glasses helps to give the boy a softer look, as well. His performance starts off with a rap, as expected, but soon after the male starts singing. A few CEOs lift an eyebrow or two, but the truth is they had already watched him sing, unlike the rest of the world. The next girl is startled by her own name when called to perform-- Choi Yoojung, who soon shows the world her skill in dancing.

The air gets a bit tenser when the next contestant walks to her spot. Kim Hyuna is one of the returning contestants of the show and her performances are expected to be worthy of her experience, especially since she was a publically-known trainee of Royal for two years. She chooses to perform a song made by herself, and her lyrics are as impactful as her first audition. Once she starts waving her hand from one side to the other, a few of the contestants join in, the camera showing Jeon Somi following along. Hyuna is another rapper with a good singing voice.

And so the returning contestants got placed one after the other, but in opposite sides of the room. Kim Bora shows several different skills by performing one song in three different languages. Joo Haknyeon’s performance comes next. It starts off slow and precise, all things normal until the song cuts off completely. The boy stops, looking as confused as everyone else seems to be. But then, just as suddenly, a different song comes back on loud. Haknyeon has changed styles completely to show us something even more exciting. This was all part of his plan and it seemed to have worked well.

Kim Jinhee walks up next, deciding to show a dance cover of a song from Jun-- someone known for being one of the best dancers in the industry. It’s a bold move to make but the girl adds her own twists to it. She decides to use props — scarfs — and when the audio says “Flame of Love” she shoots them out of sleeves, making it a memorable ending. Kim Yongsun walks up to the stage next to perform, and this leads into Takada Kenta’s performance afterward. Kim Donghyun follows them, all three showing off their singing abilities.

Jun seems to be a hot pick this season, as we see Min Yoongi performing a different song by the artist. Lee Juyeon goes afterwards with his own dance routine. The young Jeon Somi, though, has decided to hold nothing back. She sang, danced, and rapped, and as if that wasn’t enough, the girl decided to showcase her taekwondo skills with a risky spin. Somi is obviously tired afterwards, but she manages to continue with a smile.

The next contestant was someone easy to spot. His bright red outfit could be seen in the back of multiple shots and the presence of a keytar wasn’t something you got to see everyday. Lee Minhyuk made his performance a dedication to Queen, the artist of the song he had picked. “Hello! My name is Lee Daehwi,” the next contestant introduces, “and if you think that I’m taller than last time…” He wriggled his feet for emphasis. “It’s because I’m wearing extra big insoles today. I won’t fall behind in anything whether it’s height or my dancing!” And just like before, Daehwi shows a girl group cover, though this time also singing to add variety. After returning to his seat, an audible ‘yaaaaa-’ is heard from his direction all over the set.

Next up are Park Minhyuk and Lee Jooheon, a dancer and a rapper, respectively. Offering a most certain change of pace, Park Kyungri walks to the center of the stage with a bright red dress and steals all the attention to herself. ‘Coming of Age Ceremony’ was probably not the first thing most people would come up with to perform at an audition show, but the woman fits the image perfectly. Her eyes capture the cameras’ focus and most certainly impress the public.

Seo Soojin goes next, showcasing her singing skills together with ribbon dancing and impressive stamina. Kim Hyunjung performs a song along with her guitar, and then Choi Youngjae decides to only sing this time around. The following lady is one people should keep an eye on: Jung Jinsoul makes her own version of ‘Hush’ by Brave Girls but, as much as the song has been covered ever since its release, the performance is as refreshing as ever. The girl not only shows her impressive vocals and dancing skills, but also incredible charisma.

When the next song starts, the camera focuses on Tiger JK’s surprised reaction. Lee Minhyung, a fifteen year old middle schooler, had decided to use his song as his chosen performance. The CEO lean over to Hyun Bin beside him and whispers something between smiles. “I didn’t know these young kids even knew I made music.” It awards him a laugh from his fellow judge, and then the focus is back on the performances. Dong Sicheng goes after Minhyung, performing a traditional chinese dance.

Lee Sungyeol follows next with an emotional song, slowly working his way towards the desired title of ‘Nation’s Prince Charming’. Right after, Lee Jeno decides to change things around, showing an impressive dance and guitar performance inspired by Michael Jackson. “Hello! I’m contestant #4032, Moon Bin. I’m 21 years old and some of you may have heard my voice blaring from your TVs after that chocolate brand competition!” The scene cuts to show a few seconds of the chocolate commercial before quickly going back to the boy and his performance. This time around, the public gets to not only watch him sing, but also play the violin.

The one next is Lee Luda, one of the tiny girls who was in charge of singing and also decided to dance this time. Following her right after was Lai Guanlin, the young giant that had gained some attention on the previous episode. He introduces himself with a strong accent, but it only seems to help him gain attention. If that wasn’t enough, though, the boy takes out a bandana from his pocket and ties it around his head. When he starts to sing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles song it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise, but a lot of people looked shocked by it.

Joining the young ones, Choi Yerim goes next, but sticks to something basic. Then comes another one, a little more nervous-sounding than most. “Hello, I am Kim Jonghyun– I am a dancer for the most part but I also enjoy rapping… I do sing but I am not a great singer, I sound like a horse squirrel when I sing… I’ll be dancing for you today yes– that is what I’ll be doing.” And so he does, and very beautifully at that.

Kim Taehyung goes next, but this time without any heels on. Instead, he performs a good showcase of his rapping skills. He’s followed by Jeon Jeongguk and his dancing before it’s the girl Minatozaki Sana’s turn. She grabs her violin and bow, and then after hurrying to the stage manages to trip a little but not fall down. The performance is a mix of her original audition, allowing her to dance and sing, and then eventually play the violin as well.

“Today, I’m going to dance for you. I’m going to show all of you that I’m the best thing out of Texas since Beyonce.” And that was a bold thing for Kim Chungha to say. Still, her dancing was impressive and powerful. If it was actually anywhere near Beyonce-level was a bit debatable. Jung Jaewon followed her with his performance, followed by Hwang Hyunjin and his sign language-incorporated dance. The contestants were slowly coming to an end, but Choi Minho seemed as excited as ever to perform.

Another on the guitar list was Koo Junhoe, performing an acoustic version of his chosen song. Wang Jackson performs an exciting rap of choice before it’s Jeon Wonwoo’s turn to perform his bold and impressive choice of a Japanese song. Kim Wonshik decides to rap instead of dancing and it was a pleasant surprise. The tiny but impressive guy, Ha Sungwoon, decided to stick to his singing roots, but managed to leave people impressed nonetheless. “Hello everyone! I’m your resident tiny giant, Ha Sungwoon.” And there was probably a big giant inside his throat for the man to sing like that. It cracks a bit at some point, but his performance was as impressive as expected.

It was then Kim Mingyu’s turn to rap with his choice of an original song. Kang Daniel is next, and the fact he is still here probably says his parents weren’t too mad at his audition. The friendly animated hand returns for the sake of the joke and Daniel wishes his parents a joyful time. “I’m Kang Daniel, #4050, here to raise the bar a little bit with every performance. Last week was 40, and this week is 50; maybe by the end, we’ll make it to 100.” he pauses to strum his guitar before continuing. “That sounded better in my head.” We’re sorry, Daniel.

Coming close to the end, Bae Joohyun comes on the screen. “I’m twenty-three, a dancer, librarian, and… I’m the daughter of Innisfree’s CEO and CFO.” The comment came unexpectedly, but it’d certainly made it to the news. The girl still performs a strong dancing sequence, one that hopefully her parents would be watching. The last one up was Ji Changmin. “I-I’m in my first year of high school, and I…ah…really like to dance! I know it’s been a really long day; hopefully everyone isn’t too tired! I’m sure afterwards, though, you’ll feel refreshed!” His nervousness is adorable, and after a quick aegyo he starts dancing a mix of the expected cuteness with a surprising display of b-boying, bringing an end to this round of performances.

The staff announces a quick break for the contestants while the judges head into a private room to discuss and confirm the future of each hopeful outside. This part isn’t aired, only when they return to their original seats. All of the contestants wait for the worst part to come and this time around, Katie Lee is in charge of the microphone. “After long discussion, we’ll start with the elimination process for today’s episode.”

Instead of the previous piles of files the judges used to check on the contestants, each of them now has a single sheet of paper with the information of who would be leaving them that day. “To all of you who we won’t see again next week, please remember this doesn’t need to be the end of your journey. Even if you didn’t make it through this episode, maybe we will, eventually, see each other in the future.”

The woman clears her throat elegantly before proceeding with her announcement. “Before we get to it, a few contestants decided to leave us before this episode — Lee Jieun, Shim Changmin and Chou Tzuyu — which leaves us with 51 contestants. From those who remain with us, we will still take out more than one person today. Hyun Bin-ssi, will you do the honors?” And just like the man had started the episode, he’d also start the end of it.

“The first person to be leaving us tonight is… Takada Kenta.” The man says before looking at the male. “You have a very beautiful voice, but your performance skills are still very lacking. You lack the ability to capture people’s attention and heart, which is one of the most important abilities in the industry. Hopefully, you’ll get to working on it soon enough.” He sets his microphone down and Baek Jiyoung is the next one to speak.

“The second person to be leaving us tonight is… Park Minhyuk.” She looks at the boy from far away, but unlike Hyun Bin, she shows him a soft smile. “You share the same problem as Takada Kenta, but, as dancer, that is an even bigger flaw to have. You won’t have your powerful vocals to back you up. There is no point in making precise movements if they’re not the ones people will be looking at. I wish you well in the future.”

Tiger JK picks up the microphone from his center spot, eyes already flickering towards the contestant before he’s even said anything. “So, the third person to be leaving us today is… Wang Jackson. Right now you’re a mediocre rapper with poor stage presence, and if you’d like to keep doing what you’re doing that won’t suffice. Hopefully, this will serve as motivation for you to keep on going with your dreams.”

Finally, it’s So Jiseob’s turn to speak, the one who had been staying the quietest. “The fourth person to be leaving us today is… Jung Jaewon. You definitely have a lot of skill and practice, but we don’t think you’ve been able to put that same effort into expressing those things in this show. You have a lot of potential and what you lack is knowing how to use it. If you find your right place I’m sure you’ll do well in the future.”

The lady who started it picks up the microphone again. There had certainly been more than one elimination already and her eyes say it hasn’t ended yet. “The fifth person to be leaving us today is… Lee Jaehwan. You have good skill and good technique, but it still feels like there’s something missing. I hope you’ll keep practicing not only your vocal abilities, but also your stage presence. Having fun isn’t always all that is needed.”

Hyun Bin picks up his microphone again, jumping right into his speech without a break. “The sixth person to be leaving us today is… Lee Jooheon. You’ve shown a lot of skills you’re good at, but I think there’s still time for you to become great in one of them. You have the potential, now all that’s left is for you to put on the hard work to make it happen.”

Counting the first three departures, it was already down to eight people leaving, and when Baek Jiyoung picks up her microphone again the contestants can only hope it is to announce the end of eliminations. “There’s still one more person who will be leaving us tonight, and it was a tough choice between two of you. The seventh person to be leaving us today will either be Heo Hyunjoon or Kang Daniel.” The screen splits in two, Hyunjoon on the left and Daniel on the right. “Both of you have a lot to grow still, and I honestly wish both of you will keep working hard whether you stay in this competition or not.”

And so, Jiyoung picks up the paper in front of her, letting out a sigh. “The seventh person to be leaving us today will be… Heo Hyunjoon. You’re still very young and your skills have a lot to develop, but I believe that, in the future, you’ll be just as great as whoever wins this competition in the end. I wish you well, and for you to keep on dancing.”

With that, the long elimination round is done. Tiger JK takes his microphone once again to ask those who were eliminated to leave the set, cameras focusing on their faces. They don’t air the entire walk from chair to exit, but it’s still a tough sight to see. Once they’ve left backstage, the cameras continue their focus on the remaining contestants. Between these people, we’ll have the grand winner of the Mnet Global Auditions Season 4.

To see all of this season’s current contestants, click here!

And now, let’s see what’s in store for our third episode!

After the first big round of eliminations, only the best contestants are left to fight for the big winner spot. The end is still far from close, though, and there is a lot in store for this season of the Mnet Global Auditions!

There has been a lot of solo talent showcased so far, so it’s time to change things up a bit. For the next episode, contestants were grouped up in teams to deliver an impactful group performance. Members were randomly chosen and grouped up, testing the contestants’ abilities to change and adapt to the situation they are given. No piece of training will go without the eye of the public being there to see it, though.

Our beloved CEOs have turned a couple of their practice rooms available for our contestants to use during this week of training. Cameras have already been set up at multiple angles to capture everything there is to see. The teams for this episode and the companies they’ll practice at are as seen below:

TEAM A — SPHERE BUILDING #4003 — Kim Junmyeon #4017 — Lee Juyeon #4034 — Lai Guanlin #4036 — Kim Jonghyun #4037 — Kim Taehyung

TEAM B — SPHERE BUILDING #4004 — Kim Doyeon #4010 — Joo Haknyeon #4012 — Kim Yongsun #4039 — Minatozaki Sana #4052 — Bae Joohyun

TEAM C — NOVA BUILDING #4005— Jin Longguo #4026 — Choi Youngjae #4038 — Jeon Jeongguk #4040 — Kim Chungha #4050 — Kang Daniel

TEAM D — NOVA BUILDING #4006— Jang Moobok #4023 — Park Kyungri #4031 — Lee Jeno #4033 — Lee Luda #4042 — Hwang Hyunjin

TEAM E — TRC BUILDING #4007— Choi Yoojung #4025 — Kim Hyunjung #4043 — Choi Minho #4047 — Kim Wonshik #4049 — Kim Mingyu

TEAM F — TRC BUILDING #4008 — Kim Hyuna #4029 — Dong Sicheng #4032 — Moon Bin #4035 — Choi Yerim

TEAM G — KT BUILDING #4009— Kim Bora #4018 — Jeon Somi #4027 — Jung Jinsoul #4046 — Jeon Wonwoo #4054 — Ji Changmin

TEAM H — KT BUILDING #4011— Kim Jinhee #4014 — Kim Donghyun #4019 — Lee Minhyuk #4044 — Koo Junhoe #4048 — Ha Sungwoon

TEAM I — ROYAL BUILDING #4016— Min Yoongi #4020 — Lee Daehwi #4024 — Seo Soojin #4028 — Lee Minhyung #4030 — Lee Sungyeol

For the first round of team challenges, the theme of the week is something that shouldn’t be too hard for our dear hopefuls. Even if some of our contestants were born as part of the new millennium, these songs will forever be known through generations to come. This week, we’ll be focusing on the 2011 classics. Members are to group together and pick a song of their liking and that they think will also capture the public’s attention.

Baek Jiyoung announces it herself that all of the members from the team ranked as first will be safe from elimination next week, but other groups may not have the same good fortune. This time around, the stage will be much bigger and prepared with proper lighting and special effects to help make it memorable. A live audience of 1000 people will be there to watch and judge every performance, but no voting will take place or impact the results.

However, a brand new system is being introduced for this season of the Mnet Global Auditions: members are to elect a leader among themselves who will be the focus of guiding the team through preparations and the stage itself. The leader should be someone who will be able to help others and be looked up to. After being picked, a change of leader will only be able to happen by unanimous vote. Together, all members should come up with a team name that will represent them during this week. With unison being more important than ever, we hope to see our contestants growing close as soon as ever — or maybe they’ll keep everything as professional as possible.

                          Tune in next Sunday, the 15th, for our third episode!

MGA Season 4 episode three preview: The cameras show all of the behind footage for the making of the first group stage of this season. Who will hold the title of a leader? Will friendships be formed or will conflict happen as the contestants are forced to work together? The big stage is prepared for a grand performance, but the results are only in the hands of the members to make it happen. In the end, will your favorite contestant survive another episode?

[ All contestants had their introduction aired even if it wasn’t mentioned. Any other part only made it to the final cut if it was mentioned in this post. Contestants have until 5PM EST of Sunday, the 15th, to post their 200+ words solos about their performance of this first round of the team challenges. That’s at 5PM not midnight. Please tag all related posts with #rkmga4 and #rkmga4classics. Song choices should be submitted to the rkevent inbox as well as the chosen leader. Two teams performing the same song will not be allowed and this will be chosen on a first come first serve basis.

When at their designated company’s building, contestants should not interact with any trainees and should mostly keep themselves inside the practice room except for meals or bathroom breaks. Although a live audition will be part of the next episode, no muses will be allowed to be part of it this time around. In case it becomes possible in a future episode, information about it will added to the end of the post like this.

Any group chat made as a way for the muns of the contestants to interact with each other for this mission should have Mod Bianca (@luvseungjoon on twitter) added to it. She will be there to monitor everything, but any questions should be sent to the rkevent inbox in case someone else had the same question and so it won’t be seen as an advantage to your group.

To award everyone for making it this far, feel free to add +1 CHARISMA and +1 SHOWCASED SKILL to your points sheet! This includes members eliminated on this episode. Please link this post as verification. ]

[clairebeauchampfan]

Meeeow! Why are we obsessed with cats?

Claws out! Why pop culture clings to the crazy cat lady

Lucy Jones, The Guardian newspaper

Mon 16 Apr 2018 16.48 BST

For years, women with cats have been portrayed as lonely, sexless and eccentric – but why does this stereotype endure? And can millennial ailurophiles reclaim the purr-jorative?

Did you hear the story about the old woman from Ohio who was arrested for training her 65 cats to steal her neighbour’s stuff? The Columbus police department found thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery in the 83-year-old lady’s house and discovered she taught the cats to bring back “anything that shined”.

The news story went viral at the end of last year. How do you picture her? Unkempt hair, dressing gown and slippers, living alone, rarely leaving the house? The “crazy cat lady”, in other words. In fact, the story was fiction on a satirical website, but people bought it and shared the story thinking it was real.

The crazy cat lady is a common, recognisable trope in contemporary culture: think of Eleanor Abernathy in The Simpsons. After a promising career in medicine and law, she experiences burnout, starts drinking and gets a cat. Next minute, she’s talking gibberish, looking dishevelled and throwing her army of felines around. Then there’s Robert De Niro’s predictably bonkers elderly Christmas cat lady in a 2004 Saturday Night Live skit: she “had dreams and then she was kicked by a horse and now she has cats. The end!”

The younger version of the stereotype is usually associated with being single, kooky and weird; after her relationship with Carol Burnett comes to a head, 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon acquires a cat. “I can fit Emily Dickinson’s whole head in my mouth,” she tells a concerned Jack Donaghy. You can even buy a Crazy Cat Lady action figure online, complete with deranged, staring eyes.

To understand why this trope exists – and why it may be on its last legs – let’s scoot back to the middle ages and the earliest perceptions of women and their cats. Even before witch-hunts, cats had a bad rep in the western world – with associations with heretical sects and the devil. Medieval types conflated feline sex lives with lustful, sinful, female sexuality: cats were seen as “lecherous animals that actively wheedled the males on to sexual congress”, according to the historian James Serpell. Although, in recent pop culture, cat lady has evolved into shorthand for a lonely, sad, sexless woman. Too sexy, not sexy enough: can’t please ’em.

The earliest cat ladies in the west were, of course, witches. In Malleus Maleficarum, the landmark medieval treatise on witchcraft, a 13th-century folk story is recounted, whereby three witches turned themselves into cats, attacked a man on the street and accused him of assault in court, showing the marks on their bodies. From then on, witches were believed to have cats as familiars, or to change into felines at night.

Why would cats get such a satanic rep? We can only guess. Cats are mysterious. They come and go. Unlike dogs, they refuse to obey and be domesticated. They’re nocturnal. The Ancient Egyptians worshipped Bastet, a woman with a head of a cat. Although the Bible does not specifically mention cats, early Christian pilgrims were highly suspicious of other religions, and they deemed the black cat to be so demonic that being seen with one could be punishable by death.

Although the 18th century saw people beginning to question superstitions – such as the belief that a woman’s wart was a teat suckled by Satan – negative connotations of the relationship between cats and women remained. The Victorians switched witches for old-maid stereotypes – for single women without children: “Old maids and cats have long been proverbially associated together, and, rightly or wrongly, these creatures have been looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion and aversion by a large proportion of the human race,” wrote a journalist in the Dundee Courier in 1880. The Old Maid card game was often illustrated with a dour woman and her cat, the “friend of the friendless”, as it was described at the time. In the 1900s, anti-suffragette propaganda used images of cats to portray women as silly, useless, catty and ridiculous in their attempt to enter political life.

The inception of the “crazy” moniker is harder to pin down, but its connotations of hysteria are an old gender stereotype. Added to this, the extreme end of the modern “crazy cat lady” stereotype has more than a few cats, which is unusual. Eleanor Abernathy, for example, has cats dripping off her: she is, essentially, portrayed as a mentally ill, alcoholic, compulsive hoarder.

There may be some truth in the idea that animal hoarding is more common in women. A study in Brazil found that, while generalised hoarding disorder affects men and women equally, nearly three-quarters of animal hoarders were women. Since 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies compulsive hoarding as a psychiatric disorder, with animal hoarding as a subtype.

Another recent theory is to do with a parasite called toxoplasma gondii. This tiny critter infects rats and mice and changes their behaviour by, scientists believe, creating an attraction to cat urine, so it can wind up in the stomach of a cat, where it reproduces. It also infects between 30% and 60% cent of people. Scientists are exploring evidence that toxoplasmosis could create behavioural changes in people, leading to lots of excited articles wondering if the parasite is a clue to explaining the phenomenon of “crazy cat lady”. The parasite contains an enzyme that creates dopamine, which is associated with risky and impulsive behaviour, among other things, but so far the data is inconclusive.

But, really, the concept of the crazy cat lady tells us more about societal perceptions of women than anything else. It has long been a pejorative term and a device for transferring shame and judgment on women who challenged traditional roles, or were hard to domesticate and keep in line. Here is the co-creator of Batman, Bob Kane, explaining his creation of Cat Woman: “I felt that women were feline creatures and men were more like dogs. While dogs are faithful and friendly, cats are cool, detached and unreliable … cats are as hard to understand as women are,” he said. “You always need to keep women at arm’s length. We don’t want anyone taking over our souls, and women have a habit of doing that.”

But millennial ailurophiles have had enough. Over the last few years, there have been multivalent efforts to debunk the crazy cat lady stereotype and project a positive view of women and their cats. Pussy is striking back.

From glossy fashion magazines celebrating the feline-human relationship – Cat People, Puss Puss – to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry’s unashamed adoration of their feline pets, the stereotype is being recalibrated. CatCon Worldwide, a new conference celebrating cat culture, has, as its core value, the desire to “change the negative perception of the crazy cat lady and prove that it is possible to be hip, stylish, and have a cat”.

The book Cat Lady Chic (2012) offered elegant images of cat-owners Audrey Hepburn, Georgia O’Keeffe, Diana Ross and Zelda Fitzgerald as an antidote to the Eleanor Abernathy archetype. And Girls & Their Cats, a sophisticated series of photographs of women and their feline companions, was created by Brooklyn-based fashion photographer BriAnne Wills to help dismantle the stereotype.“It just wasn’t representative of any of the cat ladies I personally knew, who are all independent, cool, career-driven women who really love their cats,” she said. “Also, there are more than a million cats euthanised each year so if women (and men) are afraid to adopt because of negative stereotypes it definitely hurts cats in the long run.”

In the memorable short story Cat Person (2017), Kristen Roupenian inverts the cat lady trope by giving her male protagonist, Robert, a couple of pet cats. She employs the presence of Robert’s felines as a symbol that Margot uses to construct her image of him. “We decide that it means something that a person likes cats instead of dogs,” said Roupenian in an interview. But there is something sinister going on. Margot never sees the cats, and wonders if Robert has lied about them. So what is it about pretending to have cats that might endear Margot to him in a sexual setting? Is he using his cats to lure her in?

But perhaps the moment the crazy cat lady motif truly jumped the shark was with the song Buttload of Cats on an episode of the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend earlier this year. Rebecca Bunch walks herself down to the Lonely Lady Cat Store. “The smell is overwhelming inside / This is the future smell of my house / It’s the smell of my dreams that have died,” she sings. “When you’re a permanent bachelorette / It’s mandatory that you go out and get / A buttload of cats / Oh, yeah!”

The song made a mockery of the hysteria projected on women who own cats. So is the notion of the crazy cat lady over? Wills believes there is still work to be done to change perceptions, but she hopes that her photography project will help. “It is 2018,” she says, “and women are tired of defending themselves.” And their love for their cats.

AND I LOVE CATS TOO. ESPECIALLY SIAMESE (but my dog hates them) 

[wits-writing]

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 3 Ep 4: “Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Is Crazy” review

[My other Crazy Ex-Girlfriend reviews here]

When it was announced that music video and movie director Joseph Kahn was being brought in to do an episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend this season, I was hyped for what he had in store. No matter what you may think about the songs attached to them, his music videos always look fantastic. It’s rare for me to go into an individual episode of a series with high expectations, but this is the rare exception. Show creators Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna have managed to write an episode attached to Khan’s direction that changes everything.

I don’t say that lightly, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has never been a show that gets too comfortable in a status quo, but certain things have always been more stable than others. In the wake of everyone learning the truth about Rebecca’s past, they’re all forced to deal with their own dirty laundry and face the facts of their lives and consequences of actions that go all the way back to the show’s first episode.

[Full review under the cut]

The episode picks up immediately where the previous one left off with everyone in Rebecca’s life, specifically Paula, Valencia, Heather and Daryl, coming to her house to talk to her about what they learned from the files about her past (while she’s still being held in Nathaniel’s arms.) She rejects this hasty intervention on its face with her rejection of ever having people feel sorry for her rearing its ugly head, especially once Paula mentions a doctor Father Brah recommended for her. So instead of accepting any of their sincere attempts to connect with her and understand what she’s been through, she says the worst possible things she can to all of them. These are the sort of things it’s easy to imagine she’s thought to herself about the people in her life on various occasions but never dwelt too much on until this chance to use them as ammunition.

She tells Valencia that organizing the wedding at the end of last season to be like her dream wedding was pathetic. She also confesses that Paula was plotting with her to sabotage Valencia’s relationship with Josh before she broke up with him. Heather gets an earful about how lame it is that she was so dedicated to remaining a student that her community college had to essentially kick her out by forcing her into graduation. She tells Daryl that it’s ridiculous how someone as stupid as him is her boss and how he needs to take the hint that White Josh doesn’t want to raise a kid with him. When Nathaniel expresses confusion about what’s going on, Rebecca assumes that he was secretly in on this and helped entrap her into this intervention. Before she leaves Paula tries to stop her, she says that if she’s crazy Paula didn’t help with how much she assisted in the schemes to get with Josh. Especially with how she spent more time paying attention to that and treating Rebecca like a surrogate daughter than keeping track of her own family. After saying all these things that feel designed to intentionally alienate her from everyone in her life, she rushes out of her apartment.

After this is when the more cinematic visual style that defines the rest of the episode takes over, as Rebecca angrily marches down the streets of West Covina leaving dozens of messages for Josh blaming him for what she just went through. Eventually she ends up at a hostel where she meets a Danish tourist named Jarl, who fulfills the role of her confidant this episode since she can’t explain stuff to the people in her life after what she said to them. We see that she’s still defining her life based on unhealthy media-influenced views on what her roles in life can be. She doubles down on the “woman scorned” role she assigned for herself at the beginning of the season, demonstrated in a 007-style movie opening parody called “Scary Scary Sexy Lady.” This number contains various visual references to what happens later in the episode and further extrapolates on Rebecca’s idea that if she’s not the hero of her own romance, then she’ll be the scorned woman out for revenge.

This episode all ties back to how Rebecca struggling to define who she is without relating her life back to Josh Chan in some way. Her quest for revenge takes the form of absurd stalking, part of which involves being disguised as a shrub wandering around the backyard of his parents’ house. Josh doesn’t tell his parents any of what really happened between Rebecca and him, probably since they still seem to have a high opinion of her as someone who could’ve been a good influence on him. He’s ready to get his life back on track and move on from trying to become a priest to escape his guilt. This all comes into conflict as Rebecca’s multiple attempts at gaslighting him start to pile up; hanging his old teddy bear in his bedroom as an effigy, framing him for stealing from his job at the electronics store and finally leaving a threatening note about how she’s taken his mother somewhere, which turns out to be the local carnival.

During Rebecca’s worst downward spiral yet, we see how everyone in her life is looking for her and dealing with the things she had to say about them before running away. They start talking about if anything Rebecca said in her anger holds any merit about where they are in their lives. Daryl and White Josh talk about if WhiJo was serious about considering raising a baby together. That conversation eventually gets awkward to be around, so Hector ends up going to search with Heather. She’s taking the search less seriously than everyone else but as she starts talking to Hector, new feelings for Hector start to pop up. Meanwhile, Valencia asks Paula if all the stuff Rebecca said about them going after her was true. Paula confesses to this, but says that they are friends now against any expectations she ever had for either of them and they need to be there for Rebecca.

Their search provides them no leads as Paula, Valencia and Heather go back to Heather and Rebecca’s home, where they find out Nathaniel never left. He was waiting all night for Rebecca to come back, since he’s still trying to figure out what he should do about the feelings he has for her, going as far as conscripting George (who was in the middle of a date) to help him. Nathaniel’s lack of understanding in this situation is almost hard to watch as he’s under the idea that because he slept with Rebecca he knows her better than her closest friends.

As Paula is worrying about Rebecca, she ends up having Valencia and Heather tell her that they agree with Rebecca about how little attention she pays attention to her own family. The unhealthy nature of Paula’s obsession over Rebecca’s obsessions and how she deals with those has been a thread in the series since the start. Last season she started dealing with that by determining that she wouldn’t let herself be caught up in Rebecca’s relationship drama anymore, but she was still stuck in her habits that stem from viewing Rebecca as the daughter she never had. She’s stuck in her own patterns of self-destruction, even as she’s taken some steps towards getting out of them. Her story this episode culminates with called Rebecca’s mother, Naomi, about Rebecca’s decent and how she needs help, making a step towards letting go of viewing Rebecca as a daughter.

Rebecca’s revenge plot against Josh and how much of her self-worth she’s invested in him all ties around her view of life in the context of stories. She talks the whole episode about how this is “her movie” and how she gets to decide how it plays out. Her hostel roommate Jarl discusses this with her and says that if she’s the scorned woman out for revenge she’s the villain who dies in the end, which Rebecca dismisses since she’s still determined to think she has control over this narrative (symbolized in the joke opening/end credits that give most of the credit in “her movie” to herself.) He also notes how none of this is about Josh as much as it’s about how Rebecca resents that she could never be “normal” or “happy” the way she’s been taught to define those things, which Rebecca rejects saying it is all about Josh.

It’s when she’s at the carnival with Josh’s mom, hanging out and talking about how she regrets never getting to be her daughter-in-law, that reality starts to crash down on her. Josh confronts her about everything she’s been doing to him in a sequence where Rebecca’s determined to make him the bad guy in this situation, because in her mind someone must have that role. When she nearly lets herself fall into a ditch and Josh saves her, he tells her to leave him and his family alone. She’s left with nothing else to turn to except the bar where Greg used to do his “study drinking” and he coincidentally ends up butt dialing her. This accidental call emphasizes how she’s left without anyone in West Covina to fall back on, until she sees Greg’s dad, Marco, at the bar. He tells her that Greg has found love since he started attending Emory and has remained sober the whole time. The conversation goes on and it eventually leads to Rebecca’s lowest point yet, sleeping with her ex-boyfriend’s dad.

This lead to the episode’s big finale number sung by a cameo appearance from Josh Groban, “The End of the Movie.” Rebecca solemnly walks down the road reflecting on how it’s been a mistake to consider any of this in the context of a movie in the first place. The main refrain in the song is about how “life is a series of gradual revelations that occur over a period of time” and how things don’t resolve quickly the way we want. During this we also see brief glimpses of the other characters being left in positions of uncertainty; Daryl and White Josh don’t know where their relationship is going to go next, Nathaniel is still waiting for Rebecca to return to her place and Josh is struggling to put together a resume for a job search. There’s nothing left for them except to figure out their next step. That next step ends up finding Rebecca as she gets a call from Naomi when she gets back to the hostel. She tells her mother that she’s given up on this whole crazy idea and she’ll come home.

Between the directorial style, absurdity from Rebecca’s craziest actions yet and being brave enough to have one of the biggest downer endings of any episode in the series (which is saying something), “Josh’s Ex-Girlfriend Is Crazy” is the biggest technical achievement Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has ever done. It’s feels like a season finale worthy event used to close out the first third of this season. Wherever Rebecca’s journey goes next, she needs to find who she really is beyond Josh Chan. We’ll see how that turns out for her next time in “I Never Want to See Josh Again.”

[getoffthesoapbox]

[R:MotM] EPS 33~34 - The Thorn Bird Sings But Once

In under ten minutes, Hwa-Gun manages to steal the show one last time. 

As I expected last week, Hwa-Gun knew she was a goner once she took out the poppy field. In keeping with the tradition of sympathetic second leads, the writers take her out before she becomes corrupted like the false crown prince. A light has gone out from Ruler and I for one certainly find the story dimmer without her presence. But her death brings new changes, and I thought I’d explore her courageous last stand and the results within the men she left behind.

The Courage to Face Death with Dignity

There’s a story I heard in a song once (by F.I.R.) about a thorn bird who sings but once in her life. The song is of such quality and sweetness that the whole world stops to listen, and it reaches the heavens. In order to sing this song, she must willingly pierce her heart with a thorn, resulting in her own demise. But there’s no way the thorn bird wouldn’t have sung--her fate was to sing that last song, and that last song she was willing to die to sing.

When I saw Hwa-Gun in this episode, I immediately thought about that thorn bird. Hwa-Gun stands at her most courageous once she makes her decision to burn the poppy field. No longer torn between love and familial loyalty, she’s free at last to be the woman whose been buried deep within her--a woman who might very well have won the prince’s love, had she been free to express herself.

Hwa-Gun takes full responsibility for what she’s done even when her father begs her not to and tries to come up with ways to keep her alive. She’s decided to offer all of herself in service to her prince, and protecting him remains her first priority even as she faces her end alone. 

When her grandfather accuses her father of negligence, she moves to protect him, refusing to hide behind him any longer. Even slimy Jo Tae-Ho tries to save her by deflecting responsibility onto the crown prince, informing Dae Mok that not only is the crown prince still alive, but he’s the one who burned the field down. Hwa-Gun, enraged that her grandfather now knows about the crown prince’s survival, draws Dae Mok’s ire back to her by claiming responsibility for the burning.

At any point, she could have hidden behind her father or her men or even run away, but she didn’t. She held firm, and she accepted the consequences of her actions. She clearly knows her grandfather well enough to know that he’ll never let her live after this, but it no longer matters--she’s struck him to the heart, and both she and he know it. 

The Thorn Bird Defeats The Dragon

Dae Mok and Hwa-Gun remove themselves to the watchtower, away from Hwa-Gun’s hovering father, with Jo Tae-Ho in tow as witness. It is here that they have their final stand off, and it becomes clear the world could not bear two of them at one time--they’re too alike as people and as such one had to go. 

What’s interesting about this scene is that Hwa-Gun clearly doesn’t regret a thing she did. She struck her blow, and she struck it with the full knowledge of what was the inevitable result. 

It’s actually Dae Mok who’s the most affected, the most distraught, over the situation. He clearly cares about his granddaughter, and he’s conflicted over what he has to do. He tries one last time to reach her, in a grandfatherly way--did she know what the Pyunsoo Group meant to him? 

Hwa-Gun, with cool grace, replies that it meant to him what the crown prince means to her--something more precious than life itself. Had she answered in any other way, she might have lived. He might have been able to spare her. But she answered in this manner, and after such an answer, there was only one solution--she had to be destroyed. The two of them will never see eye to eye, and Dae Mok has sacrificed too much to keep the Pyunsoo Group in power. Not even his granddaughter is worth more to him at this point.

Dae Mok asks Hwa-Gun if she has anything she wants to say, and she asks him to tell her father that she’s sorry. It’s not that she’s actually sorry about what she’s done; she’s sorry about the effects she knows it will have on her father. Throughout this entire story, she’s been torn between her loyalties to her beloved father and the crown prince. In burning the poppy field, she’s turned her back on her father despite still loving him with all her heart. 

Dae Mok orders Jo Tae-Ho to stab Hwa-Gun. She closes her eyes with quiet acceptance, a woman who has faced her demise with courage and is at peace with her decision. Jo Tae-Ho is incapable of stabbing her--for a slimy weasel, he has some morals when he actually has a relationship with someone. Dae Mok is left to kill her himself, and the killing of her strengthens her and those she loves, and weakens Dae Mok.

With the final blow, the first chink in Dae Mok’s armor appears, setting the stage for the crown prince to rend him to pieces before the end of the story. With Hwa-Gun’s sacrifice, the stage is now set for Dae Mok’s fall. He sacrificed the last remnant of his humanity when he killed his own future--without Hwa-Gun, there is no future for the Pyunsoo Group. The legacy will die with Dae Mok, an old man with no heirs other than his useless son. By choosing to destroy Hwa-Gun, Dae Mok has destroyed himself--but the death will be a slow one, eating him from the inside out, until the crown prince taking him down will come as a relief.

Dae Mok begins to walk around like a man in a daze. He can barely function, he can barely plan. He gets a bit of light back into him with the hit list proposal, but for the most part he’s now a ghost of a person. He may have killed Hwa-Gun for the sake of the Pyunsoo Group and his own ego, but her death haunts him permanently. He will probably not shake it until his own death. 

In the end, Hwa-Gun wins in the game against her grandfather. The aftershocks of her actions in the three men she loves best will be the first stepping stones toward her dream--that her crown prince take his rightful place, free of the Pyunsoo Group--being fulfilled.

The Strength of a Father’s Love

I never had the opportunity to say it, but Hwa-Gun’s father, Woo-Jae, is my second favorite character in the show. He’s a complete mess of a person--a miserable excuse of a coward who failed to actualize himself and free himself from the shadow of a controlling and overbearing father. He never ventured out into the world to make a life for himself, nor did he ever find his own path. Instead, he clung to his father’s coattails, despite the fact that leading the Pyunsoo Group was never something that would come naturally to him.

For all his many faults, he has one virtue that has shone brightly throughout the story--his love for his daughter. She is his number one priority, and while he may dote on her and spoil her, he is always true and devoted and loving and supportive of her. He has defended her at every turn in the story, even though he is not a brave man. 

That’s why it was so heart breaking to see him tonight. Instead of attacking his daughter for what she’s done to their enterprise, he begins planning ways to save her. Maybe they can talk to her grandfather, or better, she can run away. Or he’ll take responsibility and she’ll say nothing. His whole heart is bent on saving her from what he feels is a terrible mistake she’s made, not understanding the sacrifice she’s willingly chosen to make. 

When Dae Mok comes upon them and starts berating him, Woo-Jae never once tells the truth, despite shaking in his boots and falling to his knees. He does hide behind Hwa-Gun after she interjects between him and Dae Mok, but that has more to do with his inability to stand up to more forceful personalities than any lack of love for his daughter. He hovers anxiously below the watch tower while she speaks with Dae Mok, clearly hoping they can work something out, wanting to interfere.

Though Hwa-Gun dies thinking of her prince, it’s her daddy’s arms which cradle her in her final moments. Her death effects a change within her father, a change which will likely have longterm ramifications for the Pyunsoo Group and her grandfather--her father at last grows a spine.

When Dae Mok walks by, for the first time (probably in his life), Woo-Jae calls him a monster. With the last of his connections taken from him, Woo-Jae now has nothing to lose, and it is here at the end that he finally sees what’s important and what he should have stood up to protect long ago. 

After taking his leave of Hwa-Gun’s body, Woo-Jae faces down Dae Mok, probably also for the first time in his life. Dae Mok tries to justify his actions, but Woo-Jae won’t hear anything of it--he admits his intense disappointment in Dae Mok’s choice, that he’d hoped Dae Mok would prioritize family over the Pyunsoo Group just once. Then he cuts Dae Mok to the quick with a scathing remark about how Dae Mok always talked big about needing the Pyunsoo Group to protect the family, but that now he has nothing to protect, highlighting how far Dae Mok has fallen from his goal--he now serves the power for the sake of power, not his former goal.

Woo-Jae prophetically says Dae Mok will lose everything he treasures and will die lonely and tragically. And then, for the first time in his life, he walks away, leaving Dae Mok speechless. (The music in this scene is perfectly timed too, fufu.) 

Ironically, with her death, Hwa-Gun at last freed her father from the underworld he’d been trapped within. She freed him to see the world for what it is and to finally take steps toward living the truth within himself, whatever that truth is. Her father at last grows a spine, and says the things he should have said long before. Another chink in Dae Mok’s armer appears, leaving him bereft of all of the people he had been supposedly fighting for. 

Passing the Torch

In the last episode, Hwa-Gun said a few interesting things to Gon which I thought at the time were prophetic (and ultimately were). She told him to protect the crown prince, because protecting the crown prince is the same as protecting herself. She also told him to see the crown prince to safety, and then to return to her. 

Gon, ever faithful, fulfills her requests. He sees the crown prince and his posse to safety then hightails it back to Hwa-Gun’s side. Unfortunately, as Hwa-Gun surely knew when she dispatched him on his quest, he returns to find she is dead.

It’s here that we see Gon probably loved her, which many viewers suspected and secretly shipped I’m sure. As her servant, he couldn’t do anything about his feelings, of course, but that doesn’t make them any less real. 

He finds her laid out on a pallet, and her father sitting with her. Her father acknowledges Gon’s pain, and comments that it seems he doesn’t know how to cry. This isn’t true, of course--Gon’s just a very private man, and holds his pain within himself until he is alone.

He can’t even bring himself to touch her, even though this is his last opportunity and she’s not even in her body anymore. This is how much he values her and respects her. As he gazes upon her, he remembers what she’s said to him and the directive she gave him--a directive that likely temporarily stops him from revenge killing Dae Mok (as she may have suspected) by placing a superior directive to live and defend her love. If the crown prince lives, she also will metaphorically live on, because the crown prince is the man she died to protect. 

He accepts her directive, and declares that until the end of his days, he will protect the crown prince as she requested. Death flags raised for this poor guy, but hopefully he’ll get to help take down Dae Mok for her in the end. ;)

The Queen’s Command

Though the crown prince doesn’t have much of a connection to Hwa-Gun here at the end of her life, her death still has incredible ramifications for him as well.

Gon reports back to the crown prince that Hwa-Gun is dead, which distresses him greatly, because he’s a good man and he appreciated Hwa-Gun as an ally. At the time, he’s been struggling with whether or not he has a right to challenge the false crown prince and regain the throne--as the son of a traitor, that makes him illegitimate in his own eyes.

Despite all the other voices being raised up, calling him to take on the challenge--even his beloved Ga-Eun, he’s still hesitant to take the plunge. After hearing that Hwa-Gun died at the hands of Dae Mok, the crown prince asks her metaphorically what he should do to repay her kindness. 

It is here that Gon gives the crown prince her directive--regain the throne. She sacrificed herself to enable him to return to the throne. It’s his duty to see this through to the end, because if not, her sacrifice will be wasted. (And probably Gon would kill him, but shhh.) 

And so Hwa-Gun’s last blow to her grandfather is in strengthening the crown prince’s resolve and providing him the last push forward to take back the throne for himself. Though she will never be his queen, she still gave him a queen’s directive, and he is duty bound to follow it, for she paid for it in blood.

Some final thoughts, since this’ll probably be my last post on Ruler unless a surprise happens at this point.

Hwa-Gun will be sorely missed--she’s the light of the show, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve enjoyed her plotline immensely, and I’m sad to see it’s over so close to the end. I’m glad she got to go with dignity, though. I’m equally glad to see her death has so many ramifications for her grandfather’s downfall and the crown prince’s rise. 

The acting in this episode was superb. Dae Mok’s actor nailed his character’s inner conflict and the haggard expression from being haunted by his actions. Gon’s actor, too, did such a fantastic job--in the final scene with the crown prince, he looks so defeated and exhausted, while in the scene with Hwa-Gun’s body, he perfectly captures the sorrow and the love and the loyalty the character has. Hwa-Gun’s father also is a huge highlight this episode. I hope we haven’t seen the last of him; I’d be sad to not be able to see him find at least some happiness. I know he is a horribly compromised person, but even so, I’d like him to learn from his mistakes and learn how to live forthrightly.

It is a shame that the crown prince had so little reaction to Hwa-Gun’s death, but he never was invested in her and that was quite clear from the beginning. It was all her one-sided love, which is what ultimately makes her end so tragic. Still, I love that it’s her sacrifice that propels his goal forward, despite the pep talk from Ga-Eun. It’s a fitting resolution to a love that could never bloom. 

(Speaking of Ga-Eun, her character really stepped up the game this episode. Maybe she’ll get to shine finally now that her rival is gone. ;p)

When all’s said and done, I truly enjoyed Hwa-Gun’s character, and she’s one of the things I love about Ruler. She’s set the ending up to be a wild ride, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results of her sacrifice reverberating throughout the cast as they push forward. Who’s ultimately going to get to kill Dae Mok, it’ll be fun to see. I’m betting on Gon right now; our goodie two shoes crown prince doesn’t have enough invested to do the dirty work. ;) His opponent is the false crown prince anyway. He’s got to take down what he put up, after all. He needs to take responsibility for leaving Lee Sun alone for as long as he did, and allowing him to become corrupt while he ran around freely.

I probably won’t touch Ruler again unless something really significant happens. Hwa-Gun was really the only thing I wanted to write about, fufu. Still, it’s been a great ride, and I’m looking forward to enjoying it to the end. =)

[theycallme-tunathot]

Ahhhhhhh I started cheese in the trap (from your mention with habaek) and it's got all my favorites in one drama!!!!! Have any more recommendations?

As far as Kdramas go, I’m still super new and finding shows to watch. Here is a rundown of some amazing ones that I’ve found. 

I’m omitting some, just because I feel like everyone talks about them and they’re so popular you might’ve heard of them or seen them. Shows like Goblin: the Lonely and Great God, Strongwoman Do Bong Soon, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bokjoo, Coffee Prince. If you haven’t watched any of these, they are definitely worth watching.

Age of Youth (Hello My Twenties)

So many good things to say about this show. Mainly, it deals with five girls who live in a shared home. I know that I can pinpoint all these characters in my own life and I even was able to say “Wow, I’m her!” Super funny, moments of genuine tears and over all so much fun. The penis party episode is probably the best.

Descendants of the Sun

I typically don’t watch military-related anything. It’s a theme that’s so overused in American cinema that I’m really over it. BUT, this is about Korean military and the first ten minutes sold it. Idk, this was seriously the biggest surprise for me and I was pleased to go from one episode to the next.

Scarlet Heart: Ryeo

Besides having an insanely attractive cast, Baekhyun and IU are just...amazing. Simply put, this was the third drama I ever watched and I remember staying up until 5 a.m. watching this show every weekend. And I don’t binge watch anything. But I binged this. This drama is so good that my mother couldn’t sleep one night and she came out to the living room while I was watching it and she stayed up with me until 5 a.m. just to watch with me. Soon, she got addicted and the rest is history. It has such beautifully fleshed out characters, Baekhyun was amazing which led me to doing research on him and finding out he was in EXO. Also, my baby Ji Soo is in this and he kills every scene he’s in. Best scene by far is the water ritual.

The Heirs

I debated adding this since it’s such a popular drama, BUT I’ve watched my mom watch this show in its entirety at least six times since we first started it back in May. Also, I just really love the cast. They make their characters so lovable. Even with a dick character like Youngdo, Kim Woobin does so much with him and it’s just...touching. Also, there’s a song in here by Homme called “Love is the Moment” and let me tell you...heartstrings will be pulled.

Legend of the Blue Sea

Alright, another Lee Minho show, but my mom, sister and I are huge fans of him. This show was a surprise because I was almost certain this would be a bit too cartoonish for me, but it’s so interesting. It deals with a guy who scams to make a living and a mermaid crossing paths. This holds my second favorite female leads. I also really enjoyed exploring Lee Minho’s character background. AND THE TWISTS! Oh my god the twists. BONUS: Park Jinyoung of GOT7 is in this and you get to see him get kissed and be surprised about it, cry and get into a fight. Over all, an enjoyable watch.

She was Pretty

So let’s talk about this drama. While the first six episodes are painful to get through mainly because I found it so hard to sympathize with the leading woman (she’s so loud and incompetent and I really understood why almost everyone was annoyed with her), it pays off to be patient with this show. Not to mention, this has Siwon of Super Junior in it as well as beautiful man Park Seojoon. The lead actress, Hwang Jungeum, redeems herself really well and helps tell a very relatable story about how insecurities can be a crippling thing.

Hwarang

Now, in no way am I saying anyone should watch a drama just because the cast is handsome or good-looking or anything like that. BUT rarely does a cast look this fucking good? It’s almost angering at times. Not only do we have the beautiful Choi Minho from SHINee, but V from BTS is in this as well as Park Seojoon and the man my mom will marry me off to eventually, Park Hyungsik (he played CEO Ahn in Strongwoman Do Bong Soon). The cast is just too good looking not to at least stop and think about a little watch right? Anyway, it’s got a really interesting plot with pretty interesting characters, the only problem is the show focuses too much on the least interesting characters Dog-Bird and the sister of his dead friend, Aro. That, and the plot kind of drags in the middle and there are frustrating roadblocks (at least in my opinion) where it’s obvious and almost natural to give the king-in-hiding a shot to show his leadership skills and kind of shine in really subtle ways but instead, they use it as a chance to bolster Dog-Bird and remind you how good he is at practically everything. The ending might be worth the frustration, but these handsome faces DEFINITELY make following this show to the bitter end worth it, in my opinion.

Fight My Way

Okay, so this has to be my third-favorite drama I’ve seen thus far. It’s got so much heart and I’m surprised it ran on Korean television, to be honest. It challenges a lot of the messages and lessons that Koreans are taught and encouraged to follow if they want to lead happy, productive lives. It almost felt more American with some of the messages of following dreams and not caring what others think. Some of the situations the characters are found in are INCREDIBLY TOO REAL. There’s a scene in particular where Dongman (played by Park Seojoon...yes another drama with him) is being cursed and yelled at in the middle of a Seoul street in broad daylight by his boss. He’s saying all kinds of berating things to him while people just passed. When Aera, the leading woman, catches a woman stealing and is made to do something HUMILIATING just because the woman she caught is a high-roller customer. I’ve SEEN these kinds of situations happen in my own life. Don’t sleep on this drama. Also, the most romantic scene I think I’ve ever seen in a kdrama is what’s happening in the gif above. Like, I cried myself when he promised to hide her while she cried. As a girl who hates to cry, even when alone in her room, this is probably the most caring thing any guy can do for me. I also found myself in love with the storyline for Juman and Seoulhui, the two other leading characters in this.

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #91: Late Bloomer.

Written: 4/9/2017                                                                            Music Week Song Listened to Before Writing: LCD Soundsystem - Us V Them

When Deborah was young, her mother, a former soap opera actress who spent most of her time drinking wine in the den and stewing in anger over being killed off and out of work, wold tell Deborah that she was “too ugly to be worth anyone’s time” or that she was “too ugly to even play an unattractive person on television, and the only way [she] could get an acting job would be to take part in an art house horror movie”. Deborah never wanted to act, mainly since she hated her mother and wanted to be as different as possible, but her mother was constantly suspicious of her, paranoid that her little girl would become a bigger star than she had been if she tried, a blow to her ego that she would be unable to handle. The girl never knew that this was the reason her mother was so cruel to her, but if she knew it probably wouldn’t make things better, the words would still cut deep. Although, its possible she wouldn’t have believed that she was so unbearably unattractive, its possible that she would have pursued an acting career, just to spite her mother, but instead her self esteem was as low as could be, and she mostly tried to hide away during the years of adolescence, spending school breaks locked up in bathroom stalls, making sure to sit in the back of every class, always suspicious of boys who would show an interest in her, spending most of her free time at home, under her blankets, wishing that she was dead.

She wasn’t unattractive, but she wasn’t attractive either, it was as if she was just as middle of the road as somebody could look, completely inoffensive, safe. Some guys would think of her as “somebody you would only try to hook up with when you were drunk, but who you also wouldn’t regret in the morning”. These neutral looks, that were difficult to form an actual opinion on, was a reason why it was so easy for her to believe her mother, since she wasn’t pretty enough to call bullshit. Her looks were also a reason that her neighbor, from several houses down, a young man named Arty, was secretly in love with her. Now, Arty was definitely attractive enough to be considered out of Deborah’s league, and he was very likable and social, but he had a performance issue with attractive girls, who seemed to throw themselves at him, because they put too much pressure on him. Arty had to wait until puberty struck to become attractive, but he was never able to grow out of his unattractive mindset, making attractive girls almost threatening to him, he couldn’t understand that they were attracted to him as much as he was attracted to them, so he felt a need to have to do better than normal, and would always stress himself out to the point where he was flaccid and crying about how it was too much for him. Deborah, on the other hand, seemed to be no such challenge for him, and seemed likely to be pressure free.

Maternal insults clouded the girl’s judgment, so even as she stared at the neighbor boy through her second story bedroom window, willing to do anything to be with him, she never realized that he had felt the same way about her. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he tried to talk to her, or make excuses for them to hang out, one on one, she would never fully listen, and would instead hear her own mother’s words. During their senior year, he literally told her, “Hey, some girls have been strongly hinting that they want me to ask them to prom, but I wanted to see if you would like to go with me instead. I know I’ve been pestering you a lot about going on dates, but I just wanted to make sure that I asked one last time, the old college try as my old man calls it. If you say no, I guess I’ll take the hint and leave you alone.”

Instead, she heard, “Look, I feel bad that you had to be born looking like the doctor accidentally stepped on your face when you slid out of your mother, so I wanted to ask you to prom as charity. Don’t expect anything real to come out of this, because you’ll mostly be my date in title alone. And, right when we arrive at the dance, I’m going to abandon you to hangout with my real friends, since I’m really just using you so that I can feel good about myself. You don’t think you can compare to the girls I get, right? I hope you wouldn’t be so insane to actually think that you would have a chance with me, because I swear that would be something I would have nightmares about if I ever thought of you, but I only remembered that you existed, right now, because I just happened to bump into you. I don’t even know your fucking name. If somebody asked me, ‘Hey, do you know blah blah blah?’ I would ask who the hell they’re talking about, and then I’d say that they were probably some worthless, fucked up looking person, because that name made me throw up in my mouth alone. When I heard that name, I- hey, don’t fucking look me in the eyes, that’s only going to make me fucking angry. Now where I before you made me want to put your face in a lawn mower, just so it would be easier to look at. Oh yeah, when I would hear the name, I bet I would smell something awful, like an egg salad sandwich that was left in a hot, metal shed for an entire Summer. Now get out of my way before I do us all a favor and push you into traffic.” A lot of that interpretation came hours, even days, after they talked, mostly existing in her imagination, because it seemed like she must have been crazy to think that he might actually had been interested in her, and she had to try to set the record straight.

Years later, when she and the guy were both in college, Deborah had, in a fit of intense depression, decided to drink half a bottle of gin and drive her car into a tree, in an attempt to kill herself. It seemed to her that so many people at her school were happy, were exploring their social lives, finding themselves, and she just felt like she was ruining everyone’s fun, she felt as if she was a dysfunctional human, broken inside and out, and that it would be better for her to die already, just so nobody would have to deal with her bullshit. However, the crash hadn’t killed her, she was too drunk to realize when the impact happened, was just limp enough to survive the impact, even if the shattered gin bottle (that was in her hand) and a protruding tree branch had mangled her face beyond recognition. When she was first told about this she was worried that it was going to cause her to become more deformed than ever, requiring her to actually have to hide her face whenever she would dare to go outside, but when the plastic surgeons had done their part, and the bandages came off, she was shocked to learn that she looked outrageously beautiful.

For the first couple days she wondered if she had died during one of the procedures, wondered if this was heaven instead of real life, but then she figured that if heaven was real, then there would have to be a god, and no god would be cruel enough to give her the face that she had known for a majority of her life.

When Deborah was finally out of the hospital, where she spent her recovery time staring in a mirror and making faces at herself, she decided that the first thing she would have to do would be to rub her new looks in on her mother, who didn’t bother to visit the girl since the suicide attempt. When she arrived at her childhood home, she found her mother drunk, unable to even get up from the living room couch, watching old episodes of the show she used to be on, watching the younger version of herself that had been unfairly exiled (the reason the gave her, which was the real reason, was that she was a terrible person to be around, and it seemed like she was going out of her way to put down and anger the entire cast, crew, producers, and even some of the fans, making her impossible to work with, but she just believed that one of her female co-stars was sleeping with a producer, and just wanted to get the mother out of the way, so that she could steal her spot on the show). After noticing the girl who was standing over her, the mother only asked, “Who the hell are you?”

“Its me, your daughter.”

“Bullshit.”

“Remember that accident I got in, the one that you never cared about. Remember when I was in the hospital for months and you never once visited me? Well, I have a new face, I’m still your daughter.”

Deborah knew exactly what she had wanted her mother to say, which would have been something along the lines of, “Wow, you are so beautiful now. I am so glad to have such a stunning daughter, and now I will give you all of the love that I was unable to give before. Today will be the first day of a real mother daughter relationship, and I’m deeply sorry that I never visited you in the hospital, I just was worried that I would have to see your fucked up face once again. Can you forgive me for the way I treated you? Even though it was only natural for me to have been rough on you, because of your unfortunate appearance, I would understand if you could not forgive me for it.”

This is what her mother actually said, “You look twice as worse as before. Now move to the side, you’re blocking the television.”

Finally, Deborah had realized that her mother was just a hateful person, and that the woman would call her hideous, no matter what. Then she had to make sure, and went into her old room to look at some old photographs, the few that she actually kept, believing that she didn’t deserve to be photographed, and, for the first time, she hadn’t seen an ugly girl, she only saw an average girl. When something broke inside of her, and her temper began to swell, she couldn’t tell what had upset her, and it was either the fact that her mother had been abusive, had lied to her for her entire life, putting in so much effort to make her life miserable, or the fact that she was stupid enough to believe any of the lies (her opinion), stupid enough to be willing to believe that she was much, much worse than she actually was. In the heat of the moment, the source of the rage wasn’t the most important issue, the rage itself was, and she could only think about how she wanted to make the woman suffer, so she kicked her door open, and flew down the stairs to do something permanent and awful.

However, after the newly gorgeous girl had gone upstairs, her mother believed that she would have no chance to become a star again (she clung to denial in the same way she clung to her bottle), that her daughter was going to become such an impressive star, that no matter what the mother did, she would always be in her daughter’s shadow. Instead of being her own person, she would only be Deborah’s mother, thats all people would call her, not even using her first name. Things were starting to seem, for the woman, like it was all apart of some ghastly nightmare, this had been her greatest fear, her worst case scenario, and it had finally come true. So, no longer wanting to live in this fucked up world, not wanting to have to stand next to her stunning daughter, looking like a shriveled up crone in comparison, not wanting to have to see her daughter bask in the sunlight, she decided that it was time to take the hard-way-out (what her father, who shot himself in the head, would call suicide, believing that it took a lot of effort to actively take your own life, while the easy-way-out was just waiting for death to come on its own). So, when Deborah had reached the bottom of the stairs, and re-entered the living room, wanting to break something, she had found her mother on the floor, near the couch, with a knife in her hand, and an open throat that was drooling blood and staining the tan carpet.

Taking this as a final insult, Deborah decided to just kick her mother for a while, hoping that she would get some satisfaction out of it, but the woman was practically dead, causing it to be as satisfying as kicking a table or a fridge, instead of kicking the woman who had screwed with her head for so many years. That night, Deborah had cried from anger for the first time in her life.

A morning shower turned out to be all she needed to clear her head, and figure out what she had to do to get revenge on the woman. It was a two step plan, which included leaving the corpse to rot in the house for weeks, maybe even months, until somebody would find it based off of the smell, to make the horrible woman’s death seem pathetic in the extent that anyone who heard of it would think, “What an awful way to die, unloved, uncared for, nobody even missing your company, except for the bugs that eat you inside and out. I would never want to be as depressing as that, I never want to be like her.” The second part involved her finally seducing her old high school flame, Arty, and getting him to marry her, so that she could have a happy and fulfilling life, something the bitch never would have wanted her to have in the first place. Before she left to carry out the second part of the plan, she decided to wrap her mother’s body in blankets and some air fresheners she found around the house, just to buy some time before the body was found.

Finding Arty turned out to be surprisingly easy, he was visiting his parent’s home since it was Spring Break, mainly to hide away from all of the party scenes and attractive girls that would stress him out. When she knocked on the door to the house, Arty was also the first person to answer the door, but he didn’t recognize her. “I’m sorry, who are you?” he asked.

“We used to go to school together, I just lived a couple houses down. My name is Deborah.”

“Oh yeah,” surprised and disappointed, “I remember you. You sure have grown or whatever.” There had been plenty of occasions where he had thought of her when he was in college, but now that he saw the new her, all of his interest had dissipated, she was just another girl who he couldn’t handle, another girl who would put him at risk of high blood pressure and self hatred.

“So, I was wondering, are you, uh, single?” Suddenly, she realized that she had no idea how flirting was supposed to work, “Do you want to, like, I’m single too, if you get what I’m trying to say. And I was wondering if we, well if you’re single, if we could be single together somewhere else? Like, two single people, out eating dinner or, like watching a movie,” bringing her hands into the mix, but having no idea what to do with them, “and we could like combine our single energies, and eventually we could you know, like, make a date?” Arty was confused, but he was too sweaty and nervous to be able to respond to this beautiful train wreck. “Like, we put our, we could make a date, you know? You and me? We could…” Uncomfortable since he hadn’t interrupted her, which she desperately wanted, but also was unsure if this was a part of the dating process or not, “We could put our hands together, hold hands, and.. Do you like my face?” No response. “Do you like my new face? I like your face, I would like it if you liked my face, and we could, uh, we could put our good faces together and make a kiss? We could enjoy the comforts of rubbing our faces against each other-” Then, after being scared out of his mind, Arty worked up enough courage to slam the door in her face.

It was the first time she had attempted anything like that, and it was the first time she actually had to handle rejection. Sure, she dealt with it in her mind before, but she mainly never actually tried, just so she could avoid the real feeling, which she then realized felt way worse than she imagined it to feel. It was unbearable, especially since she couldn’t understand why, wasn’t she irresistible now?

Spending the rest of the day at her house, ignoring her dead mother, standing around in her bedroom, posing in her closet that had mirrors on its doors, she tried to find just a single flaw in her new appearance, but it seemed that if she put herself in the most unflattering position she could think of, she was still stunning. In fact, she had a hard time looking away from herself, it was as if she was beginning to become addicted to her own appearance, not wanting to look away to answer the door, to use the bathroom, to get something to eat or drink, just taking in the view of her beauty. The more she loved herself, the less she understood why her old crush had treated her in that cruel manner, why he treated her just like… And then she started to understand, as she stared into her own eyes, that no matter what he would have rejected her, that he was no better than her rotten, rotting mother. With that realization, her anger had come back, stronger than ever, but she was conflicted. Should she give him the treatment that she desperately wanted to give her mother, or did she still want to be with him, and find a way to convince him to love her, since she still loved him? It was a tough decision, and never once was she able to realize that she had actually rejected him often years ago, or that personality might have been playing a key role in the situation (it wasn’t), that he could have simply been gay, or generally just unable to be attracted to her (he wasn’t), or that, which was the most important of all, it didn’t matter how much confidence she had in herself, or how strongly she loved him, because in the end it was his call to chose who he wanted to date, and even though he was rude about it, he had given her his answer and she would have to respect it, move on, and find somebody who wants to be with her.

Deborah decided that she should probably both take out her anger on him, and then force him to love her, killing two birds with one stone.

One of the reasons she was disconnected from the way relationships work, other than her self-isolation and the low self worth caused by her mother, was the fact that she had made sure to stay away from anything romance related, whether it was romantic movies, books, shows, songs, or even anything that dealt with dating or relationships in general, since she believed that it would only make her feel terrible on the inside, because it would expose her to something she could never have, would allow her to know what she was missing out on.

For hours she watched his house from her bedroom window, clutching her mother’s tazer (used for self defense) in her right hand, waiting for any sign of Arty leaving the house. Around eight at night he finally went out of the garage door and threw away a trash bag, then decided to wait outside to smoke a cigarette, and before he had even smoked half of it down, the gate into the backyard swung open, a figure moved towards him, he felt a sharp pain, dropped to the ground, and wasn’t in control of his body, which decided that it wanted to shake and twitch, no matter how often he told it not to. At some point he pissed himself, which embarrassed him. Somebody was dragging him, but he couldn’t react until he was a couple houses away from his own, tried to get up, and his attacker, the now-gorgeous girl from down the street, told him, “If you try to run I’m going to zap your dick.” The electrical sounds emitting from the tazer convinced him that she wasn’t fucking around, so he let her march him into her house, which smelt overwhelmingly of air fresheners. “Keep going, turn left, here we are.”

He couldn’t believe it. Right in front of him was a table set up for two, with candles and rose petals all over it. ‘What the fuck’ is what he wanted to say, but he opted for the more polite, “What the hell?”

“Its a date, sit down. You’re going to love dinner, we’re going to have a good time, trust me.”

Arty knew the whole situation was insane, so he decided to make a run for it, fuck the tazer, but he wasn’t quick enough, and all over again he had felt pain and dropped to the ground. “Why do you have to be such an asshole? You know I’m gorgeous, right? You know that I’m irresistible, so what’s your problem? Why are you going out of your way to ruin this night? Can’t you see how much effort I’m going through to make this work, can’t you see how much I am clearly in love with you? Why are you trying to resist so much, why can’t you just look into my face, my beautiful face, and allow yourself to just allow my looks to do their job, just let them wash over you, drown you, just let it happen. Let it happen you son of a bitch.”

He tried to get to his feet, but she now held up a hammer, right next to his face, “I will bash your god damned brains in if I can’t have you.” Then she brought it down on his left shoulder, dislodging it and causing him to cry out. “Now, get in that fucking chair, and I’m going to make you something nice.” Deciding to stop resisting, he shakily made his way to the table, hoping that there wasn’t much to it. “I’m going to have to tie your legs together, but you can understand why I would want to do that.” When she began to tie his legs, he looked down at her and became afraid, not of the situation, but afraid of the fact that the longer he stared at her, the more he was comfortable with what was happening. Well, he felt that way until she said, “And after dinner, we are going to watch a movie together, because thats what people do on dates. And after that, you are going to take my virginity, and if you refuse to do any of that, I’m going to slit your throat for being a hateful piece of shit.”

He knew that he was a dead man.

[a-skyfull-of-starz]

A picture is worth a thousand words

@aspergerhero gave me the following prompt: For your Tumblr Collections on AO3 : Can you do a Tae x Gin with the prompts « photo » and « camera », and, well, this happened.  It probably isn’t what you had in mind, so yeah, sorry about that. <_> (Sorry also that it’s so late, I was being repatriated last week, and that took up a lot of my time).  Also also, this is only part one.  I will write more and post more, once I’ve figured out where I’m going with this.

.....

“Well well, this is very indulgent, isn’t it?” Gintoki poked a pinkie into his ear.  “We already have a manga, an anime and two live-action movies, and now we’re going to have Tumblr blog post written about us too? You sure you don’t want to do something a little more relevant?  Like Dragon B*ll Z?”  He withdrew the finger, examined whatever was stuck to the tip and blew it away.  “You haven’t watched it yet?”  The finger now found its way into a nostril.  “Let me tell you, it has influenced our culture to such an extent, old grannies are saying ‘remember the time before G*ku?’. The lead has fabulous hair and loves food…a lot like me I guess.  And no other show would have you watch fifteen episodes to see the outcome of a battle.”  His hand was now inserted into his kimono as he scratched his chest.  “You still want to write about us?  Won’t your readers who are expecting a M*ss Effect post or a Shingeki no Ky*jin post be disappointed with reading about Gintama? Oh, well if you have a small following, I suppose that is exactly on par for Gintama.  But I can’t promise that you won’t be disappointed by what you end up writing.  Ah, you’re used to that too?  Are you sure you aren’t actually a Gintama writer?  They’re always disappointed.”

“Good morning,” a voice called from inside the flat.

“That’ll be our straight man,” Gintoki said.  “Come on, it’s time to get to work.”

It was indeed Shinpachi at the front door.  “Good morning Gin-san,” Shinpachi said, in the process of removing his sandals.

“Good morning,” Gintoki said.  “I see you brought a guest.  To what do we owe this pleasure, Onee-san?”

“You’re older than me,” Tae grumbled.

“Right, so I guess I’m the Onii-san in this scenario,” Gintoki agreed.

Tae gave a grim smile and Gintoki supressed a shiver.  “Oi Four-Eyes, did you bring my sukonbu?” Kagura called from the living room, where she was eating her fourth bowl of rice.

“If you don’t have the money to buy sukonbu, what makes you think I do?” Shinpachi sighed, flopping onto the couch opposite the younger girl.

“I’ll kill you in your sleep,” Kagura said mildly.

“Now Kagura, you know young ladies shouldn’t make threats like that,” Tae said, still smiling.  “If you do, it won’t be a surprise when it happens.”

“Right, sorry Boss,” Kagura said.  “I won’t kill you in your sleep, Shinpachi.”  She gave Tae an exaggerated wink and mouthed ‘I so will.’  Tae gave her a giant thumbs up in return.

“You’re my sister, shouldn’t you be protecting me?” Shinpachi squawked.

“Nahnah, your sister likes me better,” Kagura gloated.

Shinpachi slumped.  “Yes, but you don’t have to say it,” he said.

“Don’t worry Patsuan, since the dawn of time, older sisters have killed their younger brothers,” Gintoki said comfortingly.  “That’s why it’s better to be an only child.”

“It’s not as if I had a lot of choice in the matter,” Shinpachi said grumpily.  “Say, Gin-san, who are all these people?”

“Your older sister Shimura Tae, Kagura the Yato that adopted us, and the giant dog named Sadaharu which was also adopted by Kagura,” Gintoki said.  “My name is Sakata Gintoki, leader of the Yorozuya.  The word ‘yorozuya’ means jack-of-all-trades or odd jobs.  Basically, I will do anything for money.”

“I don’t mean like that and you don’t need to give so much exposition in one go,” Shinpachi said.  “We are being read, no?  And this isn’t a manga, the readers can’t exactly see us.”

“Tumblr blog post,” Gintoki explained, flopping into his seat behind his desk.  “Some chick who named herself after a Coldplay song received a prompt and she decided to write this.”

“This is in English; will Westerners understand our humour?” Shinpachi wondered.

“Probably not the references, but they have straight-man-funny-man humour as well,” Gintoki said, once again digging in his nose.  “Just look at the Two Ronnies.”

“That isn’t exactly the pinnacle of good Western humour,” Shinpachi said.

“Can we please get started?” Kagura asked loudly.  “Edo’s Next Top Model is on in two hours.”

“Right,” Shinpachi said. “My sister is actually here as a client.”

Gintoki appeared to be raising an eyebrow.  “That’s surprising,” he said.  “I thought you hated me.”

“Oh I do,” Tae answered.  “That doesn’t mean you haven’t been occasionally useful to me.”

“Compliment me some more,” Gintoki said.  “So how can we help?”

Tae reached into her kimono and pulled out a photograph.  She handed it to Gintoki.  It was a photo of her, taken apparently from a long distance (judging by the grainy quality) and without her consent (she appeared to be mid-sneeze).

“And?” Gintoki asked. “I’ve always known you’re too unattractive to be taken as a bride.”

“This was left on my doorstep this morning,” Tae said, clamping a hand down hard on Gintoki’s shoulder.  “And if you don’t stop insulting me, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”

“Ow ok I’m sorry stop,” Gintoki winced.  Tae released her grip.  “I don’t see what’s so odd about this,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.  “We all know you have a stalker.”

“The Gorilla didn’t do this,” Tae said.

“And you’re so sure of this because…?” Gintoki asked.

“It’s not his style,” Tae said.  “Yes, he may break into my house, hide under my kotatsu, steal my underwear and harass me at work, but-“

“Yes I see, taking photos of you from a distance and then leaving them on your doorstep is totally beneath him,” Gintoki finished sarcastically.

“Maybe it’s a different gorilla,” Kagura suggested.

“Don’t be stupid, there’s no way we could get away with repeating the same joke over and over again,” Gintoki said.

“I don’t see why not, it’s gotten us this far,” Shinpachi said reasonably.  “Heck, it’s what made the Goons famous.”

“Stop name-dropping ancient British comedy groups, no one is going to understand those references,” Gintoki said.  “Wait, why am I being the straight man here?  Shinpachi, you need to get your act together.”

“Ah, forgive me,” Shinpachi said shamefacedly.

“Well, there’s only one thing for it,” Gintoki said.  “Before we discount the Gorilla completely, we ought to clear him from our list of suspects.  Onee-san, you’d better be aware that this is going to cost you.”

“Don’t I get a family discount?” Tae asked.  “Also, you’re still older than me.”

“You’re not my sister, are you?” Gintoki asked.  “Come on, if we’re clever, this can be dragged out into a multi-chapter affair.”

....

And it will be dragged out into a multi-chapter affair, given that I have no clue where I’m going with this (sorry Gin-san).  But anyways, I hope you guys enjoy this.  Look forward to the next one, where the Yorozuya and Tae go to the Shinsengumi to confront Kondou, and Tae gets another threatening photo (probably called Hell Hath no Fury like a Woman Scorned).  Kono bangumi wa goran no suponsa no teikyou de okurishimasu.

[timeflies1007-blog]

Doctor Who Reviews by a Female Doctor, Season 4, p. 2

The Doctor’s Daughter: This isn’t the worst episode of the reboot, but it might be the most emotionally unsatisfying. Producing a biological relative for the Doctor by putting his hand in a machine for a few seconds undercuts his grief about the loss of his people without really any payoff—his lackluster relationship with his daughter just doesn’t do enough to compensate for the notion that apparently getting Time Lords back into the world is a lot easier than we thought. There are a couple of nice moments in which the Doctor refers to his grief about his Time Lord family, but his sense of loneliness—usually taken very seriously by the show—is undermined more often than it is accentuated here.

           I’m not really sure why Martha is in this episode, as she doesn’t want to be there and there’s very little for her to do. She forms sort of a nice bond with one of the fish creatures, but the Hath are mostly so dull that Martha’s forced to wander around in a weird, personality-less void in which fish with legs stand around breathing. She’s not really missing out on much while she’s a captive of the Hath, as the human civilization is also entirely without interest. There’s a lot of talk about war, and then there’s a brief creation myth, and then one of the humans claims that peace and genocide are the same thing so that the Doctor can yell about violence and Jenny can point out how violent he is. We’ve had an awful lot of this theme (the Doctor thinks he is above violence! but also the Doctor is violent!) in the past couple of episodes, which would be fine if it were going anywhere interesting but it’s basically not. The plot twist—in which it is revealed that the war has been going on for only a matter of days—is genuinely pretty surprising, but it’s so difficult to invest in these characters or this world that it doesn’t mean very much.  

           Jenny herself is likeable enough, but is one of the clearest foray into Mary Sue territory that the show has ever done. She’s born perky, quick-witted, and intensely athletic, and can easily understand other people’s motives and characteristics in spite of having only just sprung into existence. Other talents include asking lots of questions so that we get exposition about stuff that we already know, doing back flips through laser beams, and flirting. The actress (Peter Davison’s daughter and Tennant’s future wife) does as much as she can with the material, and she really does have a very charming screen presence, but the script confines her so thoroughly to the “attractive, physically gifted woman” box that there’s not much for her to work with. Given her origins, it’s not surprising that her connection to the Doctor comes across as forced and artificial, but I just never buy any real emotional connection between them.

           I’m even more annoyed by the “death” of the daughter, as her return to life is weirdly emotionless and doesn’t follow any of what we know about Time Lord regeneration. This non-death also lands us with one of the worst-ever Doctor speeches. Tennant generally does grief and anger very well, but his shouty speech directed at the warring figures comes across as absolutely moronic. The Doctor has a tendency to tell other people what to do, which is somewhat justified by his years of experience in dealing with conflict, but it’s a lot more palatable when it’s tempered by his awareness of his own mistakes and problems. Here, he pretty straightforwardly tells the people of this planet to model their society around their consciousness of how much better than them he is, and it’s just absolutely insufferable. I do think that his claims that he “never would” engage in their destructive behavior are deliberate irony on the part of the show, in the sense that this season does give us fairly consistent reminders that the Doctor is always trying to distance himself from violence without ever quite succeeding. That makes sense of this scene’s role in the larger arc of the season, but it doesn’t explain why the character himself has so little self-awareness or so much willingness to lie to himself that he can bring himself to say nonsense like this.

           Donna is loveable as usual here, and I particularly like her insistence that the Doctor take seriously his connection to his daughter. She also describes the feeling of stepping off the TARDIS onto a new place as being like “swallowing a hamster,” which is pretty fabulous. (I could do without the Doctor sending a mechanical mouse toy to distract a guard because Donna’s “wiles” aren’t enough, though.) She just doesn’t play a large enough role in this story to save it from the cheap emotional foundation; the entire concept of “we need the Doctor to feel feelings, preferably loudly and angrily, let’s put a blonde in” is so tired by this point that it’s difficult to watch. C/C-

The Unicorn and the Wasp: And we’re back to good episodes for a while! This is easy to forget in light of the bigger, flashier episodes to come this season, but it’s very fun. Donna’s having a great time pretending to be a 1920s socialite, and the episode gives both Tate and Tennant a lot of opportunity to demonstrate their marvelous comedic timing. Meeting Agatha Christie at a country house when someone has been murdered is a similar enough idea to “The Unquiet Dead” and “The Shakespeare Code” that they actually have Donna make a joke about it, but it’s a premise worth repeating. I do think that Agatha Christie would have written a much better mystery than this one, as none of the twists are particularly effective and the resolution is moderately entertaining but unremarkable. Still, having a giant wasp attack a bunch of rich white people (aka WASPs) is a good joke, and watching the characters try to figure out what’s going on is fun even in the absence of a compelling mystery.

           Christie herself is generally pretty well-written, but among the major historical figures the show has portrayed, she’s not one of my favorites. Part of the problem is that the actress gets sort of upstaged by some of the other guest stars. The not-yet-famous Felicity Jones is a delight as a jewel thief, but the wonderful Felicity Kendal (one of the stars of the great 1970s comedy The Good Life) steals the show. I don’t think she’s really supposed to, as she’s a fairly minor character whose function is to have a dark secret that informs the mystery, but I find myself watching her rather than Agatha Christie when they’re on screen together. Nonetheless, the idea that the events of this episode are the reason why Christie disappeared for a few days gives it a nice sense of importance, and the revelation that her books are perpetual bestsellers is not quite as moving as the similar moment in “The Unquiet Dead” but is still quite lovely.

           The heart of this story is not the character herself, really, but rather the whimsical adventures that ensue from the Vespiform’s absorption of her writing. A couple of serious moments exist, including Donna’s willingness to kill the Vespiform when the Doctor refuses, but for the most part this episode is all about the comedy. There are silly flashbacks, exaggerated plot twists, and at one point there’s a lengthy comedic bit about the Doctor cleansing poison from his system. There are also lots of accidental references to books that Christie hasn’t written yet, and Donna unsuccessfully tries to get herself into a copyright page. Nothing really remarkable happens here, but it’s just so bubbly and charming that the episode is an absolute joy to watch. A-/B+

Silence in the Library: Even if the story itself had been boring, I would have really enjoyed this episode just for the beautiful, terrifying library in which it takes place. I love libraries, and if I were in charge of the show we’d probably have a library setting about once a season. Happily, this library is home to a compelling story, with a spooky new set of monsters and a marvelous debut for River Song.

           River is definitely the highlight of this two-parter, and Alex Kingston is immediately fantastic as the doomed time-traveler. It’s a bold move to introduce a new character, heavily imply that she’s the Doctor’s wife, suggest that there are lots more adventures with her in the Doctor’s future, and then kill her by the end of the two-episode story. I can’t think of many other characters on the show who have been introduced with quite so much fanfare, and so it’s a testament to Kingston’s performance that the emotional impact of the character exceeds the impressiveness of the plot to which she is attached. She has immediate chemistry with the Doctor, and her distress at having met a version of the Doctor who doesn’t know her unfolds beautifully across the episode. In spite of this distress, though, there’s just such a tremendous sense of enjoyment and energy in everything she does, as if she can’t help relishing the challenge and the adrenaline in spite of everything that’s going wrong. The rest of her crew aren’t quite as interesting, and Miss Evangelista’s brainlessness is a bit overplayed, although I do like the brief friendship she strikes up with Donna. This two-parter is basically about the chemistry between River and the Doctor, though, and even when the supporting cast isn’t quite as good, these two absolutely sparkle.  

           The Vashta Nerada aren’t quite as memorable to me as the Gas Mask Child or the Angels, but they are solidly scary monsters, and the fact that we see the gnawed skeletons that they produce but never see the monsters themselves definitely adds to the effect. The statues with human faces don’t really do much for me, and even when we see Donna’s face at the end of the episode I’m mostly unimpressed. I’m much more interested in the ghostly remnants of consciousness that linger in those the Vashta Nerada have killed—the notion of digitally-saved consciousness is creepy in itself, but hearing Proper Dave and Miss Evangelista continuing to speak even after their deaths is absolutely harrowing. Between the dangers that lie in the shadows and the terror of listening to the dead continue to speak, there are lots of properly terrifying moments.

           The one major problem that I have with this episode is that I don’t really find the computer universe to be particularly interesting. I like the concept of having “saved” people to a computer, but I spend most of the scenes with the little girl and Dr. Moon just waiting to get back to the library. To be fair, the use of her television is pretty cool, as is the fact that she has a picture of a blond woman and a wolf on her wall, but I find the character herself to be pretty irritating. There are enough things that don’t work for me here that I don’t find this story to be quite as compelling as “Blink” or “The Empty Child,” but the gorgeous setting and the terrific introduction of River are enough to make this one of the stronger episodes of the season. A/A-

Forest of the Dead: Unreal universes clearly fascinate Moffat, who will return to this trope a number of times in later episodes. This two-parter is his first foray into a story like this, which gives it a sense of originality that diminishes as we see the concept repeat in subsequent seasons, but I would argue that this fake universe—which becomes more prevalent here than it was in the previous episode—is nowhere near as interesting as the ones that appear later on in episodes like “Last Christmas” and “Extremis” or Simon Nye’s “Amy’s Choice.” It is genuinely sad to see Donna realize that her children aren’t real, and it’s even sadder that she never finds out that her husband in the fake universe was in fact an actual person, but the whole place just says Fake Sci-Fi Universe so blatantly that I never find any interest in it as an alternate reality. It also feels oddly uncreative; I get that the other reality was initially created for Cal’s benefit, and that might explain the domestic focus, but the thoroughly unadventurous world isn’t very exciting and doesn’t seem completely suitable as a happily-ever-after for someone as energetic as Donna. Miss Evangelista, who experienced an error in translation that increased her IQ but also resulted in physical disfigurement, is a striking presence but even she doesn’t really hold my interest. (It’s also unfortunate that the script isn’t as clear as it could be about the relationship between the two changes that she experienced; I don’t think she really says anything that implies a causal relationship between the two, but a slightly vague sentence structure makes it possible to read this as a claim that her decreased attractiveness made possible her increased intelligence, which would definitely have been worth avoiding.)            

Because I don’t really enjoy the world to which Donna and others have been “saved,” this episode only really works for me when we’re in the library itself. Fortunately, there are a number of good scenes in the library and then one absolutely sublime one, as River sacrifices herself so that the Doctor can live to make all of the memories that she’s already had with him. It’s an absolutely stunning piece of writing, acting, and musical underscoring, and River’s death is so moving that it’s difficult to believe that this is only her second episode. I’m not sure what gets to me the most in this scene; it might be River telling the Doctor “you watch us run,” as she thinks of the time together that’s still to come for him, or it might be the Doctor’s acknowledgment that there’s only one reason why he would ever have told her his name, or it might be some of the best music Murray Gold’s ever composed, but in retrospect, I think what makes me saddest is the fact that one of the last things she hears is the Doctor unknowingly saying her mother’s favorite expression. She’s quick to shut down the idea that time can be rewritten in this case, but if you watch this after seeing later seasons, the words allow the spirit of Amy Pond to make a brief, heartbreaking appearance in her daughter’s final moments.

           River’s connection to the Doctor works marvelously well throughout the episode, and the notion that he’s like seeing a photograph of someone from before you knew them gives us a lovely way into her feelings. The Doctor takes an embarrassingly long time to get the connection between books and trees, but he does do some pretty stellar thinking as he figures out what it means to have “saved” all four thousand people. (He figures this out in the middle of Anita trying to have a meaningful last conversation, which isn’t his kindest moment, but it’s still impressive.) The Vashta Nerada and their creepy shadows continue to be very frightening, but the resolution—in which the Doctor intimidates them into leaving everyone alone by telling them to look him up in the library’s books—is not the most satisfying end to the main plot. The final moments, though, in which he “saves” River to the library computer, make for a much stronger conclusion. River is one of the many characters to only sort-of die, and my lack of interest in the computer universe means that I’m not that excited about the continued existence of her consciousness within it. However, the Doctor’s realization of why he gave her his screwdriver and his rush to “save” her is so compellingly done that I’m very moved by the scene in spite of the minor issues that I have with it.

           As in the first part, I don’t find this episode quite as brilliant as some of Moffat’s other early episodes, like “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” and “Blink.” The Vashta Nerada are solid villains, and the library is a gorgeous setting, but this episode is really only sensational to me when River is on screen. Still, even with some pieces that I don’t especially like, this episode contains enough brilliant moments to make it a very strong story overall. A/A-