#this is from Andy’s insta story btw!

[anxietyrobot]

[dies] [comes back] [dies again]

[obsessive-bear-walking]

I saw a guy on instagram ages ago asking people "Jew or not Jew" about something can't remember exactly what options he was giving but it was ages ago and 90% of my insta is Jewish content. But anyway. At this rate, you could make an entire game show out of whether or not my celebrity crushes/smushes from childhood were Jewish??

I'm not really the kind of person to look into actors so I tend to know next to nothing about actors I like or band members unless a friend of mine is hyperfixated and info dumps on me, I can like 8 years with a celeb crush and never even know their real name.

There are two separate reasons I know this:

1. I was going down a list of Jewish celebrities once, and I was like, "Why are so many of these guys just people I had crushes on, age 7?" I used to watch SNL half for the laughs and half to see Andy Sandberg. Who I found out was Jewish waaayyy later.

2. Sometimes I Google my more obscure crushes like Craig Manning from Degrassi to see what they're doing now and their wiki will be like "btw they're Jewish".

A lot of them have the stereotype "amazing dark hair" (which is my type I will confess that) but even the guys that arent??? Like GENE WILDER???? Or the actor who played Hugh Normus from Wizards of Waverly??? (Hugh also played an offensive Jewish character on Glee as well but). I had no idea Gene Wilder was Jewish until a few years after he passed.

(This actor isn't Jewish but the character is and this felt like the funniest picture to use)

This can be added to a lot of things in my childhood that were suspiciously Jewish so I just find this really... Interesting.

Anyway I can't wait to be Jewish and I love learning about stuff in my life that was super Jewish as a kid. I actually just found out that in one of my old stories wrote when I was like 14 and it had a ton of (poorly researched) Jewish characters. Which means I now had like 3 Jewish books I was writing as a kid.

[quercus-queer]

BA’s Reckoning

Yes, I stole this title from the Sporkful podcast. You should check it out!

So just a reminder the whole thing that kicked this off was when Tammie Teclemariam tweeted the photo of Rapoport in brown face (yes its brown face its a purposeful caricature of Puerto Rican ppl, his girlfriend called him her papi in the caption as well) saying he should simply write the article on Puerto Rican food then (the issue was Illyanna Maisonet, a Puerto Rican food writer, got rejected rudely by Rapo for her pitch to write about Puerto Rican food) Which brings up the larger issue of BA being racist and not covering any other dishes besides Eurocentric ones, and the ones that aren't Eurocentric are almost always either whitewashed or done by white people which is what happened with Masionet’s article (this is where Amanda Shapiro and Meryl Rothstein come in).

This led to a zoom meeting where Rapo made a shitty apology leading Sohla El-Waylly’s instagram posts, where she condemns Rapo, talks about her 50k salary despite having 15 years of restaurant experience (She ran a fucking restaurant and 50k in NYC is pathetic), being hired to help white editors, and not being paid for ANY of her video appearances (none of the poc you see in videos have been compensated including the zoom videos). Which has led to many people at BA being exposed for being terrible (Conde Nast is the parent company and owns BA, Vogue, Architectural Digest, Allure, Glamour, Wired, Epicurious,Teen Vogue among other things... also take note how most of these have consistently been criticized for their racism or “race problems”)

ANYWAY here’s a general guide of what each BA person has done, this is in no way comprehensive, feel free to investigate on your own, always fact check and form your own opinions!

Adam Rapoport: Brown face, not paying his non-white employees for their video appearances, treating his assistant Ryan Walker-Hartshorn (a black woman) like shit (she was working overtime and was barely making rent with what he was paying her), he's sexist (see every video with Molly) and racist (mixing up Sohla and Priya Krishna and never apologizing) and more!

Check out the Business Insider piece, twitter (Tammie’s, Christina Chaey’s, and Priya’s), Sohla’s podcast and interviews, and someone made a compilation of Rapo being condescending I think

Matt Duckor: Disgusting, racist, homophobic, sexist all around terrible person, probably the most obviously terrible of the bunch (see Rick Martinez’s insta plus Duckor’s own tweets), strung along Sohla for months saying that her pay was “stuck in legal” so that she would keep appearing in videos, gave Sohla a contract when this stuff first started happening to try and shut her up, HE is the one deciding pay for everyone at BA and was the one not paying poc for video appearances.

Check out Rick’s Insta, Twitter for Duckor’s tweets (screenshots bc he deleted his account)

Carla Lalli Music: First off, ppl are pointing out she was condescending af to a lot of her guests on her show (except for the white ones). The racism at BA did not start nor stop with Adam Rapoport and guess who was editor in chief before him? Yup, Mrs. Carla Lalli Music! Necessary amendment: Carla was the food director NOT the editor in chief and she is currently an editor at large... still a powerful position though and I think the sentiment still stands. She had a pretty pathetic twitter thread about how she should’ve done more but was focused on the sexism/focusing on women, strange because she also sent that shitty email to two women along with Delany and Brad after the two of them, Delany, and Brad were talking in the kitchen, telling them not to enter the kitchen without permission (not enforced on Brad or Delany obviously, only the two women who happen to not be white) I misread the article, Brad was a part of the convo, he did NOT receive the email, and didn't respond to the articles request for comment.. he fucking works in the test kitchen, i’m an idiot and that's on me

Business insider and her twitter 

Alex Delany: I have a post with the screenshots of the confederate flag cake he made himself because he felt the “need to express some southern heritage in cake form. Such a glorious cake...” for his friend moving to South Carolina, the lovely vine with the classic “F*g is a bundle of sticks joke” also have a post discussing that, he’s wildly underqualified for DRINKS editor and overpaid, also his girlfriend is Allegra Lorenzotti whose mother Eva Lorenzotti, is in Jeffery Epstein’s black book which is concerning (though who knows maybe Delany is dating a different wealthy Allegralo), also those sexist tweets

I have screenshots from Tumblr, ppl have the vine on twitter along with the sexist tweets (he deleted his twitter and Tumblr btw)

Andy Baraghani: There are screenshots of Alyse Whitney’s (an asian woman) twitter thread saying Andy purposefully undercut her articles multiple times because of a petty feud with Antoni from Queer Eye by using his friendship with Amanda Shapiro (Whitney’s editor) to kill the story, which is shitty and brings up the bigger picture of BA being cliquey and getting in with a friend of a friend and such which is just a toxic work environment

Amanda Shapiro: Puerto Rican food article, Alyse Whitney’s articles, she’s a perpetuator of the toxic work environment, stealing Nikita Richardson’s work and getting credit and pay for it (pls check out her twitter and the articles with her), also racist, should not be in charge

Chris Morocco: Made one (1) basic post (simply a reply to Molly calling him out actually) at the beginning of all this agreeing to not be in anymore videos until his coworkers got paid/backpay, he said he was complicit (duh) but also that he had no idea this was happening, but guess what? He is the one that hired Sohla for only 50k! There is a whole can of worms about how little Sohla was hired for despite her experience plus talent along with her current pay and Chris is a part of that. Also both his gumbo video and Halo Halo recipe are downright disrespectful at BEST and they should not have had a white man doing them (again with the white people doing articles/videos that can be EASILY given to someone whose actually part of that culture) and before anyone says anything yes the gumbo was for Chris’s show (strange how only white ppl get shows or in Andy’s case unless you’re friends with a higher up) still doesn't make the video less disrespectful, also he’s SAID he is friends with Anna Wintour (head of vogue, and a racist “there’s no room for black women” the reason the vogue challenge is happening)

Brad Leone: Himbo status permanently revoked, “Brad who just found out racism is real”(Sohla said this in the Sporkful podcast) is NOT acceptable for a 35 year old white man whose coworkers are suffering in a clearly toxic work environment, the screenshot with “I didn’t sign her contract she did” is NOT how you respond to your coworker being underpaid and disrespected by the company she works at because she is not a white man. I do not like him anymore, he has made apologies but ignorance to this extent is willful and I don't completely buy it the rumors he was upset Delany was going to be fired/would quit if Delany was fired/was mad at Sohla is not something I was able to confirm but based off of what I’ve seen he really needs to prove himself to be better, he can stay if that’s what his coworkers want but he is on thin fucking ice

Stuff I can't accredit to a single person, but BA is racist: 

NIKITA RICHARDSON, pls check her out on twitter

They sent Sohla to interview black chefs (bc BA has a bad track record) because she was the darkest and there were literally NO black chefs working at BA

Making Priya only cook Indian dishes (which were kinda whitewashed) I actually think this may have been Duckor

Tokenizing the poc staff (they would make them be in the kitchen when filming the white hosts shows and push them in front of the camera to highlight nonexistent diversity)

Paying Hawa Hassan only $400 for her video (probs also Duckor)

[your-world-with-nct]

— 2020 has been a wild year for all of us and let me start this off by saying well done to us all for simply making it through this crazy ride - if surviving this year was your biggest achievement, that’s completely okay, and i am so proud of you for being here today !! despite the many, let’s say, mishaps, that have occurred this year, both nct and nctzens have been key in my 2020 and i couldn’t be more grateful for them, so i decided to make a little appreciation post of my own before the year ends 🥰

— to my followers ;

my petals !! i can’t believe i started off this year with around 300 followers and i’m now nearing 600 🙈 this account has grown so much this year and it’s all thanks to you. if you’ve ever come across my blog, liked or reblogged a piece of mine, sent me an ask, or pressed that follow button, i want you to know that i am so grateful for you and thank you for enjoying my works 🥺 hopefully 2021 will carry the same positive energy here on your-world-with-nct as it has this year and i’m hoping that you’ll be seeing a lot more fics in the near future 👀 once again, i love you petals <3

— to my dearest mutuals ;

@emistoomultifandom

em bubs !!! i know i could easily do this on any other app or even irl but i just wanted to thank you for making my year 🥺 my lockdown wouldn’t have been the same without us constantly texting and fangirling and our ty track/bfc reunion on my birthday was elite. and obviously this new school year has been an adventure and a half so far, with all the lunch time shenanigans, revision sessions, and exam stress, but i can’t wait for the rest of it 🙈 i am so grateful that i had you by my side during 2020 and i am eternally thankful that i’ll be able to go into the new year with you by my side once again 🧡💚💜

@misfitneo

bella - my first mutual, my tumblr mum - it feels like just yesterday that you wrote a beomgyu blurb for me after seeing my pink theme; now you’ve finished college and i’m applying to colleges 🙈i know we haven’t been able to talk as much recently but that doesn’t mean i appreciate your presence any less - i’m so proud of you for getting into med school and pursuing your dream 🥺🥺 i hope that this year treated you well, and that 2021 treats you even better 💞

@nsheeteeish

loml, almost birthday-twin, fellow leo and xiaojaem stan, fave writer - what do these things have in common? they all apply to v, or, yeet anon, if you remember the days where i ranted to you about my crush and you were a baby stay 😪 not only have you delivered such amazing content on ur writing and gif blogs, but you have provided so much comfort and joy to me whenever we message with dilay 🤧 i look forward to checking your blog every day for new posts and my twt and insta notifs in case you’ve sent me something or you’ve seen what i sent you 🙈 the fact that you think of me when you see certain things just warms my heart and you’re just such a caring person in general, thank you for being a part of my 2020 v, all the best wishes for your 2021 🖤

@cloudyangers

dilay !!! my resident yangqi and the person i think of straight away whenever i see yangyang 😚 i remember when you first requested that e2l chenle blurb back in 2019 and now the only chenle stan between us is v 😁 finding you on this app again after i forgot what ur skz blog’s url was, was just amazing and i don’t know what my tumblr experience would be like without me being able to reconnect with you 🥺 thank you for being able to make me laugh effortlessly with our lack of geography knowledge and our random antics, i will always look forward to seeing the username @cloudy_____ on my dash and screaming over renhyuckyang (+ sungchan 👀) with you for years to come 🤍

@nctsoftarchives

andi bb, my fellow dad!johnny stan 🥺 seeing you post a jaemin birthday blurb for me after your return to tumblr was so sweet and i can’t believe your first post after coming back was dedicated to me 🤧 i remember the day i first messaged you and you were gushing over how you were a big fan of mine and i said the same about you - we were just going back and forth about how much we love each other’s work 😌 you are such a talented writer and you are so full of love - wishing all the best for you in the coming new year babie 🥰

@jensungf

coming across leyna’s blog after reading that jsmr fic was the best decision, because not only have i befriended a brilliant writer, but also a jensung enthusiast who is just the kindest 🥺🥺 i think now would be a good time to tell you that despite jeno’s bias wrecking antics back in august, i actually bias jisung now 😃 i know we haven’t talked in a while, because of our busy schedules, but i hope you’re resting well and i hope that 2021 won’t be as hectic for you 💟

@doyoungcore

joyce, i know we only started talking recently but the serotonin boost both you and your works have given me this year is just incredible and i am so thankful for your warm personality on your blog and for your amazing fics 🤧 i started off as a silent reader who gushed about your writing in the tags but now i’m friends with such a talented writer and we just casually ramble about doie and jaems biases and writing struggles,,, wow 🤯 (btw took some of ur tips on editing headers 🙈) i hope that next year we can expand our friendship and that i can continue to give you the feedback you deserve 🥺💕

— favourite reads of the year ;

i have reblogged all of these to my main @/lovelycharm05 before, but i just wanted these masterpieces on here with everyone since these fics are so memorable and enjoyable to me <3 (beware there is lots of me gushing over how f&%#ing good all these writing techniques and plot devices are - can you tell i’m an eng lit nerd)

@nsheetee - moonlight café

obviously v released so many iconic pieces this year but this series was just *chef’s kiss* coffee shop au’s are the cutest to me because you can do so many different things with them, and you truly showcased that through each members’ part. although i am nahyuck biased (out of all the 00 liners), i have a soft spot for jeno’s part 🥺🤧 but that doesn’t mean i’m not obsessed with jealous jaems and cocky hyuck 🙈

@notnctu - to all the j’s i loved before

the very first work i ever read of yours, joyce 🥺🥺 i remember seeing an nct network reblog this and after reading through the summary of the series, i was enticed by the plot and i read most of your masterlist whilst waiting for the next parts 🤧 the main character’s relationship with each ‘j’ was unique to them and their interactions were just so sweet to read (except jaemin’s >:( why did my ult’s part have to be the angsty one 😤 jk jk i loved it anyways) special mention to ‘cupid’s arrow’, because that fic was an emotional rollercoaster and i loved that almost as much as i love bestfriend!jungwoo in the last part 😌

@misfitneo - lee haechan’s pride

it would be a sin if i didn’t include this in my top reads this year, pun intended 😌, especially since i have a weakness for mafia aus. i haven’t had the time to read mark or renjun’s parts yet, but from what i read in this fic, i’m sure theirs are just as good, if not better. the storybuilding and the development of the plot are so detailed and intricate and that is what i love in a fic. i already reviewed this on my main with a lengthy description of my favourite parts so i’m gonna keep this short and sweet - if you love haechan, mafia au’s, and enemies to lovers, you need to read this !!

@jensungf - passing clouds + only forever

these fics hit different now that i bias jisung 😭 ‘passing clouds’ was pure angst and as much as it hurt, it was written so beautifully and i loved it so much. ‘only forever’ healed the jisung shaped hole in my heart and made me fall in love with him all over again. the first love vibes he gives off is unbelievable and that innocence was presented perfectly in this 🤧 side note: never let jisung bake for you even if it’s as a peace offering 😖

@hyucksie - in the long run + second first kiss

although ‘sweet talk’ and ‘silent treatment’ are also contenders for some of my favourite fics of the year, these two have taken the cake 😌 the concept itself of time travel and mark and y/n seeing their future child was so creative and the mixed emotions that the characters experienced seeing their future were executed so well and the ending when their actual future selves remembered the day they time travelled 🥺🥺 not to mention the sequel doesn’t feel forced at all, the story flows well, and jealous mark is a cutie 🥰

@luvdsc - not clickbait

i’ve been following cat after i first read ‘i turned my best friend into an e-boy!! (and kissed him)’ and ever since then every piece of hers that i’ve read is simply breathtaking and so engaging. her style of writing is so unique and whenever i read anything of hers i feel so immersed in the fic. the dreamies as youtubers and tiktokers was such a cute concept to me and the little comment section at the end of each fic is probably my favourite part 😳 the way each member’s fic connects to the plot of another is perfect and their cameos in one another’s fic >>> (jisung telling y/n about the tiktok challenge in mark’s fic + cameraman jisung in chenle’s) i could keep talking abt this series for a lot longer but i’ll end it here, also i can’t wait for norensung’s parts 💞💞

@pwarkhans - the neo academy

i’ve probably mentioned my love for ‘the umbrella academy’ before but THIS !!! this series just made me love it even more 🙈 despite yangyang’s part being the only one that’s out, that and the prologue are interesting enough and seeing the 00 liners in this alternate universe is honestly amazing jxjwjxkw jaemin as three and hyuck as two is everything. the brothers’ relationship, especially in yangyang’s part, is so complicated yet so cute and i can’t wait for the rest of the members’ parts 💘

@yongtxt - vintage

when i first stumbled across this series, i was immediately intrigued by the plot, and not just because it was about rapper!mark and singer!y/n🧑‍🦯🧑‍🦯 the side characters (dreamies + doie and jisoo) were so funny and well-written and the plot >>>> i was so invested in the twists and turns of the story, the relief i felt when the conflict was finally resolved and we got our fav musician couple !!

@byunbaekby - apartment b23

i only found this series recently but wow am i invested in the plot already 😭😭 the conflict in the story is realistic and feels like something you could actually relate to. norenmin’s friendship/bond is so strong and evident through the story and the side characters are my babies (heejin, shuhua, lia - ily 🤧) i can’t wait for the rest of this series since i am a sucker for the perfect balance of angst, fluff, and crack in this 🥰

— favourite works of the year ;

unfortunately i haven’t had enough time to release any fics this year, and i’m hoping that that won’t be the case next year, but here are my top 5 favourite blurbs that i enjoyed writing and reading <3

1:48pm -> dad!johnny

one of the most popular blurbs on my blog to this day 🥺 honestly i get why, who doesn’t love dad!johnny? hyejoo is literally so adorable here and the family dynamics make me soft all over again whenever i reread this piece. also everyone’s reactions and replies to this are so heartwarming because everyone’s just whipped for the suh family 🙈

1:05pm -> soulmate!taeyong

i love soulmate au’s but something always irked me with the permanence of your soulmate like ,,, what if you end up falling out of love with them? then what? that inspired me to write my own take on soulmates, where they aren’t found, but made. taeyong’s character here is just so full of love and you know how much i love lovable boys 🤧 (ever wondered why i ult na jaemin...?)

12:13pm -> boyfriend!mark

7dream!!!! i don’t usually write domestic fluff even though it’s one of the genres i indulge in the most 😔 but when i do, i go all out because everyone needs to know how soft i am for my boys >:( mark’s love for the dreamies is so unique and i love their friendship so much, i had to write about it when i first heard about the 7dream announcement which i definitely did not cry at

11:40pm -> boyfriend!jeno

this was one of the first requests i ever got and i was just so touched than someone personally requested something from me AND it was jeno 🥺🥺 everytime i read the tags under this, everyone is just gushing over jeno and like,,, same 🙈 this type of fluff >>>

waking up with wayv -> wayv reaction

when em first requested this, i didn’t exactly know how to write something for each member without being too repetitive, but in the end, i loved the mini plots i wrote for them and it’s just one of my underappreciated faves 🥰

— favourite releases of the year ;

just a few of my favourite albums that got me through online school and revision sessions for offline school 🥲 ft. lots of nct + october albums bc that month was PACKED

nct 2020 - resonance pt1 + pt2

nct 127 - neozone: the final round

nct dream - ridin’

wayv - awaken the world

superm - super one

enhypen - border: day one

twice - eyes wide open

txt - minisode1: blue hour

seventeen - semicolon

stray kids - go live + in life

itzy - not shy

conan gray - kid krow

if you’ve managed to read all the way to the end, congrats for putting up with my lengthy and very sappy sentiment and sorry that you had to go through all of that 😭😭 thank you for being a part of my 2020, i hope that the new year allows us all to have a fresh start and brings us the opportunities we didn’t have this year. happiest new year to you all 🥳 (even tho it’s not 2021 yet when i’m posting this :))

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

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

Seven (30.43% of cast).

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

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Significantly flawed, and well-known in fandom for it. Unpopular opinion? I still think it’s better than the first Avengers film.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha and Laura pass in a single-line trade. It’s sooo close to not counting.

Female characters:

Natasha Romanoff.

Wanda Maximoff.

Maria Hill.

Helen Cho.

Peggy Carter.

Laura Barton.

FRIDAY.

Male characters:

Tony Stark.

Steve Rogers.

JARVIS.

Thor.

Clint Barton.

Strucker.

Pietro Maximoff.

Bruce Banner.

Ultron.

Sam Wilson.

James Rhodes.

Ulysses Klaue.

Heimdall.

Nick Fury.

Erik Selvig.

Vision.

OTHER NOTES:

Everyone talking about Strucker like we already know who he is...

The ��Shit!”/”Language!” gag was funnier before they hung a lantern on it. Not least because it takes almost a full minute before Tony harks back to it (fifty seconds, actually. I checked). If you’re gonna make a Thing out of it, you gotta follow up immediately, not after fifty seconds of cutting around to different character intros and action shots and a whole lot of other dialogue. 

Urrgghh, ok, I’m going to break my standing rule about not discussing source material, because we gotta acknowledge the colossal wrongness of re-writing the Maximoff twins - canonically Jewish Romani - as willing volunteers in a Nazi science experiment. It gets worse the more you think about it. There are a few things about this movie which generated significant negative outcry, and this incredibly offensive decision is one of them.

Tony and Thor fighting over who has a better girlfriend does have a certain charm to it. If you’re gonna have a testosterone-off, it might as well be about how great your partner is.

I got a zero out of ten on this out-of-nowhere forced romance crap with Natasha and Bruce. We’ll come back to this later.

“I will be reinstituting Prima Nocta,” Tony declares, as he prepares to lift Thor’s hammer and thereby theoretically take charge of the Nine Realms. Primae noctis (believed to in fact be a myth) refers to a supposed Dark-Ages law that granted lords the ‘right’ to take the virginity of any newlywed peasant woman who lived on their land. So, this is a wonderful little rape joke from Tony (or, y’know, not so little, since primae noctis in reality would make Tony a serial rapist). Ha ha ha ha. Hilarious. Good one.

I’m really mad about the parts here that are total garbage, because mostly, the revels sequence has a nice low-key quality to it, good solid team dynamics. 

I can’t fucking believe that they played the ‘and then Bruce falls with his face in Natasha’s cleavage!’ gag. I cannot believe it. Is this a disgusting frat-boy comedy from the nineties?

Honestly, Tony, just shut up and admit that you KNEW from the get-go that it was wrong to try and make Ultron happen (that is why you kept it secret from everyone else to begin with); don’t try to defend the decision now that you’ve got a ‘murderbot’ on your hands. Take responsibility for a bad choice instead of talking shit about how you had to and everyone else is just too short-sighted, damn it! 

Andy Serkis is delightful.

The Iron Man/Hulk fight absolutely KILLS the momentum of this film. It goes for way the fuck too long (eight minutes) and has no narrative significance at all. Pro tip for action scenes: they should always be driving the story somewhere. You can pull off eighty minutes of action so long as your plot is advancing alongside/within it.

Also, Iron Man causes a huge amount of additional damage during this fight, in the service of the aforementioned pointless action. His efforts to minimise Hulk’s effects are extremely poor, and calling in his relief organisation to clean up after the fact does not negate that. 

Gotta love that throwing a wife and kids at Hawkeye at the same time as we suddenly start pushing this Natasha/Bruce thing. That’s not transparent at all. I also understand this to be a major deviation from Clint’s identity in the comics, and very unpopular with fans for that reason, but regardless; reinventing him as a family man to reset the romantic blather after baiting fans with the possibility of Clint/Natasha in the first Avengers movie is such a shitty move. I was not invested in the ship myself and would have loved to have them reinforce the just-friends relationship between Hawkeye and Black Widow, because there are not enough platonic friendships between compatible men and women in fiction, but 'they’re not interested in each other because they’re busy with someone else!’ is a weak reinforcement indeed. Less forced romances, and definitely less token wifey who exists for no other Goddamn reason at all. This comes out of nowhere, and not in a clever-surprise kind of way.

“You still think you’re the only monster on the team?” Natasha says, after telling Bruce about her sterilisation. This earned a HUGE backlash, and for good reason - despite all arguments about how what Natasha meant was that her being raised to be an assassin makes her a monster, the direct implication of her words as they are phrased and as the discussion is structured is that her inability to have children makes her monstrous, and that’s deeply offensive. It’s also completely in keeping with a narrative which is often played out against women, in which their value as people is attributed directly to their ability to produce offspring, so it’s not even like this outrageous implication of monstrosity - the corruption of what it means to be female! - is that unusual. It’s awful, but not unusual. Add on the fact that 1) Natasha’s nightmare-flashes specifically foregrounded her sterilisation over all other details of her training, supporting the idea that she believes that it’s what makes her irredeemable (instead of, y’know, all the murdering and stuff), and 2) this is Joss Whedon’s work and he is OBSESSED with highlighting the womanhood of his female characters and treating it like their defining trait while also variously punishing them for it, and you’ve got every reason to interpret this terrible fucking line as exactly the heinous thing it (presumably, unwittingly) seems to be. 

Steve ripping a log in half with his bare hands is the funniest thing in this whole movie.

Thor’s brief side-adventure with Erik Selvig is pretty out-of-place. He just...goes for a swim in a convenient magic pond that Selvig chances to know about. Seems normal.

Ultron is full of such boring, empty rhetoric. Reminds me of Loki in The Avengers, with all that sound-and-fury. 

I love Paul Bettany.

Man, they sure do find Natasha instantly. It’s almost like making a damsel-in-distress of her who needs to be rescued by the team was completely meaningless...

Breaking my no-BTS rule (since I already have done for this movie at this point) because it’s well-known how Joss Whedon ordered Elizabeth Olsen not to show exertion or ‘ugly emotion’ on her face in this film, because God forbid she compromise her attractiveness by being human. Joss Whedon is not human; he’s fucking trash. 

The final fight sure does just, y’know, get to a point where it ends. They really did not ratchet up the tension over the course of the Sokovia conflict, it just goes along until it stops (also, they say Sokovia is a country, but then they never call the city anything else, it’s just Sokovia. Is the city conveniently named after the country (very confusing), or is it a city-country, like The Vatican? I kinda assume it’s option three, which is that no one bothered to care because it’s just some fake European placeholder anyway and we’re not supposed to notice such a dumb oversight).

“I was born yesterday.” This is the best quip in this whole thinks-it-is-way-wittier-than-it-is movie.

Helen Cho deserved better than to be a prop rapidly dismissed and then just trotted past at the end for an ‘oh, she survived, btw’. 

Back when I reviewed the first Avengers movie, I said that I considered that film to be heavily overrated, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that I actually like this one better. The two primary problems I had with that first film were the overly simplistic plot, and the fact that most of the characters were OOC compared to previous films, and this movie does do better on both scores, so I feel more engaged by it, and less annoyed. That said...this movie has still got a lot of problems, and those include iffy characterisation and a plot with various holes, nonsensical complications, and conveniently ignored or smoothed-down dynamics. When I say I like this movie better than the first one, I mean just that: I like this better. That does not mean I am here to sing its praises. 

The tacked-on romance is part of the problem - for Clint as well as Natasha (but especially for Natasha). After Hawkeye was so heavily under-used in the first film (and his slightly-ambiguous relationship with Black Widow was the only human element that made him a character instead of a prop), Age of Ultron attempts to compensate by giving Clint a personal life, in the form of a magically-appearing heavily-pregnant wife and a pair of nameless children. The function of this family appears to be 1) to give Clint a reason to not be interested in Natasha, and 2) to ‘humanise’ him by giving him something to fight for and get home to, because we all know nothing legitimises a character quite like some otherwise-irrelevant dependents. Want a man to seem lovable and important? Give him a pregnant wife. That’s what women are for, anyway, right? To enhance a man’s story? In this case, to provide a man whose purpose in the story has been contested with insta-personality, because ‘he’s secretly a family man, ooh, twist!’ is way better than having to spend time on giving him something to do in the plot that is actually meaningful in some way. Great logic. Makes Hawkeye super dynamic, right? 

Natasha, unsurprisingly, is hit much, much harder. As the only female avenger and one of only two prominent female characters in a cast which has seven-to-nine male characters of equal or greater importance/screen time (YMMV on whether or not you think Fury and Vision count for that list), the pressure is already on for Natasha to be served up a quality narrative, because if she doesn’t get one, well...she doesn’t have six-to-eight alternative characters to pull the weight for her gender. The best solve for this problem would be to avoid the ‘Token Woman’ cliche in the first place, but since we missed that boat...not having the personal story of your only primary female character revolve completely around her womanhood and her catering to heteronormative expectations of a love interest would have been a good choice. This weird, forced, chemistry-free thing with Bruce Banner? Was the worst thing they could have used to define Natasha’s presence in the film. It sticks out like a sore thumb every time they have an awkward interaction, and it leads in to that atrocious ‘monstrous infertility’ element (though that particular egregious mistake could have been included with or without a romantic blunder, it...probably wouldn’t be, and we’d all be the better off). Even the Hulk-whisperer part of the relationship - while not awful on its own with all the unnecessary romance and Unresolved Sexual Not-Tension removed - serves to highlight Natasha’s female-ness by making her the soft maternal figure for the team, because God forbid one of the other male members of the team be asked to ASMR-speak to the Hulk while delicately caressing his hand. If Natasha’s presence in the first Avengers film leaned too heavily on her gender identity as a defining trait (and it did), this movie doesn’t fix that problem at all: it doubles down on it. 

The good news for most of the excess of male characters is, they by-and-large don’t feel as OOC as they did in the first film. The boorish romantic entanglement aside, Bruce Banner is still a naturalistic character highlight (all credit to Mark Ruffalo, who probably doesn’t know how to turn in a bad performance in the first place), and Thor’s dialogue is way less ridiculous this time ‘round, so he lands a lot closer to his personality from previous films simply by virtue of sounding like the same guy (unfortunately, the plot does not have the faintest idea what it wants to do with him as a character). Steve Rogers is still being written as if being Captain America is his character, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of his identity, albeit one which conveniently allows him to behave in a stereotypical self-righteously bland manner, thus avoiding the need for any nuance in his perspective or actions. This borderline fanfic-flamer ‘Captain America is my least favourite character so I’m going to write him as a boring stick-in-the-mud and then hopefully no one else will like him either!’ approach doesn’t grate quite as badly as it did in the first Avengers, and it can’t cancel out the innate level-headed charm of Chris Evans, so as disappointing as the bias is, it’s still a better balance here than it was last time. The one character who is not so flatteringly handled, however? Also happens to be the one who was arguably handled best last time, and unfortunately, he’s the one who is essentially treated as the ‘lead’. 

The big problem for Tony Stark is that this movie is not interested in digging in to the pathos of any character, it’s all-flash-no-substance on that front, and Tony really, really needed a less heavy-handed slathering of ‘afraid of what might come (feat. messiah complex)’ to motivate his actions and reactions in this film, because without any exploration he’s basically just a billionaire kid playing with matches. If this were an Iron Man film (either the first or third one, anyway), we’d get into some tasty deconstruction of Tony’s mental state and confront his hubris, etc, and - crucially, most crucial of all, it’s a mainstay of all his past stories in the MCU - Tony would own up to his mistakes, listen to the advice of those around him, and take contrite steps toward fixing the problem not just in the direct sense of ‘beating the bad guy’, but also in the personal and emotional sense of working on his own flaws and making amends with the people he hurt along the way. This movie offers none of that. To begin with, Tony’s ‘I know best and I will not be taking any questions’ approach to creating Ultron feels like a significant step backwards in his character development so far (Iron Man 3 was specifically about addressing his PTSD and associated tumultuous emotions surrounding the fear of imminent alien invasion, so his reactionary and secretive behaviour in this film feels particularly out-of-touch with a mental reality Tony has been explicitly working on for the past couple of years); Tony is actively aware that it’s a bad call and thus hides it from the other Avengers until it’s too late, and then he’s bizarrely unrepentant about his mistake. Worst of all, he actually attempts to repeat that mistake, only worse, late in the film (the fact that his idiotic ‘mad scientist’ pep talk actually convinces Bruce to help him again is the weakest character moment for Bruce outside of the aforementioned romance crap). The plot rewards Tony’s second, far worse mistake, in the creation of Vision, who turns out to be ‘worthy of wielding Thor’s Hammer’ and whatnot and conveniently provides every necessary skill to defeat Ultron in a deus ex machina so overt you could use it as a textbook example, so even though Tony had absolutely no way of knowing that he’d get a good result this time and almost every reason to believe he’d just compound the existing problem, his reckless disregard for the literal safety of the planet is treated like a good thing because it happens to work out this time, and they just kinda sweep under the rug the fact that Tony is playing God (and being uncharacteristically stupid and selfish about it - in other films, Tony is normally only reckless with his own safety, and it’s when his actions spill out into unintended consequences for others that he realises the error of his ways and cues up a positive learning curve; it’s what makes him palatable). At the end of the film, once Ultron is gone and Tony has thrown some dispassionate wads of cash into ‘relief efforts’, he strolls and quips and eventually drives off into the sunset in his expensive car, with nary a mention of, I dunno, maybe a little guilty conscience? Maybe a hint of having learned a valuable lesson? The closest he gets is just suggesting that it might be time he retires from Avenging, but neither he nor anyone else lets on that there’s a need for serious self-reflection. The Tony Stark in this movie is the nightmarish male-fantasy version of the character, the playboy with the cool tech and no limits who does whatever he wants and then...literally rides off into the sunset in the end, no muss, no fuss. He’s kinda like a complete reversion to his original self, pre-Iron Man, frittering money around and designing weapons of mass destruction while convincing himself he’s bringing peace to the world one explosion at a time, but that Tony has no business here, seven years of character development down the track.

While we’re talking iffy characterisation, we should also segue into plot, and that’s something we can do easily enough by looking at our villain, Ultron. Calling Ultron an actual character feels...ambitious. He’s a CGI robot full of empty rhetoric and, you guessed it, more of those quips that this movie has in place of any meaningful dialogue. I’d call him self-fellating, but he ain’t got nothing to fellate, so instead he just blathers a lot in a manner that sounds vaguely poetically intelligent but is, upon a moment’s consideration, just vapid nonsense (much like Loki in the first Avengers, as noted above, but at least Loki had the benefit of a flesh-and-blood actor delivering his lines with conviction; James Spader does solid work as the voice of Ultron, but trying to make a CGI robot who spouts a school-kid’s attempt at edgy philosophy sound like a genuine menace is an uphill battle). Speaking of genuine menace, I assume the reason the film is called Age of Ultron is because A Couple of Days of Ultron Causing Disturbances in a Handful of Specific Locations was too much. For all the big talk (and there is..so much), Ultron doesn’t get up to all that much trouble, most notably in the sense that he apparently has his code all over the internet and yet he doesn’t bother stirring up a single ounce of chaos with that ungodly power. Why bother including this as an element of the character if it achieves zero story? Is it purely to make Ultron seem ~unstoppable~ because he keeps downloading into new robots? Because it didn’t really land, y’all. They try to play it like a big victory for the good guys when Vision burns Ultron out of the ‘net, but in context it’s meaningless because he didn’t do anything while he was there. Pretty much everything about Ultron was all talk, little to no action - even a whole bunch of the trouble he did cause happened off-screen, with Maria Hill just popping in to let us know that ‘there are reports of metal men stealing shit’. Cheers, cool. And you know, Ultron makes a song and dance about how he’s going to save the world by ‘ending the Avengers’, but then he...does not pursue that at all. He tries to make himself a pretty body, the Avengers thwart him, and then he enacts a doomsday machine to destroy all life on Earth. Like every other aspect of the character, the whole ‘end the Avengers’ schtick is just white noise, there’s no meaning in it. Ultron is just a same-old-same ‘What if Artificial Intelligence wants to WIPE US OUT?!’ cliche, and maybe that’s what he was in the comics too, I don’t know, but it’s the job of the film to tell that story in a dynamic way, and they had two and a half hours to do it. And yet.

There should be more to this than a nondescript placeholder villain concept and a series of action set pieces that just kinda happen until they stop. At least the first Avengers had some variety in each of its action sequences, using the location and the different skills and weapons of its antagonists, whereas this one is just ‘there are robots and the good guys punched and shot them until they were all broken, the end’. Even making the city fly in the end doesn’t actually make it interesting, not least because the characters spend most of their time running around the (weirdly, perfectly stable) streets not having to deal with any consequences of being up in the air anyway, and the doomsday device is too nebulous to ratchet up any real tension about figuring out how to deal with it. The conflicts with the Maximoff twins have at least some spark of life in them, but the characters themselves are treated to an over-simplified and very contrived narrative arc that uses what they do and what they know more as plot devices than as details of actual people’s lives, leading to a cheap death for Pietro so that Wanda will be distracted enough to abandon the big ol’ doomsday button, and it’s just all so convenient. There’s no heart in any of it, and it makes the moments that try to have heart all the more embarrassing and out-of-place (don’t even get me started on what a prescribed attempt at tugging the heart-strings it is to have Hawkeye name his magnificently well-timed newborn after Pietro, because DAMN). When I said I liked this movie better than the first Avengers, I meant just that: I like this better. That’s not to suggest that it is significantly better in any sense, because it isn’t, and I can’t even argue that this one has a better story, because honestly, it doesn’t. The first film made more sense, it was just less interesting to watch, and the things about it that were contrived were contrived in different ways. The first film was weaker and more irritating on character, and character is always the most important part of a story for me, so as annoyed as I am by the major character blunders in Age of Ultron, I’m still not as annoyed as I was after The Avengers. That is damning with the faintest of praise; this is just not a particularly good movie, it makes a poor use of its cast at the best of times, delivers a sub-par action extravaganza, and the script is not half as witty as it gleefully convinces itself that it is. It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that I am very glad a certain writer/director departed the franchise after disappointing everyone with this outing. I say I like this better than the first Avengers, but gee, it’s a close call.

[vertigoambrosia]

let’s watch fightboys follow the carat gold road

apparently not in english though but i guess they’re busy

also apparently rico won’t be at carat, which what? even i’m gonna be there!

is “one out of twelve” a reference to him being elf zwelf at the christmas academy show?

this is a pretty epic theme for this show

lmao neue hose

wow sometimes i understand words people say!

‘i wanna be cool and strong’ dragan most relatable of all our boys

HEY THERE IS ENGLISH COMMENTARY

put it up rn wxw

hee hee glad the chewbacca chant is back

these boys are shitty and mean!

???????emil face turn???

did the nosejob cause it?

i’m not sure i can get used to not hating emil

esp since he looks a bit like my boss that drives me nuts

this match is between three Very Nice Boys

car boy vs galaxy boy vs taekwondo boy

....boys wtf are you doing

this match is fun but is def suffering from the triple threat thing where everyone takes turns being the guy laying on the outside waiting to break up a pin

also man that light needs an nd filter or something cause highlights so light it looks like people are glowing a lil

i want to say it’s making me a little nauseuos but that;s more likely because all i’ve eaten today is cookies and cinnamon pita chips

(i already know who gets into carat and the result of at least one other match so forgive me if i’m not paying 200% attention)

whoops i missed the finish but good for speedy

too bad he’s gonna lose cause marius needs closure

michael dante: still employed

maybe this year he’ll get a character

impress me, muller

oh wait you can’t impress when you’re right next to francis kaspin

not sure how i feel about marius’ new entrance gear but it sure is a look

cute boyz vs boys i have no interest in

hahaha ok muller’s face when francis denied the handshake was pretty funny

hahaha also0 great: francis trying to steal that pin while bald boys square off

man i missed marius

oh i really like that finish

aww francis is mad tho

a Bad Man vs someone who....is from canada

spiky vest canada biceps

boo this man

how dare people chant for andy

it almost feels like wxw can’t quite commit to him being a jerkass all of the time

most of the time, but not all of it

though it doesn’t help that coulton has literally wrestled for wxw like once

i was gonna ask if heel andy is still using that weird french theme, but i want to find out for myself

whatever andy i spent half that match sorting laundry so i can pack

speaking of jerks!

well one thing this lighting is really good for: the details of jurn’s gear

btw aj and jurn are both in love with pete bouncer now

at least according to social media

fucking aj and pete posted insta stories that was literally just them recording each other

oh and aj was resting his legs up on pete’s lap

if emil is gonna be a face he should go back to the booty shorts

haha look at tas; he’s so enjoyin gwatching aj get beat up

it’s so weird booing someone for biting emil; the very first match i saw him in he bit chris colen (rico Disapproved)

aw dragan noooo

bb u need to learn how to dropkick

tee hee i can see his blue underwear

...i have a lot of feelings about whatever the fuck that submission aj just did was

dragan boo boo what happened

:( deflating!

aw don’t be sad dragan

there are worse things to be than everyone’s favorite oestentatiously dressed softboy

the music for bobby promos is always on point

or at least is to someone who can’t understand the lyrics

uh oh is this another root for bobby moment

cause as much as i Despise bones rn, seeing him make bobby squirm was great

lucky kid: still precious, still the best part of any rise entrance

hahaha holy shit the way he did the finger connection thing and just dropped

real talk though they need bobby to be antagonizing nice people again cause i just cannot get into him as a tweener

obviously i’m in the minority, but i don’t like feeling like i’m supposed to root for the openly sexist pig just cause he hasn’t been explicitly sexist in a little bit

oh snap just realized he and riddle are probably gonna fight at carat since bobby called him out a while back

is bones ded?

see the thing is when bones low blows bobby, its a shitty heel thing on bones’ part, but like...bobby kinda deserves it?

john needs to start wearing real pants again cause the shorts make him look stubby

i say it is not coincidence that the “bobby sucks” is coming from women

ignore that they are wearing rise shirts perhaps they are just lucky/kiev/bouncer fands ok???

it turns out it was bobby who died

this match should not have abeen a 3 way and also i know the result and they went the predictable route

tbh i would have been down for kelly vs veda just because kelly is 200% done with veda

*kelly voice* she can’t irritate me....if i knock her out

yo dat bike kick

[i’m not ignoring this match, i’m just also figuring out what to pack]

awww tarkan and the light

ok i swear the editor is going out of their way to get lucky’s lil connection thing in time with the music

hahaha ringkampf having a little fun at lucky’s expense

why you chop walter

ivan did you forget about the giant red mark on your chest last year?

walter don’t kill lucky! or mess up his pretty face!

walter trying to take random swipes at lucky or ivan when he’s on the apron makes me laugh

look at this little boy, so proud of himself

hah @ tarkan’s ‘i didn’t do it’ face

he did

also like how lucky’s favorite way to distract the ref is just to clutch onto him like a clingy child

as i thought: rise girls in the front row are def lucky fans

that’s no excuse for chanting fuck you walter though!

aww don’t fight in front of lucky!

wait why is tim bleeding again

oh! walter giving pete a lil bit of respect!

that match owned what a surprise

uhhh sorry for some reason i spaced out in the fucking main event

barry you’re not being a very nice player right now

MARIUS THAT IS THE HARDEST PART OF THE RING YOU CAN’T SUPLEX SOMEONE INTO IT

holy shit bailey wtf

ref bump? a weird choice

marius tas obviously died why tf would u do that

give tas some beer or something

no wait BOO THIS ANDY

and everyone cheering him!

barry is a nice player :)

OOOO speedball vs bobby? i could get into that!

this is overbooked so hard though

it’s ok tho cause marius is gonna murder the fuck out of andy soon and it’ll be great