#there are trainees I really like

[velo-cats]

Icewing

[gunsatthaphan]

"I just haven't found the right person for me."

[pigglepiephi]

As someone who was in a long distance relationship for a few years throughout university, I think I need to start turning my brain off when ‘going away to study’ results in stopping ALL COMMUNICATION for no good reason in a BL!!

Why does this amicable conversation then result in zero contact for 5 years?! You two were the good communication couple remember! 😂🤦‍♀️

Guys, you could have still phoned, text and remained friends while you were apart. You didn’t need to be this dramatic and go cold turkey on each other for half a decade!! 😂😂

Jane & Ryan not getting together properly until a few years down the line when they were both in the same place to commit to the relationship is fine, but the ‘no communication whilst separated’ trope?? Nope, I will never get it! 🤷‍♀️

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

THE TRAINEE Episode 10

[lilidawnonthemoon]

[peachblossomdrama]

RYAN || JANE me missing you

[namtanlovesfilm]

I legit think the trainee is one of the best written gmmtv shows PERIOD. like yeah it doesn't have the most innovative or out-of-this-world plot, but frankly it's very rare for the writing to be this tight & well executed. it stays true to the characters while allowing them growth & imperfection and I love all the parallels in this series. it's so so so good!!!

[bonefall]

How do you feel about "character joins bloodclan" aus? Im curious about ur thoughts since youre really in tune with the themes of the series but personally i just hate them bc its ALWAYS aimed at 'unfortunate' characters and always ALWAYS ignores the fact that bloodclan is a horrible place in-canon and that they're just reflavoring the abuse and trauma the characters qent through to be more emo or goth themed.

Ravenpaw is ALWAYS a prime target for this and its like. Great. You took the character being abused by their mentor figure and is being harmed from the violent culture the clan has generated... and giving them an EMO mentor figure who will inevitably abuse them and harm them as a result of the violent culture the emo clan has generated. Sasha is another one I've noticed- you've put the woman who lost her kit and is struggling to survive with the others while being controlled and abused by someone who sees her as an outsider (aka alone and easy to isolate), and are gonna put her in a faction who specifically separates kin from one another to easily control them and who have canonically tried murdering those who stick with their family. What was gained here.

Like i know bloodclan is revamped in ur au (thank god for it) but in canon bloodclan is HORRIBLE. People ignore that in favor of putting their favs into bloodclan bc bloodclan is cool and killed tigerstar that one time bc of revenge. Ravenpaw becomes Scourge AUS are SO SO SO much worse bc of this too- sure you manage to point out how scourge and raven has roughly similar stories in their youth but you could also do something interesting and make an au where raven and scourge are FOILS and do a firestar/scourge thing, while pointing this comparison out!! Instead you just went "Ravenpaw emo now and is sad about beating up Firestar his friend" and basically kept everything the same.

Sorry im basically venting here but i just dont like how people forget that scourge in canon does NOT look out for the 'little guy', he's a murderer and abuser who wants to keep his subjects afraid and separated so that he alone has power over them. Bloodclan is not the cool strong goth group, its the group where two cats slaughter eachother over a piece of twoleg scraps, only for the survivor to die bc the food was poisonous to cats and no one knew bc theres no cohesive group that can pass that knowledge around. its a fucking horrible place to live. Im not saying that you cant do interesting "character in bloodclan" aus (a Rusty who lives in bloodclan who STILL wants to do good but is shaped by the horrid reality of bloodclan would be fun imo) but its so often used with already traumatized characters as a 'solution' or 'fix-it with some emotional issues involved' that i just foam at the mouth and howl like a rabid animal on principle at this point.

Hmm... I think for me, it doesn't tend to read that way for me when the fandom makes AUs for it. I'm coming at BloodClan from a point of really deep critique and frustration.

BloodClan's not a REAL place, and what that means is, every speck of how horrible it was is a choice the writers made to justify its treatment. It was something they actively decided, because, BloodClan was a tool to suddenly invalidate the previous 5 books of TPB so that the series could comfortably conclude there was no need to upset the status quo.

If you haven't read it before, I recommend this post I made on how Darkest Hour Is A Personal Disappointment, but anyway;

We spend a whole series on how Fireheart challenges a broken society, because he is different. Their xenophobia, how isolationism and glory get people killed, the way that Tigerstar's greatest asset is how respected he is... these are bad things. They're things that Fireheart fights for several books.

But then, in the LAST book, in the 11th inning, they introduce BloodClan. They're just evil. They have no nuance. The narrative bends over backwards to stress that this group of evil foreigners LOVES murder, hates friendship, and doesn't believe in our good god.

Suddenly, the Clan cats have to be EXTRA xenophobic and glorious to kill these filthy, murderous foreign hordes. Clan cat belief in their good god makes them stronger than the bloodthirsty barbarians. Firestar kills Scourge and we can feel happy and triumphant about it, when Tigerstar was killed a few chapters ago and given a tragic sendoff.

So, I encourage you to step back from an emotional response to how Filthy and Murderous this group was portrayed, and look at it as a writing choice.

When Tigerstar, known cat-racist and murderer of mixed-race people, is killed by Scourge in self-defense, he is grieved by Firestar and commended for his "good qualities". (and then they retconned in that it was actually secretly revenge all along, not just self defense, so this killing is extra evil)

When Scourge is killed, Firestar just thinks about how it's cool he's not going to heaven, and how all of the previously ferocious BloodClan warriors look so inferior to the forest Clans.

And so, with all that said,

I'm 100% in favor of how the fandom widely looks at this, says, "fuck that" and just makes them the Cool Goth Group. I'd argue pretty strongly that the least nuanced idea of that is still infinitely better than canon.

There was nothing there. It was literally just Xenophobia-Is-JustifiedClan. They literally hated love and friendship and banned families so that Clan cats would look good in comparison. Banned families. You don't get this level of stupid evil from anything else but an 80s cartoon.

Maybe I just don't see the AUs you tend to see (I curate my Tumblr experience very well and generally hang out in more adult-oriented spaces, I can imagine a place like Amino being mostly kids who tend to be immature. Edgelord Angstpiddle is just a normal part of growing up), but every project I see that gives me a glimpse of BloodClan Ravenpaws and Sashas come with such tweaks already assumed.

Like, these are examples I've seen,

They'll have Raven be involved with the formation of BloodClan

Scourge will actually be a character with some pity and mercy, like how he was in Rise of Scourge when his abusive siblings begged him for food, and he fed them before sending them away.

no ban on love and friendship. Lol. Lmao, even.

More of the social structure will be based around acquiring food for people in a 'harsh' environment, leading to that battle, instead of just Evil Foreign Greed (which canon!scourge only had after being almost killed by tigerstar, because he said "actually, in light of new information that you are a murderer, i need to reconsider our deal.")

BloodClan will be overhauled completely. I've seen this a few ways. Connecting them to SkyClan, or the Oakstar raids on Chelford, or even as a positive entity; a surprise ally. (VERY common with BloodClan Ravenpaw AUs I've seen).

Anyways... (Shrug), I dunno dude, it doesn't bother me that much.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Throughout the Trainee, I’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop—for some big reveal about an ultimate problem at the company or for someone to be fired who had gone too far—but the show is too mature, it has to much compassion towards all of its characters (and towards people’s humanity in general) to do that.

I saw so many instances of mistakes happening, some more obvious, some subtle, some key to the plot, some seemingly background fodder, some addressed by the characters explicitly, and some that the characters or the show just seemed to observe without commenting on. Some of these mistakes didn’t amount to anything, like the broken hard drive, and some of them caused real physical harm to people in the show, like the cosmetic mix-up during testing. I presumed there was a kind of accumulation happening. I thought that the mistakes were adding up to something, a bigger conclusion about this work environment, or a commentary on work environments and society at large. The Trainee, however, refuses to construct a larger theory about work and life’s problems. It refuses to condemn anyone or any one thing to that extent. Each mistake is its own problem. And each person is capable of contributing to it and finding a way to move past it.

You see, what Jane says here is the core theme of the show:

(GIF by @ryansjane )

Don’t assume; ask questions; talk it out with the recognition that everyone is coming to the table with different backgrounds, skills, areas of knowledge, flaws, fears, and hopes. They will not be perfect, and neither do you have to be. The Trainee wants its characters and its audience to find the courage, like Ryan and Jane, Ba Mhee and Tae, or the lovely moments between Pah and all his coworkers this week, to speak up with curiosity and openness.

Then, the next step it shows so wonderfully is how you can appreciate what complexities you contributed to the situation. You can acknowledge and apologize for your role once you understand it—not because you are wrong or right, but because acknowledgement and sorries are ways to show other people that you didn’t find a way to help avoid the problem either that time. It’s important to note, as I see some discourse rising up about who apologizes in the conversations during the show, that Thai and Broader Asian cultures in general have a VERY different culture around apologies, humility, and shame so that those feelings and their related gestures are used to build connection and positive feelings, compared to negative shame in Western culture; book rec if your interested in that topic and more—Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions.

The show doesn’t have some moral argument to say about a systemic HR issue at this office. It also doesn’t depict its office as devoid of deeply troubling systemic issues like sexual harassment. Its recommendation to address the issues, though, is not through stricter enforcement of rules or the perfecting of one’s behavior. It’s to communicate when the time is right on with self-respect and compassion.

There is just so much love and care in every element of the Trainee, and I already know it’s gonna be a comfort show to return to again and again in the future because it’s intricately produced tone and its story just release the tangled knots of perfectionism in me without discouraging me from my desire to grow and improve. You can just tell it’s done by people who love their jobs and their work environment. How rare to see a workplace in media be simultaneously so realistic in its depiction and still so positive about the overall experience 🌻

[wich]

not like i've watched many of his roles but off as jane just hit different

[doublel27]

I think one of my favorite things about The Trainee, aside from the slow reveal of who the characters all really are underneath our initial impressions of them, is how realistic it feels of training someone to go from a competitive education setting to a collaborative work space.

As an educator, admittedly in the US, there’s such a competitive nature for scores and individual achievement and there’s not a lot of room for failure. There’s a lot of reasons for helping students to develop an independent wealth of knowledge to pull on for problem solving and critical thinking based on brain science: the more information/patterns stored in your long term memory the more space you have for complex problem solving.

But also, with such an individualistic set up for achievement with self-reliance as a base, it leads to some of the issues we’ve seen the interns grappling with in terms of not being honest when problems come up or not asking a question of how to solve things, or if the decisions they’re making are the right ones. Especially as the assumption is often amongst the group that failure and mistakes mean they’re out of the intern experience. And the general response from the adults has been: you’re learning, this was a mistake but we are a team and we need to work together.

And I just really love seeing that modeled in a television show, how effective teamwork is built and how it’s a skill that has to be learned/taught alongside the technical skills of the job. Clearly that’s not how all workplaces are, but it’s going a long way to show why the production company works well even when problems arise.

[pigglepiephi]

I liked the first episode of The Trainee a lot! 😊👍

It’s always good when the work of an office-based show actually matters, so it was great to get the set up on all the different departments within the production house, and get a glimpse of the different dynamics and personalities they have.

I also like the realistic tone the show has. Serious but with some good bits of levity and comedy - I love the use of the windows error sound effect!

I also like that it looks like it’s going to be a slow burn for Jane and Ryan given how they have started - I love a slow burn if done well 🤞

You can also really feel the gap in age, authority and professional experience between Jane and Ryan - it rings much more true than say Gun and Cher in ABAAB for example - and I like that it feels realistic. Will The Trainee properly explore the massive HR violation their relationship will likely be? I guess we’ll wait and see!

Anyway, on first impressions I’m really interested to see how the story develops!

[mydemonsyourangels]

idk what aspect it is specifically about the trainee but this show is scratching an itch in my brain that i wasn’t even aware of

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

So this week we got the mentors relaxing around their interns and blurring the lines as well as some nice juxtaposition between Jane/Ryan and Judy/Ba-Mhee(/Tae).

Next week it looks like shit's going to hit the fan quite spectacularly and re-draw the lines we saw dissolving today.

[italianpersonwithashippersheart]

I hate that the BL world doesn't fucking know the meaning of long distance relationships.

They always do this. The couple breaks up for years, stay apart, never talk. And then get back together two or three scenes later.

The only show that haver made me forigive this stupid trope is UWMA and that's only because it was a couple of months and never actually change state or officially broke up just took a small break to slow down.

Every other instance of this trope always sours series for me. I hate it. It made it super hard to rewatch Ghost House Ghost Home and it's now souring the Trainee.

Even if it's good writing, even if it's understandable in context. I just hate this trope.

[halflifebutawesome]

something I’ve only recently just realized and have been thinking about a lot is that like. Even if Gordon didn’t cause the resonance cascade, he probably would’ve been sent to Xen anyways . Probably to his death