#this moment absolutely ruins the legendary (apology) scene

[khonaker]

THIS is what should have happened.

Also, taking a long break from Twitter. The amount of people laughing and saying, “He needed to get in one last good jab in before apologizing” or similar things made me angry and sick.

[arsenicpanda]

Your favourite Riverdale episodes for Bughead?

Omg, thank you SO MUCH for humoring me!  Now then, favorite episode for just bughead?  Ooh, that's a tough one, so many good choices!  I'm gonna give you top six becaue I suck at choosing.  Actual thoughts under the cut.

- 1x06: This and 1x05 are the OG bughead episodes, but I pick this one over 1x05 because it has The Kiss, among other things.  Like, Jughead trying to break through the orderlies to get to Betty?  Amazing. Betty taking Jughead with her to go see her sister?  Excellent.  Jughead climbing through that window and making two literary references in quick succession?  Fantastic.  Betty's face and Jughead's sigh after their first kiss?  I love it.  Jughead has clearly been wanting to kiss her for SO LONG, and Betty has a face of, "Oh, I didn't realize how much I wanted that, but it turns out to have been a lot."  And Jughead's adoring face at Betty's "The car!"?  Iconic, he loves her brain so much, thinks she's so amazing.  It also has Jughead's "We're all crazy" and "We're not our parents.  We're not our families", which are both SO GOOD.  And Betty opens up to Jughead and is so vulnerable with him!  And it's a good episode for their investigations too, with the SoQM and then the looking for the car in the rain.  Bonus points for Jughead's scandalized reaction to what looks like, of all things, brick weed.  As an episode, it really showcases both a shared interest (solving mysteries) and a willingness to be vulnerable and honest with each other.

- 2x12: The dynamic duo back again!  I love how, when the chips are down and Jughead needs someone's help, he goes to Betty, even when they're not together.  He trusts her, and she is completely down to help him immediately.  And help she does!  They do some great investigation here, it's so fun, and they look great while doing it!  Betty's dress is gorgeous, and Jughead's Serpent jacket over his suit jacket is such a hilarious look in concpet and yet it somehow works!  Also, Betty immediately noticing that something is wrong with Jughead at Veronica's Confirmation party and going to find him because she's worried was just the sweetest, as was Jughead's "She's one of us" (or whatever he said to that effect) when Betty was voting with the Serpents.  Also?  Betty not freaking out when Jughead said he cut Penny was quality.  She is not afraid of the fact he is a crazy person!  And, of course, there's their first time together, which is so slow and sweet.  Jughead apologizing for being a dumbass and Betty going "I can handle it" about his ~darkness~ was so pure, as was his "Or you could stay. ...Stay."  The way he put his hand on her dress!  So tentative, so sweet.  And also?  The way they just got RIGHT to it, with Betty straddling him immediately and Jughead making the quickest work of that dress.  And Betty's "I want all of you tonight" while hiding the Archie kiss secret!  She didn't want to ruin the moment, this closeness with him, so she lied, which is pretty classic Betty, tbh, and a great contrast to Jughead's admission of doing some stuff with Toni "but not everything" and also being like "she's a pal" because what a great way to describe a friend.  Also, omg, Jughead apologizing Betty for her getting dragged into the witchhunt against the Serpents and him was so sweet!  Also amazing was when Jughead said that Sheriff Keller suspected him of decapitating the statue and Betty just replied with a playful smile, "And...did you?" because she knows him, she knows he'd pull some crazy stunt like that but also believes him when he says he didn't.  And we get jealous Betty, which is QUALITY.  And the fact that they're both like, "So, have you, uh, done anything with Toni/'anyone'?  Not that it's my place.  But, uh, have you?", just trying to be nonchalant but they are INVESTED and QUIETLY NERVOUS and JEALOUS BUT IN A WAY THEY FEEL BAD ABOUT.  This is the closest we get to pining bughead, and I love it, I will take it.  They continue to be so vulnerable with each other, it's precious.

- 2x19: RISE, DARK BUGHEAD, RIIIIIISE!!  We get some quality bughead investigation, and also they TIE CHIC UP IN A BASEMENT WITH DUCT TAPE AND INTERROGATE HIM!  Jughead punches him to try and get him to talk, and Betty's reaction is just to gently cup his face!  Betty briefly chokes Chic and Jughead is just stading there supportive!  They are 100% down with each other's extreme measures, just completely on the same page there.  I love seeing each of them going full The Ends Justify The Means, and this episode I get to see them go about it TOGETHER, how amazing is that?!

- 3x16:  Ok, their morning spent talking together, drinking coffee or tea or whatever, at Betty’s window because THEY LIVE TOGETHER OMG!  They’re fucking PLOTTING in the goddamn MORNING; when I was a teenager I dragged my ass through mornings, but these two are like, “Let’s discuss ways to defeat Gladys the Drug Lord,” just completely awake.  These are the things they talk about in the morning!  They are so fucking weird!  Also, the adoring face Betty gives him and the nose boop, too cute.  While I’m not big on Seventeen in terms of music (I don’t think they pull off the singing, which I don’t fault them for because musicals are HARD in terms of the vocal range they demand.  Also, Jughead just sounds off somehow and it distracts me.), I love it as a bughead moment.  I appreciate their desire for something normal, it’s so sweet, even if I think that they wouldn’t be very good at living “normal” lives at this point; I think they crave investigations too much.  Also, Jughead getting on his knees in a way that is very proposal-esque (his second pseudo-proposal!  Third time’s the charm, so WHEN DO I GET IT???) is QUALITY.  And Betty just does such a great job of comforting the saddest Jughead.  Also also, they BURN DOWN THE TRAILER AND HAVE SEX IN FRONT OF IT WHILE IT BURNS!  That is LEGENDARY, that is the kind of quality, mutual fucked-up-ness that I want in my ships!  And it’s preceded by Jughead being all, “I’m okay because you’re here with me”, the sweetest fucking sentiment.  Also, the return of the crown sweater, if just for a moment.  This is just Betty and Jughead being a team, being willing to do crazy things to help each other, and also they are apparently turned on by arson, which is just amazing.

- 4x16:  A whole episode of Betty and Jughead being smug and gloating, I literally couldn’t ask for more.  Everything about them is amazing in this episode and the gloating whodunnit scene, the way they set each other up for each piece of their explanation, and also Betty’s “the worst thirty-six hours of my life” and then they hold hands and it is FUCKING PRECIOUS.  Also also?  Betty and Jughead both going to extremes to protect/avenge the other.  Like, they both go full The Ends Justify The Means, with Jughead literally beating the shit out of Bret both as a method of information extraction and, lbr, just regular vengeance in Betty’s name and with Betty waiting in the darkness of Donna’s room to surprise her, rip her grandmother’s legacy from her, and leave like a boss, all because Donna tried to kill Jughead.  Like, Betty promised to go after Donna specifically, and she did, saving her info for personal blackmail that she can guarantee will work as opposed to relying on the justice system, which can be shaky.  These are both fucked up things to do!  Jughead’s especially, tbh; it isn’t official police brutality because there are no cops involved in the beating, but it is certainly adjacent to that since Charles let them in and turned a blind eye to their actions and then used their actions/threats to his benefit.  That’s fucking dark as hell and I love it (within a fictional context, of course, and even in that context I’m only chill with it because Bret has the money to otherwise escape all consequences).  And then, after they’ve both done all that, they’re so soft together in a couple of other scenes, it’s the cutest thing ever.

- 4x19:  DARK BUGHEAD YESSSS!  Granted, it’s fictional dark bughead, but I love that not only did Jughead write a dark story where he and Betty are murderers who do things like kill their friends to get rid of the weak link after Betty’s comment of “Or we could kill him”, and not only do we get to see those scenes, but Betty was completely on board with this story.  Not only was she on board with the original killing of Mr. Honey, but she was like, “Ooh, we killed Reggie to keep him from cracking under pressure and revealing our dark truth, how very sexy of you, Jughead”. They are so weird!  And Jughead’s “So no one is going to know the perverted truth about us...but us” was hot as hell, as was the fact that he followed it up by tugging her bak by her ponytail to kiss her while having his other hand lightly resting on her neck.  That is some explicit G-rated stuff!  Also, they were absolutely about to makeout in front of an open door in the Blue and Gold before they were interrupted by Kevin.  That is so wild!  Also, Betty editing Jughead’s work is always a win.  He values her opinion so much!  She loves his writing and thinks it’s amazing despite the fact it isn’t very good!  I love it, I love them.

[jbbuckybarnes]

Stranded in Manhattan

Description: You are stranded inside of the building your publishing agency is housed in. A snowstorm hit New York without warnings and you can’t leave for a few hours. What sounds like a boring afternoon ends up being quite the ride. Prompt: Stranded somewhere due to inclement weather (Seb x Reader) Length: 2,6k+ Warnings: Reader is written as someone with a skin tone that makes blushing visible. Just shoot me an ask if you want me to write something specific with a WoC reader. Always open for that.

M A S T E R L I S T

You had just finished your meeting for the next magazine. Writing articles for a lifestyle magazine was your favorite part of being a freelance writer. Well, not completely freelance. You were kind of part of the main team but not with a permanent contract. A look outside of the window had you roll your eyes and grumble. “You shouldn’t go outside for the next 2-3 hours. There is a warning out.” a female colleague outside of the meeting room looked at you. “Great. I’m just gonna draft my article in the foyer then,” you muttered before saying goodbye with a few kind words.

In the lobby of the building, there already were a lot of people waiting for the storm to calm down. There was only one couch left that wasn’t already occupied by at least one person and you let yourself fall onto the soft furniture with a small sigh. Laptop opened, the document opened and there you went writing the magazine article for next week already. At least you had WiFi in here and could research for your draft. Every ten minutes one or two new people came down in the elevator and sat down beside someone else. After an hour there were only 5 seats left in the entire lobby and you would probably be one of the next ones.

“Excuse me? Could I sit here?” you heard an oddly familiar voice and looked up. “Sure.” you smiled and pushed your bag to the side. There was a long moment of silence and you staring at your screen before you finally said something. “What were you here for?” you asked with a little smile and got one back. “My acting agency is here. Meeting.” he shrugged, “You?” “Publisher meeting with the magazine I write for,” you answered. “Sebastian.” he held out his hand. “I know. Y/N.” you smiled back at him. Contrary to your belief he didn’t change much after you told him you knew him. “Which magazine do you write for?” he asked curiously. “Flow magazine. Lifestyle, personal development, mindfulness. That kinda thing.” you blushed a little. It always made you nervous to talk about your job with people that weren’t writers. His natural cuteness didn’t help. “That’s cool. And what are you currently writing about?” he looked at your hands on the laptop that was half-closed. “Mindful Dating. It’s pretty weird to research and hard to not make it sound hippie.” you opened the laptop again to show that you had written half a page for your 2-3 page spread on the topic. “I assume it starts with mindfully picking the right person to ask out.” he chuckled and picked his water bottle from his backpack. “Actually starts with finding out what you even want and where to find it but that’s definitely a part of it.” you smiled a bit awkwardly. “This sounds so cool compared to my few pages of script that I currently have to get into.” he sent a shy smile back. “Does it become less fun to get into a character when you do it longer and professionally?” you ask to steer the conversation away from you. “Sometimes. Especially when I don’t have a lot of backstory for my character to get into.” he shrugged his shoulders. “I always loved doing plays in high school.” you looked away in thought about your high school years. “What did you have?” his head dipped to the side a little in curiosity. “Romeo & Juliette, Beauty & the Beast, some play local college students wrote and the last one was...Cinderella.” you counted them. “Any big roles?” he smiled with shimmering eyes. “I had the main role in the college student one.” you giggled. It was a really dumb play and your memories of it are really chaotic. “God, I’d love to see videos of that. You definitely seem like you could pull off a lot of different characters. I mean, the appearance.” he got a bit unsure at the end if he worded it right.  You couldn’t help but giggle a little, “Yeah, could pull that black wig off better nowadays tho.” “Um, what plans did that blizzard ruin for you? Never asked,” he said with a one-sided smile while scratching his neck. “Not much. Wanted to go write in the library or meet a friend but that clearly won’t happen,” you shook your head looking outside of the window before your head went back to him, “You?” He played with the strings on his hoodie, “Technically the rest of my day was finally a free day. So only ruined my Netflix marathon.” He saw you smile when he looked up from the strings again, “Well, I have WiFi and this building probably has a more chill area. We technically COULD watch Netflix.” Another unsure smirk from him with an almost apologizing smile coming back from you made the short silence weirder than it needed to be. “Sure.” he shrugged. If somebody would’ve told you, that you would be in an empty meeting room with one of your Top 20 favorite actors, watching Netflix because you were snowed in, you would’ve flipped them off. You were both sitting on the table beside each other and had spread out the food and water you had with you. Weird circumstances called for weirder actions in response. The Netflix logo popped up, then your name with a Jessica Jones icon staring at you and after that the list of movies on your big list. “What do you wanna watch?” you looked up at him and he was already looking at you. “You can choose whatever you want. It’s your account.” he held his hands up. “Brooklyn 99 it is.” you nodded and clicked on the next episode you needed to watch. You were a few episodes in when you just needed to let go of the thought, that you had held prisoner in your head for two episodes. “You're the perfect mixture between Jake & Boyle,” you mumbled. “Definitely more Jake,” he mumbled back, his eyes darting to look at the smile that had formed on your lips. You didn’t notice. And then Jake came in with his legendary guitar scene full of screaming. “Jep, definitely more Jake.” you laughed. He lightly nudged you with a small laugh. You weren’t wrong. Another 2 episodes went by and you checked your phone for the time. It’s been 2 hours now. Maybe you could go soon. “Another one?” he asked with a big smile on his face. “Of course.” you put your phone away and jumped over the outro to the next episode.

“It’s been over two hours. Let me check the warnings in Manhattan.” you took your phone after another two episodes and stopped the show with the other hand. Your weather app was showing an orange warning instead of a red one. “Well, orange should be enough to get home, right?” you looked up at him. “Depends where you live.” he smiled one of those half smirk, half innocent smiles. “Queens,” you muttered. “That’s quite a long ride in that weather.” his right brow went up. “I definitely don’t wanna stay in this uncomfortable and way too air-conditioned building,” you said neutrally. “I live 4 blocks away and there is a café on the ground floor we could stay in.” now the smirk turned into a real smirk. “Are you flirting with me?” you raised your eyebrow. “Been trying for almost three hours. Thanks for noticing.” he laughed lightly and saw you get a little flustered. “Umm.” with a shy expression on your face you put the laptop into your bag. “Don’t leave me hanging here after I asked you for a date.” he pouted playfully. You opened your mouth at the mention of a date but closed it again after no sentence your brain formed came out. “Sure,” you said with the biggest blush on your face after a few seconds. With a smile on his face and you biting your lip you both stood up and slowly left the building through the lobby that was much emptier now. An arm found its way around you, making you flinch a little. “Did you always live in New York?” his voice was harder to hear with the big jacket on. “No, moved here from Y/C.” you answered and got a soft smile in response while you held the hood of your jacket to stay on in the wind. “God, I hate this weather.” you stomped in the snow on the sidewalk like a child having a tantrum. “You kinda look like you enjoy it though.” he laughed at your attempt at kicking the snow. “I love winter. I hate that it gets so ugly and depressing so fast. I’m just here for the snow.” you pointed your tongue at him. If he had voiced his feelings at that moment, he would’ve probably told you that he wanted to pick you up and carry you the rest of the way for you to stop complaining about the wind. “Do that again and you have that snow flying at you,” he said trying to pinch you. “Don’t you DARE!” you played into it. “Watch me do it.” he smiled picking up snow and you started running. “He’s fast, strong, had snowballs.” you quoted laughing and a snowball hit your back. “The Winter Soldier is coming for you.” he made himself bigger but had a snowball landing on his chest after a few seconds. You looked at him innocently and he blinked before running for you and catching you with a growl that made you squeak. “Help!” you said giggling at this absolute dork moment you just had. “Target acquired. Bringing it to drop off location,” he said near your ear and started giggling like an idiot with you. The bell of the café door had the waiter in the almost empty room look up at the both of you. “Hello, Sebastian.” the man smiled at the tall brunette beside you. “Hey, can you make us two hot chocolates and two pieces of the chocolate cake, please?” came back at the waiter. Having someone help you out with getting out of a jacket felt weird. You weren’t used to gestures like that anymore and mumbled a small “Thank you.” You sat down on one of the tables and he leaned forward with a, “I won.” “There never was a competition, Stan,” you said putting down your bag.

“Didn’t mean the snowball fight.” he winked and watched you blush. Before you could say anything mugs and plates were set down in front of you. “Tell me about yourself.” he gave you an encouraging smile and you started talking. About your creative roots, what else you wanted to become when you were younger and how you felt about the things you did now. Some sentences had a vague political orientation in it and your stances on social issues. “Sorry, I’m talking a lot.” you noticed yourself rambling and looked down at the half-eaten cake. “No, I like listening to you.” he picked up the mug. “I’d like to know more about you too.” you smiled with some confidence from what he just said. He started talking about what he was currently doing, his mother, a bit about his roots and what his future plans were. He was good at this whole talking on a date thing. “You like astronomy?” he asked out of the blue with his fork pointing at you. “Yeah.” you grinned. “What’s the coolest thing about it?” he asked. “Nebulas. And I recently learned about hot Jupiters. Super interesting.” you mentioned the article you recently found while researching for a personal project. “A woman of class, I see.” he chuckled before taking his last bite of the chocolate cake. “No, a woman of space,” you smirked and got warm laughter back. You checked the phone again. The warning was on red again and a look outside of the window checked out with it. He noticed your look outside, “You can stay at my apartment. If you...want.” he said a bit unsure himself. “Uuuh.” you didn’t really know how to answer this. “Not in a weird way.” he distanced himself a bit from the table into his seat. “I guess I wouldn’t have another choice, even if I wanted to say no.” your soft expression had him visibly relax. You stood up, he gave the waiter on the counter the money and then you both made your way to a pair of elevators. “This feels mildly awkward.” you spoke out what both of you felt. “Doesn’t have to.” he smiled, snapping out of it. The moment the elevator opened you snapped out of it too. You knew there wasn’t anything to be afraid of. Yes, this was weird because you just met him but the circumstances were not in your hand. He was respectful, and if he wasn’t you knew how to kick his ass. Everything was fine. Even with both of you not talking in the elevator there was still a comfortable silence. That was until fingers started searching for yours and capturing your hand in a gentle manner. It’s not that you didn’t want this but it was very unusual and sudden. Like everything else today. Sure, you didn’t mind holding hands with pretty much anyone you knew but this wasn’t just anybody. This was someone you just had a proper date with and that kinda had your brain go in circles. “Relax, I’m not trying to get you into my bed.” he gently nudged you and locked down at you with a soft smile. “Sorry, I’m just not used to this...normality.” you tried to find a word for it, immediately shaking your head a little at choosing this particular word for it. “Welcome. Make yourself comfortable.” he said while you walked past him holding the door open. “Nice couch.” you pointed at it. It was one of those expensive, big, soft ones that everybody secretly wanted. You let yourself fall on it. He let himself fall next to you after throwing his jacket and yours over a chair. “Almost too conveniently placed.” you squinted at him beside you. “Hey! Don’t judge!” he laughed. “Too late. I judged.” you giggled before noticing his stare. “What?” your brow went up. “Nothing.” his eyes went away from your eyes and lips and looked at the ceiling again. “What are we going to do the rest of the evening now?” you asked. “More Netflix?” he returned a question. “Fine. But I only accept documentaries.” you grinned. Of course, the documentary he put on was about space and you both just absorbed the information you got. You didn’t even notice the arm around you after a while or the gentle pull towards him that had you cuddled up by the end of the documentary. “You’re a sneaky little asshole.” you said sleepy. “Only with pretty women.” his hand went through your hair. You looked up at him “Thank you for making this day much less boring.” you smiled and caught him staring again. “Can I kiss you?” he whispered so close to your face, his hand going from your hair to your jaw. With rosy cheeks, you nodded and had soft lips on yours a moment later. A normal thing to happen after a date but you still weren’t used to it. The thumb going over your cheek got you out of the overthinking again. Right now, all you wanted to concentrate on was those soft lips and that slightly scratchy skin. The hand cupping your face, the arm pulling you closer and the tongue brushing against your lower lip. Everything is perfect right now, no need to overthink it.

[a-mellowtea]

RWBY Issue #1: An Elegy For Continuity

I’ve never been one for comic books. I think I read a couple when I was younger. I seem to recall Spiderman. I did pick up the Bone series at one point and fell in love with it. But beyond that, they never appealed to me. Now that I’m older, however, and finding more of an appreciation for design and storytelling alike, I really want to go back and just smother younger me in superhero and fantasy comics to make up for what I missed.

When I heard that RWBY was making a venture into the comics scene thanks to DC, I honestly got excited. It’s a perfect medium to tell stories that canon may not have been able to cover, and with the promised content being set in the area in-universe -- between Volumes 3 and 4 -- we have the least specific information about, there was no conceivable reason not to be at least interested.

RWBY #1 dropped on August 28th, 2019 under the subtitle “Prelude: The Elegy”. It’s narrated by Ruby Rose, one of the series’ titular characters and arguable ‘main’ protagonist out of the four, and covers in very brief form the Creatures of Grimm, the Huntsmen Academies, the fellow members -- Yang Xiao Long, Blake Belladonna and Weiss Schnee -- of RWBY, the Color Naming Convention/Rule, Dust, Semblances and the Fall of Beacon. It ends with the finale of Volume 3, and Ruby uncertain if they’ll be able to carry on.

The quality of the artwork and layout varies, but overall Mirka Andolfo and Arif Prianto do capture the look and feel of the characters (although, they can’t seem to decide whether Weiss is left-handed or not). Whether or not some of it seems off is an entirely subjective matter. Personally, while I find some panels to be absolutely striking (such as Tai, Yang and Ruby at Summer’s grave, the Volume 1-3 era combat panels, the initial Battle of Beacon Academy page, and the final panel), I also find others to be a bit... lacking (the Volume 4 design splash page especially).

An article by CBR appropriately labeled it an adaptation at a “breakneck pace”, which is honestly an understatement. The elements I mentioned get perhaps a page each, touched on in a manner I can in all seriousness relate to skipping a stone across a pond. Being a fan of the series, for me, that is perfectly fine; I already have as much of a grasp on things like Aura and Dust and the combat Academies as one who has been with the show since the Volume 2/3 hiatus could. On top of that, with Ruby as our narrator and speaking from in-universe, she may not see the need to go into incredible detail. However, someone just delving into RWBY with this as a primer or part of their proper introduction to Volumes 1 or 2 would in all likelihood be left winded by everything that zooms by with so little explanation. These elements are essential to the story and the world of Remnant. They, along with certain key events such as the Battle of Beacon, are the building blocks of the series.

On that front, it certainly doesn’t help anything that canon is shakily incorporated or, at points, firmly and summarily disregarded. See, the issue with RWBY #1 doesn’t lie in the art style or storytelling. Rather, it is with the connective tissue between the comic and its source material.

Most of these instances aren’t egregious oversights but are worth mentioning regardless. For instance, there is a panel in which Penny is shown wearing Beacon’s uniform, though she is from Atlas and was never shown wearing any of the Academy’s uniforms.

In the panel talking about Semblances, Weiss’ Semblance is described as being able to “summon any Grimm she’s slain”. While true, that is a facet of her Semblance, not her power itself. Weiss’ Semblance is Glyphs. She also never summoned before the Battle of Beacon, making the page of her summoning a Grimm circa that time also inaccurate.

In yet another, Ruby mentions rumors about the Maidens and magic. However, the only way she could have known about the Four Maidens before Qrow telling her and RNJR in Volume 4 Chapter 8 was through the fairy tale known as the “Story of the Seasons”. Only the Ozluminati (Ozpin, Qrow, Glynda and James) and Pyrrha knew in full about the truth surrounding the four Maidens. As this is being narrated at the end of Volume 3 (the “now”, as stated in the penultimate panel), Jaune also only knew that Cinder had acquired some sort of power; nothing of magic or the Maidens.

The worst of these errors come at the end of the comic, and are most plainly wrong. Ruby is shown having come back to Patch on foot, whereas she was most certainly entirely unconscious when she was brought back to Patch by Qrow. It is also implied that Ruby returned to help Tai take care of Yang; their conditions of consciousness somewhat perplexingly reversed from canon. 

Furthermore, though it is clearly stated and shown that Jacques was the one to take Weiss home after the events at Beacon, Willow also appears to be present alongside an AK-200.*

And finally, Taiyang is shown in the aforementioned penultimate panel waving goodbye to RNJR as they depart for Mistral.  The issues of this particular change are further-reaching than most of the others; Ruby leaving without a word to her father and sister other than a letter was brought up several times in Volume 4, and was part of what made Yang and Ruby’s reunion in Volume 5 such a good moment.

Some things are also oddly worded (and that’s without mentioning the run-on sentences), leading to unnecessary confusion. For example, at one point, Ruby explains that “Atlas, Vale, Vacuo and Mistral -- every Kingdom in Remnant has their own way of dealing with Grimm. But only the Kingdom of Vale has Beacon, the legendary Academy where my mother and father went to become Huntsmen”. This makes it sound like Beacon is the only Huntsmen Academy in Remnant, and the other Kingdoms have completely separate ways of dealing with the Grimm. I doubt that was the authorial intent; it could be explained away rather easily as Ruby simply stating that none of the other Academies are as good; ie, there is only one Beacon.

There is also another rather odd panel following the aforementioned, in which a young Ruby and Yang stand with Taiyang, their father, and Summer Rose, Ruby’s biological mother. While this family shot is very nice and certainly pulls on a fan’s heartstrings, the composition is strange. If this is meant to be an in-canon moment, rather than a symbolic one, then Ruby and Yang’s ages at the time of Summer’s death are thrown into question yet again. As stated by Yang in Volume 5 Chapter 8, “My mom left me. Ruby’s mom left too. Dad was always busy with school, and Ruby couldn’t even talk yet”. This shot, with Ruby and Yang looking closer to 6 and 8 respectively, contradicts that.

That’s not to say that these errors, numerous as they are, completely ruin the experience of reading the comic. Paired with Mirka Andolfo’s artwork, RWBY #1 presents a decent introduction to RWBY until the end of Volume 3, heading into the timeskip territory. However, being a recap of elements and events already covered in the show, it is sorely lacking and has absolutely no excuse to be. I saw someone mention that it feels like the writer, Marguerite Bennett, skimmed the show’s Wiki or otherwise did the least amount of research possible on the series before writing. I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.

At the end of the day, RWBY #1 “Prologue: The Elegy” is a good attempt at summarizing the most basic and key material of Volumes 1-3, but ultimately fails, falls flat and devolves into a mess of inconsistencies, errors and nonsensical changes that fans should not consider being canon whether it has been stated to be in the category of “canon-until-it’s-not” or not.

I do hope they find their footing in the second issue of RWBY, as perhaps original content will provide better space for the story to flow largely unhindered by canonical information.

*Amendment: I originally stated that it was Winter in this panel. I’ve been since informed that that is incorrect. Apologies for the mistake!

[samanthasroberts]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2018/12/27/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/

[adambstingus]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181456618922

[allofbeercom]

15 Biggest Pop Culture Disasters of 2017: Kendall Jenner, Megyn Kelly, the Oscars, & More

If there’s any sort of running theme among the year’s biggest pop culture fails, it’s a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness. The biggest entertainment disasters were born out of a clusterfuck of delusion, hubris, apathy, and, in most cases, an almost unforgivable deafness to the conversations defining this moment in our culture.

So while we’ve spent much of this last month cheering the output that challenged, invigorated, and, of course, entertained us this year, let us also grand marshal this parade of shame—in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, there will be lessons learned heading into next year. Here are 15 flops from the past year, be it commercial bombs or tone-deaf cultural grenades, from the worlds of music, TV, movies, and celebrity culture.

Kendall Jenner’s Pepsi commercial

The solution to institutionalized racism, millennial apathy, police brutality, and Trump-era anger? A nice cold Pepsi, and a tangential Kardashian to deliver it. The message of the resistance-themed Pepsi commercial was so laughably obtuse and reductive, and the reaction so brutally eviscerating, that the company immediately removed it from the internet and actually apologized to Jenner for its misguided creative direction. Seriously, though: Think of the sheer number of people who had to OK this ad before it was released. It’s mind-boggling.

Sean Spicer at the Emmys

Notoriously cowering former White House press secretary Sean Spicer finally embraced the spotlight at the 2017 Emmy Awards, making a cameo appearance during host Stephen Colbert’s monologue ruthlessly attacking President Trump. Spicer giggled and soaked up the attention and applause, an ovation for a public figure who lived out his short tenure in relentless disgrace and disgust, cheering him for “gamely” participating in the roasting of his former boss. But for many viewers, the booking of Spicer was a shameless absolution of a man who was toothlessly complicit in spreading lies by the Trump administration to the American people; the worst example of the entertainment industry’s instinct to bend any moral for a cheap laugh.

“As a father of daughters…”

This entire recap of the year’s disasters could be populated with the horrifying misconduct of the litany of Bad Men exposed this year—from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey and beyond—and the ways in which various institutions mishandled the behavior and fallout. No reactions to these revelations were more infuriating than the famous male figures, ranging from Matt Damon to Ben Affleck to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who clarified that they were horrified because they are fathers who have daughters. It’s a sign of how clueless men are and have been in processing these scandals and the nature of this predatory and misogynistic culture. As Hunter Harris perfectly wrote in Vulture, “Only a sociopath needs a daughter—or a sister, a girlfriend, a wife, or even just a lady standing in front of him at Starbucks—to make him queasy enough at the thought of a sexual predator in his industry to do something about it.”

Mariah Carey at New Year’s Eve

Maybe it was a simple mistake made in a very public forum. Maybe it was an ominous warning of the year that was to come. Nonetheless, Mariah Carey’s interminable avalanche of live disasters during the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve telecast was excruciating to watch. One of the greatest singers of all-time standing on stage pissed off, first saying she couldn’t hear a backing track to sing along to, then not bothering to lip sync the next song before storming off. It was an inauspicious way to start the new year, especially when you consider the optics of it: a woman helpless as the world, albeit in this case just the Times Square stage, burned around her, then vilified for refusing to smile through the carnage. The fallout was hardly handled elegantly with Carey’s team and the production company engaging in a public she-said-they-said over who was to blame.

The launch of Megyn Kelly Today

At Fox News, Megyn Kelly was a marketable if polarizing star presence, known for her prosecutorial manner in lines of tough questioning—always admirable, even if you didn’t necessarily agree with the direction. NBC found it admirable enough to spend $15 million to woo her away from the cable news network, rearranging its entire morning news lineup to launch a full hour of Kelly-led programming. Confusingly, however, it eschewed the attributes that made Kelly so popular at Fox. Instead, a manufactured, awkwardly fitting personality emerged that was crucified by critics at each tonal whiplash segment transition, especially during painful interviews with liberal celebrities who couldn’t bother to hide their disdain for the host.

La La Land Oscars gaffe

The phrase “Oscars mistake” is typically employed to groan about a film voters crown Best Picture that critics or fans don’t necessarily think deserved it, not for a situation in which the literal wrong winner is announced. That a gaffe both so monumental and so careless happened at the 2017 Academy Awards—Warren Beatty was handed the wrong envelope and, confused, announced La La Land as Best Picture instead of Moonlight—is already excruciating and embarrassing. But, again, the optics of it all make everything worse. The La La Land team had to cede the stage after the gaffe was clarified, about as awkward a moment as an award show can produce. But the filmmakers behind Moonlight, a film about the marginalized black and gay experience, were denied the emotion that comes from a watershed cultural moment like winning Best Picture, and the chaos overshadowed the power of the moment, let alone their speeches. While it was deserved to a measure, the amount of attention given to the La La Land team’s graciousness after the mistake only further magnified how problematic the incident was.

Marvel’s Inhumans

It’s bad enough when the phrase “worst thing Marvel has done” is used to describe your new TV show, as it was for ABC’s fall foray into the Marvelverse. But the launch of Inhumans became more dire in light of the investment made in the series and its hubris in assuming audiences would consume it anyway, despite its middling quality, just because it’s Marvel. The big-budget bet included a release in IMAX theaters of its first two episodes ahead of its ABC launch, a theatrical run that garnered a pitiful $2.9 million.

Matt Damon

It’s been quite the year for Matt Damon, who needs to fire any publicist whose advice isn’t simply, “Stop talking.” His response to the Weinstein scandal has been disastrous bordering on offensive, with the actor running out of feet to put in his mouth as he attempted to add nuance to the conversation but instead came off as defending bad men’s behavior. But even if you reluctantly put all that aside, the films he was promoting during those calamitous interviews, Suburbicon and Downsizing, have underperformed at the box office and divided critics. All that on top of the way he kicked the year off: in a riotously silly man-bun white savior-ing Chinese history in the epic box office bomb The Great Wall.

Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy

In September, Louis C.K. premiered I Love You, Daddy at the Toronto Film Festival. It’s a film in which C.K.’s protagonist, Glen, in a very Woody Allen-ish plot, has a 17-year-old daughter who enters a relationship with a 60-something man who is a legendary filmmaker. In one scene, a character played by Charlie Day vigorously mimes masturbation, not bothering to stop when a female producer, used to such things, enters the room. What was purposefully provocative in the film now borders on lunacy after The New York Times confirmed an industry open secret: that Louis C.K. had masturbated in front of upcoming female comedians. Suffice it to say that I Love You, Daddy’s theatrical release was canceled.

Kathy Griffin’s Trump mask fiasco

When Kathy Griffin was made aware of how ghastly and in poor taste the photo of her holding a bloodied, decapitated Trump head was—which happened instantly—she apologized for the offense. But few celebrity controversies have spiraled this out of control this quickly. Griffin was immediately let go from nearly every entertainment job she held, and, in response, she staged a misguided press conference in which she alleged that the Trump family was targeting her. It’s a classic case in disastrous damage control, but it shouldn’t have damned Griffin the way it has. It certainly says a lot about the latent misogyny in the industry that, as recent months have brought to light, famous men are guilty of truly horrific behavior that for so long was excused—yet an atoning Griffin still can’t get representation or a footing back into the industry she made her name in. The one good to come of this: Griffin’s fed up with all of it, too, and she’s naming names.

Fyre Festival

The best thing to happen to Coachella’s reputation is the worst thing to have happened to the hoodwinked revelers who shelled out upwards of $250,000 for a luxurious VIP concert experience on a private island in the Bahamas. Rich kids arrived only for it to instead resemble, as one fooled attendee attested, a refugee camp. The entire thing was organized by rapper Ja Rule and out-of-his-element entrepreneur bro Billy McFarland under false pretenses, with no infrastructure in place to support, house, or feed the thousands of concertgoers who paid premium prices only to be met with an unfinished tent village, packs of feral dogs, mountains of trash, no-show artists, and not enough food to go around. A breaking point for the increased lunacy surrounding the culture of music festivals, or merely a cautionary tale for how not to ruin the next one?

Tulip Fever

Maybe it’s schadenfreude that Harvey Weinstein’s swan song as a Hollywood mogul included this long-gestating, notorious disaster of a period film, riddled with false starts and re-castings and shuffled release dates and, most notably, Harvey Weinstein’s constant tinkering. Perhaps the lowest moment in the botched release of the film, which starred Dane DeHaan and Alicia Vikander and earned a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 9 percent, was when Weinstein himself penned an essay defending it, citing the fact that Vikander’s mother’s friend called her to say she enjoyed the movie as evidence.

Kid Rock’s “Senate run”  

The music industry’s resident American Jackass dialed up his reign of terror this year with the threat of a Senate run, to be launched on his tried-and-true values of cheap beer and racism. In the end, it was nothing more than a barely veiled publicity stunt. Nonetheless, breathless headlines blared the preposterous idea, and, considering the trajectory to public office mapped out by Donald Trump, seriously considered it. Of course, we can hardly fault anyone for, against their better judgement, giving credence to the nonsense that Kid Rock says. We still can’t get over his bigoted use of “gay” as a pejorative—let alone his embrace of the Confederate flag.  

Baywatch vs. Rotten Tomatoes

A bad movie is a bad movie. That’s fine and inevitable, and Baywatch was a bad movie. But shining a spotlight on this turd in particular came reports of industry insiders pissed that critical reviews decimated the movie’s box office haul, as well as that of the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It’s not the fact that these movies were shit you could smell from miles away that made audiences not want to buy tickets. It’s Rotten Tomatoes! If you ever want to know how little Hollywood studios think of you, the audience, just read this quote: “The critic aggregation site increasingly is slowing down the potential business of popcorn movies. Pirates 5 and Baywatch aren’t built for critics but rather general audiences, and once upon a time these types of films—a family adventure and a raunchy R-rated comedy—were critic-proof.”

The Mummy and the Dark Universe

Tom Cruise’s The Mummy wasn’t just supposed to be a franchise reboot cash-grab using a familiar property and a big Hollywood star. It was supposed to launch an entire shared cinematic universe, dubbed the “Dark Universe,” for Universal, filled with monsters including Russell Crowe as Dr. Jekyll, Javier Bardem as Frankenstein, and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man, as well as Sofia Boutella’s Ahmanet from The Mummy. It was a whole big plan. They all posed for a photo together and everything! But following disastrous box office returns for The Mummy, not to mention abysmal reviews, plans for the interconnected Dark Universe, at least as far as they were in motion, were scrapped and its architects, producer-writers Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan, jumped ship for other projects.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/15-biggest-pop-culture-disasters-of-2017-kendall-jenner-megyn-kelly-the-oscars-more/