#this is not a complex take but maybe this is just an indictment on the literacy of people who are still rwby fans

[shithowdy]

i'm turning off reblogs for this post because everyone has collectively decided to piss on the poor and ignore my emphasis on this being about so-called original settings and instead made the post almost exclusively about rwby fix-it fics

if your "original story/rpg" idea is rooted in the premise of "what if [existing franchise] was good?" then just start over. i am not kidding. your ego is like insulation spray foam being inserted into the cracks of the premise-- sure it fills the gaps, but it's beyond ugly and everyone can see it.

[todayontumblr]

Friday March 31.

Tumblr's Friday Explainer: Indictment.

For no reason, no reason whatsoever, absolutely none at all, we have decided to take you good folks with us on a little lesson in law. And no, not bird law, The Law; criminal law, to be precise. Every day is a school day, after all, so we figured there was no better time than this, the 31st, the last day of March 2023, to give you a little schooling on "Indictment". It is an important step in the legal process, and you never know, it may come in handy: you yourself may fancy yourself as a hotshot lawyer, or maybe you just can't get enough of crime dramas such as Better Call Saul, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Boston Legal, or indeed Suits. It could even give you a helping hand navigating the noisy, complex world of #us politics. You know. For example.

Well, curious critters, at a basic level, an indictment consists of a formal written list of what a suspect is accused of. An indictment, it is important to remember, is not a conviction—instead, it means that a prosecutor may move forward with criminal charges. Gosh, isn't that interesting!

With that, you can go about your Friday safe in the knowledge of your newfound, well, knowledge. And you're in good company, too, because as luck would have it, Tumblr's indictment fandom community are all beside themselves with excitement today. For reasons, admittedly, still a little unclear. 

[arbitrarygreay]

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Absolute least favorite trope in the fic: inserting new world-building so that the controversial actions that Alder does in canon are all rationalized into woobie-bait. Examples: "Alder was forced into the Biddy bond!" "The Martyrdom was actually a lesser evil!" "Alder felt regret about signing the Accords!" "Alder was forced into doing things by men in power!" Since fucking when has the US military been meaningfully held accountable for anything, or their power (and the military industrial complex) had a reduction in growth? Name me one irl modern general that doesn't believe wholeheartedly in militarism. The nation can do much wrong by the rank and file (including appalling treatment of veterans), but the brass? Hah. And neither do the brass of the MFS military waver in their belief in militarism, either. We know that they could play malicious compliance via things like Tally's dispensation if they wanted to. They don't want to. The "magical enforcement" didn't stop Dodgers from existing, nor did it stop Nicte from deserting. The slow-play of the invasion of the Cession could have just as easily been done in their deployments in other nations, or in their hunting of Dodgers (like Scylla's parents). (Even Anacostia doesn't have a problem with torturing Scylla for information. "Gotta break a few eggs." No one agitates for the closure of GuantanamoSt. Dominique, either. There's no doubt in my mind that MFS's detention centers carry the same controversies as our world's.) No. Alder not only has no regrets about the Accords, she believes in them. She truly believes that all witches under her jurisdiction should serve, and that it is an honor to do so. She believes in the concept of glory in battle, and wishes for her soldiers to, as well. Alder's instinct is to hide inconvenient information from the chain of command and the public, which further proves that if she wanted to commit malicious compliance and covertly get around the wishes of those in power, she could, but she chose not to because she doesn't have a problem with the Accords or the wars she's been in. Most relevantly, Alder maintained the conflict of the Spree as an alternative to nationalist conflict. Letting the Spree propagate was her solution to Liberia. That is how she thinks, not even the smallest inkling that maybe she could modify the Accords and aim for our world's progressive strategy of pushing anti-discrimination policies and full civilian population integration/equality/equity. The idea of de-militarization is borderline anathema to her. She doesn't see conscription as slavery at all, but an honorable duty. Someone who says "I never needed The Hague's approval for my actions. I simply extend the invitation to accept my rulings." has a particular relationship to power. If the director of the CIA said this, we would not pretend that they are laboring under the yoke of anyone. Nah, that's just plain ol' mundane deep state. (Meanwhile, in 3x4 the scene with Alder and the Marshal shows that she definitely did not take on or continue using the Biddy working under duress. She's grateful for it, he's not morally indicted for using it, and they called the exchange "sharing." In fact, that might even imply that the Marshal could have been willing to share the Working without the deal, but Alder negotiated the creation of the Cession as thanks.) These characters are so much more interesting when they are allowed to do women's wrongs, for this show to explore how a world of alternative supremacy means that those alternative figures of power will still commit the same ethical pitfalls with it. Let them commit war crimes, as a treat! The relationships are so much more interesting when they have to grapple with real universal flaws instead of hand-waving them with "[other demographic]'s prejudice made me do it."

[ssaalexblake]

It is funny though, because at the start of the stp season a bunch of themes and plot lines were identifiable, and while i wouldn’t have picked them, that’s not an indictment to the story or writing, it just meant I wasn’t a fan. Had those plots played out, again, wouldn’t have been super happy but in an opinion kind of way. Sadly, Most of those plots that were hinted at, structured and set in motion at the start have just failed to come to fruition in any way, let alone meaningfully. It’s just devolved into. Something. I don’t even know what to call it. I would not use the word meaningful Anywhere though. 

I honestly thought this would be an examination of trauma, I thought this would be a changing of the guard in all senses where it would Basically be kid!fic where you’d slowly get intro’d to the offspring and they’d all band together to save the day in the end when the parents got themselves into heaps of problems, hence the ‘the next generation’ name of episode 1 that was So tone deaf I thought it had to be there for a reason, I expected the finale to be called ‘the next generation part 2′ as the bookend (to be fair, it might be called that, i have not looked) like how Discovery had parts one and two be the premiere and finale in S3. 

I thought maybe that we’d be given a narrative that cared about the trauma that apparently drove Beverly to act as she did, but she’s basically been a stock character. I thought maybe we’d get more than a line about how Thad dying really traumatized Deanna, I thought that since he died that Deanna and WIll would be fighting tooth and nail and worried about their daughter whom they don’t seem to have spared more than a thought for with No explanation to us as to why they’re Not terrified for her. Not only should they be worried in general, but as parents who have lost a kid, they should be beside themselves Because of that pre-existing trauma. I thought maybe somebody Might tell Data about his kids, and how one is dead but the other is alive and well and how they could meet. I thought maybe they might mention Alexander, have Worf and Picard talk about finding out they have sons years after the fact. I thought maybe Alandra LaForge might get to do more than, well, not doing anything really than being there. I am at least glad that Sidney got that small micro plot with Seven. 

I thought that maybe, with all the absurd amount of set up they gave Shaw and his borg trauma, they might Actually talk about the complexity of it At All? I would not have picked a character like him taking up so much narrative time if it were my choice, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t say something interesting with him. But not only did he take up space from so many other things, they didn’t even bother to Discuss his problems! Instead they have him show zero remorse for any of the objectively shitty things he’s said and for no reason apparent, suddenly decide to call Seven by her actual name and drop dead. He didn’t Learn. He didn’t Heal. He was stagnant. They wanted me to care that Seven’s name was used? then write it competently. It was possible, easy even. Didn’t bother with it. 

I thought maybe they’d write Raffi as a continuation of S2 Raffi instead of cherry-picking her out of her state of mind from some time before S1 started. This is all the more insulting because it was in No way necessary to do this. Raffi’s plot would have worked out just fine Without this all. She cares so much, her choosing to go undercover into danger and temptation just to save people even thought it’d be hard because of her relationship with Seven would have been just fine, but it would have involved writing about Seven and Raffi as a pair even the tiniest bit i guess. I suspect that in the finale we’ll get an ‘oh we never stopped loving each other’ moment that absolves them of degrading the gay ship by virtue of it working out fine in the end. The very end. The kind of end where there’s just no Time to go into depth about it. Really. We Wanted to but couldn’t! yeah. Sure Jan. 

I thought Maybe they’d remember the past two seasons of this show? I’ve never seen a whole season of this show more than once, I do Not know the absolute nuances of these seasons, and even I know how much they openly fucked up/disrespected what happened before and I am not running at expert level, more at casual fan level. 

It’s just that i have listed a massive list of things they could/should have done, and i cut myself off an could have gone on. And it’s not that they’ve gone with messages I didn’t like instead of the above because if i’d had the choice I wouldn’t have really even picked those things. It’s that they set up a bunch of things and didn’t bother to say hardly anything interesting they start to say they veer off of for the #nostalgia. They’re not even Trying to say something at this point. 

at first, they veered off course for the self insert white man OC whose parents Happened to be That Cool Ship Off That Show. Ain’t that a fanfic insert of the times. And yes, it was annoying. But now they seem to even be veering off even That because the gang’s back together and that offers more TNG worshipping than the Fruits of Their Loins I guess. 

The bottom line of this season should not be ‘wasn’t tng super cool!!!’. I would take a plot i do not personally like Any day over something this objectively badly written with the depth of a puddle. 

In any other show, i’d now be predicting what i think would happen in the series finale from what has happened before in the show. 

I am not bothering. There’s no point. It doesn’t matter. If there is a chance for a great moment, supported by the narrative and relevant to themes, and there is a chance for a scene where we get to see the whole TNG crew reminisce together, the latter will win out instead. A good story will be in some ways predictable to those paying attention, and i cannot predict a thing because i cannot rely on them to follow their own lead. 

[sincelastsession]

I understand that I'm a difficult and complex patient and when I say difficult I mean I'm not the easiest person in the world to treat and I don't try to not be treated I'm just saying it's hard to figure me out and it's hard for me to figure me out it's hard for me to explain and communicate.

And I don't exactly think that any therapist has ever enjoyed being my therapist.

Feel like a lot of people give up on me and I'm hoping that doesn't happen

And just because I know a lot about therapy because I've been in therapy for so long does not mean thatI know how to execute those things and then I do have pretty terrible executive dysfunctiand going on right now and most of the time

And sometimes I feel like if I just was able to get a nerve block that worked that was like successful that I would be able to experience and enjoy life and I might not have some things going on it might just all be because of trauma and stress and PTST shit I don't know though

But I always feel like time blind or like a pressure to be on time and to focus on time and it stresses me out

I had to tell my dad that I needed to talk to him about like 6 different things he was trying to tell me aboutAs if I was gonna remember everything he said verbatim and I couldn't and I kept asking him please text it to me or email me that information so I can put it somewhere where I can at least go back and find it and read the information if I need it and it took me a few tries for him to understand that I am not gonna remember anything he verbally tells me when I'm overstimulated for whatever reason.

And the problem is I have been overstamulated for what feels like most of my adult life it's just gotten worse and I have these meltdowns and these automatic reactions and I get angry and I text and I get reactive abusive and I can't stop I have not been able to stop.

There has been no pill or practice that has worked so far I'm willing to try some things But don't get mad at me if I tell you I have done that multiple times and it did not helpBecause this is not the first time I have spoken to a therapist and ask them for help about this and been unsuccessful

I would love to be successful

I don't think anybody realizes how tired I am all the time either and I'm probably having some thyroid problems but my indictment knowledge is a stupid idiot who won't listen to me about my own body and what medicines work for my body and have worked in the past and help me think

And I'm about to blow up his inbox on my chart because why the hell am I not on thyroid medicine if my thyroid was low I have hypothyroidism currently and I'm not on anything for it and that's probably fucking with my head as well

And then not to mention all the physical disabilities that I have and the pain that probably doesn't exactly help any of this situation

And I feel like I'm on top of shit mountain and shit mountain just getting taller and taller and fucking taller and it's so hard to clean up all the shit on shit mountain and I just want off of shit mountain

I just want a helicopter to come and take me off of fucking shit island off of the mountain off of the shit Volcano that I'm scared is going to erupt at any point in time

And it's so frustrating it's hard it hurts I hurt

I hurt in my heart I hurt with my physical disabilities I hurt with my Mental disabilities I hurt with my memories and I don't get many breaks from the pain

And right now I'm pretty upset with my partner because he said he was going to make time to call me today and talk to me because he knew it was gonna be a hard day for me and maybe he had a hard day as well but I'm still hurt about that

And people keep telling me oh you seem like you're doing so much better and I don't see it I really don't I don't understand I am literally doing worse I am having a flare and I'm probably having a physical body flare of my immune system issues and I have so much shit to take care of and all I want to do is just magically have enough money to just run away and go to the Netherlands like I was supposed to do for my birthday last year and that never happened and it didn't happen this summer when I was gonna go and people at this point probably just think I'm lying about it But luckily Ashley is really chill and just tells me you know when you're able to comeJust let me know and we'll figure out a good time to fly you out and all of that and I'm like okay cool so that's less pressure on me about it but I'm still mad because I desperately need a vacation

And my mom asked me if I wanted to go to biloxi and check out this casino and stay in biloxi for the weekend and I got upset with her because yes I need a vacation no I don't want to fucking go to biloxi but cause I don't want to be reminded of certain things but but yes also I do want to go but no I don't want to deal with my mom's bullshit and I don't know what to do

I'm not trying to be a brat and I know that everything or a lot of what I say sounds bratty and reads that way and I don't know how to change it to make it look better and I'm so tired of trying

I am tired of trying I don't want to quit but I'm fucking tired I really do need a God damn vacation and I don't need just like a 2 day vacation I need like a real vacation

I have actually had a real vacation in a very long time

I've gotten to go out of town to visit a friend but now he won't even fucking talk to me because he's seriously dating somebody and he's out from the country and their girlfriends get really possessive and fucking insaneIf they talk to other women as friends which I think is the dumbest shit ever and I don't know if he's alive or dead because he won't answer my text messages and I'm talking about Mike that lives out in abbeyville and his father died and I've been trying to check on him and talk to him and he just ignores me and my text messages and I don't know what happened and I don't want to call his mom and find out that he's dead or something

It really bothers me that a lot of people I know are doing really well yet I don't know how they're doing really well I have no fucking clue how they're good at the things enough to make the money they're making I have I doesn't make sense because I know these people and I'm like what sort of fucking witch craft are you doing to be able to do that I don't understand other people it's like I feel like I'm having to study them all the time

And I don't know if I'm even cut out to work like other people work because I have to get my brain straight in order to do that in order to somehow figure out how to make money and be fun actually independent and I wish I could be this lovely ethical slut that could be a financial dominatrix then do all the sex work and dress in these beautiful clothes and be very confident with their body and all of this other shit but I'm not I'm just a fucking autistic Traumatized little grammar of a person and I don't know what to do

Like it's so hard for me to just do basic things currently

Like I need to take a bath I took a shower this morning but I really need to get some Epsom salts andAt take a soak and then I need to drain the bath and run it out and then I need to take another bath and do a whole like regimen

But what I've been able to do is just take a bath and take a shower and wash my hair very basic self-care is all I've been able to do latelyesterday I wasn't even going to eat I had just given app on the idea of eating I wasn't hungry I couldn't make myself hungry the idea of food made me want to vomit and then finally I got the munchies and ate some food and felt a little bit better And thenI ended up staying up till 5 AM and freaking out again and then I went to bed and I got up at 10 AM And then I took a shower and then I sat around and mentally prepared myself to deal with my dad today and then I went and got a burger and I ate my burger and then I went to therapy and dad was not how he normally is he had his mask on real well andNothing went at all like I expected which is fine because nothing ever goes how I expected to be andFor me and for my brain and for how I took it it did not go well and now I'm not even fucking remembering parts of it which is disturbing and worrisome to me andI don't even know what I was gonna say because I'm super duper stressed out right now and I just keep talking and I can't shut the fuck up and it's just like compulsory and I don't know what to do and I'm having really painful Charlie horses all over my body or I guess painful muscle locking cramps andI probably should smoke my medical weed and take care of that and go to bed but my brain is wide awake And I want to do so many things and this happens every day where I get all these ideas to do things and I'm like yeah I'm gonna do the thing and then I never do the thing

And making a list is fucking pointless a list is just a self-destructing thing for someone like me I it doesn't matter if I have it in my head it doesn't matter if I have it on paper it doesn't matter if I have 15 alarms set with the list it doesn't work with my brain and I wish it did I wish I could be a super duper organized person and keep a planner my sister keeps a planner and I don't know how she does it I have no clue I don't know how people do that I don't know how people stay organized because I can't stay organized to save my fucking life

Like gun to my head and tell me to organize my shit and I would just tell them to go ahead and pull the trigger because like it's just not happening I'm not good at it I don't know what I'm doing but you know what's hilarious

I'm really bad at cleaning up after myself and taking care of myself but I'm really fucking good at doing that for other people

I'm also really good at dressing other people but I'm not good at dressing myself

I am also pissed off because I haven't had the ability to make any new artwork of fuck and I have no use and I don't even know if I enjoy art anymore and I don't know if I have any passions and I don't know what I want to do with my life and I have no idea if I'm ever going to end up and a relationship other than the current one that is good and fulfilling for me

And I want all the things that I see that my friends have and it looks like it came so easy it looks like they had such an easy time doing it or it looks tremendously hard and impossible for me to do

And I'm so scared I shouldn't be scared to live my life but I'm terrified all the time I'm scared that someone's gonna pop out and be mad at me and that's gonna hurt and I'm scared to get hurt and I'm already hurting and I don't want any more hurt

And I'm seeing my sister turning to me and I can't stop it and no she's not exactly like me but I see a lot of the same things happening and it's because of the way my dad is abusive towards her and what he thinks is okay to treat her like but also she has some serious problems

Like I know sometimes people smile when they're nervous or they have like a weird emotional response like that's kind of a normal thing that just happens like I laugh at funerals because I don't even know what else to do I get so overwhelmed by grief and instead of crying after I've been crying for a while I just start hysterically laughing and I have to fucking excuse myself so people don't think that I'm a bitch

But my sister since she was very small has always gotten this dead eyed look on her face and grinned when she was doing horrible shit to me

And when my father is extremely abusive he makes the same fucking face even though they're not blood related it's the same sort of whatever I don't know I can't diagnose that

And no one believed me until my sister got a little bit older and my mom started to notice

So I got punished for years and tortured by her 15 years younger than me for years and she doesn't remember any of it and if she does she thinks it's funny and I don't even know

I don't even know how I had a time jump from like 7 PM and now it's 1 AM and I haven't even been typing that long I know that other things have occurred since then but I feel like there's missing time and I don't know if it's just time blindness or just associative issues or if I am in desperate need of a vacation and sleep

I mean I don't know what I need I don't know anymore

I do and I don't

I just find that life is incredibly hard and I'm tired

I'm so tired I'm not at risk or anything don't pick up the fucking phone please dear God but you know I'm tired dude I'm really tired

And you know my dad has promised me so many things and one reason I'm so angry with him and so frustrated with him is because he promised me so much and I didn't even ask for it he just told me Hey I'm gonna do all this stuff for you and he got my hopes up and then I found out that he doesn't know how to manage his money and I have noticed that my mom doesn't know how either and They fucked up and all the money that was supposed to go to helping me or helping me go to college etcWent to adopting my sister and my dad getting a new car and my mom needed to pay bills with inheritance money that she swears wasn't inheritance money but my uncles are like no your grandmother loved that to you and your sister and your mom used it and they both don't like my mother and my uncle who is a priest flat out was just wasted on the phone the other day when I was asking him a question and he was talking shit about her but I couldn't fuss at him because he's An uncle that actually does kind of care even if he doesn't understand but he was also shit face drunk and I wasn't going to argue with a drunk priest uncle because I've already done that before familyAt family gatherings and he's just sprayed me with holy water and recited parts of the Bible like a fucking Dick

I wish I could talk to my schizophrenic uncle. It is so nice to talk to other people who are actually mentally ill and do understand family dynamics that are insane it's refreshing because yeah they aren't understood very well either but we understand each other

And I really hate this whole idea of autistic people having to fit in with normal people and the world is just not built for us it's not andIt's just not built for different minded people at all

I mean my psychiatrist in his PA talk to me about how I'm incredibly smart and I have all this stuff going on in my brain all the time and the world's not built for people like me and they told me that you know my intelligence and my ability to think about certain things in certain ways is like a super power and yeah I get that it's a little bit cringed to call it a superpower it's more like a curse to me because damn I wish I was dumber I wish sometimes I was just dumb as a box of rocks and could just have a job and go through life having a job And big a dumb dumb and not havingA fucking care in the world because I see like people that are questionable if they're not like a bunch of animals in a trench coat or like people that look like they secretly eat glue and crayons as a snack and I'm like how in the world do these people get through life walking around acting like ignorant dumb fox and I'm having problems with like basic shit like making sure that I brush my teeth and brush my hair and bathes And it's stupid and I'm so angry about it

And I'm mad right now that my hips hurt and my back hurts and I can't do anything about it unless I go to the urgent care and get some anti-inflammatory shots in my ass because otherwise I'm gonna have to lay in bed for a few days and I don't want to do that and I want to do a bunch of other stuff but I'm exhausted and I have to take a break and I don't want to take a fucking break

And I don't know why I always feel like I'm in a frantic rush like I'm the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland screaming we're late we're late

I don't know what I feel frantic sometimes and I guess it's anxiety related or I don't know

I miss my grandmother's so fucking much I really do

They understood me and my uncle understood me and he still alive and I would really love to visit him but nobody will let me and I don't know how he's doing and I'm just sadd I want to know my odds and my uncles and not be treated like shit

I wish I had a tighter knit group of friends and a better support system Travis is wonderful and all but since I've been hanging out with him other people are acting weird because they're not understanding that he's sober because they haven't seen him in a long time and a lot of people think that we're dating and I had to correct so many people at the metal show and it was not fun To be like yeah that's no that's my brother you know no thank you he's really great though and you should definitely talk to him if you're interested but I am not interested

And the thing is sometimes I look at him and I try to be interested I really do because he's nice enough to do there are some things about him that I really don't like but I know he would be good to me but I'm not attracted to him in the way that I would need to be I don't see him like that he's like a brother today he literally farted at me and then ran out the room like an asshole Or a brother I don't know

But like it was just weird everything's weird I just want to be back where I was going to shows and socializing and God damn I miss having sex it's been so fucking long and it takes so long for me to have a connection with somebody to do that and maybe I just need to get laid

Maybe we just need to figure out a way to get me laid without me losing my mind maybe I need to have a one night stand that's really good or something but I'm not that kind of person no I was cursed with demisexuality and it takes me a long time to like somebody and jump into bed with them or I have to be horribly comfortable around them I have to feel at ease

I don't even know if I like sex anymore

Like if this is too much information you can just skip over it because I'm gonna keep talking about it I can't really Get myself to pleasure myself anymore and when I do it's more of like a compulsive thing because I feel like I just need to get off and go to sleep it's not something that like I'm enjoying anymore and I don't like this

And I had to talk to my GYN because I have never had a traditional orgasm like I'm supposed to and so the Doctor was like well there's a procedure we can do where we can inject plasma into then you'll have orgasms and I'm like that sounds really cool we could try that if I can afford it but like I also get these awful sists and The doctors figured out what's causing it however there's been no treatment for it because they want me to lose weight but I have thyroid issues and even if I Stick to a diet and exercise it does not help me drop weight until my metabolism is working correctly and if I'm in hypothyroid then it's not working and if I'm in hyperthyroid then I drop weight or super fast and I don't know right now I can hear my Neighbors screaming at 1 another and it's Driving me Insane because it's Really late at night and I shouldn't be able to hear people screaming at each other from 2 Doors down Inside of their apartment

And I told my dad that I would be willing to stay short-term in a downstairs apartment somewhere safe and quiet if I didn't have neighbors above me that stamped around or at least the noise was muffled a little bit because people get on the roof above my apartment to fix the AC units for the apartment surrounding me and some people just climb app there and party and I can hear them when they're walking app there and it's so Loud and scares the shit out of me every single time Since the time I moved in

So I don't know if having an upstairs neighbor is tolerable for me and I do not want to make things hard on my family and I already feel like a huge burden

And there was a time where my dad was doing nothing but calling me an imposition For weeks he was doing this I wasn't serious pain I had a back injury I was using a Walker to move around and he was being abusive to me severely and telling me I was faking everything while I was crying in pain't struggling to get up the stairs and he just drove off and left me by myself to figure out how to do things and I had to pay my ex-boyfriend to stay with me when my father and my mother could have done that where my sister could have done that and all I needed them to do was just fucking call EMSIf I fell and my doctors have been telling my parents to move me to a downstairs apartment and get me some sort of help when my back is fucked up If they can't as my family help me

Because I was always taught that family is supposed to help family and be the ones that you can talk to about anything and be closest to and that's why I don't want to give up because I want that and I was lied to

There's just so much I'm finding out at 37 about the way people think and work and just operate and I don't understand it doesn't make sense to me I don't get it it's not clicking in my head

And people are like well if you know it's not clicking in your head then shouldn't you be able to figure that out and I'm like no but because my brain does not work like yours and I don't think like that and I could try to think like that but it doesn't make it click into place

It's just like I don't understand why my partner being my dominant and helping me get things done by tasking me works but it does and I don't know how he can magically put me in subspace and I feel completely relaxed and safe and like I'm being protected and then I'm given Like long distance after care a little bit of a chat or he'll check on me the next morning and see how I'm doing and nobody else Has ever really been able to do that with me and Figure out how to loop hole my brain But he does and he's good at it and sometimes I ain't like hey I really need help today because I can't fucking function

And if he has the time then yes we do that and if he doesn't then he lets me know but usually he won't leave me with nothing he'll at least tell me ZI can wear my collar and tell me to find something to keep myself busy until he can do something for me or Whatever.

You know he wants me to find a partner here and I'm looking and it's just really hard because it's not like I can really be dating people here actively right now and letting them get to know me when I'm still figuring shit out and in therapy for all my crap and about the only person that I would be willing to sleep with currently is my ex-boyfriend who does not seem to be interested in whatsoever but I could be wrong because I can never tell when somebody is interested in me it's confusing as fuck people have to like directly tell me hi I like you I would like to have sex with you I would like to date you etc like otherwise I'm fucking clueless

I hate this so much

I hate the incessant compulsive need to just process all this shit constantly for pages and II don't know if it's helping me or not

I mean apparently according to my psychiatrist this is actually a good thing for ptsd but I don't know

I'm not noticing the good things that other people are about me and I don't know what that is Like I don't know what is changing for the good and they tell me that like I'm doing so much better and then I'm like I don't know what the fuck you're talking about dude

Also completely off-topic since I'm not really staying on topic anyway but completely fucking off-topic out of left field I need to talk about something well I'm thinking about it

So I used to hang out with Matthew on Sundays and Father's Day was Sunday and Matthew still follows me on TikTok and liked quite a few of my reposts during probably the time he was supposed to be hanging out with his kids and wife for Father's Day stuff and I feel that he probably would rather be here with me but he chose to not divorce his wife and Stay together with her for the kids benefit which is stupid in my opinion but I understand that his kids come first but I still think that a divorce Would not hurt the children and no I'm not talking about Matt in New Jersey I'm talking about Matthew who was a transperson and They use heat they pronounced and they wanted to be more feminine but unfortunately they were kind of built like a Jack marine and it just wasn't like a girly style that they wanted to try and say they just presented as masculine and male and I have discovered that I am attracted to people who are male to female trans or or I am sometimes attracted to Stone top lesbians though I have never gotten to experience any sort of intimothy other than with Matthew who was a sexual so the intimacy was only just cuddling and they caught me off guard 1 day when they just gave me the world's most beautiful Wonderful kiss and the last time I saw them in person They went to leave because one of their kids was very sick and in the hospital but before they left and walked out the door they ran back over to me and they kissed me and And then the next thing I knew his wife was calling and it all blindsided me because he told me he was looking for a lawyer to get into force but it turns out that he had gotten a house with his wife and they had been going to couples therapy and he had just neglected to tell me for 4 fucking months out of years of a relaxing spin time together type relationship Z He just didn't want to hurt my feelings by letting me know what was going on

He didn't think that his wife was smart enough to figure out that he was coming over to my apartment and I wanted to be left out of the drama because I had heard the way that she spoke to him and it was horribly abusive and I was always under the impression that they were separated and in the process of trying to divorce and I was lied to you and that hurt really bad and I did get an apology and I do believe that they are sorry And I miss them desperately and I can't reach out any more than I have because it's going to get him in trouble because his wife is really awful and the only reason he's with her and chose to stay with her is for their kids and sometimes I hope that he will change his mind and divorce her and show up at my doorstep And sometimes I think about well maybe he will wait until the kids are 18 and then say fuck you to her and come back to me but then I put that on a shelf for later and I walk away from it because it hurts so much

And last night I met the most beautiful Woman who was definitely male to female at med city ballroom I believe she works there and I wanted so badly to flirt with her but I didn't know how and she was so pretty and It was so interesting because she had a very strong masculine deep voice but she looked very very feminine like she started her hormones very early or something and if she had spoken in a woman's voice I would've never known because usually you can kind of tell by facial structure and body build but no not with this person And It makes me want to go back and see her again but I don't even know her name

And one thing that Matthew told meWhen I discovered that I likedMale to female transpeople he was aggravated by that and what he was aggravated about was that I wasn't interested in dating a transperson that had bottom surgery I was interested in transpeople who aren't interested in bottom surgery who want to date women who want to have sex with women but are still trans and women themselves And I was told that this was wrong and I don't understand how that's wrong and it made me cry becauseIt's just a preference it's not anything that's like a fetish for me it's just what I don't see how that's wrongAnd who knows I maybe would date somebody with bottom surgery but I could never be sexual with a woman that way because I have had a horrible trauma and I am not interested in female genitalia at all I don't even like my own but I don't want male genitalia that I'm aware of

I experienced romantic attraction I experienced sexual attraction I think pretty sure I am I guess pansexpaul and Demi sexual. I don't know whatever labels and terms else I would identify as

I mean me myself I don't really know if I identify any certain gender but I just use she her pronouns because it feels easier because it just feels really complicated if I want to use other pronouns and having to tell people but I don't even feel the need to do that and people don't generally believe me when I tell them that I'm not straight or people think that I'm a lesbian because I don't exactly dress feminine or really give off feminine energy to them

And I really do wish that I could be somebody but I don't really feel like somebody I just feel like a part of a brain with was a body and I don't even know if this is me or part of me talking and II don't know

And and there's so many lives I want to live and so many things I see and it just doesn't seem possible

I wish I had some sort of aesthetic and style for myself I wish I had some sort of cause play type identity that everybody else seems to have

They seem to know what they like to wear and know what looks good on them and they can flaunt it and pull it off and they look great and I feel gross and it doesn't matter if I'm thinner because I have been thinner I've never been skinny but I've been thinner and I still look stupid and things that I would try on and I've been bigger than I am now and I look terrible and the clothing that I would try on and I don't really have very many clothes to wear I just have like 2 pairs of pants and a bunch of old ass shirts with holes in them and It's really not great

And my mom gives me clothing and when I wear it it looks like old lady clothing of course because she is an older lady and it ages me and I want to wear leg a crop top but I look stupid wearing them because I don't look like the fat girl models that look good in those clothes

I just don't my body shape as bizarre

All the things that are flattering come in ugly colors and bad patterns or it's too expensive to buy and the sewing machine I was given because I was like fuck it maybe I will sew my own clothing well nobody knows how to work it and I was promised my other grandmother's sewing machine but my mom is letting abusive alcoholic man probably use that or she's like squirrelled it away and says she's gonna use it someday but if you saw how absolutely filled to the brim her house is of just boxes of stuff that she's going to get 21 day it's sad because the hoarding disorder she has is Very sad and her need to constantly get more things and buy more food because she felt sheaker app with scarcity even though both of my uncles are not like this at all and they told me that she got everything she wanted growing app and she would throw tantrums if she didn't and she never really got in trouble and they got a brunt of the abuse from my grandfather and according to my oldest aunt on my father's side he's always been out of control And strange acting since he was young and he's done some fucked up things and I looked up things and I don't know who to believe

Anyway circling back to my sexuality I don't know what to do anymore about dating

Like I'm happy with Matt but he's right I do need somebody that's here. Unless he decides to just move down here I don't have anyone. Sometimes I think he gets a little drunk and talks about wanting to move to New Orleans and retire and live here with me and that sounds like a wonderful thing andI know that he really wants to marry his primary partner who already has a husband and that's not something he can do and not and I consider him my primary partner but he wants me to have a partner here and I understand that but I haven't found anybody that's acceptable and I would consider dating my ex-boyfriend again because he's sober now andYou know he would always apologize to me about all the awful shit he did and I let him get away with and all that and I was like well you know verbal apologies don't generally make me feel any better because I've had you know my family apologized to me for hurting me and then they do it over and over and over and over and over again and apologies begin to mean nothing to me and the only thing that means something to me is seeing a change in a person And them doing the work and proving it to me and I do wonder if that's something he chose to do for himself or partly because of me orIf maybe I just contributed to it by putting that in his head when I was talking to him about how you know apologies are great but I'm tired of having apologies and not saying any changes like maybe that clicked in his head 1 day or I don't know maybe somebody else magically convinced him to get silver I'm not sure

And I love him and I know about all the stupid shit he's done like shit that no other girl would put up with but it's not really a big deal to me

And he's fucking younger than me and I don't know if that's a good idea even my partner is 2 years younger than me

I wish I could like Travis I just don't though and it's really aggravating I can't make myself I've tried I've tried to get myself attracted to him and I just can't do it I know everybody really wishes for that tap but it's just not going to that I can see

And I have spoken to a lot of really cool nice people and they seem interested in me but no one ever tells me if they are andI don't know what I'm doing anymore

And I'm really lonely like my partner tries his best and today he was supposed to be here for me he knew it was gonna be a hard day and all of that and he wasn't here for me and it hurt andI don't know if he had a reason or if he's just fucking forgot because he's an alcoholic and he needs to get his shit together but you know I promise not to fix him but he also let's me know whenIt's OK for me to call him out on bullshit and I'm pretty timid about calling anybody out on bullshit other than I'm late unless they are hurting somebody I love and care about

And I wonder if I do actually love and care about myself and that's why I am so vicious and protective of myself and I do wonder if that's why I'm so vicious and protective of people I love if there's like a correlation between that if that makes sense I don't know but like I never really thought about if I loved myself or not because I don't really know what myself is I just know that myself Never got protected it never got Justice for what happened to her and she needs somebody to protect her or she's going to get hurt Again and we can't do it we've been trying and I don't know where she is We look for the course self all the time and sometimes she's then she disappears and I don't know because it's real bizarre because I'm part of her I am her but then I'm not and We don't know what's going on with that I don't know what's going on is what I don't know if it's me or if I'm crazy or I mean I don't have like pretty much given up even reading about this sort of stuff because it is so confusing

Like how do people go about Not being broken into pieces because I feel broken in a million little pieces and you know it's really weird if you have me do handwriting my handwriting changes constantly and it's really weird it's like script and print and the styles change and It's really bizarre and you know I see the paragraph that I wrote wee and I'm like who the fuck is we but I know that there's a wee because I know it's just I don't understand how to explain it

I don't like talking about it because I don't want some other diagnosis so a Doctor can treat me like I'm crazy and tell me to quit smoking weed and take me off of my anxiety medicine when I actually need those things for pain and all sorts of other reasons

And I've already explained the purpose of those medications so I don't need to go over that and you No somebody has to protect her

Nobody protects her

And I'm scared that everybody's going to find out that I'm not like them

But I also don't know why I care

I don't know why I can't just say fuck it

I don't know why there's just no Justice for all of the bad things that happen I don't know why people don't follow rules I don't understand that I don't know if this talkie part of me is an altar or me or a disorder or just PTSD or 80 HD

I'm not correcting that we can all figure out what that means I'm pretty sure

You know I always suspected that I had some sort of disassociative disorder and my mom's even made comment about like how I always was spacing out especially when they were arguing but I don't understand why they never stopped are you and once they noticed that it was causing me to great distress because who the fuck does that to a kid what the fuck is wrong with grown ass adults why do they do that in front of children I wish I could slap the faces of every single fucking person that does that And then like chokes slam them into a wall and tell them that they're gonna fuck up their kid to hell if they continue and they shouldn't be fucking parents if they're going to continue acting like that

You know I could have really hurt my sister and my family doesn't know that I could have really really hurt her when she attacked me and I had so much trouble trying to fight with myself and parts of myself it's all to hold it together and just like shove her ass out of the way and try to block the hits that were being thrown and all the bullshit she was screaming at me and I tried really hard to reason with her And I thought about putting her in a hold where she couldn't get loose and I could just make her take a little nap on the carpet and she would be fine but I didn't want to hurt her Or cause her any more distress and my dad told me that it wasn't about the candle for her that she was just pissed off because she had a bad day at work and that makes me even angrier now that I know that it had nothing to do with the candle for her because I thought it was all about the stupid fucking candle

No she's just immature and a little asshole and she just decided she was gonna try and beat me up

I grew up with people that would go to the person they hated's house and if their parents weren't home they would go in the house and drag them outside and beat their ass on their own front lawn

I grew up with gen x people.

I ran around with my best friend Going to fucking trap houses and I'm not bragging about it it's not cool the things that I experienced I rode around in the back of the car with her getting stoned as hell while her boyfriend and baby daddy and her friend's boyfriend and baby daddy wrote around and sold crack and the only reason that I know what a crack rock looks like is because they showed me and it looks like a block of parmesan cheese it's wild and now I know as I call it Certain slang names and I've never done it I've never touched it I've never actually physically touched it because I know that shit can soak in through your skin and people don't realize that Also I mean it's made with lake household chemicals and that's pretty fucking gross

But also I have definitely smoked a Blunt that had Coke in it before and I did not know it and It made me incredibly sick it did not get me fucked up it just made me sick and want to fucking die and I thought I was dying but I didn't and I would never want to touch it again

And then one time my mom's shitty alcoholic pet boyfriend whatever the fuck he is got me some weed because I didn't have anybody to get it from and it was laced with cocaine and PC P and I smoke that and it was a large bag of it and he said it was Mexican weed and I really do think that it fucked me up and the reason I know what it was laced with is because I was waking up in puddles of sweat and smoking entirely too much constantly and then one evening I had an auditory hallucination about being in a ballroom with leg you know like bridgerton style and this was before bridgerton existed and it was like mentally in my mind's eye I could see everything and physically I was just laying in bed But I could hear the talking and the music and it was beautiful but it was also terrifying and so I asked my dad to go get me a Drug test and I pissed tested myself and it popped for those 2 things and I was horrified so I had him get rid of it and everybody was like I would have taken that that's hilarious oh my God do you know how expensive it is to get PCP and I'm like why in the world would you want to do those drugs

Like why would you want to do PCP?

Like you know how anti psychotics can cause people all sorts of problems yet that drug can wreck your brain for the rest of your life and I worry that that's what happened was before I moved out of his house right before I moved in with Lucy and Don't know if it did something to me and changed me. I do know that it can profoundly change people and it can cripple them and fuck them up beyond belief

And then one time I smoked opiumThat was in a Blunt and I thought it was really weird that everybody else was nodding off and faded and I was wide awake and like Hey guys Hey hey I don't fucking hurt this is the best thing ever who wants to go on a long walk with me andWe're all so fucked up and I was just pain free.

I never did that again though

I was always scared of doing other things

I did try the stupid gas station weed before and all it did was give me an awful fucking headache back in the day when spice was popular

I was like fuck that

And then I used to go get dackeries a lot with Kelly and I would ride with her so she could go get her pills and I would help her find fucking hose clamps.

But I never took those medicines unless I was prescribed them for paying for myself for my own problems because I wasn't interested and how they made me feel I'd just liked having no pain but I never had an addiction to them that was never an issue I've never had like any sort of addiction issues

And I guess I'm lucky about that but sometimes I look at the vodka that lives in my refrigerator and I think about just getting wasaid because I just want to

And sometimes I look at alcohol and beer in the store and I want to get it and I don't have any sort of drinking problem or anything but there's so much history in the family of drinking problems that I don't know I don't want to tempt fate but sometimes I do want to go out and have drinks and get drunk and I don't really have anybody to go out and party with and Justin Was a person that I was going to be comfortable doing that wasn't till he got really fucking weird and we are still technically friends but I have been ghosting him because I can't really handle a lot of his behavior which is very similar to my father's behavior that I finally figured out what bothered me.

The thing is like he really likes me or at least he thinks he does but what I noticed is he likes the idea of me and not actually who I am and he had problems with who I am when I tried to show him who I was currently and he didn't like that and I'm just like well I'm not going to morph myself into the perfect little tradwife for you sorry that's not going to happen And then him insulting my partner really pissed me off and I've already told him off about it

Because what did he think that he was going to pretend to be Polly and then start dating me and then push Mat out of the picture

And the last time we spoke he was just like well I've been thinking about you in the most leg try hard flirty way and I was like you internally I wanted to say it out loud but I just didn't and I didn't even respond to it over the phone call and I just changed subjects because it's just like I don't know what I'm supposed to do cause I don't like him like that he knows it and he's still pushing even though I have put his ass in friendzone or whatever the fuck you want to call it people are like Always bitching about friendzone and terms and crap like that and it's just like oh come onEverybody knows that technically friend zone is just like you liked the person but you don't like the person enough to fuck them or date them so they're just a good friend because they're a nice person you don't want to like not be friends with them and then it just makes things complicated if the person can't just stay within the boundaries and he crossed my fucking boundaries by messaging me to ask how I was doing when I told him that I would message him when I was ready to talk and feeling better and I'm still not feeling better and he has continued to message me and I don't really Want to reply right now and he can just live with that or he can fuck off

And I don't know I think I'm just gonna stop for the evening I'd have plenty of other things to talk about and I think you know it's time that we have out decompression time and go to sleep

AndI don't know sometimes it just really feels like time is bending because it goes fast and then it goes slow and then it doesn't make any sense to me at all and thenI just start thinking about you know how the Earth and the universe is just not locally real and how all of that works and all these lake theories that it keeps me up at night but not in a bad way because at night I can just quietly do what I please on the computer and I can comfortably eat without feeling embarrassed or shamed and it doesn't trigger my eating disorder And I can smoke weed and not be bothered and I can do you pretty much everything except make loud assNoises because I don't really want to disturb my neighbors or I might be like enjoying myself loudly singing or something but you can hear through the fucking walls

So like generally I just watch Korean dramas and whatever shows that look good on Netflix and prime and I might also be playing like a Sims game and I might be having like 60 tabs open with 6 different rabbit holes of research I'm doing on some sort of niche subject that I have become hyper fixated on and then suddenly I'll be like I'm not interested in this anymore and I'll close it and then I'll be like oh no where did that go and I'll never be able to find the fucking webpage again and you know there's just So much information and I want to absorb all of it.

I have some videos that I have not posted that I'm going to post here

I found them to be very interesting and it really explains somewhat how I feel you'll and I haven't really looked at any disassociative disordered TikTok's but I was considering doing that to see if there is anything relatible to show you but most of the ones that I save are about like other mental health issues or narcissistic abuse or whatever that I very strongly Agree with and understand that I want other people to see and understand and share

I don't like that my dad has put me on a time crunch that I'm going to have to change phone proviters and you get a new phone and start paying a bill for that and he's acting like I can't just give him money for the family plan that we're on and I'm like are you planning to die soon and he doesn't look good like he'll eat it lose weight but he has no muscle it looks like and I'm like Hey I want to ask him hey you know is are you fucking dying are you going to die soon do I need to go ahead and start grieving now like I already grieved a little bit when I was on the contact but you know I quitBecause my mom would tell me about the awful shit he would say about me behind my back and the shit he would say to her and it made me mad and I was just like fuck him

And you know same thing with my sister who's just being awful to my mother and it's weird because my mom will be nice to me but then you'll turn around and be really nasty to me and you know next session it's probably going to be about things I do that she doesn't like.

I never really hear or see my parents act genuine.

It was weird as hell to see my father act the way he did today.

Chelsea said he looked scared when I asked what his facial expression was.

I was pissed that he was late.

I still don't understand what he needed to talk to you about first and why.

I left that choice up to you.

I can't go back in time. I should have said no. I should have just gone in together.

I started to panic when he went in there with you.

My father, the person that literally hurt my neck connective tissue and I had whiplash pain for weeks. I have evidence. I could send him to jail.

I didn't bruise and didn't think to take pictures of the red marks on my chest from my sister before they went away but she admitted she did it and not even about the candle

Who does that?

Now I'm angrier because it wasn't about that. She was just mad and had a bad day and wanted an excuse to fight.

I regret not fighting back or calling the cops now.

I regret not beating her ass to teach her a lesson.

Fuck her.

She didn't apologize and she's partying and getting stoned and drinking having fun not giving a fuck about what she's doing to others around her.

If she ever puts her hands on me again like that I will defend myself.

But no I'm being nice. I got her a bag with plan b and condoms and narcan and fentanyl test kits. I'm still trying to be a good big sister.

I'm trying to just be a person.

[btvs3x21]

#I never could explain how I saw their relationship#Because it's just so complex and messed up on so many levels#But this person really put it into words#I 100% agree with them#And maybe it's my personal bias coming into play but I don't think so#I know Zuko's and Azula's relationship is a hot (haha) topic in this fandom but I always believed it was somewhere in the middle#I think people tend to see things too one sided#Like they either blame Zuko or Azula instead of seeing the deeply complicated and messed up thing that is the royal family#People act like Zuko is a horrible brother for not trusting her but he's also an abused kid who has reasons for being cautious around her#But some also act like Azula is just a monster who doesn't care about anyone when that just isn't true#I think it needs to be understood that emotions are a fucking messy thing especially when you're in an abusive household#It just feels like people are too harsh on them#I don't want to excuse their actions because holy fuck they were messed up but they can be explained#And I personally don't really see the comics or even tlok as really canon because things just seem really off there to me#And again maybe it's my bias because I want them to heal and repair their relationship but I do think that deep down they do/ did care

i'm genuinely asking you to tell me when zuko ever does or says anything to imply he cares about azula in the show. not your personal beliefs about his secret thoughts that we never see proof of but legitimate proof within canon that he cares about azula at all because i cannot think of a single moment that supports this idea.

and once more i will clarify: i am not morally indicting this fictional character for not caring about his sister. he's not real. him being a bad brother doesn't do any real world harm. it just makes his dynamic with his sister more compelling because it's interesting and subversive to what we usually see portrayed in fractured sibling relationships in fiction. if your response to "zuko is flawed and doesn't care about his sister" is to provide a moral defense for that lack of care instead of to provide evidence in canon that he does care, you have misunderstood what i said.

you've cherry picked this reblog of my post which is your prerogative, but it is interesting to note that when i replied to this reblog asking the op both why they pretend to agree with what i said while completely undermining my point with this desire to clear zuko's good name from bad brother accusations and to show me a single moment wherein zuko actually demonstrated any kind of care for azula, they didn't even try.

i'm not interested in if zuko is morally good. i'm not saying that him being a bad brother doesn't make sense. i'm not even saying that i wouldn't find it interesting to see azula and zuko mend fences one day. but i am saying that he is a bad brother in that he fundamentally doesn't care about azula as his sister and expresses zero desire to be her brother and i have yet to see a single person offer proof that says otherwise.

that is the point of my post, and i find it strange how much some people want to read against that while still reblogging it and putting their misplaced takes in my notes.

the crucial fact of zuko and azula's relationship that makes it so insanely compelling is not the tried and true facets of siblings on opposite sides of a war, sibling rivalry turned murderous, or siblings who are divided by their parents' favoritism; it's the fact that despite being the older sibling, zuko is the one who doesn't care about azula while azula cares about him even when it goes against her best interest to do so. i think this makes a lot of people who want to see zuko through the fanon lens of this awkward turtle duck who's just doing his best and isn't super angry and volatile deeply uncomfortable because it so directly contradicts that reading of him unless they completely strip azula of her sympathetic and human traits. but that reading is not only unsupported by canon, it's boring.

the truth is that azula cares about zuko (in a very distorted way given how her upbringing and trauma restrict her ability to express it in a way anywhere in the area code of healthy) to the extent that because she chooses him over herself in bringing him home (because it is an insane retcon that implies she is near omnipotent to say she knew for certain the avatar was not really dead and was just going to scapegoat zuko, not to mention it makes very little sense and is, again, boring), she loses everything. and zuko cares so little for azula that he only feels anything remotely close to grief about it all when he sees just how badly she's hurting.

as much as i think his redemption arc leaves to be desired in terms of the political implications of it, zuko does have a good heart. he does want to do the right thing. it's just that azula has always been his blind spot, and that makes their relationship so much more interesting.

[project1939]

100+ Films of 1952

Film number 131: My Man and I 

Release date: September 5th, 1952 

Studio: MGM 

Genre: drama 

Director: William Wellman 

Producer: Stephen Ames 

Actors: Ricardo Montalban, Shelley Winters, Claire Trevor 

Plot Summary: Chu Chu, a Mexican-American farm laborer, dreams of saving enough money to live his own American Dream. He meets Nancy, a troubled alcoholic, and seeing the good in her, falls in love. Things crumble, however, when his racist boss refuses to pay him the wages he is owed, 

My Rating (out of five stars): ***¼  

For the first hour I absolutely loved this film- I would have given it four stars at that point. It was dark, sad, and more risque than most films of the time. Nearly all the characters were extremely damaged in an unvarnished way. But after about an hour, it was like the movie came to its senses and said, “Wait!! This is MGM in 1952! We can’t let this be some kind of Italian Neo-Realist stuff!” So it tacked on a happy ending and dispensed with most of the soul searching. (Some spoilers) 

The Good: 

Ricardo Montalban! First of all, the man is so beautiful I swear I could literally swoon if I was standing next to him. I kept writing, “OMG HE IS SO PRETTY!” in my notes. He was more than just a pretty face, though. His acting made me feel loads of empathy for his character. 

The character Nancy. She was one of the rawest and most vividly portrayed alcoholics I’ve seen in a Classical Hollywood movie. She wasn’t a glamourous alcoholic like the Joan Fontaine character in Something to Live For. She was desperate, self-hating, hopeless, and suicidal. 

We actually got some pretty steamy “female gaze” moments in this! The wife of Chu Chu’s racist boss often watches a shirtless Montalban working on the farm, and her thoughts are unmistakable. 

The two main villains in this, Mr. and Mrs. Ames, are so despicable you want to throw things at them. This made for really good drama, though. Then add in the fact that Mrs. Ames was much more complex than just a simple bad guy. She was one of the most broken characters, and it wasn’t hard to feel sad for her. 

The writing, especially in the first 2/3 of the film was pretty damn good. I often paused it to write down quotes that impressed me. 

The film was visually interesting- it was often darker and shadier, like a noir, but it still had a somewhat polished MGM look. 

The subject matter was shockingly dark and risque for the time, especially for MGM. 

It was pretty cool that a Mexican born character (and actor!) was the star of the movie- almost every single film released in 1952 had a white protagonist.  

The indictment of racism. Chu Chu is often subjected to racist remarks and prejudiced treatment. Slurs are used in the film, but they always come out of the mouths of bad guys. The character we are most meant to love and empathize with is Chu Chu. 

The Bad: 

Chu Chu is probably too perfect. It kinda reminded me of later Sidney Poitier films- some of the black characters he played were almost saintly, clearly to make them likeable to anyone but the most terrible racists. I get that there are good intentions behind it, but I wished Chu Chu could have maybe had one noticeable flaw! 

The broken English the Mexican characters spoke got to be a little much sometimes. 

The final 30 minutes or so were a letdown for me, mostly because the tone suddenly seemed to take a 180. What was gritty and realistic started becoming more sentimental and idealized.  

The ending, especially the change of heart from the Ames, seemed almost ridiculous. 

The romance between Chu Chu and Nancy wasn’t very believable. As interesting a character as Nancy was, I felt dumfounded that Chu Chu would fall in love with her. She was an absolute mess who needed medical care. I kept thinking, “She doesn’t need a boyfriend right now, she needs professional help! 

[femme-objet]

the cool thing about moderates is that it usually doesn’t take very long to get them to defend hitler and/or slavery

[ambivalens999]

A (Very) Disorganized Analysis of Snape

As preface, this is neither a defense nor indictment of Snape’s character so much as a…very disorganized exploration. My only aim here is to explore what I find to be the fascinating complexity of his character.

Just to get this out of the way, I am just going to establish the following as accepted fact:

Snape was, among many things, a bully

Snape likely committed—or at the very least, aided / abetted—terrible crimes as a Death Eater

Whatever happened in Snape’s childhood, that does not give him a free pass for the terrible things he did

There are going to be typos in here and I apologize sincerely for them.

On the relationship between Snape and Dumbledore

There are very few private conversations we see between Snape and Dumbledore in the series, but the ones we do see (or read) are, in a word, complex. When Dumbledore asks Snape to kill him, Snape wonders out loud if Dumbledore is worried at all for his soul, or (he alludes) if he thinks Snape is already doomed and his soul simply doesn’t matter anymore. I also think a lot about Dumbledore forcing Snape to teach Harry occlumency his 5th year, and Snape being resentful not just because it's Harry, but likely because of the danger that potentially puts him in. Even if Snape's mind is impenetrable, Harry's as established is decidedly not.

For many reasons, I think Dumbledore and Snape’s relationship must have been very, very tumultuous. For one, I think Snape would have had a far more intimate view of Dumbledore than Harry, and thus a greater understanding of the man beyond the symbol of virtue/infallibility Dumbledore was often seen as—he, unlike Harry, would have observed Dumbledore’s failings and flaws over the span of decades.

Possibly to a greater extent than Harry, Snape might have also perceived Dumbledore as both mentor / war general figure and pseudo father figure. Dumbledore, after all, was the only one who knew both the best and the worst of Snape. Snape obviously respected him a great deal in return--but, yes, I also think there would have been a great deal of resentment.

I think Snape would have always questioned how much Dumbledore valued his life (and, indeed, soul) compared to those of his Gryffindor counterparts. His skepticism would have been deeply rooted, developed as early as his school days—before he’d even become a Death Eater, before he’d truly gone down the wrong path—when the marauders went essentially unpunished for nearly killing him.

I think that pivotal scene with “after all this time?” "always" also shows how much Dumbledore, even after decades, didn't really understand Snape: his motives, what drove him, the depth of his loyalty to Lily’s memory. Perhaps, Dumbledore hadn’t believed Snape capable? Which might have only affirmed Snape’s resentment—that the headmaster, even then, underestimated him.

On the relationship between Snape and Lily

I know some people consider Snape loving Lily “after all this time” problematic? Personally, I don't see it in that light. I sense that there’s this “it’s creepy and obsessive that he hasn’t moved on from this woman who didn’t even love him back” sentiment, however:

Not necessarily a hill I’m willing to die on, but in the books his affection is never explicitly stated to be romantic in nature. (I recently saw @k-s-morgan​ take the same stance in a similar character analysis, so maybe this isn’t as much of a rare read as I think it is?)

If his feelings were romantic (and I acknowledge that they are heavily coded to be), to our knowledge Snape never ever attempted to force his feelings on Lily or even asked for / expected reciprocation.

To some degree, I feel like too much is made of Snape being romantically in love with Lily. More fundamentally, Lily was his first, true friend—possibly the only true friend he made in his life. This, alone, is sufficient in my eyes to lend her a huge amount of importance in his adult life.

From what we know of his childhood, Snape’s experience at home was rife with abuse & neglect; we understand that he left his house when possible to meet with Lily, positioning her as both escape and solace.

At Hogwarts, she was his only meaningful friend. This is not to say Lily was a saint, but I think it’s fair to say that, until their falling out, she gave him more credit than most and was willing to think better of him—i.e. that he was capable of becoming more than what everyone else assumed, which was Death Eater fodder.

So I feel like, sure, it's possible Snape's love had romantic qualities (maybe temporarily or the entire time), but the depth of his regard for her would have been rooted in something far more important than romantic + sexual attraction. At the risk of repeating this ad nauseam: Lily was his only friend, a person who expected more of him while most others expected less. If you only had one person in your life who saw you that way, why wouldn't they mean the world to you? Especially when he wasn't even getting that validation at home? (Not entirely analogous scenarios, but is James not vitally important to Sirius too, even years after the former’s death?)

I think Lily could have easily symbolized so much of what was aspirational in Snape—his “better” self—because of the way only she seemed capable of seeing him (again, as far as we know from the books). I think this explains why it might not have been so simple for Snape to "move on," or why the "move on" criticism is perhaps even unfair, given that his attachment to Lily as a person, even as an idea, was very likely extremely complex + layered.

To be clear, I think Snape's connection to Lily goes way beyond just a failed love story (platonic or otherwise). I think a huge contributor is obviously guilt. Snape's not a happy man, and he isn't a happy one because he’s fucked up a lot: he indirectly killed her. In that sense, holding onto Lily / being hyper-obsessed with her for fifteen years makes a lot of sense to me.

On Snape’s Choices

Something that’s so fascinating to me about Snape is how realistic his character trajectory is, especially for a children’s series. I can see (again, without excusing him or giving him a free pass) what influenced him to make the terrible decisions he did and how he is, in large part, a product of his circumstances.

Snape grew up in an abusive household. Harry did too. But when Snape goes to Hogwarts, everyone basically assumes he’s going to become a Death Eater. He’s bullied by the four most popular boys in his year. He’s shunned by the other houses as most Slytherins are and is additionally perceived as lesser in his own house for being poor and a half-blood. After he parts ways with Lily—so there’s no one who truly expects differently from him—it’s unfortunately not hard to see how he might have been easily radicalized.

It’s also not hard to see how—after that initial rush of belonging, of having a place where he was seemingly accepted—Snape might have realized that he was in far too deep, just like Regulus was said to have: that being a Death Eater was not, in fact, something he wanted.

I know some read Snape’s change of sides as purely tied to Lily’s death. This is my take: I think he had reservations as soon as he understood what being a Death Eater truly meant, i.e. past the promises and pomp / ceremony that may have initially seduced him.

I think, still, that he would have been weak to the allure of belonging, the affirmation he may have received as a Death Eater—that he might have, at first, ignored his reservations in service of those benefits. I do think, maybe generously, that Snape would have left eventually, but it might have taken much longer if not for Lily’s death. So, I don’t think Lily’s death was the sole cause of his change of sides so much as the catalyst. 

As for his personal beliefs... I don’t think Snape ever truly bought into pureblood ideology with any sort of real permanence, beyond perhaps the pressure to fit in. To that point, I do not believe that during Harry’s time at Hogwarts, Snape is even subconsciously a blood purist. Nor do I think he is indifferent to the physical (if not mental) well-being of Harry’s peers. To be clear, I don’t think Snape risks his life as a double agent, at this time, just for Harry or Lily’s memory; I think that he also believes in what the Order stands for.

With Harry being the series’ lens, much of this is necessarily conjecture. But we know that Snape finds killing—even in service of a larger agenda—to be unconscionable. When Dumbledore requests it of him, Snape is extremely resistant. He wonders about the state of his soul. This does not read to me as someone without an active, moral compass.

[thefirstknife]

What are your thoughts regarding Myelin Games' theory about Sagira's message to Ikora being supporting evidence for the Nosiris theory?

This is Myelin's video!

So, his main position here in regards to Sagira is that Sagira's message to Osiris is basicaly a fake message and that Savathun wrote it to coerce Ikora into giving Osiris a high ranking position within the Tower. This does seem to fit Savathun's general operating scheme, but Myelin doesn't really explain his argument for this besides "Savathun would do this."

He basically doesn't list any arguments for why he thinks the message might be fake, besides saying he's not sure how Sagira managed to write the message seconds before her death. I don't think that works as an explanation because Ghosts are highly complex beings who can process vast amounts of data at incredible speeds. In D1, Ghost reads the entirety of Toland's Journal in 2 seconds. Link here (1 minute, 41 seconds).

He reads the message Sagira left, but he doesn't analyse it other than to assert that the message and Sagira's death are a perfect cover for Osiris to be given the position of Zavala's advisor. And I agree! Sagira's death really is the perfect cover for Savathun to pose as Osiris in the Tower and have the excuse to pour over Vanguard records about the Light, Ghosts and other things.

But let's look at the message:

But before that, Osiris had handed her a message. One he couldn't bear to read, which was just as well because it contained, amongst other things, an all-caps indictment:

HE IS NOT AS STRONG AS HE THINKS.

Ikora had smiled upon reading that. Even in death, Sagira couldn't resist taking her Guardian down a peg or two. The rest of the message was not as amusing.

I know you know that, Ikora. But I'm telling you here because he will try to strong-arm you and everyone else into leaving him alone. Please don't let him. Without me there to harass him into asking for help, I don't know what he will do. Something self-destructive is my guess.

You're the same that way: you've got hungry minds. Needing constant challenges to occupy you. My death is one of those puzzles that cannot be solved. He'll try though. He'll try until he burns out completely… only this time, I won't be there to sweep up the ashes.

We don't have evidence either way, but Sagira definitely was able to write this before dying, that much is certainly established. Now, is this the writing of Sagira or a fake written by Savathun?

I believe that, from what we've seen so far, Savathun has not really been very good at properly impersonating Osiris. I don't think she would be able to properly impersonate Sagira either and this message does not read to me as Savathun's writing. It has all the hallmarks of Sagira's way of treating Osiris: she cares about him a lot, but she is honest about his self-destructive and obsessive tendencies. Ikora even makes a remark about it.

Now, is it possible that Savathun has read the message and maybe even tampered with it? It certainly is. I can't fully prove that this message is legitimate and that Savathun wasn't involved. I also believe that doesn't mean it directly proves the opposite.

I definitely believe that Sagira's death was fully planned and counted on by Savathun (perhaps even with Xivu's involvement; after all, Xivu owes Savathun for being given Torobatl). Her death set everything in motion and made the whole scheme of swapping real Osiris out possible. It also allowed Savathun to be as out of character as possible because, hey. The man is in grief. He may not be fully himself. And it worked. People were reluctant to question "Osiris" and confront him due to this, which allowed Savathun to last as long as she did.

Personally, I believe that Sagira's final message is legitimate and that it was simply co-opted by Savathun who found it to be very convenient for her plans. Kind of an unfortunate sequence of events, but also in a way, perfectly planned. Savathun may have counted on Sagira writing a message that would prompt Osiris' loved ones to do exactly what they did.

Other than that, Myelin's video is pretty good for a 20 minute breakdown of the theory. I'd go way more in-depth about certain other points instead of focusing on Sagira's letter tho. I'm also quite agitated that, while he did mention the Boots of the Assembler lore, he did not mention anything about Osiris' and Saint's relationship. He only remarked that Osiris "acts cold" to Saint. We also still have no proper analysis of Immolant. Lore youtubers stop ignoring Osiris' and Saint's relationship challenge.

But you know what they say: if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

[bisluthq]

How did you figure out that you needed real help? I've never had an official diagnosis, but lately I've been feeling like this might not be normal sadness/bad moods. There doesn't seem to be much relief from it, and I'm so tired.

TWs obviously.

So I have had mental health issues since I was a teenager in terms of compulsive behaviors and an ED and like what at that point was an affirmation complex. I also experienced my first major depressive episode the summer after my first year of uni. I also had had my first very lowkey suicide attempt - finished a pack of painkillers - when I was fifteen/sixteen.

With the MDD episode I knew it wasn’t normal because I couldn’t get out of bed. When I did I yelled at friends and my family and my boyfriend and then I’d feel bad (only for the latter tbh) and so send him nudes to “make up” for being a bitch and that was also the summer I cheated on him (we were apart, I went out out, I was very sad, etc).

I went on an antidepressant, went back to to uni, got my first hormonal diagnosis, some more meds, and felt better and forgot about it. (My eating became disordered again that year when the boyfriend and I broke up).

This time it took me longer to get “proper” help because I expected the original cure - antidepressants and a bit of therapy - to work. But I’m also older and more fucked up now so it didn’t really help that much but I was very much gunning that it would help and I was telling myself I’m functional.

Then because I was struggling to work, I went into clinic for one night and one day and I was like “okay the good stuff I’m fine now” but that obviously put my family on alert. I was better at masking it this time tho, so in my mind I’d been in touch with family and friends and colleagues consistently and so was “fine” and doing well.

Then I - accidentally tbh - took too many antidepressants and my parents freaked out and said I needed to take the advice I was getting and check myself in properly, so I did, in part because I wasn’t functional and hadn’t written in a while and I wasn’t responding to emails and like an editor who has worked with me since late 2016 reached out to my parents via Facebook to be like “is she ok??”

So like I did a stock take of it all and realized 1) I was not functional 2) my relationships - with family, friends and colleagues - were suffering from the dysfunction 3) I actually could remember not being that useless. I also spoke to my very best friend as well and he was like “no dude you’re not okay lately” and so yeah I went and checked myself in.

I would say in your case ask your GP and maybe get a therapist - they can recommend one - as well. Beyond that, assess functionality - in a real way with yourself not what you think people want to hear - and also ask yourself what you were like before and what you want to be like.

Issues™️ don’t always involve a “diagnosis” like bipolar, or ASD, or ADHD, or a personality disorder. Sometimes you just manifest particular dysfunctions and have particular issues.

It’s never nice to admit to yourself “wow I’m fucked up” but the point is if you’re not comfortable with how you feel and want to feel better rather go now than when you’re like “this is normal lol this is how I am” because your brain tricks you into forgetting. This is where friends and family and colleagues are also v helpful.

Admitting you have problems isn’t an indictment of you as an individual. If you had a physical ailment you’d need treatment - even if it was a relatively small thing that required symptomatic treatment - and you’d go get it. Mental health is the same.

Talk to your doctor, ask for a therapist, and go from there.

And it’s okay to be scared and to not want to, but the thing is you DESERVE TO BE HAPPY and the people in your life deserve a happy you and not a dysfunctional asshole they worry about.

Hope this helped a bit.

[ronsenburg]

Since you mentioned you were looking for drabble requests, if you haven't moved on from AA already, could I request something where Apollo or Klavier is struggling against pride/feeling that his problem isn't a big deal/some kind of internal roadblock to seek comfort from the other? Maybe they lost a case they don't think they should have lost, or it's the anniversary of something sad, or they just feel crappy physically or emotionally. Any reason is fine. Thanks for considering my request ^^

vorher:

It’s nearly six pm by the time Franziska finds him, tucked into a chair in the corner of some pretentious and probably ephemeral bar downtown.

It isn’t one of his usual haunts, but the staff seem to know who he is well enough, anyway. Though he is just barely twenty-three and his tab has been approaching the four figure mark for the past hour and a half, no one has bothered to card him or attempt cutting him off yet. Of course, that may have had more to do with the sizable tips slid to whatever staff member is closest in proximity rather than his rather notorious celebrity status, but Klavier’s ego has been rapidly ceasing to care about such things in recent months. What matters to him at this very moment is less the thrill of universal adoration and more the ability to nurse his wounded pride in pseudo-solitude with a vastly overpriced drink.

That solitude is shattered, however, by the arrival of Prosecutor Franziska Von Karma. The sound of her heels clicking firmly against the highly lacquered floors crescendos over whatever smooth jazz cover they’re piping through the hidden speakers as she makes her way directly over to him.

“Are you finished with your tantrum yet?” she asks, removing her dark sunglasses and placing them onto the surface of the bar beside him without any sort of invitation.

It takes a moment for the words to process; Klavier has spent so long playing the role of the ostentatious expat that his alcohol muddled brain can barely grasp the crisp and nearly foreign sounding syllables of her German.

By then, she has already removed her long leather gloves and cape, handing them off to an employee that floats near her elbow like a well trained dog on a leash. When she slides into the chair beside him and signals for the bartender, the scotch she orders for herself is nearly as expensive as Klavier’s own. If he weren’t so chagrined by her sudden interruption, he would likely be impressed.

“Since when is enjoying a drink after work considered a tantrum?” Klavier returns, finally, and also in German. He attempts to fire off one of his charming smiles as he speaks, but the words feel so clumsy and out of practice on his lips that the gesture falls short and sounds far more like the kind of sulk that directly proves the point she has made.

Franziska raises a perfectly arched eyebrow in reaction, though whether it is a response meant specifically for his faltering pronunciations or juvenile tone, Klavier can’t be at all sure. “Since someone recently made a complete fool of himself in a court of law.”

The words strike out like the lash of a whip; Klavier winces despite himself. Franziska is only two years older than him, but when she glances away with an air of disinterested disdain to take a sip from the tumbler placed in front of her, the gap seems far wider.

“You heard?”

“I saw,” she replies, glancing over to him again just long enough to offer a small, disparaging smirk. “It was quite the performance. Do people actually pay you money to see such foolishness on stage?”

The shame he’d been attempting to shove away for the past five hours flares up just below the surface of his thoughts then, hot and bright enough that he suddenly feels sick to his stomach.

“You are just as charming as they say, Fraulein,” Klavier smiles; the sarcasm tastes false and bitter on his tongue.

In truth, he had made a fool of himself.

Klavier has always prided himself on being meticulous in his pursuit of the truth, in perfectly balancing the demands of both his prosecutorial career and his life as a musician. And, most of the time, he’d succeeded so brilliantly that it had blinded him to the subtly advancing and yet still discreet signs that he might have been slipping.

There had been issues with the band’s latest album.

With the ink long since dried on the studio’s contract and their chosen title already heavily marketed, the pressure to produce something of value had been mounting. Every song he’d written since then had seemed increasingly vapid, words that fit a theme but lacked any sort of meaning, chords that sounded deliberately catchy but were devoid of anything new and surprising. They were going through the motions, but those motions were long since stale. There was nothing of the artistic fire that had skyrocketed them to success in their early years and that alone drained any last bit of excitement he might have derived from the process.

It was driving a neat wedge through the center of the band; Daryan called him a diva, so used to having things his own way that he fell to pieces at the idea of ever being told what to do. Take the money, release an album that was shallow but on brand. They could always switch it up next time when time was on their side. You’re the lawyer, he'd mocked, you should know exactly how much of our asses are on the line here.

Their arguments on the subject had become more and more frequent as the days passed, spilling from band practice to crime scenes and, finally, to the kitchen of Klavier’s apartment. This time, it was Daryan who had packed what few belongings he’d scattered throughout Klavier’s various shelves and drawers into an old duffle bag and left, slamming the door shut behind him with finality as he’d gone.

As Klavier’s luck would dictate, Daryan had been the lead detective on this last case. While they were both professional enough not to ignore each other completely during the proceedings, the type of communication necessary for a successful indictment had been… difficult, to say the least.

And so he’d been distracted in his investigation, enough that he’d overlooked a piece of evidence so decisive in the opposition’s favor that when it had been presented, he’d been left gaping in uncharacteristic surprise from his place at the bench.

Yes, he’d been slipping, unable to see the progression of his descent until he had been standing firmly at the bottom of a tall slope.

He was only lucky, he supposed, that this was not a murder trial.

Back at the bar, Klavier rolls his eyes softly, more an aversion of his gaze than a gesture for dramatic display. Franziska doesn’t seem to be paying him enough attention to notice such things, anyway.

“Well, you can consider me scolded. Your work is done.”

“And yet, that’s not why I’m here,” Franziska returns. Ignoring the eyebrow he raises toward her in obvious question, she instead tilts the tumbler back, swallowing the last centimeter of the amber drink. “I would not waste my time and energy searching the city to scold a fool who seems to be doing an admirable job of berating himself. No, despite your recent failures, there are people in this city who seem to care about your well being. It would be a shame if you were to drown in a pool of your own vomit.”

He cannot help his rather obvious flinch at her words, no matter how quickly he endeavors to mask it. “How very touching, ja? I was expecting more anger.”

Franziska pauses in the midst of extracting a matte black card from the small handbag she carries. When her steel grey eyes meet his, Klavier suddenly understands the fear the von Karma name had once inspired in courtrooms across the world.

“Oh, I am angry,” she smiles, wagging her finger in such a way that it is clear she is mocking him. “You allowed a criminal to walk free today. But he is guilty, I am certain of that. And now he will be cocky.”

Klavier is so stunned by her words that he barely registers that she has slid her card across the surface of the wooden bar, let alone has the presence of mind to argue.

“There will be more evidence to find and new charges to file,” she continues, unperturbed by his gaping. “I will assume that next time you will have your priorities in the correct order.”

With that, she stands and turns to the attendant who is still waiting nearby, ready to help her back into the dark, cashmere folds of her cloak. When the complex ritual of donning her long gloves and sunglasses is complete, she turns once again to face him.

“I will be driving you home. You may choose, now, whether you would like to accompany me willingly or if you will require Detective Gumshoe’s escort. You have until I reach the door to decide.”

It feels as though a whirlwind has swept through the room, appearing out of nowhere to disrupt his wallowing completely before disappearing as suddenly as she had come. Klavier is not stupid enough to doubt Franziska’s words, despite the fact that he is twenty-three and more than a bit inebriated. He wavers only slightly as he finds his own feet and follows her out onto the sun soaked sidewalk beyond the bar.

If she is smiling when she looks back towards him, it is the small, private smirk of victory. Klavier finds that he is too preoccupied with the act of placing one foot in front of the other along the uneven slabs of concrete to care. He stumbles gracelessly into the backseat of the car Franziska indicates, through a door held open by a man that Klavier can only assume is the Detective she had mentioned inside.

“Huh,” he comments before closing the door. “Somehow I thought you’d be taller, pal.”

A sharp stab of pain somewhere behind his left temple resonates brightly in response.

This is something he will certainly regret tomorrow.

nachher:

“Okay, spill,” Apollo demands, crossing his arms in a visible display of stubborn obstination that, at any other time, Klavier might find endlessly adorable.

Tonight, however, he has reached a new level of exhaustion, one that leaves him blinking back at Apollo in baffled surprise as he attempts to pivot his thoughts from their previous trajectory in order to make sense of the other’s sudden words. “Spill was?”

As his words indicate, the intended course adjustment doesn’t go very well at all.

“Whatever’s going on with you,” Apollo replies, huffing out a sigh of what sounds nearly like frustration. “You’ve been working late, you don’t eat, you haven’t been sleeping. Something’s up; I think you should tell me what it is.”

Though Apollo’s words and posture are combative, it is all for show. There is an uncertainty in his eyes and concern exposed in the way he bites at the inside of his lip in silence, waiting for Klavier to speak. The fact that Klavier has learned to recognize this expression through repeatedly causing it is a painful enough thing to shoulder; to admit to the reason behind his behavior when it will only bring them both all the more strife, however, would be far worse. Not because he doubts the limits of Apollo’s strength; it is his own resilience that is threatened by the thought of divulging the extent of his insecurities.

Klavier runs a hand through the strands of hair that have escaped the hasty braid he had tied earlier that evening and attempts an apologetic smile. “Ach, Liebling, there is nothing to tell. It is just work.”

“You’re lying.”

It is stated as a fact, nothing more. But while there is nothing accusatory in Apollo’s tone and his face is perfectly even as he says it, Klavier still feels the words as though they are the sting of an attack.

“Ja?” he responds. “And you promised there would be no bracelet inside the house, did you not?”

What he intends is for the words to sound facetious, a nod to the same kind of fond banter they had indulged in long before the intimacy of a romantic relationship. But Klavier is lying; it is not an offense often committed between them and certainly not one he has reveled in or perpetuated out of malice, now. Still, to be seen through so shifted his smile without meaning to. Klavier can feel it teetering on the edge of a sneer that feels both unfamiliar and familiar all at once.

What follows, then, is a long pause.

A lifted arm, a proffered bare wrist, is Apollo’s only response.

That gesture feels more devastating than the aftermath of an actual, physical fight. Klavier can feel the air exit his lungs in a sharp hiss of remorse, his posture on the plush sofa of their study crumbling as he leans forward to place his head into his waiting hands.

“That was uncalled for,” Klavier begins, though his voice is muffled by the skin of his palms pressed firmly against his speaking mouth. “I am sorry, Schatz, I—“

But his words are interrupted by the sudden creak of sofa springs, the cushions on either side of Klavier dipping under the newly applied weight of Apollo’s knees. There is the feeling of Apollo’s warm fingers wrapping around the skin of his wrists, gently pulling his hands away from his face.

“I know you, Klavier,” Apollo says softly; his voice is so uncharacteristically gentle that the words sound less like a statement and more the sweetest declaration of love. Maybe they are. After all, Klavier has been loved before. But being actually, truly known? He glances up into Apollo’s brown eyes, warm with determination and affection. “I don’t need the bracelet to see when you’re upset. If you don’t want to talk about it right now, I understand, but you don’t have to go around pretending everything is okay when it isn’t.”

“Bold words for someone who insists upon always being fine, ja?” Klavier murmurs, another half hearted attempt at humor that falls flat in what little space exists between them. 

Apollo still lifts the edge of his lips in a small, humored smile of concession. “In court, maybe. But not with you. We all need to be vulnerable, sometimes.”

The breath that Klavier exhales wavers under the strain of unspoken emotions, his eyes fluttering closed just as Apollo leans forward to place a featherlight kiss against the center of his forehead, against his cheekbone, against the corner of his downturned mouth. 

“You can trust me, Klavier,” he concludes. “I’ll always be here, whenever you’re ready, okay?” 

Klavier finds he does not have the words to respond, then, even as the sound of fabric rustling against fabric fills the air and the hands holding Klavier’s wrists retreat. Their absence is felt immediately in the lack of warmth as Apollo slides back off the couch and onto his feet. 

“Apollo?”

Apollo’s footsteps stall halfway through the door.

Klavier still finds he needs to clear his throat before he can continue to speak, swallowing back the sentiments that have collected there that he is otherwise unable to express. “Could you stay? Bitte. Just for a moment.”

This is a weakness Klavier should not afford himself. It is selfish to ask Apollo to comfort him when Klavier cannot even bring himself to explain precisely why he requires it. But Apollo’s eyes are soft when they find Klavier’s gaze once again, inexplicably fully of acceptance and, beyond that, what Klavier knows is love.

“Yeah,” he nods, “of course.”

Apollo stays far longer than a moment, his fingers combing through the strands of Klavier’s loose hair under the fading light that filters in though the slightly open window. They don’t speak, but the steady rhythm of Apollo’s breath in the otherwise silent room, the gentle pressure of his fingers, is enough to distract him from the tumultuous cascade of his own thoughts.

[oneweekoneband]

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages.  (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time. 

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. 

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift,  she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #481

Top Ten Pixar Villains

Those rascals and rapscallions at Pixar are famous for twisting our emotions, aren’t they? Perverse masters at making us cry with sadness or joy, often at the same time (I’m looking at you, Inside Out, with your yellow and blue marbles). Oh yes, they’ll stick the knife in and give it a good old yank, like John Travolta teaches his daughter to do in Face/Off when he’s not really John Travolta and it’s a bit icky but then she stabs him at the end of the film so it’s alright really.

Where was I?

Oh yeah. Pixar, renowned for turning grown men into blubbering messes, mostly because an adult character was convinced to part with old toys he no longer plays with. But I’d argue that one thing they’ve done less well than their parent studio (that’s Disney) is crafting iconic baddies. I mean, we all know the Disney Villains; they’re so iconic and successful as pop culture icons that there’s an entire trilogy of movies based on what would happen if a bunch of them had kids (apparently they’d sing a lot). Pixar baddies though? Hmmm, maybe not quite so iconic. I can’t see someone making a live action prequel movie about Chef Skinner.

But that’s not to say they’re not great; in fact, rather than going down the route of snarling, moustache-twirling villainy, Pixar actually does a great job in creating antagonists instead. Sometimes they’re misunderstood; sometimes they’re not the person you thought they were! Quite often some kind of redemption is offered, and the villains are very, very rarely dropped off something tall. A lot of them aren’t even defeated, so to speak! A good deal of nuance and shade goes into a Pixar villain, and if they haven’t made as many all-time-great iconic ne’er-do-wells, it does seem as if their approach is starting to rub off on Disney mothership (the likes of Frozen II and Moana either don’t have, or at least subvert, the notion of all-powerful bad guys).

So what do we have? Well, hopefully, we’ve got a list of really cool villains from Pixar movies. most of them are presented as the film’s “big bad”, although there are a couple of lesser baddies. And I think we do see the pattern emerging, of more mundane levels of villainy; the selfish and greedy and damaged. It makes for great characterisation and some beautiful storytelling; some complex and pitiable characters. And, yes, a few absolute bastards too. Let’s tut disapprovingly.

Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear (Ned Beatty, Toy Story 3, 2010): a superb performance from Beatty as a seemingly nice, jovial old bear who’s really a manipulative, power-hungry, gaslighting bully. Realistically portrayed as damaged and bitter, he has a tragic backstory that feels real, and a sense of pain and loss that feels earned in this universe. Questions the nature of everything the movies are about, and is a genuine threat in more ways than one. Plus he literally leaves them all to die in the furnace!

Syndrome (Jason Lee, The Incredibles, 2004): Buddy Pine’s backstory is one of belittlement and rejection, so his switch to villainy is as well explored as many a comic book bad guy. But he’s interesting partly in what his character says about Mr. Incredible – in a way justifying the criticisms of superheroes, as Mr. I does ignore the admittedly-annoying Buddy rather than mentoring or respecting him – but also because he prefigures notions of toxic masculinity about a decade or so before they became, well, a threat to global democracy.

Al (Wayne Knight, Toy Story 2, 1999): Like how Lots-o can be seen as a dark examination of toy life (all toys are replaceable, kids don’t really love you, etc), Al also shows us another dark facet of toy-dom: namely the life of a “collectable”. Toys, in this world, want to be played with, preferably by children, so a big ol’ man-child who stores them in boxes or puts them on display is not ideal. It’s an inversion of what a toy is for; an object of joy reduced to a commodity. Is it entertainment versus art? Who can say? Also, he’s really just a massive jerk and a huge slob, so we feel no pity for him once he gets his comeuppance at the end of the film.

Sid Phillips (Erik von Detten, Toy Story, 1995): man, they nailed the Toy Story villains, didn’t they? Maybe there’s even more to come! But right out of the gate, Sid was a classic. An utter sadist in a skull t-shirt, torturing toys for kicks; adults can see the traits of a genuine sociopath (some serial killers start by torturing animals, remember!), and he’s portrayed like a character in a horror movie. Seriously, in 1995, Sid’s room was legitimately disturbing. I’m not sure what moral lessons his actions teach us, but just as a pure article of terror, he’s supreme.

Hopper (Kevin Spacey, A Bug’s Life, 1998): it feels a bit weird, if I’m honest, to celebrate a Spacey performance. But as a character, Hopper is excellent, one of the best things about the generally-overlooked-but-still-a-bit-lesser-Pixar Bug’s Life. Riffing on biker gangs, Hopper’s locust swarm in, revving their wings. Hopper’s a classic tough guy thug, dominating through violence and threat; a creature with a small amount of power determined to hold onto it, and ultimately eaten by a terrifying bird. Just don’t look at the cast list.

Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt, Coco, 2017): after the horror of Sid and the thuggery of Hopper, de la Cruz is a different, more insidious villain. He’s a thief and a betrayer who exploited and murdered his best friend, condemning him not just to death but to a forgotten obsolescence in the afterlife. He’s a perfect example of the gaslighting, friendly-seeming bad guy, more in the mould of Lots-o, but with the world on his side and a sweet guitar. Genuinely hissable.

Stinky Pete (Kelsey Grammar, Toy Story 2, 1999): what, more Toy Story? Well, yeah. Don’t blame me, blame Pixar. And so Stinky Pete; a far more relatable and understandable villain, one driven to desperation through a lifetime of rejection and broken promises. Unlike the Machiavellian, power-hungry Lots-o, Pete just wants everyone to retire quietly together; he can’t accept the risks of freedom and only becomes sneaky and, indeed, violent after all else fails. But he does kinda get a happy ending, even if he doesn’t realise it; this is a villain who I feel could eventually be redeemed.

Randall Boggs (Steve Buscemi, Monsters, Inc., 2001): Waternoose is the real baddy in Monsters, Inc., of course; a conniving capitalist who’s prepared to sacrifice the world’s children to keep his monopoly. But it’s Randy who sticks in the mind; his selfish, vain lackey, a monster with a huge chip on his shoulder. His design – lizard-like, snake-ish, with a huge mouth and invisibility – is seriously disturbing. Hearing Buscemi’s voice come from that form – an aggravated teacher, a furious accountant – adds something special, something darkly hilarious.

Evelyn Deavor (Catherine Keener, Incredibles 2, 2018): visually and conceptually, The Screenslaver (great name) is pretty cool, but when it’s revealed that the Big Bad is really under-appreciated tech genius Evelyn, that’s a great twist. A smart woman propping up her schmoozing brother, her criticisms of the heroes – like Buddy Pine’s – have resonance, although she’s learning the wrong lessons from tragedy. Her relationship with Elastigirl, from friendship to enmity, is very well-written and performed, and her belligerence at the end is a nice touch, denying the heroes of any catharsis from her capture.

Shelby Forthright (Fred Willard, WALL-E, 2008): I was originally going to feature the autopilot, but then I figured, if you can get Fred Willard in your list… and really, who’s the big villain here? It’s us, right? We killed the Earth. But Willard’s smiling, happy CEO is there, encouraging his customers to buy, promising them safety and security, promising them a repaired world… but really he’s shovelling them off the planet, secretly commanding the computer to take humanity far away and never look back. It’s a devious, horrible plan, giving the people unending luxury, making them want for nothing, turning them into fab, soporific blobs, basically because that’s easier than the alternative. It’s a horrible indictment of humanity (also: he’s the CEO of a company, but also – it looks like – that makes him rule the world? Creepy). So, yeah, the autopilot might be a baddun, but it’s the man in charge who’s the real villain of the piece, even hundreds of years later.

Sadly no room for John Lasseter, who may not have tried to enslave humanity or torture children, but still managed to be a huge jerk and a phenomenal disappointment.

[redantsunderneath]

VAL and BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD'S A LITTLE BLURRY

I shouldn’t be allowed to watch documentaries. All that any documentary seems to be about (at this point, to me) is the relationship between itself and the truth. I don’t know if it’s 2000's reality TV or that one time I watched Capturing the Friedman’s and Waco: The Rules of Engagement back to back that broke me, but what interests me isn’t the subject matter but standpoint epistemology of the thing. These two docs are very different, diametrically opposed in almost every way, but both are defined by the ways in which the text struggles against reality. Val is about an old man who used cameras (himself) to capture his entire life as he pretended to be someone else on film. He is infirm, occluding his laryngotomy tube to talk, and his handlers try to manage his naps around meet and greets where he sells the shell of the person he once was for the fans who still care. It’s forbears are archeological dead celebrity docs that try to find the elusive star at the center (Robin Williams, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse) and those about reclaiming memory (Alzheimer Project, Waltz with Bashir) but it’s just… he’s the cameraman and he’s still shuffling around. Closest comparison (minus the age part) is probably Kid 90, which was being cut at the same time. This doesn’t get at how weird this is, though. He used to make movies with his brother, who drowned during a seizure and haunts the movie (he would put up his brother’s drawings in shots on film sets, the talks about or around the event constantly). He often hands off the camera to people so he can be seen in his world with complex instructions (when I walk off, focus in on that speaker so when I go onstage you will hear my first line) and when the camera hits a mirror he lingers (as in the video of his newborn baby). He seems to always be performing, an aspect of life we are all familiar with by now but less common when this footage was taken. His wife is uncomfortable on camera, usually mugging or hiding, and you get the feeling the distancing from his life is intentional as he focuses on internal transformation away from ego resolution, but he still needs to be seen, his sense of self tied up in an object permanence issue. The movie is structured as someone trying to sort through memories of their life and come to terms with them, although the memories in this case is a small warehouse full of video tapes and film canisters. In his current life he can only communicate with difficulty and tries to convey reaction with meaningful-but-of-what glances and gestures. Effacement by time and looming death drench the whole enterprise - when his brother dies he says his father “lost his charisma” (just contemplate that). His current simulacra of celebrity makes him feel like a ghost, signing “you can be my wingman anytime” multiple times for people who this means something to. So he brings up the footage and tries to reconstruct his life (his credit as cinematographer is both funny, touching, and chilling). This thing is full of interesting moments. He is doing a line reading of Hamlet at Juilliard and Peter Kass stops him to ask where the performance is coming from. He responds that he has never considered killing himself which causes Kass to explode, insisting that no-one in the history of the world has not had that thought. This seems to rob us and him of a potentially revelatory moment as Kilmer seems different, spiritual in an unusual way… maybe the reason why he never thought of that was more interesting than that point. His entreaty to Marlon Brando to tell him what his earliest childhood memory is is responded to by Brando asking for him to rock his hammock with repetition of the question only yielding feedback on the rocking until neonatal-fat Brando’s satisfaction at being rocked seems like an answer. The argument with John Frankenheimer who does not want to be filmed is something else. The major things going on are here are being haunted vs feeling like a ghost and an arrested Lacanian mirror phase that complicates his intersubjective context, with the karmic

self-assessment of who he is trying to chill in the middle. The filmmaking knows this and orients itself as a process of evaluating memory where what is true seems elusive, heavily edited, and hall-of-mirrors-like. The question of what is performance is a subconscious struggle. Conspicuous in their absence are his own feelings on his decline beyond the fact that he “doesn’t believe in death,” real insight into his marriage (and breakup, other than an allusion to his method acting Jim Morrison being a problem) and relationship with his kids (who are around all the time, but seem like Sixth Sense characters), and the fact that he’s a legendary asshole on set. This last is, like, the one thing everyone knows about him. But you can sort of sense this stuff secondarily, right off the edge of the screen and in him relentlessly projecting onto his parents. The real crux is the study of a man who never feels seen, but tries to become so by disappearing into someone else, who needs recording devices so that he can capture himself properly, all controlled performance; someone unaware of his own loneliness brought about by not being very good at making himself available because his “self” is externally resolved and constant inner transformation masks the unformed nature of his ego at rest. The film accomplishes this by allowing him to reveal what is absent by his preoccupations and bearing witness to his deflection mechanisms, so that he is no closer to knowing himself but, by being manipulated in a way we can see the frame of, we kind of get a glimpse. Good experience, wish there was more Christian Scientist material (that seems like an angle of understanding the film wasn’t interested in). Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry is about a young girl who is followed by cameras capturing her entire life as she pretends to be herself on stage. She has a Simone Biles flavored psycho-physical compromise that everyone tries to “handle” while she sells herself as the person she isn’t to fans who care, at least right now. This is in the tradition of Truth or Dare mimics that seem de rigueur for female pop stars. Closest comparison is Miss Americana. This movie feels made by spreadsheet to contain scenes to develop the official narrative of an in-her-brother’s-room, in her suburban parent’s house, sui generis composite genius who is on the edge of mental unfitness trying to be as normal as she can in this crazy merry go round called fame. The obviousness of the put on is diffused by the relative lameness of the pieces. In some respects this is the typical documentary “look for the cracks for insight” play, but it is consciously using that as a tool too and doing it badly - the manufactured insight escape moments largely ring false. This comes off as a Zoom background era counterfeit, a series of YouTube clips where Markeplier or whoever lets the mask slip a little in the most forced bit of unbiddenness possible. There is a boyfriend who feels like a story mandated version of “from Canada.” But the interesting thing is the way it recapitulates the way modern pop is put together, not by writing, not by spontaneous “feel your way,” but by putting bits of ideas together and trying to emulate form. There are a lot of moments in the film that feel like they could have been real, but the non-actors were asked to do another take and can’t quite nail it. It actually has such a boner for produced casual that it is pretty much allergic to authenticity, which is quite a thing for a documentary. The major things going on are here are grappling with whether she brings anything musically to the table (the brother seems like the musical force, she’s afraid her voice is bad, they make a point to show her idea notebooks as work product), her wish to only perform if she can give the fans her best show (possibly her version of just wanting to call in sick, understandable) is at odds with her being the center of a machine that has to move, her as a product of a not entirely with it older parents who gave their kids an open creative runway

and now are instrumental in managing her as a resource that is tricky to work with, the work being her and her brother dicking around and making magic happen, and an attempt to paint her as a Beleiber who now is on the the other side of the fan dichotomy. Development of her style, arguably her #1 thing, is sort of left as her telling a video director “I drew this bleeding eye woman, can we do something like this?” and sort of suggesting through letting her point around that she is a de facto co director. At times, it feels like a try at icon forging that someone wanted to fail, but it is probably just the high school conception-to-production level tat ultimately comes off as a larger indictment of making a movie like you make modern pop music - overdetermined manipulation of flimsy elements without a satisfying ethos, that looks too be an insubstantial assemblage of spliced pieces that live of die by their stickiness. But it begins to feel, more and more, that it’s about how non-exciting pop stars can be as people and that a narrative that people respond to can kind of die if you show that’s it’s just work and somewhat normal people trying to be a piece of an illusion. It’s this partitioning away of the hyperreality and an attempt to show the official story acted by the sausage makers trying to pretend the banality is just crazy man. Where Val is a simulation of an habitual performer considering who they actually are selectively sorting their life and failing to confront the loneliness of age and death (more elusive to them than us), this is obvious hoax unintentionally (?) revealing the fabricated nature of the image-music industry by way of demonstrating the strangely normie creatives, green-yellow ombre or no, can’t be arsed to summon a proper freakout (the whining seems authentic, though). Music videos may lie to you, but the official story is strangely correct - kids living in mom’s house cobble together catchy stuff and pull off pop stardom due to social media age production savvy and a little zeitgeisty imagery, it’s just everyone is well adjusted if stressed and someone’s only donning the costume of the online archetype of a specific kind of girl. Val uses the constructed nature of these narratives as a tool wielded in the open to suggest the inner working of a mind failing to be honest with itself while the other is interesting in its transparency and failure to convince us of the loosely conceived fiction, leaving reality apparent as bong resin. Baudrillard would have liked this one more, probably.