#this thing that has ingrained itself into my very being and the way i think

[iamthemaestro]

had a character development moment today where I realized maybe I simply do not have a healthy relationship to classical music anymore

[moe-broey]

VIVID fucking idea I had last night....

Background info, I think Moe has some really distinct tendencies that Alfonse ends up being able to immediately identify it by (and finds a lot of comfort in doing so). One of which, is it doing a quiet, hesitant, but steady knock. Persistent, but with long pauses in between.

ENTER..... the Vision........ just. This entire sequence. "You'll never hear from me again". Into, the quiet knock only a few hours later. Into bursting in with the MOST enthusiastic, "HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Moe really is Some Type of Guy LMFAOO

Fave panels.......

[azen13]

CW: Yandere Themes, Power Imbalance, Mind Control

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

Yandere!Zhongli, despite his nature as the Archon of Geo, isn't as restrictive as one might think at first. Quite the opposite, actually. He'll say it himself, as he forces you to stay still in his strong arms, trapped inside his Adeptal Domain. He wishes he could give you more privileges, but he simply can't trust you.

Of course, you press him about this, you say he can trust you. With no other option but to fight for any scraps of freedom you can get, you're willing to grovel on your knees for anything, as much as you hate yourself for doing so.

At the sight of your desperation, Zhongli has to mask the way the corners of his lips twitch up, eyes predatory, draconic instinct seeping through a human facade. With the flick of a hand, a thick roll of paper pops into existence in front of your head. The very end of it unfurls, revealing what looks like a place where a signature is written.

For a contract.

Sign it, Zhongli says, and he will grant you multiple privileges listed in the contract: he'll allow you to leave his Adeptal Domain when possible, write to your family and friends, leave you alone for a set time if you so desire, and more listed in the contract.

Your hand itches for the crystalline, amber pen floating next to the contract, beckoning you to write your name, but you control the urge. You've already been played for a fool by a foe you once called a friend, and you won't fall for his foul ploys any longer.

So, you pull the contract to unfurl it. The paper flows like water, gushing across the floor like a wild stream down the bed to the floor, across the bedroom, through the door, into the kitchen, continuing on, and on, and on. It seems like days go by until finally, the contract is fully unscrolled.

Zhongli is less than pleased at your wariness, a disappointed sigh echoing through the still room. He had hoped you would be less uncooperative, but he will allow you a day to read the contents of the contract. After all, time is of the utmost importance, even for the immortal.

You glare at the god, but know that you cannot allow anger to cloud your mind. With only a day to read such a dense document, there's no time to spare.

When you look down to start reading the contract itself, though, your eyes widen in confusion.

The words on the paper are almost kaleidoscopic, warping and twisting and forming new phrases every second. One moment, you think you can read "the"; the next, those same letters have become "remain". Looking back up, Zhongli has a pitying smile on his face. "Dearest treasure, do you see now that this game is a fruitless endeavor?" He asks, a hand reaching to brush against your jaw, sliding tenderly across your skin. "I would not lie to you about these things. I have never lied to you," he says.

For a moment, you almost mistake his tone as kind, like you almost mistook everything about Zhongli—a polite, cultured gentleman who turned out to be a possessive, obsessed dragon—until you realize how patronizing his words are. You want to curse him to the Abyss and back, but hold back your hatred. "I'd prefer to read the contract." You look back down, and begin attempting to decipher the undulating paragraphs.

Hours pass by, and you've made no progress. Through it all, Zhongli has stayed by your side, whispering cloying words in an attempt at disarming your defenses. You've managed to stay strong in the face of his unending patience though.

But while you're smart, Zhongli is a god, with thousands of years of knowledge ingrained in his mind. And he knows eventually, one argument will break you down. So, he keeps trying.

"Time is running out, my sweet. But before this offer disappears, I will give you one last chance to sign," he says. "Besides, even if I am being dishonest about the contents of the contract, can things really get worse than this? At least by signing the contract, there's a chance your circumstances may improve."

His logic is sound, drowning out the dissonant thoughts scrambling your mind. You hate the idea of agreeing with Zhongli, but at this point, it's hard to see a reason not to sign it.

With trembling fingers, you pick up the pen. It's slightly warm in your hand, the way a rock in the afternoon sun would be. Smiling like he knew this would happen all along, Zhongli makes a motion with one hand, causing the contract to begin rolling up. After waiting several moments, all that's left unrolled is the space where you will sign your name.

The pen slashes against the paper, marring it with an ink-black scar that reads your name.

Then you feel it. The lightness in your chest, as though you're untethered to the world around you. Thoughts in your mind begin to pop like soap bubbles, fear dissipating into pure nothingness. You can hardly hear your spouse chuckling over the absolute blankness blanketing your mind.

Yes, Zhongli would allow you many more freedoms now. After all, you had sold your mind, body, and soul to him. Escape was impossible. You were clay in his hands, and he would mold you into a perfect, obedient lover.

[lucabyte]

thinking about the very specific reading of isat i had during act 3 for the most part

anyway yeah ill ramble here about this. since it actually explains my headcanons for what the disappearing island wish was

disclaimer: taken as a whole this is way too allegorical for what i'd consider a holistic reading of isat, but it was part of my running theories at the time.

anyway my guess for the real-world equivalent of the island ended up being French Polynesia by the end of the game. I had initially thrown a dart at siffrin being greek wrt europe, sisyphus allusion, enjoyment of plays and seafairing-- but the moment that little guy started getting real weird about stars and specified they were from an island i switched my guess to him being polynesian. And then that reading only really strengthened from there (and i was pretty close, tbf!)

but yeah during act 3, especially the king plotline, i started thinking about the themes of cultural erasure + lack of identity that the game has and how that plays wrt vaugarde's extremely welcoming and diverse nature.

reading far too much into it but it made me wonder if they are the results of a fallen empire of some kind. somewhere that gathered people from across the globe (as empires are known to do) before dissolving into what seems to be a localised theocracy of some kind?

like. vaugarde is basically the Good End for an empire. Fully demilitarised (they barely have use for police to the point where the defenders are surprised by burglaries, and almost CERTAINLY have zero army), extremely diverse, not caring where one comes from.

(either that or they've been a socialist utopia like, forever? and thus just aquired migrants perpetually... but ka bue is characterised as harsher by odile in a lot of respects so one can assume its not that the whole planet is Niceys All The Time.)

this lines up pretty well with the um. Whole France Thing. Boy do they own a lot of islands still that they maybe shouldn't. Also lines up with bonnie's word-of-god french creole dialect. So Vaugarde as the welcoming, ideal form of former-colonialiser-nation is like. one i vibe with if we're gonna read too hard into the worldbuilding as presented.

Anyway all this to say I did for a time wonder if the Northern Island wish was 'For The Island To Be Safe'. Assuming this world to have any level of inter-country conflict-- Wish craft is powerful stuff, and a singular island might not be able to defend itself against those seeking to take it by force. Hiding the island from the world would protect it.

... though that felt like an unusually cruel read. The implication that cloistering away like that is a 'valid' strategy for a culture to be safe (albeit with the splash damage of hurting any diaspora).

Plus, wish craft is superbly powerful, with evidently its use on the island only becoming more widespread after it was discovered how to make it work Consistently.

(i work here under the assumption that Siffrin's growing cloak is imbued with wish craft, assumedly the same as the king's armour? Since there's no way that was created at that scale...)

So it almost makes more sense, to me, for the wish to be to 'Protect The World (universe) From Us' or to 'Keep The Universe Safe'.

Wish craft being so second nature to the Islanders (See: Siffrin, favour tree), that a wish that breaks the universe is almost inevitable were the knowledge to become widespread and ingrained.

This too is an oddly cruel read, that a culture's rituals can be dangerous to that degree, but ... ? Dunno. Like I said, reading it as hard allegory makes it fall apart somewhat. Symbols can mean many different things at once until you flatten them for direct analysis like this. I don't think it's quite so 1-to-1, and it's honestly slightly too 'no story only lore' for my tastes, so I did push a lot of this stuff out of my analytical mind once I started getting to the back and of act 3 and into act 4.

Anyway. Not the most coherent explanation in the world, but still some thoughts I had mid-game that i figure i should put somewhere at least, even if I don't think they are really what the game is going for.

As a bonus, the discussions on what the island wish were in this context also lead my friend @samhainian to speculation on the colour wish that i really enjoy. Which is....

The wish that removed colour from humans perception of the world being something along the lines of:

"I wish the world was simpler"

ergo, removing colour as an invocation of Nuiance VS Black and White Morality. The world is simpler, easier to understand.

I think it's a fun headcanon! I like it.

Well anyway. A work is more than the sum of its parts and dissecting something so sloppily as this often does it a disservice. So don't take my theorising as anything more than a general rundown of where my head was at mid-game before i had all the pieces. The emotional core of the story is far more where it's at for ISAT sooooo. [Shrugs and scampers away]

[hikarry]

As immortal beings, by definition, Crowley and Aziraphale don't have to worry much with mortality.

Sure, they are surrounded by it constantly. After all, they live amongst humans, and they watch the few friends or acquaintance they make through the ages come and go systematically. They are aware of mortality, of death, they just don't think much about it in regards to themselves

To them mortality is not scary. It's just another step in the humans' lives when their eternal house is decided. It's something natural and unavoidable. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Aziraphale has helped some humans cross to the other side more peacefully.

My point is: As immortals, they are aware of mortality. But they don't think much about their own unless they are thinking about being caught by Heaven and Hell, but that's just a what if. An hypothetical. A real one at that, yes, but not reality yet.

Now, the bookshop fire.

In this moment, Crowley is punched in the face by the mortality of immortals.

Something he doesn't think that much about just falls into his lap by the hand of no other but Aziraphale.

Suddenly he is faced with utter loneliness. The ending of a life that, technically, should be eternal. A life he took for granted for more or less 6000 years.

In theory, he has always known both him Aziraphale could die. By their bosses' hands. By the end of the world itself. But it's very different to think about it in theory and living it.

Crowley wasn't prepared. This happened suddenly.

He was on his way to find Aziraphale, possibly to apologize again over the stupid shit he said and talk about the whereabouts of the Anti Christ, and suddenly a day that was actually not going that bad anymore (aka escaping Ligur and Hastur with little to no collateral damage) turns into his worst nightmare.

For 6000 years he has had the theory, and suddenly he his gifted with reality.

And the last thing he had said to Aziraphale's face was that he wouldn't even think about him when he left. You bet those last words started playing in his head as soon as he saw the fire.

And there's a whole hidden layer there: it wasn't just his best friend that went up in flames, which in on itself is already painful as fuck. No. The man he has loved for 6000 years also was destroyed.

Coming to terms with your own mortality as a supernatural being and the destruction of your companion since Eden would drive anyone into shock. Would be ingrained in their brains like a new trauma. The new notion of how actually fragile life is gifting you a whole new perspective.

No surprise Crowley probably has PTSD with fires. Or that he has nightmares about that day often. Or that he forbade Aziraphale from having anything fire related in the bookshop and convinced him to buy electric candles and a shit tone of fire extinguishers. Or that his mind went into "Fuck this, let the Apocalypse come. I'm too tired to deal with this anymore". OR that his first instinct was hidding in a random bar and getting sloshed out of his own mind to try and put the pieces all together. (Like, cmon, my man was about to open his third bottle)

The actual relief he must have felt when he found out Aziraphale was only discorporated must have been fucking abysmal! Like taking a cold shower after a fever! But you bet his encounter with mortality has changed him. You can't go through something like that and remain the same. And he didn't.

Imagine how he must have felt when Beelzebub told him about the Book of Life. The fucking flashbacks he must have had. No surprise the first thing he did was drive to Aziraphale, apologize and agree to his dumb plan of helping Gabriel. Anything to keep him under his eyes. At least if they go down then, they will go down together.

Or so he thought, innit? We know how this story ended.

[snickerdoodlles]

#I think a lot of my dislike of the movie might have been just differences in taste #That movie was NOT my sense of humor and I disliked how they handled some things #Like...it kinda bugged me how they went about Ballister's prosthetic limb I won't lie. #I also don't know if Nimona ''not wanting to be a monster'' yet also wanting to cause so much destruction around her worked for me #Or at least not the way it was done #Like. I'm ALL for a character that wants to hurt others because of the way they've been hurt. That's based. #But that's not...really what they did? Or at least I don't think so #Like she's not REALLY a villain but she did sincerely want Ballister to be. #She values life. But she also wants to murder people? She wants violence??? Idk. It was a weird mix #She's SO sad that child was scared of her but earlier she like. Completely fucks up another kid's game. For no reason. #God and Nimona being 1000 years old makes a lot of her actions kinda weird. She feels so 14 to me yet she's immortal afssf #Also just not that big a fan of the trope where it's revealed ''this ancient legend was actually kids the whole time!!!'' #but I know that's just my tastes #HOWEVER. I also think it made the movie weaker in certain aspects. #Prejudice is learned. So making it feel SO ingrained into the very beings of this world's people #IDK man did not hit it's mark for me #the queer allegory was legitimately very good though. loved that (op's tags)

Nimoma has good emotional payoff and animation but nothing else to really write home about TBH

It's very SPOP in that way, where the arcs and scenes are solid when viewed outside of the media in gifset or clip form but don't work as well when actually watching what they're from

For sure! I think that's a problem she-ra and toh both share with Nimona—they struggle with setup but then go ham on the payoff, which leaves everything feeling somewhat unearned.

The end of the movie bugged me in particular—Ballister's 180 with calling Nimona a monster (something he KNOWS pushes her to the brink) after one conversation with his ex-boyfriend was...I think out of place?

Normally if you have a character make a wrong choice like that you, as the audience, would be questioning the whole movie if they had ever REALLY changed. Was Ballister's loyalty truly to Nimona or to the Institute/Goldenloin? But, by that point in the movie they had really sold me on Ballister's complete acceptance of Nimona and disregard of the institute, so....why would he turn on Nimona then? I'm surprised they didn't do this plot the other way, which would instead have only made it seem like Ballister betrayed Nimona, you know? Like they did in Tangled. That way you don't undo Ballister's movie long arc with one scene, but you can still have Nimona go berserk and make her way into the heart of the city.

There were also a couple of other things that felt kinda dropped by the end. Ballister being the first commoner to become a knight? The Queen's important role in this society? This kingdom's prejudice going SO deep that not even a child would give Nimona a chance after saving their life, yet blowing up the wall changed everyone's minds in the end?

There were a lot of good pieces, but they weren't quite put together in the right ways.

[longing-for-rain]

regarding aang becoming offended bc of his portrayal as a woman in ember island players, i think his anger was justified on that specific occassion? I mean, the fire nation was mocking his gentle nature and pacifism by portraying him as a blithering naive idiot who never took things seriously and the belittling of his culture and beliefs. This is one of the worst episodes for him, dont get me wrong, but in this case, femininity was utilized as a source of derision and weakness imo. I dont say this with bad intentions, just thought i would write this bc i also condemned aang for the same thing before

If that was what Aang was upset about I might be inclined to agree, but everything he says and does throughout that episode points to the contrary. Aang doesn’t say anything about the incorrect portrayal of his culture and personal values. Here is what he does say:

[Note: the above expression is before the actress hardly says anything so he’s clearly just mad about the fact that she’s female]

Aang: [angrily] Is that a woman playing me?

Aang: I don't do that! That's not what I'm like! And I'm not a woman!

[Note: the official script includes the emphasis; again, it’s very obvious that he’s most bothered by being played by a woman]

Then this exchange:

Toph: I don't know, you are more in touch with your feminine side than most guys.

Aang: [Standing up, angrily] Argh!

Katara: Relax, Aang. They're not accurate portrayals. It's not like I'm a preachy crybaby who can't resist giving overemotional speeches about hope all the time. [Everyone looks at her] What?

Aang: [Turns around and sits down. Sarcastically.] Yeah, that's not you at all.

You know what I love about this conversation is that is proves two things at once. Firstly, yet again, it’s clear that being portrayed by a woman is what is most upsetting to Aang. Secondly, his reaction (and, honestly, insult) to Katara’s values here shows that he’s not thinking that deeply about this. It has nothing to do with values. Aang is offended at the idea that he is being portrayed by a woman and with more “feminine” qualities, which honestly plays well with his creepy, possessive behavior with Katara later this same episode.

And I actually do like the fact that you brought up femininity being used as “a source of derision and weakness” because guess what! That’s the definition of femininity itself. Femininity doesn’t mean simply being a woman; femininity is the social behaviors and roles that women are expected to fulfill. Which is why I don’t have any sympathy for a man who is offended by being called feminine or compared to a woman because it’s reflective of a deeply misogynistic attitude on his part. If Aang thinks femininity is so degrading and weak, what does that say about the fact he expects his crush to behave that way? I mean, this is what he thinks of Katara, through his own perspective:

So yeah, that’s my question. If being compared to a woman is so insulting and humiliating to Aang, what does that say about how he intuitively views actual women? Why does he think he’s above that treatment but women aren’t? People act like I’m crazy for saying that he exhibits toxic masculinity this episode but this only furthers that point.

Oh and before someone jumps in here and acts like this goes both ways, let me point you to this:

Toph’s reaction to finding out she’s being played by a big, buff, stereotypically-masculine man. She’s thrilled! Why? Because we are products of a misogynistic society and therefore intuitively view being compared to a man as a compliment and a woman as an insult. The respective roles assigned to each are not equal. Masculinity and femininity were never equal and the system was deliberately created that way. You can see this idea ingrained in the writing of this episode because it’s a bias we all hold to some degree, including the writing and creative team here.

So I’m sorry, but considering the bias clearly present within the writing team and the way the characters behave this episode, it’s clear to me that Aang’s reaction has nothing to do with his culture and everything to do with his misogyny.

[generalluxun]

Hey. Asking about how Chloe was abused. My knowldge of abuse is fairly limited to general pop knowledge so I'm curious as to what abuse was done to her.

Okay caveats first:

I am not a medical professional, I am simply someone with a vested interest in the topic who has done more research than the average person.

There are many definitions of abuse. Legal definitions are rarely useful, as they are limited to concrete, provable, gross violations. Just as you can inflict a lot of pain on someone without leaving the marks to prove assault, you can do a lot of damage to a child without it being legally 'provable'. Medical definitions are much more helpful for discussions.

Lastly some level of extrapolation is required as it is a show. We take what we are shown. For example:We actually only have Felix's word that he was ever abused, and his first character traits sre being deceitful and manipulative. We still take his word though, because it's a show. (And also we should give weight to victim accounts!)

So both parents are guilty in different ways. We will start with Audrey, the simpler one. There's clear verbal and emotional abuse demonstrated on screen. Mis-naming your child is a form of abuse:please ask the trans community about the impact of deadnaming even in full grown adults.

Beyond that she is constantly dismissive and belittling of her child- to the exclusion of all else. Style Queen/Queen Wasp is rife with examples. There is also the clear behavior shift in Chloé. The wheeling, approval seeking, hunched posture expecting rejection. This is a *pattern* not a one off. Audrey may live in NY, but no fashion movil would be away from Paris for 13yrs straight. We are simply seeing the most recent interaction. This culminates im a child having to ask 'Why don't you love me mother?' and the response is telling

Audrey barely chokes out the strange word when trying to contradict the question. It takes Marinette literally making them both mad at her to get a bare minimum of interaction on Audrey's part. It doesn't last though. Audrey falls back into her negation behaviors and is now present to inflict them more regularly on Chloé, while also being a constant target for/model of behavior for Chloé. (Seriously it was such a misstep to write Marinette reuniting a victim with an abuser) We know the show itself considers Audrey'ss care as a bad thing because the original script had André divorcing her and takin Zoé because Zoé 'doesn't deserve you' so Chloé being in an abusive parenting situation in Representation is supposed to be 'punishment'(ewww)

André is not off the hook either. People look at him 'spoiling' her and leave it at that. Well, 'spoiling' can in fact be abusive too. Let's look at what we see:

André has been her primary caregiver for 14 years now, so he has had the most responsibility in molding what we see for good or bad(mostly bad). She does learn from him too. Darkblade she proudly announces she learned everything about winning elections from watching her father. He's also excessively arrogant (I'm the symbol of Paris!) and quite willing to abuse his power for his own ends(having Roger round up protestors etc) which explains where Chloé learned where power is to be abused.

André is also extremely neglectful as a parent, extreeeeemely. Let's hit a bunch of points in the order they come to me.

Chloé lives *alone* in a hotel suite. There's no shared space, no family area. It's not even really her room. It's commercial, sterile. Where sre her hobbies? Posters? Even her *colors*? She is so used to being ignored at home that the girl who is loud as heck everywhere else doesn't make a single mark on her living space.

A hotel employee seems to think he needs to step in to raise Chloé. Let that sink in. An employee can see how bad it is and tried to make some kind of change, (he's working against a lifetime of ingrained behavior and is not very good at it himself). He doesn't even think to you know... Get Andre in to do this.

André was unaware or didn't care his daughter hasn't done schoolwork since Sabrina *learned to write*(5/6 yrs old) that is a shocking level of disinterest in your child. 6yr olds aren't criminal masterminds.

Andre supplants actual attention and affection with *stuff* he gives material possessions in *place* of parenting. This is somewhat similar to spoiling but not the same. André's method denies the child something vital. You see- things aren't a substitute for affection/attention, developmentally. And so while they may delight they never satisfy the need. They never validate the emotional attachment. So after the shine wears off, the hole is still there. So, like someone with an addiction, the child needs more, and more, and more. Since the needs are never met, it is never enough. And this is what the child views as *normal* this is simply *how it is*. They rarely know they are being given inadequate care because it's just life to them. Seeing something different in a one off doesn't make a dent vs a whole life.

This sort of thing makes a potent cocktail when mixed with the abandonment issues from her mother too. See- if her mother left, and daddy doesn't pay attention, anyone can leave. This leads to a cycle of pushing/demanding/hurting. The child expects to be left and let down, so they both try to reassure themselves it won't happen, and *make* it happen on their own terms (because they believe deep down it will) so more outrageous demands, because when those demands are met, it shows that you are still 'loved' and when they are not met, then there you go, you are not loved and they will leave you. It's a self-destructive spiral.

You see it play out with her interactions with her classmates and Sabrina specifically. How does she express affection? Gifts. What does she do? Push. Push and push and find the breaking point because if she can make Sabrina actually leave then it shows that she herself is worthless and her mother was right to leave her and her father is right to ignore her. Pretty messed up right? Yeah. Child abuse does horrible things to kids.

We're not done with André yet. Some people might say 'he expresses love for Chloé!' and to that I say- performatively.

André likes the idea of being a father. It's what respectable people do. It looks good on camera. It's someone to love him unconditionally. It's an ally against his wife.(broken home dynamics are horrible too) André just doesn't like having to parent for more than a snapshot.

We can see his interactions with Zoé highlight this too. He's delighted she's here!(a potential person on his side vs his wife and daughter) what's his first parenting advice? 'lock your dreams away and get on with life' A+ André.

What's he do in Queen Banana? He uses his power to let Chloé manipulate the movie *kicking Zoé out of it* This is the guy who is supposed to be supporting her? He only draws the line when it comes to sending Zoé away... Why? He doesn't want to lose an 'ally'. It's power dynamics. Not parenting. Where was he when Zoé was stuck in boarding school? He was going to keep Zoé in the divorce so clearly Mr Lee isn't in the picture, Audrey probably forgot Zoé existed, why didn't André bring Zoé to France and let the sisters grow up together? Oh, right, that might be work.

André likes Zoé because she comes pre-raised(boarding school was probably better than either parent) he doesn't have to put in work and he gets a free good kid to make him look like a father. She's his 'do over' as he throws the one he raised in the trash.

André shows his true colors when he's lamenting to Gabe about his corruption and abuse and blames ot on his 'heartless daughter' you know... The child he raised. The grown man is actually shoving his own corruption and misdeeds onto his child. You really don't need much more than that.

So, via neglect, verbal abuse, and emotional abuse the Bourgeois parents raised an incredibly messed up child. Chloé is not a 'good victim' like Adrien, she doesn't sulk quietly under abuse. She lashes out. She is hurt and angry and she passes the pain on. This is why they call it the cycle of abuse.

The end of Revolution illustrates this perfectly. Audrey throws verbal abuse at her on the plane. Angry that Chloé embarrassed her(not that she did wrong, Audrey loved the power grab) and calls her a loser by implication. You *see* it hit, the physical cringe. Then Chloé immedietely goes to try and pass on the pain. She is hurt and making someone else hurt is the only way to lessen it. She calls Marinette. Marinette breaks the cycle though, and good for her. But the show seems to have forgotten there's still one hurt child in this scene, and it doesn't seem to care.

I'm going to stop here for now. I probably left a bunch out, but I do have other things I need to do. Feel free to ask more questions. Thanks for taking the time to seek answers.

[philtstone]

for the writing meme - Juliet and Lassiter, platonic? :)

this pov is so wildly outside my comfort zone that im in the stratosphere rn and as such i have no idea how i feel about this. that said: tag for 4x09, aka shawn spencers horrible no good very bad day, ft. a scene i am convinced must have happened.

As if the rest of today hasn’t been horrifying enough, when Lassiter gets back to the empty hospital waiting room with the requested 9-p.m.-hail-mary-verge-of-collapse coffee and truly-unwieldy large-sized woman’s purse in his hands, O’Hara is blubbering.

Despite his partner’s bubbly exterior and inexplicable desire to speak with awful regularity about his feelings, she has, since first meeting, more than impressed him with her steel stomach, unflappable cool, and general fortitude in the face of evil, gore, and worldly destruction. Coming head on against the lowest scum of humanity’s underbelly has yet to have cracked her almost belligerent, cotton-candy-wrapped, peach-scented determination to take their job seriously, and it isn’t until right now, right at this exact miserable unfortunate second, that Lassiter realizes: 

Beyond a few stoic cases of Misty Eye and, admittedly, more than a few instances of dreamy girlish exuberance, he has never actually seen Juliet O'Hara cry.

As in, the Real McCoy. Unfiltered feminine waterworks. Mascara smeared down her face, perfect updo unraveling, exhausted, snotty, blubbery sobbing into her dainty little manicured hands.  

Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Mary and Joseph and Christmas and Justice and everything in between.

Lassiter freezes with the coffee and the purse precariously in arm, his exhausted body wedged within the half-open door, and stares at her. 

She stares back, equally frozen. Her watery miserable bloodshot eyes, already in the realm of grotesquely-Disney-princess-flavored large, grow unbearably larger until they achieve the size of small and glassy bluebell colored dinner plates. 

“Oh! C-Carlton,” she squeaks.

Then sniffles.

Her chin is wobbling.

Horror he did not know he was capable of feeling clouds his general consciousness. Panic, borne of a fight-or-flight instinct ingrained into the hard edged fiber of his belligerent being since aged twenty, wells up rapidly within his chest.

Even when confined to an ICU bed with a bullet hole in his goddamn shoulder, Shawn Spencer is still capable of causing him problems. One of these days, Lassiter's going to lock the little twerp up in that smelly corner alcove underneath Dobson’s desk for a full forty-eight hours – maybe more! – just to teach him a lesson.

Except O’Hara would probably disapprove.

Which is exactly the fucking problem, isn’t it.

“O – O’Hara,” he manages to croak, before squeezing with an ungaining shimmy through the rest of the way into the room. He makes it two awkward steps forward before a slow and sad zzziiip sounds out and O'Hara's too-full purse and the tray of coffees in his hands flop forward and overbalance. Fumbling, he tries to fit all the indiscernibly woman-ish bits and pieces of her handbag back together into some semblance of organization so she doesn't think he's gone through her things while also balancing the coffees in his other hand. A tube of lipstick clatters to the floor while a disastrous bundle of frilly pink yarn tangles itself around his arm. He can hear the faint sound of a nurse paging someone over the hospital speaker system and the white lights of the waiting room grate against his eyeballs.

Who carries their knitting in their purse to a car chase?

… O’Hara, he supposes. O’Hara does that. He already knew this about her.

"Goddam -- goddammit."

“... Carlton?” she says again, querulously, in the smallest, most pathetic tone of voice he has ever heard emit from her smiley pink mouth. She looks flustered, almost afraid, like he wasn’t supposed to see her like this.

He probably wasn't. She'd forgotten her bag in the back of Guster's stupid little car, she said not ten minutes ago, and could he please go grab it when he went to get the coffee? She'd stay behind and get started on their ass-load of paperwork. That was the deal! The straightforward, simple deal. Basic series of steps. He'd had to go get the keys from Gus, who'd finally convinced the doctors to let them into the surgery room. Abigail sat beside him, pale and shaken but pleasant. Shawn was sleeping but fine. The purse was half-spilled against the backseat but there. The day was over but not really, because Lassiter had been waiting, hands itching with a vicious twitchiness he hasn’t felt in a long time, to get the hell out of Santa Barbara General so he could head to the station – a place of blessed and reliable familiarity – and book their miserable scum sucking lowlife rat bastard shit stick of a perp away for life. 

Lot of buts today, he thinks. It's a generally unhelpful thought.

“You – coffee – I – here –” He clears his throat, gives up, and lets the twirling trail of little crocheted flowers dangle sadly from his arm. Then he frowns, and straightens up. “O’Hara,” he says, loudly and a little too firmly.

She looks anguished. It’s terrible. 

“I d-didn’t mean – I w-was only just – I’m like, really tired? And sometimes when you’re tired, y-you just n-need to – to cry a little bit, but that’s not –! There’s nothing wron – it’s fine, I am – J-just because he said – and I can't even go in the - it’s not even th-that – n-none of this means – it’s just been a v-very – day, and –”

Somehow the panicked and incoherent babbling is worse.

“Jesus,” is all he can offer, still holding the purse out like a fool.

She squeezes her eyes shut, as if trying to block some horrible and mortifying memory out, and buries her face in her hands again, giving up on her explanation. Her cheeks are red, with embarrassment and probably exhaustion. Lassiter is exhausted, and he’d definitely feel embarrassed if he was her. His stomach churns with discomfort. As he lamely uses the yarn to blot at the dribble of coffee that’s transferred onto his rumpled tie, he notices that his shirt is stained. Dirt and gravel and just one smear of blood, right over his stomach, where Shawn’s hand fumbled as Lassiter and Henry helped him get upright and against the car's vaguely cushioned backseat while they waited for the paramedics. 

He’s not stupid, or blind, no matter what the rest of the world likes to presume sometimes. He knows that whatever juvenile attachment O’Hara has to the Great And Irritating Thorn In His Side goes beyond the platonic and has elbowed itself into something greater than the immature and saccharine attraction that was regularly horrifying and – only sometimes – mildly amusing. Spencer is an idiot; O’Hara is not. 

Doesn’t make any of today feel different, though. 

He feels his shoulders sag. He feels the adrenaline drain out of him. He feels a surge of strange, complicated protectiveness trip over its metaphorical feet and land face-first in the back part of his throat, angry somehow, on her behalf – it’s difficult to explain precisely why – and then, through some cosmic magic that Shawn would probably claim he can commune with and Carlton absolutely does not believe in, his mouth opens of its own accord and her name comes out a second time, with more gentleness than he knew himself genuinely capable of:

“Juliet,” he says. 

Still awkward, and stilted, but maybe three percent less of a disaster. He watches his partner’s – his friend’s – mouth snap shut in surprise. He watches her sniff, and look at him a little desperately, a little lost, like even she’s not sure what to do with whatever horrible and unavoidable human indignity just accosted them. 

Lassiter swallows painfully and casts around for something else to say.

“You – you want a ride home?” he finally lands on.

Thank God: she nods. Exhaling loudly, he holds his arm out and the door open while Juliet scrambles to her feet in those confounding heels and accepts her bulky purse and his poorly-delivered grace with simple, slowly-settling determination. Or maybe it’s just plain relief.

He can work with that, he thinks, before absently raising one of the coffee cups to his mouth and immediately choking on the awful bitter sludge that is her black, one Stevia order.

“Oh, Carlton, this is undrinkable,” he hears her croak beside him, in between his own disgusted spluttering. He wonders miserably if Karen’s already worked her way through the interrogation he was so looking forward to conducting. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack twenty years premature …”

One of these days, he thinks again, wondering how many Tylenols it’ll take to kick the day’s headache. 

Spencer, chained to that desk armpit.

Forty-eight whole hours.

It’s a blissful fantasy that wouldn’t be possible if the man wasn’t going to be perfectly, one hundred percent alright, but that’s neither here nor there, just now; he said he would get his partner home.

The rest, he'll just have to figure out later.

[bleue-flora]

why do people think cdream was obsessed with ctommy like i read stellos analysis on it and its well written and nice but they fail to take into account that cdream has a persona and 90 percent of the time is not telling the truth

Ummm well many reasons actually. Ones I’ve talked about a bit before, but basically I think it actually comes down to Tommy himself for a few reasons.

a) Firstly, I think because Tommy believes it, it’s hard for us not to believe it. In other words, by watching his stream, being in his head, that perception is ingrained into the lore itself so we are more inclined to believe it, simply because the character we are watching through does. This is true not just for Tommy but other characters as well and it makes sense, we are seeing things for the first time through their eyes - how could it not taint our view? This is also not helped by the fact that Dream leans into Tommy’s expectations. In multiple scenes we see him bring to life Tommy’s world view, giving him and us more inclination to take it at face value. Like Dream becomes who Tommy thinks he is so it makes it really convincing from Tommy’s head to not believe it.

b) Secondly, in many ways Dream is obsessed with Tommy. Sure not in the way Tommy thinks - like him constantly trying to kill him and take his discs and yada yada… but he tears up Tommy’s whole yard for Tommy’s discs, he fights wars for the discs against Tommy, and in some ways that is Tommy obsessing over Dream forcing Dream to engage. The problem I think is not so much that Dream is really obsessed with Tommy but that he’s obsessed with keeping his “big happy family” and Tommy continues to threaten that and be the center of chaos and conflict, there by making him a priority for Dream. And it doesn’t help that Tommy is also the very center of Dream’s hurt, and beginning and end of his downfall.

c) Lastly, and I think probably most notably, I kinda touched upon this already, but because Tommy is obsessed with Dream, he forces Dream to constantly be involved with him, making it look like a focus/obsession/priority when Dream really may be just trying to defend himself, defend his friends, get back his stuff… etc. Dream can’t not be involved with Tommy because just like the finale Tommy inserts himself right at Dream’s throat again.

So is Dream obsessed with Tommy? Or is he obsessed with getting to live his life, something Tommy continues to make impossible?

And yea the fact alone that Spirit, Mars, and Bekerson existed before Tommy and that Dream built a prison but plans on putting Skeppy in a little cage, should be enough to highlight that Dream is talking nonsense in the disc confrontation about Tommy being the key and him needing Tommy alive and yada yada… like it should be enough to showcase that maybe he isn’t really obsessed with Tommy like he depicts. But perhaps it’s much easier to believe that narrative than the one that Dream is actually a relatively sane person who’s just lying (like he’s accused to be lol - “All you do is lie, Dream…”). It’s a less messy reality then the what ifs and considerations and dissecting needed to find the actual truth. And who doesn’t want to just do the things that are easier?…

[joanofexys]

tell me about cult shit (every time I read your cult posts I feel super enlightened I think it’s great that you’re sharing your experience because I feel like it teaches so many others including me) specifically about things cults do to normalize their actions? idk if that makes sense but I was thinking about how jean thought that what he went through was something he deserved and like normal punishments etc

yay cult shit!

warning: this got long and i think i veered off topic and a lot of it is incoherent. To sum it up, there's a lot of ways that cults manage to normalize things. And a lot of it boils down to your brain not wanting to admit you're trapped and that it's worse than you thought.

A lot of it is subtle integration. If you're not learning it from birth and they're trying to convert you they're obviously not going to hit you with the worst of the worst right off the bat.

This is a rough comparison because it is comparing two forms of abuse and two traumas but it's the best I can think of right now. It's kind of similar to how domestic abuse in relationships can work. A man hits his girlfriend for the first time. He swears it won't happen again. She accepts that. It obviously happens again. And grows more frequent over time.

A lot of cults don't function off of physical abuse. At least not as their foundation. A lot of cult members are physically abused, are more likely to end up in relationships where they will be abuse victims, and in many husband/wife relationships or parent/child relationships there can be physical abuse present. But that's often not what a cult sustains itself on. But it is does to a similar thing to physical abuse where it eases into things and as people are manipulated and get in too deep then the abuse becomes more obvious or more frequent.

With the way I grew up it was largely that I came to associate unnatural punish/consequence as natural consequences. A child drops a plate. Natural consequence: they clean up the mess (with help, if needed). Unnatural consequence: some form of corporal punishment. This is a specific example that we still see very frequently. Many kids who grrew up being hit or spanked do still believe that it is a natural thing/natural consequence. Your child misbehaves and therefore the "natural" consequence is that you spank them. Obviously we have evidence and psychological studies that contradict this. But that doesn't change the fact that based on the way many people were raised they still believe that to be a natural punishment.

Cults work similarly. Growing up if I messed up there wasn't often a natural or connected punishment. The obvious answer, or the consequences for my actions, were often based in religious/cult related things. It erases the sense of the natural consequences and replaces them with things ingrained in the cult. Until it seems natural.

I'd honestly assume the ravens work similarly. You mess up a drill and instead of re-running it you get hit and then you do it again. It adds the factor of physical abuse into the process until it becomes a regular and expected part of it. Until it seems like the obvious thing.

There's also the aspect of fear and fear mongering. I thought I deserved certain things because I had sinned. Because I was going to hell and that was something I feared greatly. Anything that comes from a higher power is deserved. Whether that's a god or a cult leader or anyone else above you. And a huge part of that probably factors into Jean's abuse and his sense of deserving. He has never held a position of power over Riko in any form. Not in name, not on the court, not anywhere. Riko has always been above him. And even when Jean fought back that was something that still existed. There's a huge power play involved there and your mind and body can only put up that fight for so long before fear wins out.

When there's no clear out you will eventually succumb to it and normalize it. To put it in very simple terms. Jean could never get up and walk out. And there was only so much abuse and torment that his mind and body could withstand before he learned to give in. Before he learned that Riko, and Tetsuji, were things to be afraid of.

You don't just get up and walk out of a cult. Maybe in the early days, but they don't show you the worst of it early on. But once you're in it becomes normal because there's no way to leave. So you have to rationlize it. Justify it. Find a reason why it's the way it is. Obviously for Jean it was abusive from the get go. And that was because he has absolutely no out. For the other Ravens they could, in theory, drop out at any point. But that's not how cults work. Even if it seems like there's a way to leave, most cult members can't see it. You never know you're in a cult till you leave it. Why would you be looking for the exit?

[mtreebeardiles]

Been thinking about heteronormativity and how it gets regurgitated into queer media and I think maybe the conversation around it is missing some key understandings:

1) no one is saying that the more femme partner can’t be the bottom — just that it shouldn’t be assumed as some kind of “default”

2) no one is saying more femme peeps can’t be attracted to more masc peeps and vice versa — just that it is entirely possible for more femme folks to be attracted to other femme folks, for more masc folks to be attracted to other masc folks, and all the possible combos you can think of rather than **defaulting** to masc x femme as some kind of ingrained, innate dynamic

3) both straight women and queer men can write reductive, stereotypical MLM fiction — but there is an undercurrent of assumptions being made about these writers that are also tied to stereotypes. Critiquing a man in largely leftist spaces is treated as a morally correct given, but critiquing a woman in those spaces is often “men talking over women” or “putting women down” without actually considering the criticism and whether or not it has merit. “I’m not fetishizing gay men, you can’t fetishize gay men.” You can! The same way straight men fetishize queer women! Next!

4) related to 3, both women and men can write AMAZING MLM fiction — I know because I have read some pretty great shit, and some of that was indeed by women! But that doesn’t negate the very fair criticism that a lot of MLM media is largely written by women. Does that mean those women should stop? No! Absolutely not. But it does mean that maybe as a reader or heck even as a creator, it may be worthwhile to broaden your own horizons and read & promote works about queer men written by queer men. Not all of it is automatically good by virtue of the author being queer (again, see above), but we have this tendency in our broader society to assume woman= better at emotions and man= emotionally illiterate, treating it like some kind of innate, “natural” state of things. (It’s bioessentialism. It’s just bioessentialism, that tenacious foot soldier of patriarchy. Avoid this path lest you end up in TERFdom)

Unfortunately the article I was gonna cite here for this point is one I can’t seem to find again, but it essentially was this dude explaining why he’d chosen all women to work on a romance anthology (queer) over any queer men and literally said it’s because men can’t write romance as well/aren’t as “in touch with their emotions”

Idk seems spoken like some schmuck who hasn’t been up til 2 am sobbing over some werewolves from Green Creek but what can ya do

Ultimately my point is: no, you don’t have to be a queer man to write about queer men. But as a queer man who loves reading about queerness (particularly romance cuz I’m a sap and I love that shit), my only real ask is this:

Consider how you’re writing the character and why. Are some patriarchal biases sneaking through? Are those biases YOURS, or are you giving them TO THE CHARACTER in a way that you want to explore? Because there is a difference there and I am not saying you can’t write toxic characters or toxic relationships

I’m just saying there is a difference between the writer crafting their story in a way that implies or heavily endorses toxicity as “default” or “natural” versus a writer who knows it isn’t and is exploring that toxicity with that awareness — an awareness that does, in fact, translate into the work itself

[billpottsismygf]

The Devil's Chord! This was my most highly anticipated episode of the series because of The Beatles - who I'm very nostalgic for, sue me - but they had a much smaller part than I expected. That may be for the best, as the actors don't look anything like the real deal, but they did an admirable job considering the circumstances.

I love the idea behind this one. I'm a musician myself and love things about music. Music being important, music being holy, I love it all. Everything from Maestro playing us into the theme tune, to the way it aligns with the characters' established personalities (the Doctor's jukebox and Ruby's band), made me very happy. The music battle was especially cool. Very The Devil Went Down to Georgia. Out there, but I liked it a lot.

Maestro was also a lot. I liked them, though. Great costumes, great performance. A campy villain in the best way. They're the Toymaker's child, which is interesting in itself, and I like that the rules around fair play seemed to extend to them as well.

There was a lot of series arc stuff here. So, Ruby has Carol of the Bells deeply ingrained within her. There was some important figure (another of the Pantheon, presumably) at her birth - is Ruby herself a child of the Pantheon? More snow, as well. There's also the One Who Waits coming up again. It all feels a little too self-conscious and crammed in - "remember, there's pay-off coming for these random mysteries that you have no context for!". I know we live in an era of heavily serialised media, in large part because of streaming and the binge model, and obviously Doctor Who has been semi-serialised since the revival, but it just seems like a lot. Maybe even too much, especially since the first episode was quite heavy with it too.

Although, I did wonder if this one was meant to be later in the series. First Ruby saying "you never hide" and then "you always know what to do" signaled a far longer association with the Doctor than she has had, but then it was especially jarring when she said it was hard to keep track of when her time is and it could be June or July... That sounds like someone who's been travelling with the Doctor for a while, not like someone who's on their second trip. And it was Christmas for her only last episode. Obviously there can be off-screen trips, but usually for the first couple of episodes we want to feel that this is the start of their journey as the audience gets to know them. Did this get plucked from later in the series and dropped into the episode 2 slot? Because it seems a bit of a shame, if so.

There was a lot of fourth wall breaking in this one as well. There was a wink to camera each from Maestro and the Doctor, as well as the Doctor's comment about thinking the music was non-diegetic (a nice little moment that probably a lot of people will miss). I do quite like a meta moment, and particularly loved the Twelfth Doctor's partaking in them, but I wonder if these serve a particular purpose, because we also had Mrs Flood talking to camera at the end of the Christmas special. Since RTD seems to be going with a theme that the rules of the universe have changed and become a bit more magical, I wouldn't be surprised if the meta elements tied in somehow.

Then, this is less meta and more fully surreal, but that whole ending musical number was... odd. I don't know what I think about it yet. The Doctor with his wink and "there's always a twist at the end" seemed to signal that we were leaving the normal reality of the show, but then... Did that musical number literally happen? How about the Abbey Road zebra crossing acting like a piano? It's part of my specific brand of autism that I struggle with surreal things when it's not clear how/whether they relate to the more realistic things going on, so maybe other people love it. It just made me feel confused, though, and slightly annoyed. I expected a musical number because the trailers showing this made that fairly clear, but I'd assumed it would be explicitly connected to the strange happenings of the episode. Instead it's just plonked at the end after everything has been fixed.

A lot of this latter stuff sounds quite negative, but overall I really liked this one! As I said before, the music stuff speaks to me personally very much, and I'll withhold final judgement about the serialisation stuff and even the meta/surreal stuff, as it may well pay off yet.

Small things

Love their outfits so much, and obviously we've known about them for a while, but it was funny they were worried about blending in when both of them (especially Ruby) were wearing pretty 60s adjacent outfits at the start. The Doctor was more 70s, but I don't think many people would have looked askance.

Ahhhh, Fifteen mentioning that One was in the junkyard made me exceedingly happy! The speculation about what happened to Susan also has me hoping beyond hope that this might be set-up for a Susan return.

I loved that extended instrumental scene where Ruby just played on the rooftop and people listened. It was quite moving!

Love hearing the word "lesbians" on Doctor Who <3 - I don't think even Bill explicitly got to use that word!

Just the general queerness is really nice. Ruby writing a song for her friend's gay break up. Maestro being they/them and it not really being a thing beyond their introduction. Ruby's mum having a "girlfriend" who was a Beatles fan that makes me wonder if that's in the platonic or gay sense.

I want to know the behind the scenes details of how they chose the music they did, especially when it comes to the chords that both summon and banish Maestro.

Henry the child is real and alive at the end! (Though it's during the musical number, so I guess real is dubious.) When he vanished into nothingness (and his music teacher didn't seem to care), I had thought he wasn't real. Does he have his own world-ending powers?

The Doctor referring to bigeneration as having had his soul "torn in half". Hmm, don't like that! I won't rehash my feelings on bigeneration here, but this implies that there is not continuity between the end of Fourteen and the start of Fifteen, which mucks up one of the only ways I could hold onto being just about okay with it.

[driven-to-abstraction]

So a theory I've developed that I surprisingly haven't seen anywhere else on the internet (by which I mean here on Tumblr bc I'm not actually anywhere else on the internet these days) is this:

Will Ferrell's character. The Mattel CEO.

This guy. This guy is a Ken who wandered into the real world and stayed there.

Think about it. Despite being framed as very much the villain of the story (at least the part in the Real World), the CEO never has any aggression toward Barbie. He wants her to go back to Barbieland because he's concerned for the ramifications to both realms if she doesn't. When they meet in person he is awed and respectful and-- dare I say it-- understanding of what she's been through since she came to the Real World. He isn't surprised when she doesn't know how to drink real water. He never threatens or commands her. He suggests she get back in the box so she can go home, but even when she evades and asks to go to the bathroom first, he lets her go without question. Because why would he ever question Barbie?

Even when Barbie escapes and the executives are chasing her through the building, the CEO comes face-to-face with her at one point, but does he grab her? No. She screams, and he screams, and they both keep running in opposite directions.

That feels like Kenergy, but maybe that's just me.

Also, he knows how to get to and from Barbieland. I can see how maybe, if it's something that can happen, Mattel executives might get briefed on the possibility of a Barbie entering the Real World and what to do if it happens, but I can't imagine the particulars of the journey itself are common knowledge. Yet this guy knows it immediately.

ALSO also, the bit that sticks out in my mind is his conversation with the other executives as they start making their way to Barbieland (which is now transforming into Kendomland). When they hear about the success of the Mojo Dojo Casa House playsets and the new Ken movie and everything that's changing, he's upset. The other executives even say, "what does it matter if we're still making money?" and he has his whole mini-rant about how that's not the point. He's not in this for the money, he's in it for the little girls, and the imagination, and the power that Barbie should have. Now, that doesn't sound like the opinion of an (admittedly bumbling) executive in the otherwise painfully accurate Real World. It sounds more like a holdover of a Ken's ingrained adoration of Barbie and everything she represents.

Not to mention that Allan explains to Gloria and Sasha (when he's trying to convince them to take him with them to the Real World) that others have left Barbieland and stayed in the Real World. At the time, he's referring specifically to Allans, but who's to say it couldn't happen to a Ken? In the original order of things, Kens aren't much more important than Allans, and might be equally unlikely to shift either world in a noticeable way. And if a Ken did manage to wander into the Real World, is it such a stretch to think he might have had a similar patriarchy awakening as the Ken we know, and also ended up at Mattel (like Barbie did), but instead of being captured, he could have talked his way into a position there (thanks, patriarchy) and worked his way up from there?

And he knows there are no real weapons in Barbieland. And I'm pretty sure he's the only man in the Real World (including Ken) we ever see wearing iconic Barbie pink. And, in the end, he's just happy things got back to normal and he's willing to give Barbie whatever ending she wants.

Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[thirteens-earring]

Jane Schoenbrun, from Episode 174 of the Gender Reveal podcast (episode) (episode transcript)

[ Tuck: Yeah. And somehow that brings me to Limp Bizkit. Because I think it’s so funny that you created this incredible soundtrack with like every iconic girlie, and then in the movie itself you know Sloppy Jane’s in the movie, King Woman’s in the movie, Lindsey from Snail Mail is acting in the movie, and then…Fred Durst is there. [Jane laughs.] Can you talk about why you wanted to work with him specifically, and what that experience was like of bringing him into the movie?

Jane: Yeah. So the first thing to say is that when I was 12, I loved Limp Bizkit, because it was 1999, and I was vaguely pissed off at a thing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, right? And I think that nu metal thing was very appealing to me, in that — Limp Bizkit less, but a band like Korn or Slipknot — Slipknot is donning masks, and actively appropriating just the sort of iconography of the horror movie and grotesquerie to describe their internal feelings. And Korn is talking about how they’re a “Freak on a Leash.” And it’s this pre-Columbine, right before Columbine moment where I don’t think culturally we had like zeroed in on that necessarily (or at least I hadn’t at 12 years old) as a symptom of this growing nascent white male anger. It felt more like they were carrying the torch of the weirdo; I think that was sort of the appeal of a lot of that nu metal music when it first came out, was like I’m a “Freak on a Leash.” I think Limp Bizkit was a little different, because they certainly cast themselves as the underdog, but they didn’t necessarily cast themselves as “a freak,” you know? It was more of a pissed off, like Kid Rock style — I’m young, I’m white, I’m angry, have sex with me. [Tuck and Jane laugh] But I didn’t understand all of that, and I was 12 in the suburbs, and that was what a lot of money was being spent to convince me to buy, and I bought it, and I loved it, and I had that Family Values ’99 tour tape cassette, and I listened to it. And when I got bar mitzvahed, my bar mitzvah gift was a CD case — remember those little things you would keep in your car to keep CDs in?

Tuck: Yeah, definitely.

Jane: We got custom “Jane’s Bar Mitzvah” CD booklets [Tuck laughs], and it had Limp Bizkit drawings on the cover. So if you have one of those, that’s a collectors item now. [Tuck and Jane laugh]

Tuck: That rules.

Jane: After I wrote TV Glow, and just spending a lot of time unpacking my childhood and my adolescence in the suburbs and just feelings of alienation, I had written this character — hardly a character, more like this spectre of the anger of a dad who looks at you in the way that I have experienced, where it’s like…are you looking at me as your child, or are you looking at me as a person who has robbed you of your child? And this is very much a trans horror. I got notes early on like “let’s flesh out this dad, where does that come from?” And I was like “no actually, I don’t really care about that.” This is a movie about that gaze and that disapproval, and the way something as innocuous as saying, like, “isn’t that TV show you love and are finding refuge in for girls?” can steal decades of your life from you, because of the shame and fear that it ingrains in you. And so the question then became: who is glaring at us? And it wasn’t just like “oh Fred, get on a casting call and do your best glare.” It was that it means something to see Fred Durst glare at you. Fred is a fascinating and wonderful and generous person. I took Dave McCary (my executive producer) to see Limp Bizkit with me at Madison Square Garden as we were prepping, and as I was basically like “please let me cast Fred Durst as Owen’s dad.” And we walk onto the floor of Madison Square Garden, and it’s like…white militia is the audience, I’d say. [Tuck laughs]

Tuck: Totally.

Jane: It’s a lot of, like, ex-Marine energy in the house, and a lot of the energy that was being cultivated at that show was, let’s say, riling up the audience in the way that you would at a wrestling match. There was such anger and aggression being let out — just people who were riled up getting their rocks off, or whatever. But it was also so homoerotic, and not even subtly homoerotic. Like people…the guy in front of me just kept screaming at Fred Durst on stage “I want to suck your dick!” [Tuck laughs] Yeah, I mean…good admission; [Tuck and Jane laugh] follow that impulse wherever it leads you…

Tuck: Totally.

Jane: …and get whatever you need to get out of your system — there’s a way. At one point early in the show, Dave turns to me and goes “do you ever feel, like, unsafe in public?” [Tuck and Jane laugh] And I was like…oh — this is how you teach cis people what it means to be trans, you take them to the Limp Bizkit show, and you have them stand next to the trans person. And I’m like “yes Dave, actually…and a lot more recently since my transition.” [Tuck and Jane laugh]

Tuck: OK — and what about this was like…I gotta get this man in my movie?

Jane: So then what happens…Dave is like, “you can stay if you want, but I’m actually gonna go before they play ‘Break Stuff.’” And we ran out of Madison Square Garden, and on the street Dave is like “do you still want to cast Fred Durst?” And I was like “yeah, more than ever!”

Tuck: Incredible.

Jane: And then I got on the phone with him a couple days later, and we were talking about French films within three or four minutes. He’s a gentle soul behind the scenes, with a great understanding of film and art. He’s a showman, and it happens to be that the audience that will come to his things at this point tend to be the kind of people who wanna scream that they want to suck his dick, in an arena that feels like it’s about to turn into a riot. I’m interested in the film being this intertextual thing of: what does it mean to see Fred Durst in this particular movie about this particular thing, and how does that spectre bloom both in our collective memories but still in the present tense? Which isn’t to say that it’s about Fred himself; it’s more about this white male rage that I found something in when I was 12 years old, but that has also been brewing and metastasizing since then in ways that I am very disturbed by. ]

[skepticalarrie]

This ask has me seething with rage lol. It’s not about being British, it’s about class and if you are not British working class then you won’t get it.

Firstly, you’re not comparing how British Harry and Louis are by talking about their likes and dislikes, I was raised on a council estate in Cheshire very close to where Harry was raised and let me tell you, he was very very comfortable before the band. I am not saying he was rich because there’s a massive difference between £60k a year and multimillions but he would not have had to think about money growing up, he lived in a very safe area, he was incredibly comfortable and that comes with a certain amount of financial conservatism regardless of how socially liberal you are, as well as general ingrained “snobbishness” which is not me insulting him, it’s just the culture.

Chavy would’ve been an insult to Harry’s family. Louis on the other hand was raised working class, again I’m not saying he was on the brink of homelessness, but definitely living paycheck to paycheck rather than with a buffer to fall back on if anything went wrong. The area itself was less affluent, less safe, more multicultural (Cheshire is white, especially 15+ years ago). His background and priorities and comforts from his youth are different to Harry’s, he has the working class camaraderie, he likes the pub (I could write an essay on Harry’s local vs Louis local but only British people could understand it lol) and football and fastfood and whatever else you deem trashy or chavy because he did grow up as what Harry’s peers would call a “chav” and he’s allowed to reclaim that. It is nice when you’ve been called a chav too to see someone like you not immediately distance themselves from the working class when they make it big and I suppose you either feel that or you don’t.

Also, imagine being from that background and then overnight you’re a millionaire. You can lose your identity. Again I could write more about why it was essential for Louis and Zayn to have each other so as not to totally lose themselves because you can’t take a working class northern teenager to Hollywood and expect them not to be psychologically affected, so I think it’s impressive that Louis has been able to combine those identities and carry his past with him whilst also obviously enjoying the finer things too.

That was an essay and I only got like half of my thoughts across sorry Allie, but basically what I want to say is stop policing how Louis identifies with the social class he grew up in. It’s not an act, he’s not deceiving anyone, he has expensive taste too and he’s not hiding that, he’s just proud of where he came from and it’s insulting when people can’t accept that he’s a multifaceted person.

Thank you so much, anon! I appreciate this message so much. When I used the argument that “Louis is just very british” and reclaiming his roots, I thought about developing the thought but I don’t think I’m in a place to do that since I’m not british in the first place. And you just did that in a beautiful way. I don’t think people fully realise how americanized their images were back then and how much the industry still keeps forcing artists on that. So when we see someone is so openly proud of something that is not american at all, that comes across as weird and forced. It’s a shame.

In reference to this and this