#very curious about the general consensus because i feel like this is an unpopular opinion on GT tumblr

[reese-but-blog]

Hey, I'll ask about Tart. I'm curious.

A GODSEND, THANK YOu aight [hacks up a lung] here goes

Favorite character: it’s a close tie between corbeau and riz!! though i think corbeau takes that spot just barely

Least Favorite character: minou, unfortunately

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): aALRIGHT. i don’t think i have five of them hhhOWEVER tartriz and corbriz are very big favorites of mine!!!

Character I find most attractive: ah. i am being outed. the answer is riz. riz is very pretty. i am but a simple gay.

Character I would marry: yes. next questi- okay, okay fine. i think.. riz.

Character I would be best friends with: none of them except maybe melissa.

a random thought: lapin kinda makes me a bit uncomfortable sometimes and she is the main reason i’m kinda glad tart is so.. obscure?? i don’t want people to clown on her.

An unpopular opinion: i do not know what the general consensus is, as the tart magica fandom barely exists, so this is a hard question to answer :(

My Canon OTP: you come into my house. ignorant, a fool,

My Non-canon OTP: c. corbriz. i love my bastards

Most Badass Character: corbeau she’s feral and scary and i love her

Most Epic Villain: CORBEAU BUT A SECOND TIME

Pairing I am not a fan of: apparently corbeau and fléche is a thing! it doesn’t sit right with me for reasons i can’t explain, might be the torture on corb’s end. that’s probably it

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): it’s not so much a screwup as a nitpick but i feel like. in comparison with her other two sisters, minou is VERY unlikable. almost.. too much. she’s such a bitch. i will cry

Favourite Friendship: melissa and tart!!! oh i love them

Character I most identify with: i don’t think i directly identify with any of them

Character I wish I could be: none of them because they’re all going through hell all the time and no one will let them be happy :(

[pilferingapples]

How about Joly for the character ask meme?

favorite thing about them

He’s just such a cheerful friendly bean?  It’s very uncomplicated to like Joly, he’s just openly and directly kind and cheerful, without even the Walls of Nonsense to have to climb over to figure out what he’s talking about. (…actually it’s kind of Noticeable how much all Joly’s major conversations and apparently very closest friends are Very Big Talkers with long involved speech patterns and he is..Very Much Not. Grantaire: *multiparagraph speech about love and vapors and holding hands in the infinite* Joly: Marius has a girlfriend!:D)

least favorite thing about them

…There’s nothin’, honestly. He’s just a Good Bean. What, am I gonna hate him for **checks notes** being curious about alternative health remedies? In the 1800s??  shoo.:P 

favorite line

“The mouse, plus the cat, is the revised and correct proof of Creation.” –and really just the entire “Cats are Proof of a Competent Universe” speech. He makes a fair point! Let the man talk!XD

random headcanon

He and Combeferre combined are a Terrifying Force for Optimistic But Inadvisably Applied Science– not because they generally agree, but because they generally don’t , and the only course for them as Men of Science is of course to conduct Experiments to decide which theory is more sustainable, and their theories involve things like lightning and fire and Condensing Exciting Chemicals. 

..Also, Joly has 100 percent tried to communicate via Snailography. It was not a rousing  success, but he remains open minded!

unpopular opinion

I feel like Joly is a character where I tend to agree with the General Consensus more than not? I do hold that he genuinely has some sort of Constant Health Issue, probably one that has flares or episodes of being Really Noticeable instead of a more constant thing; that seems to be something people are pretty divided on, but it fits really well with his particular stripe of Health Focus to me. 

song i associate with them

…unfortunately, it’s  The Mary Ellen Spider.  Just. just listen to it.  (apologies that this vid is the best online version I could find)

favorite picture of them

…I can’t find it anywhere, but you know that scene in 2012′s Red And Black where he’s smoking a pipe full of Probably Not Tobacco and cracking up?  Yeah, that one. 

[theliberaltony]

via FiveThirtyEight

The New York Times published a story last week about how some Democratic presidential candidates — notably Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris — had said that they are open to the idea of the government paying reparations to black Americans as a restitution for slavery. The two candidates were cautious in their statements on the issue — both to the Times and in a subsequent Washington Post story — primarily emphasizing the history of racial discrimination in the U.S. Neither candidate laid out specific details about how they think a reparations program should work, and I’d be surprised if either of them put out a formal reparations plan — it’s a very unpopular idea. (More on that later.)

But it was notable that neither those two nor several other 2020 candidates contacted by the Times really wanted to firmly oppose reparations either, as past Democratic presidential candidates have. That shift away from outright opposition to reparations is another sign of how the Democratic Party is moving toward more progressive stands on racial issues.1

But the reparations news made me curious: On which issues is the racial liberalism of the Democrats in line with the broader public — and where is it not? So I looked at the polling around different policies and rhetoric on racial issues. This is not a comprehensive examination, but an informal look at public opinion research since President Trump’s election.

Before we dive in, I should emphasize two things. First, it’s not new or surprising that ideas that we consider controversial don’t poll well. That’s kind of the point of bold ideas — they wouldn’t be bold if everyone already agreed with them. And, historically, racial liberalism in particular has often been unpopular — Martin Luther King Jr. may be almost universally revered now, but he was not in the 1960s. Secondly, there’s a difference between “unpopular” and “bad policy” and between “popular” and “good policy.” Some ideas that are unpopular may be right or effective — Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2014 essay “The Case for Reparations” is very well-argued. I don’t want to suggest that just because a racial justice idea is unpopular that it shouldn’t be enacted.

I have divided these results into three categories: ideas or rhetoric that is broadly popular (more than 60 percent support from Americans overall), ideas that are unpopular (less than 40 percent support), and those that are somewhere in between.

Popular

This category includes vague notions of multiculturalism, ones that I assume most Americans support and that it would be hard to tell a pollster that you oppose. The policy ideas that are fairly popular, such as allowing felons to vote after they have finished their sentences, tend to be those that split Republican elites, with some opposing the ideas and others embracing them.

Here are the some of the popular ideas:

Racial and religious tolerance: 86 percent of Americans believe a significant part of being “truly American” is accepting people of diverse racial and religious backgrounds, according to a poll released this month by the Public Religion Research Institute and The Atlantic.

Acceptance of nonwhite people: 78 percent say that being of Western European heritage is not important to being American, according to that same PRRI survey.

Ending mandatory minimum prison sentences: 75 percent of Americans back this idea, according to the PRRI survey.

The U.S. is a “nation of immigrants”: 73 percent of Americans hold this view, according to a a January 2018 HuffPost/YouGov poll.

Allowing felons to vote after they have finished their sentences: 63 percent of adults “strongly” or “somewhat” support such a policy, according to a March 2018 HuffPost/YouGov survey.

Programs to increase racial diversity on college campuses are a good thing: 71 percent of Americans agree with that notion, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center poll.

Optimism about bridging racial divides: 66 percent of Americans are optimistic that people of different racial and religious backgrounds can work together to solve the country’s problems, according to the February 2019 PRRI report.

Allowing undocumented immigrants to become citizens: 62 percent of Americans support a path to citizenship if undocumented immigrants meet certain requirements, according to that same PRRI survey.

The country has not done enough to give equal rights to blacks: 61 percent of Americans hold this view, according to the 2017 Pew poll.

Muslims have a disadvantage for getting ahead in the U.S.: 60 percent of Americans agree with that statement, according to a 2018 Associated Press-NORC poll.

White people do have some advantage for getting ahead in the U.S.: 60 percent agree, according to that same AP-NORC poll.

Separating children from their parents at the border is a human rights violation: 60 percent of Americans agree with that statement, according to a July 2018 Quinnipiac University poll.

Mixed opinions

This section is generally made up of policies and rhetoric that splits the parties at the elite level — i.e., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would likely support most of these items, but House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would oppose them. That elite divide mirrors similar partisan divides in the electorate. Not coincidentally, this section includes more issues and policy questions that have been top-of-mind in U.S. politics over the past several years. (Views of the Black Lives Matter movement are a good example.) Similarly, general expressions of tolerance of all races and religions are popular, but Americans are more divided when you get more specific.

Here are some of these somewhat controversial ideas:

Being Christian is not essential to being American: About 56 percent of Americans say being Christian is not an important part of being truly American, according to the February 2019 PRRI report. (Thirty-nine percent said being Christian is important.)

Trump has emboldened people who hold racist beliefs to express those beliefs publicly: 55 percent of Americans agreed with this notion, according to the Quinnipiac survey that was released in July 2018.

Black and Latino Americans each have some disadvantage for getting ahead in the U.S.: 51 percent of Americans have that view, when asked about each group individually, according to the 2018 AP-NORC poll.

Agree with the views of the Black Lives Matter movement: 50 percent of Americans said they “mostly” agree, according to a 2017 Marist poll.

It should be easier to immigrate to the U.S.: 49 percent of Americans agreed with that idea, compared with 32 percent who said that it should be harder, according to the Quinnipiac poll released in July 2018 .

Trump is a racist: 49 percent of Americans hold this view, according to the Quinnipiac poll.

The U.S. should not define itself as a country of Western European descendants: In the PRRI survey, respondents were asked to put themselves on a scale where one end is the statement that they “would prefer the U.S. to be a nation made up of people from all over the world” and the other end is the statement that they “would prefer the U.S. to be a nation primarily made up of people from Western European heritage.” Forty-seven percent said they mostly agreed with the first statement.

Being born in the U.S. is not important to being American: 46 percent of people in the PPRI survey agreed with this idea. A similar share (50 percent) said being born here is important.

Kneeling as a form of protest during the national anthem: A 2018 Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 42 percent of Americans felt kneeling was appropriate, compared with 53 percent who disagreed.2

Racial discrimination, as opposed to personal actions, is holding back African-Americans who can’t get ahead: 41 percent agreed with this view, according to the 2017 Pew poll, while a plurality said that such Americans were largely responsible for their own condition.

Unpopular

This section is largely made up of ideas that are to the left of the consensus within the Democratic Party. Taking down Confederate monuments in public places, for example, splits Democratic voters, while Republicans are overwhelmingly opposed. This section is shorter than those above in part because pollsters don’t tend to ask about ideas that are not backed strongly by either party, since those have little chance of becoming reality.

Here some very controversial ideas:

Confederate monuments in public spaces should be removed: 39 percent support this view, according to a 2017 Quinnipiac poll.

The number of immigrants in America should increase: 28 percent of Americans hold this view, according to a June 2018 Gallup poll, with 39 percent of Americans wanting immigration levels to stay the same and 29 percent wanting them to decrease.

Reparations: A July 2018 survey from the left-leaning Data for Progress found that 26 percent of Americans supported some kind of compensation or cash benefits for the descendants of slaves. A May 2016 Marist survey also found that 26 percent of Americans said the U.S. should pay reparations as “a way to make up for the harm caused by slavery and other forms of racial discrimination.”3

Abolishing the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency: 25 percent of Americans said they supported this idea, according to a July 2018 Politico/Morning Consult poll; 54 percent wanted the agency to remain.

Reparations, along with abolishing ICE, are very unpopular. This was not surprising to me, which is why I was surprised when I first saw the headline, “2020 Democrats Embrace Race-Conscious Policies, Including Reparations” in the Times. But the candidates’ actual comments were more in the vein of our first two categories — somewhat vague acknowledgements of the inequality that black Americans face. The challenge for Democratic elected officials, as the party leans into its racial liberalism, will be how to translate the public’s general pro-minority proclivities into policy. I suspect that Democratic presidential candidates will end up pushing policies that limit how aggressive ICE can be and that address the wealth gap between black and whites — but fall short of explicit calls for abolishing ICE or giving reparations.

But I think there is another potential outcome — Democratic elites moving Democratic voters and then the broader public toward more racially liberal positions. There are many factors behind the growing support for marijuana legalization, but one may be that liberal activists have successfully convinced the public that aggressive policing of marijuana use has resulted in unfair treatment of black Americans.

[dapperfvck-arc]

🔥 The TV show... (Because I really want to know exactly why you don't like it [or hate it?] because i'm so freaking curious. Also I think in general a Constantine TV show would do best on AMC rather than NBC... FEEL FREE TO COMPLETELY RANT. I WANT TO KNOW. Please.)

Unpopular Opinion Time!

Oh boy. Hooooo boy. I’m still going to be relatively gentle, because honestly, I’m saving my true vitriol for the times that I must defend my choice not to RP it or for the hysterical consensus opinion from the fandom that TV show was an improvement over the film (lol nope, aside from Matt Ryan “looking the part” but that’s a whole other can of worms). 

Note: Cut for length and maybe a bit of brutality in my honesty.

*sighs* Ok, I’ll first preface this with that I still have like four episodes to go. Obviously, I have massive issues in the needless changes made to the adaption of comic canon. It was unnecessary to make Chas American while retaining the fact that he’s John’s oldest and best of friends. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but who knows. Maybe it’s explained a little better in one of the last few episodes, but you know. My hopes aren’t high. I don’t like Chas’s virtual invulnerability, not just because it takes away the stakes of the danger he’s putting himself in, but also? It’s a plot device scarcely used? So why make that choice if it’s not going to be capitalized on with meaningful frequency? I hated that Zed was portrayed as a novice, and that the teeth were taken out from the Newcastle Incident. Now obviously, I understand why they’d have to alter a bit of it due to Network censorship, but at the same??? I mean child abuse and sexual violence are nothing new on shows like Law and Order: SVU and Criminal minds so…Idek, it kind of comes off as an excuse. It’s not a child’s show. Maybe it could be argued that it was marketed toward teenagers, but it’s not like they’re ignorant to those horrors in the world. I’m not asking them to show Astra’s rape, just to acknowledge the true horror of the situation instead of making it all about John’s failure. So yeah, I was annoyed by the occasional attempt to adapt source material and completely mucking it all up.

Now to begin with, I completely get the SP/N’s fandom bitterness more than ever. Before watching it I thought they were just trying to be like “whaaaat, another show about magic and exorcism? Of course it’s a ripoff because don’t you know our fandom invented those things?” I honestly believe the crux of the issue is that NBC clearly wanted their own SP/N as well as to cash in the popularity of comic book based media, so there’s that. To me, it comes off as a shameless cash grab. I honestly believe if I felt like there was some kind of passion from its creators, I could have dealt with some of those changes, but I don’t get that. It’s been a soulless experience overall. Like it’s not been a matter of me nitpicking like “oh this is wrong, this has been changed, boo hoo, it’s not all existential horror and fucking and drugs.”

Because frankly...I just think it’s a bad show. It’s poorly written, poorly made, poorly researched, poorly acted, it’s just bad. The main issue I have with it is that it’s a lot of telling and not showing. There’s not a lot of tension or foreshadowing, just “boom this is how it is” and so much exposition. John, for example, about half of his dialogue in any given show is verbal exposition. It’s frustrating, tbh. Like, it doesn’t make sense for me in this day and age for a TV show, even on a network channel, to be this bad. Over the past several years, television series have improved exponentially in content and writing. It’s not shameful anymore to start off on TV anymore. We’re in a very exciting time that television and cinema are almost completely on equal par of perceived quality. So yeah, it’s been an even greater disappointment for me because it’s not just that they fuck with the source material but because on top of that it’s literally a bad show. I’m not one bit surprised that it wasn’t renewed because there just...Isn’t enough to like about it. It’s not faithful enough to the comic to secure that base of fans and it’s not good enough to be taken for face value. 

The other massive issue I have is the portrayal of magic, which honestly extends to DC’s handling of Hellblazer and John as well. See, what you have to understand is that predominately, throughout the Vertigo series, it’s clear to me that most of its writers either have some awareness of how magic works or at least have done their research. I can follow the logic and ritual in what he’s doing. ​Let me tell you a little something about magic. It's all about focus and will. You can do and say whatever the hell you want as long as you're putting your intent behind it. The ritual of spell work, use of candles, crystals, incense, chanting, incantations, etc. are meant to be the focus of a magician's energy and will on a particular result, but it could be attempted without as well. To explain it in more fantastical terms, in Harry Potter casting without a wand is considered impressive. This implies that the wizard's focus and will is so strong that they no longer need a wand to draw out their intent. Now I get it. By this understanding magic doesn't make good TV viewing (I guess...), but my main concern with this series is there's no attempt to portray an iota of witchcraft's reality along with the fantastical. Now part of this problem is that they've removed a great deal of John's innate ability. He can no longer see spirits/ghosts and there is no mention to his connection to synchronicity (as far I’ve seen, mind). Instead of happening to end up where he needs to be or what have you, he's following a map, and he uses a lot of artifacts and other implementation to get the job done. Which bothers me on a few levels. For one, it imbues the focus, not the caster with the power, which is not how magic works (at least in the sense of portraying gritty urban fantasy), and for two, it's very much against character. Let me give you an example: In the two part story Newcastle Calling, at the end of it, John hands a dying man a twig, telling him it's the finger bone of St. Cavartigan and that it's known to bring relief to those in need. He tells him to squeeze it tightly and focus on the pain going away. Near the end of the scene, the young man tells John that it's working. A couple things can be taken away from this scene: John's will was that the dying man would believe as he was told and his instructions were rote ritual. By contrast, in the series, John would probably had actually given him a Saint's fingerbone. You see the comparison takes the power of the scene away, as well as the mystery. Is the power of John's suggestion so strong that he could make the guy believe by holding that twig his pain would do away? Or was he so desperate to believe in order to not die in pain? You can interpret it either way. Hell, I could invent other interpretations, but going by what I believe would happen in the show, it can only be interpreted in the most literal sense. Now, to be honest, most television shows portray magic poorly. Even movies do a better job while keeping fantastical elements. The Craft, for all it’s 90s cheese, is a great example of this. So I suppose I could be blamed for getting my hopes up to be dashed because it’s just following the formula of 95% of all TV shows that feature a magical element or theme, but I mean...it’s not like Buffy or Charmed that was working without a script, so to speak. The TV series had a ready made blueprint and still chose to take the mumbo-jumbo bullshit route. Now, I have a lot of theories on the why for this, but that’s another post altogether and this has already gone on for way too long and I still have more to say.

Now, I guess I should, at least briefly, touch on the elephant in the room: Matt Ryan as John. What did I think? Because a lot of people have told me that he’s the shining beacon of this show, even literally admitting that yeah, it’s a poor representation of Hellblazer but that Matt Ryan man, he’s great! The problem that I have is that it’s not a good a show, and so no, I don’t like him in the role. I’m not going to compare him to Keanu because that’s not fair for a number of reasons, and maybe I’m a little biased because I adore Keanu (there’s also that can of worms I mentioned earlier, which is honestly yet another separate post lol). The way John’s written for this show, he’s positively insufferable. He’s not charming at all, which is find the most offensive, because one thing that can be said across all series and iterations of the character is that John is magnetic even despite xyz (he’s dangerous, he can be an asshole, he’s unreliable, etc.). Here he’s just a know-it-all, condescending prick. Now I do think with better writing, in a better representation of John’s character and Hellblazer in general (and maybe with a voice coach or director to discourage that Welshy intonation because yeah, his accent does irritate the shit out of me, but I’ve been very vocal about that before and honestly, at this point, I’ve come to realize that Ryan’s vowels are the least of this show’s problem), I think he has potential to be a fine John. As it stands in the media he’s portrayed John in so far (idk, maybe he was good on Arrow, but I’m talking the TV Series here and the JLD animation, which I’ve admittedly not seen, but I hated the comic so I’m not real likely to give that a chance considering my disposition toward the source material), I’m not entirely sold on him. Like if they tried another TV series for Hellblazer and didn’t cast him in the role, I wouldn’t be upset over it. 

I do agree that it probably could have been better on another channel, but here’s the rub, all the blood and gore and sex and loose censorship in the world could not save that show without better writing and direction. It could have been a fine show even on network if it had been crafted with some degree of caring. Let me give you an example off the top of head, namely the handling of the Newcastle incident. It was laid out pretty plainly within a few episodes. Alterations from canon aside, it doesn’t portray the horror of it at all and is one of the show’s many missed opportunities to really play up the scarier, more mysterious elements of John’s backstory. For example, instead of laying it out in a sloppy flashback with a laughable puppet, picture this scene instead: ​John is having a chat with someone, maybe Zed or Chas or some b-plot character. Something reminds him of the Newcastle incident and he gets a far off look in his eyes. The folly drops away to an eerie silence as the camera comes in tight on John's expression. Filling up the silence is a little girl's scream, then the voices of his friends, perhaps some sounds of violence, an inhuman sound or voice, it all blends together to become a hellish cacophony of sound as John's expression becomes more strained. Then suddenly the other person calling his name snaps him out of his reverie. The screams stop, the folly returns, and the scene appears jarringly normal. John shakes his head, makes a joke, and they move on. Yeah, that kind of scene has been done before, but the reason for that is it’s effective without giving away the whole story. It shows that this is a man haunted by something horrible. It’s also cheap and doesn’t necessitate straining the no doubt thin budget of a TV show that has yet to prove itself worthy of having more money thrown at it. 

Honestly, the issues I have with this show are innumerable and I’m just scratching the surface here and laying out my biggest problems. I could nitpick for days, and that’s the reason I’ve stayed mum about my opinions. There are people that follow me and that I write with that really like and care about the show, and I don’t want to make them feel...you know, bad about it or that they can’t talk to me or whatever. You know, if they found it enjoyable more power to them. I just didn’t and that’s maybe on me. By no means am I trying to bash the show here (because lord if I wanted to, I could), but to offer up what was requested, and that’s my undiluted opinions and feelings about the series. Of course I’m sorry that I couldn’t share the joy and that I couldn’t even like it on a similar level that I do the film (as a very solid AU, which people have tried to sell the show as to me, knowing my previous understanding of some of the changes made that deviate strongly from canon. As I said, maybe if it had been better made and written, I could, but as it stands currently, I can’t and unless real changes are made in the future, I’m unlikely to alter my opinion of it).

So yeah that’s it. Apologies that this got so very long, but as you can tell, there’s been a lot that I’ve been holding back.