#well shot but it's misogynistic garbage

[cappedinamber]

The Red Shoes (2005)

Directed by Kim Yong-gyun

Cinematography by Kim Tae-Kyeong

[weepingpussywillowtree]

Okay, given who typically watches anime I really shouldn't be surprised, but I was shocked when mushoku tensei came out and now I'm being shocked again. RANT INCOMING

I succumbed to the hype and watched the first episode of oshi no ko and oh my god was it bad. It was so bad. The reason I bring mushoku tensei up is because its the exact same feeling of ick I got when watching oshi no ko. I could go on a whole other rant about false depth of character/stories/themes in shitty anime, profoundly misogynistic writing, the weird fetish/sex stuff, the weird underage and baby shit. It's just all so bad.

All these baby reincarnation shows just boil down to a male protagonist getting put into a position where the fact that he retains his adult intellect makes him super extra special and a bunch of girls fall at his feet and/or he is the smartest and most precocious boy and can manipulate everyone into doing what he wants. It's all just redressed male power fantasy stuff.

Also, the lack of media literacy from the people who watch these shows is really disturbing. How on earth is oshi no ko a scathing takedown of the entertainment industry? What kind of idol is able to actually keep a pregnancy secret, and maintain her career completely, as well as getting her managers to raise her kids???

In mushoku tensei, the protagonist commits multiple acts of sexual violence against female characters, which every fanboy will tell you is part of his 'character arc' and is portrayed as bad actually. Okay, so then why do all the camera angles, shots, etc. try to make these scenes look sexy? Why is it frequently played for laughs or excused with no consequences? In a similar vein, all the oshi no ko people are defending the breastfeeding scene and similar content (it's just realistic!) Oh, and the writers cared about realism, I'm sure, when they made the babies born with full heads of hair, or capable of speech before their bodies developed the fine motor control for it. Give me a break.

Just admit you like it because it's half plot, and half weird sex stuff and power fantasy garbage. Everyone is allowed to like things that are simple and problematic and not deep. I just dislike when people try to pretend anime like this is at all profound.

[benayoung]

once upon a time, being a gamer kind of used to be nayoung's dirty little secret.

it's not as much anymore, as she's gotten older and grown exasperated with maintaining the same carefully-crafted pretenses she once did. she doesn't talk openly about it, sure, but she's not so sneaky about it anymore.

she also doesn't get to play as much anymore, thanks to training, and especially next gen, but she's gotten back into it more recently.

she's still really good, of course, but she can tell she's rusty, so when she fires up overwatch 2, she decides to warm up in quickplay until she's confident she can play well in a ranked match.

the problem is, the game always puts her in the most horseshit stupid ass quickplay lobbies. she gets that the game doesn't bother keeping skill levels as even in these matches, but holy shit, how can some people be so stupid and bad at the game?

nayoung has been checking the scoreboard periodically, mainly when she dies, which is far too often because her supports are garbage – and the other dps's stats are just god awful.

and what do you know, said other dps is in team voice asking for backup. they're another girl, presumably, which is tragic, because this just reinforces the misogynist stereotype of girls being bad at video games.

nayoung turns in the game to face where her teammate is frantically pinging, and takes a shot – misses, but on the second shot she headshots the tracer and kills her instantly.

"tracer dead. also, can you stick to one hero? holy shit," she says into the team chat, exasperated. "maybe play, i don't know, torb, so you can at least put a turret up and contribute something to the team. or symmetra." those heroes are usually pretty good in lobbies full of idiots. nobody ever shoots the turrets.

mystery heroes. feat. @benayoung

some games just aren't made with sua in mind. not her playstyle, too serious or not serious enough. sua's a person who makes her own fun with games, especially ones she doesn't play as often. or care to play.

it's chat's choice today, and overwatch 2 is something apparently they've been dying to get her to play-- but once she starts a couple games, she realizes quickly why they wanted her to play this game so badly.

she's terrible at it.

"what-- okay." sua laughs outloud in disbelief as she once again dies right outside of their spawn. her chat is going at lightspeed, all emotes-- and she knows she's the butt of the joke. she can feel her eye twitching. "zelda puzzles don't even get me this tilted."

chancing another glance at chat just makes her laugh. ####: bro ur cooked ####: LMAOOOOO your team mad af ####: never give up never what

"do i need to switch again? what about robot guy?" she clicks bastion from junkrat once she has to option to in spawn. she doesn't know how many times she's changed characters at this point. she's started as ashe because she was sexy, then it's just been character change after character change because sua doesn't know what the fuck she's doing.

she yelps when something shoots her from behind, and she visibly panics on screen, going what, what, what as she strafes on screen. there's a tracer flying around, and sua's frantically pinging anywhere she can. "uh," she hits the button for team chat. "a little help here?"

[mlwritingprompts]

Submitted prompt: This Movie Is Garbage

Because I refuse to believe Animated Astruc isn't just as much of a misogynistic creep in his writing as the real deal.

So, we've all heard the thing about Thomas Astruc basing Sabine on one of his ex-girlfriends, basing Tom on himself, and Marinette basically being his RPF fankid, right?

For those of you that didn't know, I am so sorry to have robbed you of your innocence.

Anyway, for the purposes of this prompt I'm ignoring Tom being a self-insert because Astruc has an even more blatant self-insert, that being the literal in-universe version of himself, which is the Thomas Astruc I will be referring to for the rest of this prompt unless specified otherwise.

Sabine and Thomas Astruc used to date. It doesn't really matter how their relationship went or how it ended- although for the record I'm going to assume badly- because the real meat of it comes after, when he started directing. 

See, in the Ladybug movie, Ladybug's mother shows up in a few scenes, and bears a striking resemblance to Sabine. On her third watch of the movie, Sabine manages to pause it at the right time and find a family photo in the background, and, wouldn't you know it, the fictional Ladybug's father bears a striking resemblance to Thomas Astruc himself.

Sabine realizes that Thomas clearly never got over her, and is now using his movies to imagine a future where they'd stayed together and had a child. While this is undoubtedly disturbing and more than a little pathetic, it's far from her only problem with the movie.

For one thing, there are certain shots and scenes in the movie that make Ladybug look... rather sexualized. She is at MOST fifteen in the movie and, having a teenage daughter herself, Sabine finds it disturbing that the camera seems to want her to view a teenage girl as sexually desirable. And the fact that said teenage girl is meant to be in the wrong for not wanting a relationship, and her arc resolves with her dating someone Sabine can safely say will not give her what she needs. (Like respect, for one thing)

The fact that this is an animated version of her and Thomas's potential child does not help matters at all.

And god, there is so much more. The more Sabine thinks about it, the more she realizes how bad this movie is on a writing level and a moral one.

She knows Marinette has seen it, so she decides to have a chat with her daughter about some of the more objectionable content. It's not that she doesn't trust her, but, well. Teenagers can be rather impressionable at times.

To her relief, Marinette already seems to have spotted it, and she is not pleased.

Neither is Alya, who is over at their house at the time, and seems to be in the process of writing a review of the movie to be posted on the Ladyblog. To call it a negative review would be an understatement.

Their discussion turns into more of a venting session about Thomas Astruc and all his various crimes against storytelling. Alya seems to be taking notes of Sabine and Marinette's complaints in between her own.

____________________

Once Alya's review is published, all hell breaks loose on social media with regards to the Ladybug movie. The movie becomes deeply controversial, although most people seem to agree it's bad, even if they don't agree on why. Even more controversial than the movie itself is the people involved in making it.

Alya did her research on this one, and she found what can be generously described as "a lot of bad shit". Animators for the movie drawing NSFW of the very underage, very based on real children characters for one. Also, with Sabine's permission, she included the little tidbit about Movie!Ladybug being Thomas Astruc's hypothetical child with a woman he never got over.

Akumas will be made. Blood will be spilled. Call-out posts will be written. How do you imagine the fallout?

[celestial-ringleader]

https://celestial-ringleader.tumblr.com/post/658246663116341248/mushroom-cookie-bears-send-me-a-character-and

Remy & Pietro??

@lucifers-favorite-child Buckle in y’all because this is gonna be a long one

Remy LeBeau:

favorite thing about them: So. Many. Things. I can’t decide on one so I’m just gonna list off my top three:

- His entire aesthetic is just so cool to me?? I love the idea of his character, just him being a thief (and an heir to an entire Guild on top of it) but I also like how he’s often seen as siren-like with how he can pull people in and smooth-talk his way out of almost anything. Also his eyes are so fucking cool idc what anyone else says. The black with red sclera is just so awesome.

- His powerset, omg people seriously underestimate what he’s capable of. Some think his power is just throwing explosive cards when it’s so much more than that. Like do you have any idea how useful it could be to manipulate energy?? He could literally make a moving object stop because he can just sap out the kinetic energy within it. On top of that he made a missile explode in Excalibur which I think was an interesting way of using his powers.  Also his goddamn reflexes are broken as all fuck, like he can sense a bullet coming even before anyone else notices it and dodge it perfectly. And if he’s quick enough he can hit it back at the person who shot at him. It’s fucking insane. And let’s not forget that in an alternate universe he was able to kill the Dark Phoenix and destroy his whole planet in a fit of his powers overloading. So.

- This is gonna be cheesy, but I love the way he talks. I like how no matter how much time has passed, he hasn’t changed how he speaks and is proud of it. Besides, his accent is just,,,so good.

least favorite thing about them: Aside from the moments where he’s characterized and portrayed poorly, I can’t think of anything.

favorite line: “I ain’t a thief, or an assassin. I’m an X-Man and I’m never comin’ back.” He said that to Belladonna in X-Men: The Animated Series and it stuck with me so much.

But also the line “You need ta get a life. Seriously.” is so good too. Just ANXF in general had a lot of good lines.

brOTP: Oh boy I have so many so I’m listing them off:

-Remy & Ororo Monroe

-Remy & Laura Kinney

-Remy & Anna-Marie (and before I get people asking, I personally don’t ship them romantically. Not saying no one else should, it’s just a personal preference.)

And some bonus crack brOTPs:

-Remy & Neena Thurman

-Remy & Felicia Hardy

OTP: There’s a lot here too,,,

-Remy/Pietro Maximoff (obviously)

-Remy/Fantomex

-Remy/Johnny Storm (this is more of a crack pairing, but I blame rping on discord for this)

-Remy/Kurt Wagner

-Remy/Warren Worthington III

nOTP: Honestly Remy is so shippable with a lot of people so I don’t really care all that much. Like,,sometimes I like people exploring him in toxic relationships (like with Sabertooth or Mister Sinister) so I really don’t care skjvbdkj

random headcanon: I like to headcanon that Remy has ADHD, which mostly shows itself through him having special interests, stimming, and having a bad case of RSD (Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria) because of past trauma associated with him being abandoned by those close to him. Also I like to imagine he uses playing cards to stim and his special interest is science fiction and space operas. Let him be a nerd.

Also he’s an Omega Level mutant. There I said it.

unpopular opinion: Okay, nobody get out the pitchforks and torches, but I don’t like this common headcanon that he’s a himbo and a narcissist. Usually a himbo is described as a character who is dumb while also being kind and beefy, but Remy just doesn’t tick all those boxes in my opinion. He’s incredibly clever and learns quickly, but he also doesn’t waste his time with knowledge that won’t help him. Like maybe he can’t do basic calculus but he understands how to get a lock to break based on it’s materials. Also because he was a physics teacher and I’d buy that he understands physics very well, especially since energy is such a big part of physics. So to me, he isn’t a himbo, he’s just a decent man. And as for the narcissism thing, he just doesn’t fit into the personality of someone with NPD. In fact, most of the time he talks down about himself and thinks himself less worthy....the exact opposite of a narcissist. Sometimes he’s just full of himself because he loves himself for once and that’s perfectly okay to me.  

song i associate with them: “Blood on my Name” by The Brother’s Bright, it has a southern gothic feel and it fits well into his backstory. Also “Poker Face” because why not. And also “Addict” by SilviaHound (yes it’s a Hazbin Hotel song but the vibes fit him so well)

favorite picture of them: I have,,,way too many I like. But these ones are just so good.

Also this one because it genuinely made me laugh

okay and now onto pietro

Pietro Maximoff:

favorite thing about them: There’s so much I love about Pietro so I’ll just list it off again ajkdbvkj

- His powers are actually really fucking cool. Like people think he can just run fast but forget that running fast is just one thing he can do. He can literally vibrate himself fast enough to go through walls, he has been shown to have some control over metal like Erik, he ran faster than the speed of sound (and possibly light), and he can leg press over 2,000 pounds. Also his superhero name is just so good, not even being ironic, the name Quicksilver is so badass.

- I love his relationship with Wanda, like sometimes it’s written really bad but other times it’s the cutest thing ever. Like he feels so protective over Wanda because of the environment they were raised in, but at the same time he learns when to let go of his own insecurities and let Wanda be her own person. Like,,their sibling dynamic is one of my favorites.

- His entire backstory is so tragic and I love it. He always feels like he isn’t good enough and tries to be as good as he can despite it all, but he’s also unabashedly pissed off about the circumstance he’s in. Like Pietro has every right to be bitter and I love seeing him call people out on their bullshit (especially in Quicksilver: No Surrender when he calls out people for marketing and appropriating Romani culture) 

least favorite thing about them: ...I literally can’t think of anything akjdbvkj

favorite line: Oops it’s all gamquick

Remy: Are you being difficult on purpose?

Pietro: What other reason is there to be difficult?

And also-

Pietro: Well, that’s a step up from a blow-up doll, isn’t it?

Remy: Did anyone ask you?

(Yes these are both from ANXF)

brOTP:

-Pietro & Wanda

-Pietro & Lorna Dane

-Pietro & Clint Barton (not MCU)

OTP: Okay I really only have two but I’m gonna gush about gamquick for a minute-

-Pietro/Remy LeBeau: I don’t even know where to begin with these two, I guess to start out with they both just look so good next to one another. They also bounce off one another banter-wise very well and while neither of them take bullshit from anyone, they still don’t mind messing with one another because it’s strictly playful. Also both their backstories are similar and lends itself to them finding solace in one another, they both recognize each other’s pain and will try their best to alleviate it as best as they can. They both understand what it feels like to be abandoned and abused and would never inflict that on each other, they both came from poverty and find it hard to fit into the “normal world”, but also Pietro usually never shows his softer side to anyone, but with Remy he’d make the exception because Remy wouldn’t hurt him like that. It’s also cute to explore them being able to settle down and get away from the superhero life for a while, but also them being a battle couple is A++

There’s just so much to say about them ajbdvkj

-Pietro/Namor Mckenzie: This became one of my favorite Pietro ships mostly because of @imperiuswrecked​ but also because apparently they were gonna be a couple in House of M?? Like that sounds so good to read about! Like Pietro is more carefree than Namor in some instances and it would be nice to see Namor relax a little bit more around Pietro. But also because I love imagining them being That royal couple and it’s so good.

nOTP: Pietro/Crystal. Just no. That ship is a garbage fire and it should’ve burned out ages ago.

random headcanon: Pietro has darker roots because his hair used to be the same color as Wanda’s before his powers manifested themselves. Also I like to headcanon/draw Pietro with darker skin.

unpopular opinion: Sometimes Pietro is seen as being misogynistic towards Wanda and I hate that interpretation of him. He’s protective over her, but he still allows her to make decisions on her own. Also people need to stop blaming Pietro for the events of House of M. For the love of god stop that shit.

song i associate with them: “Dollhouse” by Melanie Martinez

favorite picture of them: Need I say more? Pietro carrying his Cajun bf goes without saying

This was a lot of fun to write out and there’s so much more I can say but for now I’ll leave it here ajdbvkj

Ask Meme

[zuzuslastbraincell]

atla x star wars

aang: luke, obviously. both share the burden of being the *last* of a mythologised group of people, who are single-handedly trying to uphold traditions and methods considered lost (obviously these comparisons should be made lightly - the air nomads are a group of people & a culture that sufferred genocide; the jedi order is a religious-political order that served an increasingly corrupt government). sensitive, prodigious, but also contains a great degree of anger and grief at his loss and displacement. works *hard* to be compassionate, kind, and ultimately wise, balancing the needs of the world and the traditions of his role with his own ideals. effiminate / lacks a care for traditional modes of masculinity and is under appreciated for it.

zuko: luke, obviously. lost family for the sake of duty, was forced to leave his home and travel across the stars/seas to fulfil his destiny. maimed and traumatised by his authoritarian and distant father whose footsteps he aspired to follow in, and struggled with whether to follow him to the dark side or to fight for the side of good. ultimately rejects his father's fascist ideology, his family history, and the empire in the 3rd act to fight for good. also? he's gay!!

katara: leia, duh. a great sense of responsibility to her people (who were victims of genocide), expected to take on responsibilities beyond her age, deeply principled, stands up to authority, fights for the secret rebels, full of kindness and compassion, full of righteous anger, not above pettiness either, she's a rich character that is wonderfully flawed and layered and i love her immensely <3

sokka: a mix of han and luke. while han is the obvious choice here - han is our token non-force user, and let's remind people, he isn't as "cool" as his reputation in fandom, he's a total dork (see: how he impersonates a stormtrooper in episode iv). han has a strong sense of pride masquerading as a cool and mysterious bounty hunter type (when really he's a washed up smuggler). sokka shares that same awkward dorkiness, more realistic/cynical outlook, and chip on his shoulder/pride, but he's smarter, kinder, and also got a greater sense of responsibility towards the world rather than that cynical detatchment. in this sense he greatly resembles luke, especially in the sense that, especially in the early episodes, he is trying to follow in his father's footsteps.

suki: a mix of han and leia. suki isn't part of the magical world of the protagonists (initially), has her own priorities and goals, but ends up joining them like han. much like han, she is "what if han was as cool a badass as fandom advertises" (although how good a shot he/she really is depends on the plot) combined with how leia takes a leadership position and grows into her own with it at a young age. i think suki is principled but deeply practical, however, something she shares in common with leia (who is both idealistic and principled as well as grounded, task-orientated, & practical). i also think suki has a strong sense of pride (and is a bit of a sore loser) which you see in both han and leia.

toph: chewbacca. okay, seriously, she's *kinda* han, she's got that same sense of pride especially about flying solo vs being part of a team, her inability to accept help is also very han, but she'd insist on being chewbacca. she's as wise and as emotionally receptive as chewie, as well as able to clobber anyone, so who am i to judge?

azula: she'd 100% be leia, in a much better, kinder universe where she had her own bail organa :(

mai and ty lee: clone wars era lesbian bounty hunters asajj ventress & latts razzi, who are way too cool to be dealing with this jedi/avatar bullshit, and have a wonderful off-screen redemption arc and gay romance

iroh: obi-wan (except more war crimes). once a famously successful and clever general. now generally considered past his prime, has become a mentor with a tragic past where he stalwartly served the republic/empire but in his unquestioning adherance to that doctrine he lost his mentee/son. full of regrets about it, and refuses to do the same with his current mentee. i could hear an argument for young anakin given his blithe attitude to war crimes and enthusiastic militarism and imperialism - but honestly? considering how the late republic was just a mask for the empire, obi-wan fits iroh well enough. (iroh, sadly, is not gay, and thus is a poor man's obi-wan).

ursa: anakin (except he died like padmé). she has the silk hiding steel aura that padmé has but her plot arc is all anakin's. chosen on the basis of a very special heritage. will forgo socially accepted moral/ethical frameworks if her family are threatened, and will not hesitate to kill a man if her son is threatened. despite what people think, this hardly absolves her of being an active particpant of empire (simply makes her complex). massively favoured her son over her daughter (who she traumatised). differs from anakin in that, because she is a woman, and the writers of both of these shows are misogynists who barely give space for older women, especially mothers, in their narratives, she disappeared ~in mysterious circumstances~ and will never complete my ideal plot arc for her which involves throwing ozai down a garbage chute. shame.

hakoda: bail organa (except he's not dead). lifelong rebel? respected and admired leader of his people? as the only good parent in the whole damn show? bail organa.

ozai: low-budget palpatine who is not as competent or calculating. bzzt bzzt lightning go bzzzzt. awful. gets his ass handed to him. yeah. you may know his voice actor from batman: the animated series and nowhere else.

[shu-of-the-wind]

LIKE. OKAY. SO:

>politics were absolutely incoherent inconsistent and corrupt as hell. during the 1970s there were four general elections, four prime ministers, and five state emergencies. internationally you had a background of multiple wars: the vietnam war didn't end until april 1975, and a few years earlier british soldiers had been involved in the nigerian cvil war in 1967-1970. tensions in ireland and northern ireland were off the charts. in 1972, british soldiers shot into a group of Irish civilian in derry, murdering 13 protesters (and fun fact, to this day, if you post the names of these soldiers publicly online the british government WILL block you from british servers, because ~anonymity~ i guess. fucking assholes.) this was bloody sunday. the troubles continued all through the decade and into the next, only "ending" in 1998. throughout the decade, people would have been reading newspapers and listening to radio reports on violent skirmishes between the british army and the ira, as well as bombings (including the birmingham pub bombings in 1974), assassinations, kidnappings, and riots, in ireland, northern ireland, and england.

>economic stability was out the window (as is typical with capitalism). there were two different oil crises. arabian oil producers imposed an embargo after the us supported israel in the yom kippur war and that resulted in the price of oil skyrocketing. heath's conservative government was already struggling with food prices that were massively high due to global shortages; the inflation rate hit more than 24% that year. massive manufacturing hubs in yorkshire and other northern counties were collapsing completely. In certain parts of the country (leeds, for example) unemployment rates were up to 21% because of industry collapses. Strikes were omnipresent, starting with dockworkers in 1970 and spreading across almost every industry in the uk. at one point strikes were so intense that the government had to restrict the average work week to only three days in 1973-74 because so many coal miners and railway workers were striking for better pay and a cost of living increase that you literally could not have the lights on. garbage piles got so high in london during a sanitation strike in 1970 that they were two storeys tall. there are photos of this if you just google it. firemen went on strike in 1977. in 1978-79, bus drivers, authority workers, health care workers, and other industries also went on strike because of the horrific levels of inflation. everyone was on strike, and everyone was at risk of losing their jobs, all the time, for a decade. houses literally fell down around people's ears.

>women were becoming more and more present in the workplace, but there was a massive societal backlash with the conservative majority that resulted in shocking levels of misogyny and misogynistic violence. three different serial killers that I know of were operating during this time (the yorkshire ripper as well as fred and rose West) and memories of myra hindley and ian brady (the moors murderers) were fresh in the minds of many people. jimmy savile was the most popular man in the country and behind closed doors he was sexually abusing children and vulnerable adults for DECADES (this was pointed out by former sex pistols member john lydon, during an interview; the BBC edited it out and only published the complete interview in 2013).

>the levels of racism were appalling. afrocaribbean and asian folks were often being encouraged by the uk govt to move there but they faced shocking amounts of racism and discrimination in housing, society, and other social fields. police brutality against community of colors was rampant. the grumwick strike was in 1976. the black people's alliance was also founded in the 1970s. antifascists movements were off the charts in response to the british national front being formed in 1967 (careful when you google this one).

>wales won recognition of the welsh language in 1973 with the construction of the council for the welsh language (previously the british govt had tried to destroy the welsh language in its entirety, because wales and cornwall and scotland were some of england's first colonial entities). The gay liberation front was founded in 1970 and published its first manifesto for LGBTQ+ rights, and in 1972 the first ever british gay pride rally was held. punk rock got its start in camden, london, in 1974, and you can clearly see why when you realize that its messages of community solidarity, fuck the man, and acab were strongly inherent right from the start.

there is SO much to dig into with this decade and everything new thing i uncover is like OH!!! ANOTHER HORRIBLE LITTLE THING UNDER A ROCK THAT HAS A HORRIBLE PARALLEL TO TODAY!!! WHAT FUN FOR ME

hands down my weirdest special interest to date is "cultural and political upheavals of the uk in the 1970s" and tbh i'm not mad about it

[aries-rising-on-an-aquarius-tide]

A/N: Any mistakes or indescrepancies made in regards to any content relating to the DRC is my own. I did my own research on the DRC and the ICC that was put in place for the DRC war crimes. I also read a chunk of Sandra Uwiringiyimana's book How Dare the Sun Rise, which is her personal memoir of being a war child in a Burundi refugee camp in DRC in 2004. The photos of Alex/Stephanie March are from her IG, not in the Congo but in other areas of Africa which were as close as I could get.

For those of you who have stayed with this story all the way, please know it means a lot to me. ❤️ I started this fic on a whim, never thinking that it would become the longest, most-viewed story on my A03.

Spoilers: Witness, Shattered

Trigger/content warnings: alcohol, references to timeline-relevant wartime events of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, blood and references to child death

Evocations: XXII

Alex's office had gone through several incarnations over her years of comings and goings. It was no longer the dim, quiet room full of books and mahogany that Olivia pushed her way into for their first kiss.

Although, her heart was pounding much the same as that day long ago, as she stood once again at the door.

Liv didn't knock this time, however; she simply turned the knob and let the soft click of the door announce her into the room. Alexandra was midsea among chaos - stacks of files and books, some already in boxes, were everywhere. As Olivia took it all in, Alex finished flipping through the file in her hands and binned it into a garbage can behind the desk.

"Alex," Liv said seriously, "what are you doing?"

"Packing," the blonde replied simply, side-stepping the other, layered questions in the phrase.

"You can't be serious about this."

"I'm dead serious," Alex assured her, picking up another file.

"Well, the dead part is right!" Liv snapped, "You're going to get yourself killed!"

"If you recall, I happen to already have some experience in managing not to get killed," Alex pointed out. Her tone was maddeningly casual and Olivia's exasperation was obvious.

"Goddammit, Alexandra! The Congo is not Wisconsin! You won't have the protections there that you had here - you're going to stick out like a sore, tall, blonde thumb with a target on your back for going after powerful men!"

Alex sighed and put down the file, accepting that Liv wasn't going to be sent away quietly. "I thought going after powerful men - after powerful, criminal men - is what we do here?"

"It's not the same thing and you know it," Liv put her hands on her hips and paced a tight circle. "You're talking about a civilly volatile place that has larger things to worry about than catching a handful of bad men."

Crossing her arms over her chest, Alex settled her gaze on Olivia. "Liv. My life has been chaos and secrets, and a knotted string of temporary circumstances now for seven years. I need more - I need to make a decision like this, to go find something to re-center myself finally!

"Nardali showed me that the world outside mainstream America is still fighting for something larger. I want to be part of something that means more than putting small-time misogynists away week after week!"

Olivia fought to hide the hurt in her gaze. Hardly two weeks previous, they had been locked in sex that was akin to a death struggle, permanently claiming one another. Liv would never understand how their relationship could never again be the something that meant more.

"So what is it that you think I've been doing here the last dozen years?" she asked, "Biding my time?!"

Alexandra took a deep breath and came around her desk. "I told you when I came back, Liv - everything is temporary. Even the Congo is temporary: the ICC is managed out of The Hague, so ultimately I'll end up in the Netherlands."

Liv shot her a sardonic look. "You don't have to pretend you care when you already have one foot out the door."

Offended, the blonde took a step closer. "Look at me," she demanded. They locked eyes, and Olivia's filled with tears. "I love you."

"How could we have gotten this so wrong?" Liv said weakly.

"I have to go get more boxes," Alex replied, stepping past Olivia to the door.

When she returns shortly after, Liv is gone.

.

.

She marvels at how the sun here is like nowhere else on Earth. Since she first arrived in Africa, It's as though her pores are always open, leaving the parts of her skin not burned by the sun sheened constantly with a fine layer of sweat.

The sound of crickets chirping is unending along the edge of the lush greenery on one side of the dusty path she walks. Beneath her thin canvas shoes, even the clay ground is warm. At the end of the road, the jungle parts abruptly to reveal a calm, secluded area of shore before the mighty Congo River.

Alexandra shades her eyes as she looks into the sunset, clutching the notepad and pen that she has with her tighter. Her hair, lightened by so much sun, is pulled into a haphazard ponytail off her neck where she has tied a blue bandana. She continues all the way down to the shore, where she takes a seat and puts pen to paper to get out her thoughts before the sun goes all the way down.

7 April 2010

Dear Liv,

Never did I dream of places as beautiful and tragic as this jewel of Africa. The joy that somehow thrives among chaos is unbelievable and inspiring. It is a marriage of the best and worst of humanity all at once.

My pores seem permanently open; the heat is a constant, humid, cloying presence. You learn immediately what things the Western world takes for granted.

I have been introduced to more people than I can keep track of, and they ask me the oddest questions - about New York, about popular music and movies. You can almost forget for a minute where you are . . .

then you see a child feeding a banana to a monkey, or a jeep full of soldiers with rifles poised, and it's the end of the illusion.

So far my favorite thing to do is to sit by the river at sundown, when the temperature cools. It's meditative; it feels like preparation for the fight we'll have in The Netherlands. . . .

.

.

The first letter arrives in early July. It is marked Business Mail, and covered in stamps and official waybills from several customs stops. It comes, of course, to the precinct rather than her apartment - Olivia finds it on her desk as she arrives one morning with her coffee, a donut in her mouth partially bitten. She tucks it among the other stacks of paper on her desk and forces herself to ignore it until the end of the day. Then the next day, for good measure.

When she finally takes it home, she tosses it on the coffee table. She prepares supper, refusing to even look at it, as if the universe would know and call it weakness. After supper, Liv opens a bottle of wine and pours herself a glass, sitting with the envelope neatly in front of her, as if it contains divorce papers, or the Will to an estate rather than correspondence. Curiously, she runs a fingertip over the writing on the front, touches the international stamp, unsure what she expects them to make her feel.

Liv imagines Alex, in an unfamiliar land full of forest, of war, of wild animals crashing through the bush and dusty roads that lead to who-knows-where. She pictures her tanned, smiling, in white linen and filled with a hunger for justice.

She flips over the envelope and inserts her finger along the seam, tearing it open.

. . . I feel as though maybe I'm finding myself again, this time - here, in this place. Maybe what I needed was a mission, larger than myself, or you or even New York. Only time will tell.

Don't worry about me. Take care of yourself.

Love, Alex.

.

.

Olivia's head spins, with the acrid smell of Melinda's blood still drying on her hands, with the sound of Sophie still singing to Nicholas in French, with Jo's confession that was heard clearly outside the morgue while still trying to talk Sophie down.

The door finally opens so that Elliot can nod the all-clear to the officers in the hallway, and Jo comes staggering out behind, shell-shocked. Olivia is the only one rushing into the room, now.

Elliot turns and follows her, concerned and curious. She passes Sophie, holding the dead body of her son, without a word or glance.

"Bonne nuit cher enfant. Dans tes langes blanches repose-toi, joyeux, en rêvant des cieux . . ."

A large sink sputters on across the room and Liv is scrubbing angrily at her hands and wrists. El makes his way to her slowly, as if she is as volatile as the Gerards, who played a dangerous game and would be paying for it for a lifetime.

"Liv," he says quietly. She ignores him, the soap and her skin both turning pink in her fervor. He reaches out carefully and slips his hands around her wrists. "Liv. Stop."

She does, but still says nothing. Elliot pushes the soap from her her fingers, letting it clatter into the sink. "Here," he says, unbuttoning her cuffs and jacket sleeves so he can roll them away from her wrists. He adjusts the water temperature as if she were one of his many children, throwing a tantrum at bath time.

Methodically, he rinses the soap lather away, looking to make sure that he gets the blood that has clung to cuticles and the lines of knuckles. He holds her wrists under the hot water, letting the heat soothe her. "You're okay," he says softly.

Nothing has felt okay for a long time for Olivia, and the words cause her eyes to brim with tears. Months of checking the news in the Congo every morning has ground her down with anxiety, waiting to hear from Alexandra. Then the appearance of Marlowe, and the blonde's cryptic inferences with Elliot, which had put a new kink in what little peace Liv had left.

She meets his gaze and shakes her head, her lips pressed into a terse line as Sophie begins Brahms' Lullaby over again:

"Une berceuse et une bonne nuit. Dans le ciel, les étoiles sont lumineuses . . ."

.

.

12 August 2010

Dear Liv,

I have been granted several opportunities to speak at a few girls' schools in the area. There has been work on developing a program to educate girls and women about consent in sex, rape, birth control, and protecting themselves. This, in conjunction with giving them the hope that reporting sexual assaults can result in justice, has made a visible difference among the women.

No word yet on when we'll be relocating to The Hague, but I imagine it will be the beginning of the new year. January in The Netherlands will be a shock to the system after all this heat!

More and more displaced persons shift around the area all the time, in response to various conflicts. Sometimes they move with soldiers, other times alone seeking somewhere to wait out the newest upheaval. Just a few days ago, a camp was attacked and fire-bombed in the night at the edge of the village where I've been staying.

Perhaps any mission larger than one's own happiness is a war that never ends with the forces outside ourselves. This violence is so much darker than I could have imagined. I still smell the scent of smoke, burnt canvas and flesh when I lay down to sleep. ...

TBC

[onceuponakdrama]

The World of the Married KDrama Review

—

Bingo Card for The World of the Married

—

Synopsis: Ji Sun Woo is a family medicine doctor. She is married to Lee Tae Oh and they have a son. She seems to have everything, including a successful career and a happy family, but she is betrayed by her husband and others. Meanwhile, Lee Tae Oh dreams of becoming a famous movie director. He runs an entertainment business with the support of his wife Ji Sun Woo. Even though he loves his wife, Lee Tae Oh falls into a dangerous relationship.

TW: infidelity, attempted murder, suicide mentions, abusive relationships. 

Overall Main Plot: Rating - 9 out of 10 

Wow. Okay, so I have to clear up that I really like romantic comedy dramas better, but I gave this a shot because it was highly rated and I did not regret it. Like many other viewers, I was super invested in every episode because there was just twist after twist and it was the kind that was actually not expected (other than the mistress getting pregnant because I totally called that). It definitely felt like a thriller drama, especially as things got more and more tense between all the characters and how they were all pushing the plot. Just when you thought you were safe and knew what was going to happen—BAM, new plot device! I know this drama is surrounding the romance and the whole theme of infidelity, but it was so much deeper because it was focused on more than just the one relationship. It was about how these relationships overlap, class dynamics, and even a couple of notes about sexism when it comes to parenting and divorce. It was also about trust because Sunwoo’s trust was not broken between just her husband, but also her friends and there’s also the doctor-patient trust.... There is just so much happening and it feels so overdramatic, but it actually works. I guess what made it a 9 out of 10 rather than a 10 out of 10 is the fact that there were too many elements happening that if you missed something real quick, you might have actually missed a major part of it, but that’s just my opinion. 

Characters: Rating - 8 out of 10 

↣ Ji Sunwoo [played by Kim Hee-Ae]: y’all, the first thing I wanna say about Sunwoo is how bad I felt for her the entire time. She was just so fooled into thinking she had a perfect life, only to find out that her husband and her friends really just... hated her? Or, at least it felt like she was secretly hated amongst them. Not to mention the fact that Joon Young (her son) just felt more and more antagonistic towards her. While I understand how hard divorce is on a kid, the way he acted sometimes just felt lowkey misogynistic at times and I felt so bad for her. Not to mention that she kept going back to Tae Oh for no fucking reason. Well, I guess it’s just hard to break off ties when there are lingering feelings, but he’s tried to kill her! TWICE! Maybe, even thrice! I don’t know; her relationship with her family was the one thing that she wanted to protect but then it broke her in the end. One another thing that made me mad was also her relationship with that other doctor, Dr. Sul—that two-faced bitch needed to pick a side and she kept gossiping and... God, I hated that Sunwoo kept talking to her, like why. Overall, I just felt bad for her and how things played out; while she definitely handled things like a boss at times, there were moments that were too flawed for me about her character that I couldn’t overlook. I think I just really felt for her when she lost Joon Young (temporarily, but still) and, along that, herself and, her suicide attempt.... she really deserved so much better. 

↣ Lee Tae Oh [played by Park Haejoon]: okay, real talk. I hated all the men in this goddamned drama, but Lee Tae-fucking-Oh takes the entire cake. I have never hated a man more in my entire life. He didn’t even get everything he deserved, which is nothing, and, after everything he and his families had been through, he never once formally apologized or even took the fault of the problems HE started. His character alone is enough her to deduct a point because he was the only one who did not develop. He never once reflected on the fact that he was the problem and all he had to do was apologize. AT THE END OH MYGOD THE AUDACITY. He literally was just so stubborn and was the ultimate downfall for everything that happened because he couldn’t keep it in his fucking pants. 

↣ Yeo Da Kyung [played by Han Sohee]: I really hated her at first and I only really liked her at the end when she left Tae Oh with literally nothing. But, I started to go through the posts about this drama and... some good points were made. The most notable thing to me was the fact that she really was just a younger woman who was gaslit into thinking that this married man loved her. At the end, she realized that she was deluding herself into thinking that. It makes the viewers think about it too—the fact that she gave him a choice, but when Sunwoo left him, she thought he actually did divorce her when it was the other way around. I just wished she came to this realization earlier because we could have gotten some real epic scenes of Sunwoo and Da Kyung together. I think I really didn’t like her in the beginning because she really was just a spoiled rich girl (she still is at the end, but she’s just less gullible) who thought she owned the world because her father had so much power and her family had so much money and.... she was such a disrespectful and dumb girl. But, again, she is a younger woman who’s been sheltered and her development was really satisfying, especially when she rejected that one guy’s advance to focus on herself. There was a lot to hate about her until the very end, but it still feels satisfying to know that she wasn’t gonna let Tae Oh ruin her life completely. 

↣ Lee Joon Young [played by Jeon Jin Seo]: he was also another annoying character I didn’t like either, until time went and he slowly grew to understand things better. He is a teenager after all and there was a lot that he did that he’ll definitely regret looking back on, but his response to his parents and their complicated their relationship was totally warranted. He’s just a confused kid and his parents weren’t going to explain anything to him—it wasn’t until he and Sunwoo had an honest and open conversation that they were able to determine what it was that they would do and all that other good stuff. In a way, he was a major part in the plot because all this plot built up to him running away from home at the end. His parents were the downfall of his mental state and he really needed to just get away from them, which also helped his parents realize that they need to get their shit together. I also felt really bad for him too, especially when Da Kyung accused him of hitting her daughter to getting hit by his dad to getting bullied at his school (and I highkey thought that fight at school was warranted because of all those kids talking shit about his mom, like.. mind your own business). There was so much happening to him all at once and his behavior, while infuriating to us as viewers, it felt very on par for a teenager who is going through these issues. 

Personal Notes: I think what really made the characters great was how flawed they were and their development along the way. The ending was mostly satisfying for the most part, in which everyone kind of got what they deserved. Although, there were definitely some weird choices that made no sense and they kind of tried to reason it with all the emotions (like when Sunwoo bailed Tae-Oh out of jail... girl, leave him in jail to rot). I also did not predict Joon Young just flat out running away from home and it made me think about his parents: did Sunwoo and Tae Oh really learn their lesson? Are they going to change after he returns? I went through so many emotions with these characters and, those who developed, it felt satisfying to watch. 

Romance: Rating - 7 out of 10 

There was definitely chemistry between the three main characters. For romantic chemistry, there was a lot of it in both before the divorce and after the divorce. There was just so much push and pull from Tae Oh and Sunwoo and it was heartwarming (for a hot second) to see how they got together and decided to get married (you know, before he tried to make Da Kyung a copy of Sunwoo because he is obsessed). The biggest thing that put me off about this romance though is how toxic is. While that’s supposed to be main point of the drama, it just got me rolling my eyes because Sunwoo really needed to remove herself from this emotionally abusive relationship. It pushed her all the way to the edge—both causing her depression and her suicidal attempt. This drama made me distrust everyone because I wasn’t (and still not) sure of Dr. Kim (the psychiatrist). I was just pushing for self-love on both Sunwoo and Da Kyung’s parts because of how Tae Oh ruined these women. All of these romance relationships, while I was invested and the chemistry between them were present, I did not love them and root for them. I was screaming at my TV screen for them to get away from one another. The romance is the key in this drama, but it’s the ultimately downfall of the characters because of how it all broke apart so easily because the men in this drama are garbage. 

Second Plot/B-Plot and Secondary Characters: Rating - 8 out of 10 

I was actually really invested with the secondary plots, especially when it came to Hyun Seo and Ye Rim. They were in these situations that were similar to Sunwoo’s, but it was different in which one turned more dangerous and the other was more of a ‘what could have been’ had Sunwoo forgave Tae-Oh. I think these secondary plots were definitely interesting, especially in contrast to Sunwoo’s situation. I mentioned it earlier, but I was not interested in Dr. Sul, so I had no real interest in her becoming the associate director or whatever. Another side plot I didn’t care for was the whole issue with the women’s association. It was really unclear as to what they really did and it seemed to break apart after Sunwoo joined and quit, which followed by Yerim and Dr. Sul quitting. What I liked about this drama was the fact that the secondary plot could also overlap with the main plot because it’s all interconnected; it could also branch off into its own naturally because of the main characters and the damage they have caused onto the other characters. 

Additional Notes: 

Joon Young’s Development - while it took a bit, his character development felt the slowest and I just ended up feeling really bad for him because he just.... ran away from his problems. I really wished there was more communication between Joon Young and Sunwoo because then there would have been better outcomes for them and the whole family situation. There was that small moment and you could see how that was very positive towards their relationship, but then it all just fell apart and then he ended up running and then kind of coming back? It was just all bad writing and I just felt so bad for him. 

Lee Tae Oh’s Demise - I mentioned it earlier but I hated him and watching him fall into pieces was so satisfying. I just wished he got nothing nothing in the end. In the end, it was more that he was broke and that was fine, but I kind of wanted him to be homeless because he really did not learn his lesson until he lost Joon Young. But the question still kind of remains though: did he really learn his lesson? I really wished that he did, but knowing the men in this drama, I don’t think he would have. 

Social Commentary on Divorcees - I really liked the social commentaries on divorce and the double standards between men and women. There were so many married couples throughout this drama, but there seemed to be specific breaking points. But, even then, their breaking points might not have been divorce, but rather a complete break of trust within the marriage and things would not be the same. I just thought it was interesting to watch as things went down between each couple, whether they were apart of the main cast or not. 

Overall Rating: 8 out of 10 

Recommended? 

↣ Yes: this is one of those overdramatic dramas that have so much going on, if you’re into that, this is a good drama for you. Because it’s also a thriller drama, there’s a lot of action included—there is a violence warning though, since this is a more *rated* drama. It also keeps you on the edge of your seat because there’s a lot happening with many twists and turns that come unexpectedly. There’s also a lot of character development, even though it takes a while, but it’s really satisfying to watch as the drama progresses. This is a drama that is really about rooting for the characters to grow on their own and build their independence further. There’s also many side stories, which do cross with the main storyline; it all aligns and still manages to be interesting. 

↣ No: this is not a really romance centered drama—it’s more of indirect commentary about marriage and complications of divorce. If you wanted something with a couple to root for.... this is not it for you. Because there’s a lot going on, you have to pay close attention to details and if you wanted a less involved drama, this is not the right drama. This is also a very frustrating drama to watch because there’s so much happening, the development is very slow or very fast, and there’s also the fact that it’s about infidelity so there’s a lot of frustration between the main couple. 

[quietest-rebellion]

Do the chaos household for that character meme you coward

Me upon realizing I have to explain what that is

Basically it's the idea of my fav murder boys having to live together. This being Stefano, Eddie, and Higgs. @christmasace and I came up with this one night and it has been our main source of serotonin since.

I'm going to do the character break downs for them in the context of their original games though. So anyway, buckle in, lads, this'll be a long one. (Eddie and Higgs will be below the cut)

Stefano Valentini

How I feel about this character

Fav. Favest of favs. I would willingly die for this man in a heartbeat. His voice? Beautiful. His personality? Snarky. His art? Breath taking. The way that he has to fix his hair after getting shot with a smoke bolt? Hilarious. Me? I'm in love. Also the fact he put jokes outside of the theater is iconic. Anyway, Stefano was an appealing character from the moment I first saw him in Markiplier's playthrough. I didn't realize I'd fallen until I started crying at his death and Mark was like "I don't even feel a little bad!" Because then I was like "oh shit why am I crying" Also I believe Stefano is an undiagnosed autistic man with horrible PTSD and brain damage(obviously) and I will die on this hill. I could talk about how I feel about Stefano for pages but I won't right now.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Me. Honestly I feel like Stefano is either an asexual aromantic, who only cares about his art, or he is a raging bisexual who is extremely picky with men since he himself is such a perfect man. As for actual ships though, I feel like Stefano is attracted to Sebastian and flirts with him throughout the game. I just don't really see the idea of Sebastian flirting back. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Emily Lewis. I love the idea of them being in a relationship, official or unofficial, and then things went south and he killed her. Stefano killed a lot of people before being put into STEM, why was this one so special he had to make a series of displays representing her? I don't know, just my thoughts.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

This is gonna sound weird, but I guess Theodore? Look, I just love the idea of Stefano driving Theodore insane and making him regret ever hiring him. And like, all the memes everyone makes about it? Amazing. (A personal favorite, also the one that I made) Plus, "You are special. You've always been special." Yeah, anyway I really need to know what the other half of that conversation was. Does Obscura count? I think she does. I see Stefano and Obscura's relationship being like that of a father and daughter or of a pet and an owner. He just loves her so much and he's so snippy when Sebastian gets to the theater the first time. "You did not appreciate my beautiful Obscura's performance." I imagine if you actually chose to fight and kill her in Ch. 7 he was really upset about it. Guardian is along the same lines as Obscura but I think Obscura has a higher place in his mind. 1. Because she is a camera and takes more photos for him. 2. There is confirmed to be more than one Guardian so he probably doesn't grow overly attached to any particular one, where there is only one Obscura. 3. Stefano seems to love whatever he did most recently the most, which is fair. As an artist, it really just Be Like That.

My unpopular opinion of this character

Unpopular only in the world of the game, but his art is good.  Actual unpopular opinion? Not sure I have one, tbh.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

I say it literally all the time but I really want a prequel comic or SOMETHING to tell us more about him as character. What happened to his family? Why did he come to America? What war was he injured in?  Also the idea of him getting some dlc for the second game is still always on my mind, like, it could take place before and during the main game and it’s just us fucking around and making art and then catching Lily and fighting Sebastian. I am not gonna say that he didn’t deserve to die in canon, so really I wouldn’t change that.

Eddie Gluskin

How I feel about this character

Look... uh... I honestly am not sure how to describe my feelings for him. Because on one hand, is a misogynistic asshole who deserves literally everything that happened to him as an adult. But on the other hand, he was an abused child that grew into a hurt and sick adult. Also, when he’s not trying to kill you he is quite the gentleman.  Basically, I love this character, but I have no idea why and am slightly ashamed about it.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Literally no one. This man should not be in a relationship with any of the canon characters. I’d like to imagine an AU where he is sane and settled down with a wife and had 2.5 kids and lived together in their house with a white picket fence but that isn’t going to happen obviously.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Look, I know they never interact with each other, but Eddie and Trager. And like, not as friends really but more as weird acquaintances. They talk about surgeries and such, share a drink every now and then, complain about women, etc. 

My unpopular opinion of this character

He’s straight. 

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

I just wish he would’ve been sent to a place that could actually help him instead of Mt. Massive. But then he wouldn’t be in the game, lmao. ALSO, there is a lot of unused Eddie dialogue in the files for the game. I really wish that all of them would have actually been included in the game. Some gems include: “Did I...? Oh lord. I forgot to give you an anesthetic, didn’t I? Eddie, you doofus! Would forget my own head if it was screwed on!” (Timestamp 16:32) “There you go. No, no, don’t cry. You’re not dying. I’m going to make you better.” (Timestamp 10:13) 

Higgs Monaghan

How I feel about this character

Garbage boy stink man. Just a rowdy, dirty boy. Pizza rat. Like, I sometimes have a difficult time imagining that he ran a company before he was a terrorist, because he doesn’t seem like a very organized person. Higgs is so multifaceted it’s impressive. In the game we only really get to see him a this asshole who wants to end the world. In his journals we see his hunt for power and want to be important. In his bunker we see the organized chaos of how his brain worked and how he operated his life. Not to mention the Peter Englert emails that are so well written. Anyway, I love him.  Plus I’m gonna mention something my sister(Thrushheart) pointed out when I was having her watch me play. He is the exact opposite of Sam. Examples: Sam hates being touched or touching people. Higgs is touching people as often as he can, including but not limited to even licking them. Sam is reconnecting the world, at first for Amelie, then for everyone he’s met along the way. Higgs is ending the world, at first for Amelie, then for himself(or possibly still for Amelie). Higgs is loud and bombastic while Sam is more quiet and reserved. Sam is smol and Higgs is tol.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Look, I’m not gonna say that I do or do not ship Goldenbridges. I’m not sure how I feel about it because, as I said, Higgs and Sam are such contrasting personalities I don’t think it would work. Fragile. Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking, but I imagine they were together before he met Amelie. His betrayal would mean even more if this was true. And in his journals he only ever refers to Fragile as “his partner.” Now I know this was done to hide that they were his journals and because they were work partners, but it could also mean more. And of course we can’t forget the somber and clear writing, directly over his bed in his bunker. “Fragile forget you ever met me.” And how surprised he was to see her on the beach after the fight. The sad look he gave her as she caressed his face. Aaahhhh.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I wasn’t sure whether to include Higgs relationship with Amelie here or in the last section. But he quite literally worshiped her and the ground she walked on so  🤷🏻‍♀️  I don’t feel like she ever really gave a fuck about him though. Amelie is extremely manipulative and proves that every time she opens her mouth so I have no doubt she told him whatever he wanted to hear so that he would help her.

The Veteran Porter. If you worked hard enough to get more than one star with this guy, you learn that he used to work for Higgs and that’s why he is reluctant to trust the UCA. I like to think that he and Higgs were good buddies before Amelie.

My unpopular opinion of this character

With likable villains it’s hard to figure what is a popular opinion and what is not. So I’m really not sure. Maybe just that he didn’t get enough screen time?

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

Redemption ark! Redemption ark! Higgs is the one guy on this list where I’m like, “Okay, he saw the error in his ways. Maybe he gets a second chance.”

______________________________________________________________

Anyway, that’s all of them! If you actually read this whole thing, first of all... wow. Second of all, thanks! Here is a screenshot of these chaos boys from The Sims 4 as your reward. 

[doesnotloveyou]

never played, only watched, but my sister just saw gameplay of it and we've discovered a mutual hatred to bond over. i know my streamer pal was annoyed by the gameplay too, to the point where he would avoid story quests and just hijack cars for fun.

i wanted to keep this short in case you actually like parts of the game, but uh, yeah. organized tirade ahead (feel free to ignore)

aside from my sister adding "all the women are prostitutes" i don't have much else to say about the chokingly misogynistic overtones. there is more than one scene of a voluptuous, sensual woman being brutally violated in some way. the frequent sex kitten voices are grating. the scene where the hack doctor is putting garbage mods on a gorgeous woman and she's writhing and moaning on the table? torture fetish much?

Race Portrayal

it's...odd to me that a game where they put this much research into realistic and interesting portrayals of ethnicity it would still force them into stereotypes/tropes.

best friend mexican (aw, rep!) dies in the prologue (oh...okay) and his family lay on the culture suuuuuuper thick. why are they speaking Spanish to the monolingual MC? they speak perfect english, they would speak english to him.

black, bling-dripping, drug dealer is greedy and backstabbing. so he dies immediately

the black rebel group seem mysteriously supernatural and lethal (rings of the Magical Negro trope), but they are actually backstabbing and stupid. so they all die

the big baddie is an Eastern corporate monolith (Yellow Peril) that is inherently eeeeeevill

i know it was meant to be shocking, but the side quest where the Buddhist-monk-coded NPC is horrifically mutilated was nauseatingly cruel. it wasn't put in there to spur some kind of conversation about body-modding, it was meant to upset the player and make them go on yet another killing spree

no matter what the player character's customized ethnic makeup is, they have a white guy in their head influencing their decisions

There's plenty of nuance here, for instance it's a grim and hedonistic world where all the characters are up to something shady and dangerous, so naturally they are all problematic and likely to get the ax. Easy too to say "the token white guy is literally dead before the game starts" but then he is the star of the game, isn't he? The other dead or brutalized characters did not get second chances (with exception of raped gf being uploaded to the matrix or whatever).

Writing

it's up to the player to get revenge for *checks notes* breaking into private property, stealing something priceless, witnessing a murder, and getting shot at while escaping. mkay. they're criminals, that's logical probably, idk i've never done crimes

wait, so hookers get an implant that makes them extremely wise and sluttier? then why doesn't the main character just get one??

i'm not really sure what the characters are trying to achieve. my fave streamer replayed this multiple times bc his saves kept getting corrupted, and at no point did the plot seem cohesive. tbf i was also actively trying to block it out

i did think "trapping the player behind glass and making them watch a murder" was VERY interesting from a story perspective

but "the only way to smuggle out the implant is to accept the implant" is pretty funny/contrived from the start. "what do you mean it downloaded a guy into my brain?" is the equivalent of "i didn't think being a drug mule would mean i have drugs in me!"

idr how long ago i even watched these streams. if i got stuff wrong, oh well, but i remember muting/leaving cyberpunk streams after a while bc this game bothered me so much :|

Final note: a repeated message in this game seemed to be "there are many ways to violate a person's autonomy" from rape to mutilation to forcing a human to live forever detached from their body in cyberspace. Even the player character suddenly being condemned with a terminal illness is a violation, and maybe the most interesting message in a world where humans inorganically mod themselves. What is it like having a death date that no amount of cybernetic enhancements can prevent? Is an organic body and the autonomy thereof worth protecting as part of one's worship? Should a line be drawn between prostituting your physical state and your mental state? How much is too much to take from a human being?

Regardless, these concepts were barely explored in any philosophical or thoughtful way, but in a shooter game where taking as many NPC lives as possible is more or less the goal, and achieving a few sexy cut scenes is a bonus. Also, a dick joke.

back on my "cyberpunk 2077 was misogynist bs" soap box. can't stand that game. it's just about women being brutually raped, killed, and abused in the most provocative ways possible. and the dialogue is laughably awful. like, how are male players not hearing it? oh and screw all minorities, only straight white guys are heroes in this game, except they can't keep their s/os from being raped and killed

[mst3kproject]

The Ship of Monsters

Check me out, I’m being topical!  I had another review almost finished for today, but when I saw the news I knew I had to set that aside and find a movie about life on Venus.  This one is a ridiculous Mexican film starring Lorena Velazquez from Samson vs the Vampire Women (looking only slightly less like Cher) and one of those amazing cardboard robots you only get in the very worst of late 50’s and early 60’s sci-fi.

An atomic war on the planet Venus has killed off all the males, so an expedition is sent out in search of replacements, consisting of a native Venusian named Gamma, her Uranian navigator Beta, and their robot Tor.  After promising the Empress that they will bring back only the most manly of men, they wander the solar system a while collecting creatures with penises before an engine problem forces them to land on Earth.  The first human they meet there is Laureano Gomez, a singing cowboy with a well-earned reputation for telling tall tales.  One might assume one could predict the rest of the movie from there… but then Beta turns on Gamma and reveals that her true mission all along was to conquer a planet to feed the vampires of Uranus!

I gotta say… I did not see that coming.

The Ship of Monsters is supposed to be a comedy.  It’s seldom funny when it’s trying to be, although it mercifully avoids being the kind of desperately unfunny a lot of bad comedies are… possibly this is because it’s in Spanish, and by the time I’ve realized something is stupid there’s another subtitle to distract me. The jokes, such as they are, are pretty standard.  Tor the robot was created by an alien race, who were aware of Earth but never bothered exploring it because they thought the inhabitants weren’t very intelligent.  Laureano is in the habit of telling ridiculous stories to his drinking buddies, so of course when he claims the Earth is being invaded by space monsters they don’t believe him.  That sort of thing.  The movie is much funnier when it’s just showing us absurd situations, but to nobody’s surprise, The Ship of Monsters is at its funniest when it’s trying to be serious.

This hilarity comes in many forms, covering just about all the possible bases for a dirt-cheap 1960 sci-fi film.  We have spaceship sets made of cardboard, covered with buttons that don’t actually press and levers conveniently placed so people can bump into them during fight scenes.  We have Tor, with his tin can body that’s always a little dinged up but never in the same places, giving us clues as to what order the scenes might have been shot in.  He also has wiggly spring antennae and makes a little whirring noise every time he moves. We have space babes in silver bathing suits and glittery high heels.  Vampire-Beta, sporting plastic fangs that look like they came from the bottom of a cereal box, could be the female counterpart to the guy from Dracula vs Frankenstein, and the puppet used to represent her in flight is nearly as bad as the one from The Devil Bat.

The ‘monsters’ of the title are a bulging-brained Martian prince, a scaly cyclops, a spidery creature with venomous fangs, and the mobile skeleton of what appears to be a *damn worwelf (he tells us that his race has Evolved Beyond Flesh... apparently not Beyond Bones, though).  The costumes are all terrible, particularly the warwulf puppet, whose backbone extends into his mouth and who has to be carried around with his feet dangling in any shot that’s not a close-up.  It’s nice, though, that a little imagination went into them, and somebody gave a bit of thought to the idea that a monstrous appearance is relative.  The Martian tells Beta that he admires her ambition and might even marry her if she weren’t so ugly by his planet’s standards.

At the end, naturally, this alien invasion is defeated by Laureano, his twelve-year-old brother, and a cardboard robot, while Gamma just stands around and screams.  With a movie like this I expect nothing less.  The denouement contains my favourite intentional joke in the whole thing, in which Gamma stays on Earth with her True Love, and Tor the robot takes his, the Jukebox, back to Venus with him!  Tom Servo would have given a speech to congratulate the happy couple, and I can just see him breaking down into happy tears before he got five lines in.

(The wirwalf skeleton is not present at the climactic fight, by the way… no explanation is offered, and I strongly suspect that they broke the puppet trying.  I rather enjoy this omission, because it lets me imagine him getting lost or maybe buried by an enterprising dog, and finally finding his way back to the landing site only to learn that they’ve left without him.)

I called Laureano a cowboy but he only has one cow.  Her name is Lolobrijida and she is the very first time I have ever seen a movie spur a hero into action by killing his cow.  She gets a proper Teenagers from Outer Space death, with her skeleton left behind propped up by metal struts like a dinosaur in a museum!

I also called him a singing cowboy, which he is – there are several songs, including one in which he tries to explain to Gamma and Beta what ‘love’ means.  The songs have pleasant but forgettable Mexican pop melodies, and none of the lyrics make a whole lot of sense.  Being translated over-literally from Spanish probably didn’t do them any favours (my own Spanish tops out at yo no tengo dinero), but I still can’t imagine that the What Is Love song clarified anything.

Laureano himself comes across as kind of a fool, but he’s not actually a full-on idiot, which is quite important.  If he were the kind of one-dimensional ‘comedic nitwit’ embodied in characters like Dropo, or the janitor from Reptilicus, he’d be insufferable.  Laureano is no genius, but he’s got personality traits besides being stupid – he cares deeply for his little brother Chuy and for his animals, and he doesn’t treat Gamma and Beta’s appearance as two women for the price of one.  Very quickly he decides that Gamma is the one he loves, and he sticks to that, doing his best to let Beta down gently even when she offers to make him a king.  He’s also smart enough to trick Beta into dancing with him so he can steal the device she uses to control the rocket and Tor, and to listen to Gamma when she tells him about the various monsters’ weaknesses.

Gamma and Beta, on the other hand, don’t have a lot to them besides the basic fact that Gamma is the Nice One and Beta is Evil. Gamma starts out in the story with a strong sense of duty, and it’s a bit disappointing to see her abandon that because of Tru Luv.  I would have liked the ending better if she’d taken Laureano home with her so that the two of them could be the Adam and Eve of the new Venusian race.  Meanwhile, Beta shows no sign of any loyalty except to herself and her own ambition.  Her original mission, to secure Earth as a blood supply for the Uranians, falls by the wayside as she decides she’s going to conquer and rule the planet herself.

So The Ship of Monsters isn’t exactly a feminist manifesto, but neither is it complete misogynistic garbage like Project Moon Base.  The whole premise, after all, rests on a planet of women being able to develop space travel all on their own!  This is a fairly surprising plot point, because in many ‘planet of women’ movies like Fire Maidens of Outer Space or Cat Women of the Moon, the ladies need the virile Earth Men to come to them.

There’s also a little bit of actual science peeking out of the cracks.  The moment for launch of the rocket from Venus is determined by when ‘the elliptical orbits coincide’.  Launch timing is, indeed, a delicate art depending very much on what’s orbiting where. There’s also the moment when, trying to land on Earth, Gamma and Beta worry that the friction, combined with our oxygen-rich atmosphere, will set their ship on fire.  This stuff is pretty impressive coming from a time when the moon landing was still nearly a decade away.  There are even a couple of scenes in zero gravity that honestly aren’t totally terrible.  I mean, I’ve seen better, but I’ve also seen much, much worse.

There’s also one weirdly prescient moment when Laureano, telling one of his silly stories in the pub, describes being surrounded by dinosaurs – only to get a laugh a moment later when he mentions that they had beautiful plumage.  I’m not sure whether this is meant to be a joke in that Laureano is exaggerating an actual encounter with an angry bird into something more fearsome (I think we’re to assume that the whole story is totally made up), or whether it’s just supposed to be funny that Laureano thinks dinosaurs had feathers instead of scales.  Either way, it’s the equivalent of the moon Fornax in Menace from Outer Space being so reminiscent of Io.  There’s no way the writers could have known that, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

The Ship of Monsters is very cheap and very dumb, but it’s good fun for those of us who like crummy old alien invasion movies, and I recommend it to anybody in that demographic.  As for actual life on Venus… I feel like a lot of the people getting excited are too young to remember when Bill Clinton told the world that we had totally found life on Mars.  Humans have been discovering life on other planets for about two hundred years and every single one of those ‘discoveries’ has turned out to be either a mistake or an outright lie.  We have plenty enough to panic about this year without a Venusian invasion.

[drunklander]

Drunj!Der Yells About Outlander

Thoughts on Ep. 512

Looking for a way to spend Mother’s Day? Well, we here at Outlander have the perfect idea! Celebrate with the women you love by watching us gang rape grannie!

This episode is like the perfect storm of everything that is wrong with Outlander. The cast and crew saying it’s their strongest episode yet when it’s basically artsy gang rape. The CYA trigger warnings when the story would have worked perfectly well without including yet another rape. The kool aid-drinking fans yelling at and acting holier than thou at the fans who rightfully call out the massive problem this show has with rape and assault. The fans yelling at other fans because It’S iN tHe BoOk so it has to be included. The fans yelling at other fans for wanting to follow the books but not wanting rape every 0.5 seconds. The fans yelling at other fans to fuck off if they don’t like the show. The women in the cast throwing out trigger warnings while the men are radio silent or wanting the gladiators to face the plague and fight for their own amusement. It literally has everything.

And I am tired.

I’ve been in this fandom for six years and have had quite a journey. From first discovering the show and immediately devouring the books. The honeymoon period where I could headcanon out all the problematic bits. The getting deep into the fandom nonsense. The getting out of the fandom nonsense. The judging the fandom nonsense because it’s funny and they’re all idiots. The getting sick of the fandom nonsense because it’s not even fun to judge the dummies anymore. The becoming more and more aware that it’s impossible to whistle past the problems in the books and the show. The sticking around, holding out hope things might turn around and the initial magic could be recaptured. And finally, the giving up.

The books are trash. The show is trash. There are a handful of good scenes in each which can be enjoyed on their own, but as a whole, holy shit this stuff is not good. (Seriously, I tried to do a Fiery Cross reread before the season started. I started like a year ago and am still only at Jocasta’s wedding because I just don’t care enough to actually get through it.)

Which brings us here. I am tired. I have already ranted and raged and yelled and swore and wrote far too many words about the gratuitous overuse of rape in the Outlanderverse. It fucking has its own tag for fuck’s sake.

So here’s a recap. And then I think I’m done looking at this show in detail. Not because the idiot fans insist on coming to my notes to tell me to fuck off if I don’t like the show. Not because the crew are condescending douchecanoes. Not because the author is a misogynist garbage heap. But because spending an hour of my time for a few weeks out of the year to write these things isn’t worth it. I did it for as long as I did because it took so little time. So why not? But yeah, it’s not even worth that tiny commitment anymore.

And to the people who I know will @ me about how no one was forcing me to stick around and I could have quit any time, yeah, no shit captain obvious, I know that. Fuck off already. I stuck around because I really liked the little corner of the fandom that I’d found. I made some awesome friends. Most of those friends have since quit the fandom. I’m really glad to have them in my life outside of this little corner of the internet. And it was a fun writing exercise. I don’t really like the show anymore, but I enjoyed building an argument about why I don’t like it and think it’s bad that has valid points behind it. Especially considering how blindly overly adoring a bunch of the fandom is about it. But now I think I’d rather consume Outlander content as pretty people in pretty period costumes in gifsets. Or like, on in the background but not really paying close attention. Why not quit altogether? Because to quote the great Ron Swanson (I’m halfway through a Parks rewatch and I just love that show a lot ok.), I can do what I want. And besides, there’s like a fucking library’s worth of fics that I haven’t read and have been meaning to. And I like the characters enough to want to keep reading about them in stories that are better than the canon. (Bless you fic writers, blesssss.)

So. Was this whole ramble self-indulgent and overly serious for a fucking TV show? Absofuckinglutely. But please see the aforementioned Swansonism.

Alright, fuckos. Let’s do this.

This is a Roberts brainchild, isn’t it. *checks credits* Yup. Knew it. This feels very much like a Roberts special. In that he is probs quite pleased with himself but like, it’s crap.

Yes, we ARE doing ANOTHER rape story! But look! It’s a disassociation montage! It’s the ‘60s, get it?! There are callbacks! An orange from the king in season 2! A vase from season 1! A rabbit from season 3! An amber-looking dragonfly! Jamie with the young hair spouting off book lines! ApPrEcIaTe MuH aRt! We are so good at finding new and creative ways to rape our characters! Fuck off, twatwaffle. You are the worst.

Like, does Roger feel left out at this point? He’s only been hanged. Literally everyone else has either been raped, been sexually assaulted, or been threatened with rape and/or sexual assault.

“But it’s not gratuitous! Look! They’re all so different! Jamie’s was overly graphic and he got a half a season to brood about! We manged to not show much of Fergus’ (but still showed a thrust) because he’s a child and it was just a plot device for Jamie and not actually about him! Mary’s was about Fred! Claire’s with the king was about Jamie! Jamie’s with Geneva was shot like p0rn! Marsali being threatened by the sailors was to motivate Fergus! Bree’s was about the other people in the room and Roger! Claire’s really has no purpose because she’s already been kidnapped and beaten, and that is super traumatic, and we’re gonna wrap it up with a bow by the end of the episode!”

This fucking show, guys. This fucking show.

Bonus points* for the Black character spouting off the superstitious stuff.

*By bonus points I mean this show, and the books are absolute shit on matters of race. The books especially.

The cast and crew have 100% heard everyone’s thoughts on the overuse of rape in the Outlanderverse. And their response has been to include more and more of it. We had a whole season of one character’s arc being about her rape and literally as soon as that was resolved, they gang rape another character. It really does tell you as much as you need to know about them. Lazy. Fucking. Cowards.

Kidnapping not enough trauma? Let’s add some gang rape! Gang rape not enough trauma? Let’s add visualizing that your daughter and grandchild are dead! Just like Fred died! This show really brings trauma p0rn to a whole new level.

Called the Bree and Roger shit.

This scene with the men rallying to go save Claire is like another layer of fuck you. Bree, you stay home, men, give your hero lines and let’s have a getting ready montage. Because your hero moment is what this is really all about. And your manpain about killing someone. *screams into a pillow*

The petty side of me is happy that it was Fergus and Young Ian who are with Claire when they find her and not Roger. Her two sons...

Why yes, I am judging all of the fans who like get their panties all wet over Jamie being like “It is I who kills for her.” Like “yeah go ahead and rape and beat Claire within an inch of her life if it means the big strong man gets to come in and save her and say something intense.” Fuck off and go take a hard look at yourself and what that says about you.

“Was there an Indian there?” “Nope, he wouldn’t help you because LiOnEl but somehow was able to peace out when it was in his interest. Because he is as bad as the ones who actually raped you.”

The Bree and Claire hug makes me both sad and angry. I want to hug them both and take them out of this fucking place and tell them that they’ve been done dirty and deserved fucking better from the writers.

Glad Marsali gets in on the hug. Claire’s two remaining daughters.

Claire’s “I have fucking survived” speech is like the one time she she actually talks about herself not in relation to a man. It’s about her. Claire. HOWEVER! It is epically fucked up that a woman needs to check off all the trauma she’s endured to show she’s a strong character.

So. Fucked. Up.

The fact that we’re spending time on Roger’s manpain about killing someone also really tells us a lot about the show’s feelings toward women. Yeah, killing someone is a big deal. It’s normal and expected to have feelings about it. But the juxtaposition of Claire’s speech about all of her traumas with Roger being like yeah, I killed a guy who had kidnapped, beaten and raped your mom is like, read the room, bro/writers.

The fact that the men put Claire’s rapist in her surgery, her space, her place of healing, where she is able to be most herself, makes me want to punch each and every one of them in the throat. Like seriously. Fuck each and every one of them.

Also Lionel is like cartoonishly terrible. Not that nuance has ever been this show’s strong suit. But like come the fuck on.

Marsali killing Lionel is the one thing about this episode that I didn’t hate. The men are all like “We kill for Claire! Let’s all rally in this montage and go do the manly thing of defending the woman!” Marsali is just like, yeah, that’s my Ma you fucked with. She shows some agency. She doesn’t do it in a performative way for the other men or for Claire like the guys do. She just knows this fuck needs to die, knows it’s gonna be hard for her and might damn her soul (don’t worry Marsali, all that religion crap is bullshit), and does it anyway.

Marsali’s arc has been my favorite of this whole fucking series. The one bright spot I was hanging on to all of this season especially.

Her quick scene with Jamie doesn’t bother me like Roger’s does. Because Roger is like oh no, I killed a guy! Can you forgive me? For killing a rapist? Like fuck off, bro. And Marsali is like yeah, I killed a guy. I hope I’m not damned for it, but the guy needed to die so I did it.

Also like, Richard had potential to not be cartoonishly bad. But like nope. “He reaped what he sowed, but cLeArLy I’m gonna need to escalate this further. Because manly men can’t let shit go.”

Fuck all men, tbh.

*googles how to emigrate to Themyscira*

Jamie’s speech that’s like supposed to parallel Claire’s can fuck all the way off. Giving him the last voice over just underscores how this was all about men. Not Claire. But the men. Fuuuuck everything.

Look! Everything’s fine again! Back to normal! Peaceful for a bit! With a cheesy af on the nose storm coming! So you know something bad’s coming! In case you forgot!

And Jamie got a book line. So it’s all good now.

And don’t worry about Claire, y’all. She feels safe now. Her and Jamie fucked it out.

It’s amazing, in retrospect, that I ever let this story suck me in so much.

Happy Mother’s Day! See you on the other side of the hiatus.

[watching-pictures-move]

Put On Your Raincoats #15 | Rainbows in the Dark

To the extent that a porn director crossed over to the mainstream, Gregory Dark would be it. Certainly, there have been directors who did one or two porn features early in their careers, like Abel Ferrara, William Lustig and Wes Craven, but they're known almost entirely for their mainstream work. There are also porn directors who did maybe one mainstream movie, like Gerard Damiano, but their careers were relegated to porn for the most part. Dark is the rare director who was prolific on both sides, so to speak, starting with massive hardcore hits like New Wave Hookers, moving on to directing softcore, thrillers and softcore thrillers with some regularity and eventually becoming a popular music video director. My initial plan was to explore the full gamut of Dark's career. I wanted to get a sense of each phase of his work and to see what elements of his style translated across them. Essentially I wanted to understand Dark as an auteur. But then something miraculous happened. I got lazy. (Also I had a muted reaction to some of his movies and became more interested in another director in the meantime.) So I decided to limit my exploration to a few of his early movies and call it a day.

The first one I watched was New Wave Hookers, his best known hardcore title and considered a classic in the genre. What I expected going in and what worked for me can be deduced from the title. Dark's visual style very much brings to mind the "new wave" in the title: big hair, fog machines and neon lighting, all of which are first seen in the opening credits, in which the female talent almost ritualistically present themselves to the camera. There's some stylistic precedent in the work of Rinse Dream AKA Stephen Sayadian (the artist I got more interested in as I delved into Dark's work), but Sayadian's aesthetic feels culled from the art underground. (Dark reuses a few of Sayadian's actors in some of his films.) Dark's style feels more commercial, almost packaged for MTV. (Dark intended his film as a reaction to hardcore porn features of his era, although I'd argue that his choice of camera angles still feels in line with other films of the era.) This is a movie that looks good and, thanks to some choice music courtesy of the Plugz (whose song "Electrify Me" accompanies the opening credits) and the Sockets (who provide the theme song), sounds good too.

What I gelled to much less was the sense of humour. The movie opens with two buddies played by Jamie Gillis (wearing a tie over a t-shirt) and Dark regular Jack Baker shooting the shit and watching another Dark production. ("That fuckin' guy looks exactly like you. Is that you?") Baker starts expounding on his thoughts about pimping and "programming" women to fuck with music. Baker also notes, "a pimp calls a chick a bitch". They doze off, and when they wake up they find themselves inexplicably in an office. Baker is wearing a yellow tracksuit, Gillis is sporting an East Asian accent, and there's a guy on the floor substituting for their phone. (Gillis asks: "Why do we not have a regular telephone?" Baker explains: "He got the power, the second sight.") As the movie proceeds to make good on its premise, wherein women have sex after listening to new wave music, we're treated to a steady stream of racial taunting. Baker grouses about black music being ineffective for their purposes, dropping the N-bomb. Gillis continues with his accent. The two get into racially charged arguments. A middle eastern client is served in a tent and barks like a dog after he's finished. At one point, Gillis wants sushi and is served by Kristara Barrington while East Asian style music plays on the soundtrack. I recognize that a lot of humour from the era is extremely politically incorrect and has aged poorly, but there's something about Dark's use of racist and misogynist humour that feels especially confrontational. I admit I was a bit bothered by all of this.

Still, there are moments of humour that did work for me. One of the headsets that the characters use has dildos protruding from both earpieces (pointing outwards, of course), and the production design, while not always stylish, is at least endearing in its blatant cheapness. To their credit, Baker and Gillis have undeniable chemistry and do sell the material as well as they can. (I laughed when Gillis, when confronted by the vice squad, drops his accent and exclaims "I used to work in your fuckin' office, and now I'm rich, I'm satisfied, and I'm Chinese, you assholes." Am I a bad person? Probably.) And in terms of how it meets genre expectations, I do think Ginger Lynn and Kristara Barrington have a real magnetism in their scenes.

Given the racial content in New Wave Hookers, it probably won't surprise anybody that Dark was a pioneer in interracial pornography. I am not a sensitive enough writer to begin unpacking all the implications of the concept, but I did watch one of his movies in the subgenre, Black Throat. This was a shot-on-video effort and looks considerably cheaper and uglier than New Wave Hookers, but shares some other qualities. It opens and closes with a punk song that references that film as well as Let Me Tell Ya Bout White Chicks, Dark's first interracial feature, and to be honest, the song is pretty fucking catchy. The movie follows Roscoe, a man who wears yellow sunglasses and both a polo and a Hawaiian shirt and his friend Mr. Bob, a talking rubber rat. He's searching through the garbage while arguring with Mr. Bob over what to eat when he finds a business card. "Madame Mambo's House of Divine Inspiration Thru Fellatio!" (All of the characters pronounce fellatio differently. Mr. Bob says "fell-uh-tee-oh" and calls Roscoe a "fuckin' honky", to which he responds "Fuck you, Mr. Bob!")

Roscoe insists he has to find her. "If I don't find her, I'm gonna die!" (When asked why, he responds, "I dunno, it sounded kinda dramatic, I guess.") Mr. Bob enlists the help of a "young urban professional pimp" named Jamal, played by Jack Baker. (He prefers the term "flesh broker" and describes upgrading his diet, clothes and investments.) Roscoe, Mr. Bob and Jamal go from scene to scene, watching other characters having sex in different racial combinations, asking them where they can find Madame Mambo. (Sometimes they ask the characters directly, other times they talk to their private parts.) The best of these scenes, in my humble opinion, is a light domination flavoured sex scene featuring Christy Canyon. Perhaps because of the dynamic, there's an element of actual acting involved here, and because Canyon is, uh, pleasingly proportioned and has a certain magnetism, I found this scene more engaging than the others, at least until it turns into a regular sex scene.

Eventually they go back to Roscoe's place and find a voodoo ritual taking place where a black woman with multicoloured hair (think the George H.W. Bush rainbow wig from the Simpsons, but straight, not curly) is jumping on their bed while a bunch of white dudes in hats, capes and sunglasses jack off around her. This of course is Madame Mambo and at this point the movie makes good on the title while drumbeats and funk play on the soundtrack. Given the premise, this movie proved (thankfully) lighter on racial humour than I expected going in. There is an element of racial critique in Baker's character, and Madame Mambo is certainly exoticized, but the racial content otherwise is limited to the interracial couplings and doesn't overload the dialogue. However, this is a fairly ugly looking movie, shot on video, featuring unimpressive camerawork and lighting as well as extremely cheap looking production design (although the movie does mine this for laughs). I also found the sex scenes overlong and the music a bit repetitive. I imagine if you were jerking off to this back in the '80s it was easier to get through, but trying to watch it now as an actual movie, despite some decent humour throughout, proved a bit of a challenge.

The next one I watched was White Bunbusters, which despite the first half of the title is not particularly racially charged. The theme song here, crooned in the style of early '60s rock'n'roll, explains that the movie is about anal sex, as the second half of the title suggests. We begin with Tom Byron thrusting into his wife Shanna McCullough (while wearing his glasses) only to be disappointed by her refusal to take it in the butt. The next day at the office (decorated by construction paper all over the walls, drawers sketched in magic marker and a crude sign with their business' name "Acme Proctology"), he hears an ad for the "A-Busters", an enterprising duo who will convince your wife or partner to let you put it in their butt. We cut to the A-Busters office and see them in yellow shorts, lime green suspenders and orange baseball caps, fiddling with their hi-tech instruments (which include an "anal listening device"). Soon we see them go to work on Jack Baker's girlfriend, taking a cash payment after the fact.

Meanwhile, Byron's friend Greg Rome hears about his woes and offers to let him fuck his wife Keli Richards (Rome is named Bob and Richards is named Bobette). Of course Byron takes advantage of Rome's generous offer, but later gets annoyed when Rome insists it was a "one time deal". They're interrupted by Jennifer Noxt, who asks about a secretarial position for the law office next door. Rather than correcting her, which would be the right thing to do, they have sex with her, which is absolutely not the right thing to do. ("So do I get the job?" "We'll call you later, baby.") We go back to the A-Busters, who go to work on a pornstar warming up for her first anal scene (the movie is called Hershey Highway to Hell). Eventually, Byron decides to make use of their services, and in the climax, when he's having a nice dinner with his wife (complete with plastic cups and paper plates), they crash the party and get to work. After it's all over, Byron thanks the A-Busters and shakes one of their hands, only to promptly wipe it off on his suit.

This is as lo-fi as Black Throat, and features a lot of raunchy humour, but thankfully no real racial content outside of the title. Perhaps because the focus is on a specific set of acts (threesomes, anal sex, double penetration), the execution seems more consistently energetic. The ratio of the threesomes is a little off from what I prefer, but I was not unmoved by the scenes involving Keli Richards, Jennifer Noxt and Shanna McCullough. I realize there are more dignified ways to spend one's time than watching in its entirety and singing the praises of a movie called White Bunbusters, but sometimes the lizard brain takes over. I feel compelled to report the facts, and the facts are that this is good at what it does. As an actual movie, there isn't a whole lot to this, but were I to rate this on the Peter-Meter as the filmmakers intended, it would fare respectably.

Where Gregory Dark's style and the sum of his provocations really worked for me was in The Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning and The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage, a two-part odyssey through hell. (Attentive viewers may note that the original Devil in Miss Jones takes place before the heroine is sentenced to hell, but this is not a direct sequel. There is also a second part by Henri Pachard and later sequels directed by Dark that I did not see. The narrative in the third and fourth entries feels pretty self contained.) The movie begins with close-ups of our heroine, played by Lois Ayres, taking a shower while "A Christian Girl's Problems" by the Gleaming Spires plays over the soundtrack, her interiority hinted at with an astute song choice. (It's worth noting that this was not an original song made for the movie.) The structure intersperses her story with a series of interviews with those who knew her: an ex-boyfriend who "had a disagreement about the relationship" (he slept around); a woman speculates that Ayres was "a closet lesbian" and that "she probably went to live in one of those lesbian islands in the Caribbean"; a girl who knew her as a prude back in high school, a priest with a thick accent who offers a eulogy; her brother, who speaks in new age euphemisms and resents that she was the favourite growing up; and a blind ex-boyfriend who claims she was the loveliest person he knew "after Helen Keller". (This last character describes his sex life as very "normal": no peeing or dogs, wouldn't fuck pizzas, etc.) All these people knew her, but they didn't really know her.

The actual story follows her after she breaks up with her boyfriend (over the phone, as he shaves another woman's pubic hair while feigning innocence). She heads for a bar, brushing off a stereotypical black pimp played by Jack Baker who mistakes her for a prostitute, and promptly orders a "taco" (a draught beer, a Bloody Mary, and a draught beer in three separate glasses). Beside her is a man asleep on bar in tuxedo, who turns out to have been stood up at his own wedding. They hook up, leading to a sex scene scored by a blaring saxophone that I assume was practice for Dark's softcore work. The scene ends when the heroine knocks her head against the headboard and wakes up in a pitch black space near a grave. In comes Jack Baker, riding atop a woman, to tell her what the situation is. "You are dead, you got no clothes, and this is hell!"

The rest of the movie follows them going through different rooms, the heroine being unable to comprehend her fate, as they watch the different punishments endured by the denizens of hell. There's the room full of "peepers", virgins doomed to only watch sex for all eternity. (One of them explains: "I showed my tits to a guy to get a Gucci purse. He went off an overpass.") There are characters doomed to fuck until their genitals wear out or are ravaged by venereal disease. Baker gives Ayres a raincoat "to keep the come off", but the moment she forgets about it she finds herself getting gangbanged and promptly has to be rescued by Baker (okay, not that promptly, we get to enjoy this for a few minutes). Along the way we're led to believe from the interviews that the heroine might have a fetish for black men, and the conversation between Ayres and Baker grows increasingly heated and racially charged. This idea culminates in a trip to the "racist room", where a white man with a swastika armband is having a threesome with two women of colour while a white woman is sucking off two black men in tribal makeup. Ayres and Baker have a final confrontation on the subject.

"What about all the black racists?"

"Look bitch, when a black man hits a white man, we don't call it racist!"

"What do you call it then?"

"Smart!"

"That's ridiculous, there are plenty of black racists!"

"No dig, you stupid ass white bitch!"

"Look, you're even one of them, calling me a stupid bitch and a white bitch!"

"We'll you're stupid, you're white and a bitch, so what is your motherfucking problem?"

"You're crazy, negro, and you're one of the sickest people in here!"

"That's right, I'm a crazy negro! I'm so crazy I'll eat my own arm!"

This is a deeply uncomfortable scene, and what follows is even more disturbing, as we learn the true nature of the heroine's relationship with her father, a reveal that Dark plays for maximum shock value in depicting "The Ordeal of the Taboo Breakers".

In some ways this isn't all that different from New Wave Hookers, but Dark's direction seems more purposeful here. The stylized depiction of hell, with its black backgrounds and harsh neon lighting, imbue a real sense of menace into the proceedings. With the exception of two scenes, the sex isn't all that outrageous, but Dark's mise-en-scene has a way of rendering it almost as horror. It's not exactly scary and probably still "does the trick" if you're watching this for those reasons, but there's an undeniable charge here. Likewise, the dark humour and the racial content seem to work in tandem here, and Ayres and Baker really sell their adversarial chemistry. (It's worth noting that even by the standards of the video vixens that appear in Dark's movies, Ayres has an amazing hairdo.) Dark may not have entirely thought out his thesis along these lines, but the movie is provocative in its handling of this content, and unlike New Wave Hookers, not in a way that hurts it. At a combined 2+ hours, this probably runs a bit too long, but it does shape the usual procession of sex scenes into a structure that carries an uneasy momentum that matches the heroine's trepidation. We might not like what we're seeing, but we also can't help but keep looking.

[lastsonlost]

After the first episode of "The Mandalorian," the Disney Plus series in the Star Wars universe that became the top streaming hit of 2019, aired on the platform, some Twitter users expressed frustration at how few women spoke, and how few female characters there were in general.

Some of those who tweeted, including well-known feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, were met with dogpiling and waves of harassment across social media platforms. 

The harassment largely stemmed from anti-feminist Star Wars fan accounts who rounded up and highlighted tweets under the pretense that those complaining were "outraged" social justice warriors trying to tear down a successful Star Wars franchise.

The harassment is just the latest instance of feminist fandom voices being shut down online.

Anita Sarkeesian is no stranger to online harassment,

YEA SHES VERY GOOD AT MAKING THEM.

 being one of the central figures in Gamergate, the online harassment campaign that resulted in her receiving numerous death and rape threats, along with bomb and shooting threats at her events. But even she was surprised at the amount of vitriol her tweet about "The Mandalorian" received.

After watching the first episode of the Star Wars series for Disney Plus, Sarkeesian tweeted asking if she was just tired, or if there wasn't "a single female speaking character in the first episode."

She was exhausted, Sarkeesian told Insider — missing the one scene where a woman spoke and making a typo in her tweet. In the replies, Sarkeesian corrected herself. Then she went to bed. In the morning, the tweet had more than 3,000 replies. It currently has close to 7,000.

"Maybe you should switch to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills... I'm sure you'll find much to relate to there...." one top reply read.

"No wonder you're so tired. They say you should stretch before making such reaches, especially at your age," said another, with more than 1,400 likes of its own.

It's an example of dogpiling, a type of online harassment where, on Twitter, someone's replies outnumber likes and retweets, and are mostly filled with repetitive, hurtful comments.

"It's ironic. Women, especially feminists, get accused of being emotional and angry and all of these things when all we said was 'Hey, I noticed this thing. And it's kind of a problem, and I think it's really bad for our society,'" Sarkeesian told Insider. "If they didn't reply to it, my tweet would have just been gone. They made it a much bigger deal."

Sarkeesian is the most prominent figure facing dogpiling and harassment in response to her criticism of the series, but she's not the only one.

People with and without large Twitter followings, some who are verified and many who are not, have found themselves overwhelmed with anti-feminist replies and messages across platforms after tweeting about how few women are in "The Mandalorian."

Specifically, in the first episode, there's one female character wearing a mask who speaks, and two female characters total, along with a few women spotted as extras in the background of shots. More female characters are expected to play larger roles in future episodes.

"Even if you want to give the show the benefit of the doubt and say there's some big, wild justification that's going to come around in episode 7, it feels wrong that the vast majority of this world is populated by men or male-identified characters," Sarkeesian said.

Star Wars fans have a history of harassing women online when faced with criticism

Online harassment in the Star Wars fandom, particularly of women, is nothing new. Actresses like Daisy Ridley and Kelly Marie Tran of the latest Disney-owned Star Wars trilogy have recently talked about the negative aspects of the Star Wars community.

Ridley, who stars in the newest Star Wars trilogy as Rey, "cut off" her Facebook and Instagram accounts "like a Skywalker limb" due to harassment, and Tran faced racist and misogynistic harassment after appearing as the first woman of color in a leading role in the Star Wars franchise.

"It wasn't their words, it's that I started to believe them," Tran wrote for The New York Times after deleting her Instagram posts in 2018. "Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories."

In the case of "The Mandalorian," almost anyone who tweets about the show from a feminist perspective is at risk of being targeted, because Star Wars fan accounts are rounding up tweets that criticize things like the amount of time it took for a woman to speak in the first episode.

One account rounded up 33 of these tweets with the caption "SJW's are outraged over the 'lack of female characters' in the first 2 episodes of The Mandalorian. A show with 3 female characters. Feminists only care about counting the number of minutes women are on screen in Star Wars."

Insider spoke with two people whose tweets were featured in the round-up, who said their tweets were mischaracterized, inspiring a wave of online hate.

Both of the people who spoke with Insider said they liked "The Mandalorian" and will continue watching it, but wanted to point out that it could be better in terms of female representation.

One woman who spoke to Insider anonymously, because she is trying to distance her name from the situation, says the harassment began several days after she posted her initial tweet about a lack of women in the first episode.

After receiving anti-feminist replies on Twitter, she also started getting harassed across platforms, in part because other anti-feminist Star Wars accounts picked up screenshots of her tweet after it was first included in the round-up and distributed to an even wider audience, including on Instagram.

One person even left a violent message for her in the email submission form on her professional website. It reads "People like you don't deserve a f---ing opinion, but at least I'm glad you can voice it. Doesn't prevent me from calling you f---ing r-----ed for spouting your misandry. HOW DOES IT F---ING FEEL C---? I hope you expire and never have children."

"I had to put everything on private, for my own mental health," she told Insider. "I just had to shut down my profile. I will never, ever, ever tweet about Star Wars again. And I love baby Yoda so much. But I can't. They won. Life's too short for me to fight this fight."

Even after setting her accounts to private, she was inundated by hundreds of follow requests on Twitter, along with DMs sent to her private Instagram.

Those who tweeted about female representation in 'The Mandalorian' stand by their words, despite the harassment

The person who tweeted the round-up of critics didn't want to share any identifying information with Insider, but did stand behind the tweet, and said they didn't participate in or encourage harassment, but the reach of the account became clear once Insider asked for comment in the replies. Within a few hours, a video had been uploaded about this article (which had not been written yet) to YouTube from a channel with more than 130,000 subscribers.

The video in question has been viewed more than 33,000 times and highlights the mentality in at least one corner of the Star Wars fandom that is male-dominated and is aggressive toward diverse media representation.

"What SJWs do is as soon as this kind of thing happens, they identify [the Twitter account that posted the round-up] as hostile to their narrative [...] I would call them left-wing garbage," the voiceover of YouTuber ComicArtistPro Secrets says in the video. "They are going to come in and write an article smearing [the Twitter account], 'Don't you dare shine a light on these cockroaches in such an effective way ever again,'" The YouTuber mocked, referring to the feminist critics as the "cockroaches" in the situation.

"This is a strategy that these sorts of anti-progressive, very regressive cyber mobs have used for years," Sarkeesian said. "They try to use social justice language against us when we try to bring these issues up but it's so transparent and so obvious what they're trying to do, by undermining our point. It's very bad faith."

Writer and programmer David Ely, a male who's tweet was included in the roundup, told Insider that his replies were pretty tame in comparison to Sarkeesian and the other woman Insider spoke to, although he did receive one unspecified death threat from an account that he blocked.

"Part of the response seems to come from a belief that Star Wars needn't be political. That it be pure entertainment," Ely told Insider. "Star Wars is a made-up universe. If gender inequality exists there, it's either on purpose, or because the creator's biases meant they didn't notice it. Either way, that's political."

Sarkeesian also stood by her original point that "The Mandalorian" should have more female characters, and said a lot of the negative response was because there's so much pushback from people who have historically been over-represented on the screen, and are hostile to the changing expectations for diverse characters that represent the diverse Star Wars fanbase.

"We are so accustomed to male-dominated narratives that it's easy to not even notice glaring omissions," she said. "Unlike if the entire cast had been women, I suspect everyone would have immediately noticed that regardless of what one's opinion would be on that casting choice."

MAYBE ITS NOT FOR YOU ANITA....

[puttingherinhistory]

I finished watching Netflix’s new series, Love, Death, and Robots, (or maybe more accurately Love, Death, and Violent Misogyny) and it made me think about how there’s an important conversation to be had about the difference between sexual violence and sexualized violence, and how insidious copious amounts of sexualized violence is, especially when just like sexual violence women are overwhelmingly the target

Warning: this post contains descriptions of sexualized violence, descriptions of gore, and discussion of sexual assault

We all probably know what sexual violence is, it’s sexual assault and any sort of forced or unwanted sexual acts or contact. It’s usually done as an assertion of power over the victim.

But what is sexualized violence and how is it different? A good and prominent example of this that most of us have probably seen and are aware of is present in slasher films starting in the 70′s and up until now. Usually it involves a woman who’s young, sexy, conventionally attractive. She’s in the middle of changing, or naked just because, or she just engaged in a consensual sex, and then BAM the killer shows up and brutually gores her, she’s screaming, there’s blood, and probably a shot of her nude body and exposed breasts while she’s being gored and brutalized. It other words, sexualized violence is violence made sexy, with it almost always being women who the violence is against that’s being made sexy and gazey.

In Love, Death, and Robots there’s copious amounts of sexualized violence, which is incredibly insidious from a show that appears to try to be angling itself as “girl power / empowering for women” in some of the episodes. It’s especially disgusting and insidious because this show also felt like it tries to appeal to adolescent boys, a lot of media that tries to appeal to adolescent boys just love Love, Death, and Robots has copious amounts of sexualized violence, it’s so insidious because it’s coding boys from a young age to associate violence and brutality against women with sexiness, and when it’s a repeated theme again and again and again in many different shows, movies, and games you can see how this could have a great deal of influence on the sexuality of adolescent boys. Then look at the rates of women who are murdered by sexual partners, ex sexual partners, or just men who were sexually attracted to them and you might be able to piece together why copious amounts of sexualized violence against women in the media is a fucking problem when we’re coding young boys to see brutality and violence against women as sexy.

I mean, think of Pavlov’s Dog and the power of association. When it’s a repeated theme again and again and again in media, which sexualized violence is, we’re trained to associate the arousal of seeing a young and conventionally attractive nude woman on screen with the gore and brutality that inevitably ensues in a lot of media, such as your typical slasher film or in this case Love, Death, and Robots.

Adult men are not immune to this either, so yes Love, Death, and Robots has a MA rating for adults, but adolescent boys aren’t the only ones I’m worried about. Besides, how many 14-17 year old boys have their parents supervising every little bit of media they consume and making sure their kids don’t watch any mature content?

Sonnie’s edge was particularly insidious because of how it appears to wear a cloak of a “girl power” episode, but we have two women who begin to engage in consensual sexual touching, one gets half nude and there’s a lot of shots of her exposed breasts, and then when the audience is titillated suddenly there’s gore and violence against one of these women, then not too long after the half nude woman with exposed breasts gets gored as well.

The Witness was just bad and gratuitous, the whole episode is a half naked, and then suddenly for “plot” reasons completely naked woman (a young, thin, conventionally attractive woman at that) being chased around by a man trying to murder her, of course he’s fully clothed, while she’s running in fear for her life with her exposed breasts wobbling around, and plenty of shots of said exposed breasts wobbling as she’s terrified and running for her life from a (fully clothed) man trying to kill her. How is that not insidious and gratuitous?  

In Beyond the Aquila Rift we have a very graphic and detailed sex scene, then only a few moments later we see the male protagonist shoving and slamming the woman up against the wall we were just graphically shown him having sex with, oh but it’s actually “okay” because she’s just an alien manipulating his mind. Actually, that brings up another trope I’ve noticed that I think is worth dissecting, how much we see this theme in media of where a man is physically aggressive with a woman he’s dating/married to/sleeping with but it’s justified by the plot because she’s secretly an alien/monster/spirit or w/e, and how this might normalize IRL men being physically aggressive with sexual partners because there’s some reason it’s “justifiable”

The worst and most disgusting example was in The Secret War. The only women we see the entire episode are mutilated corpses, the only speaking characters who are alive and have any dignity and plot other than being a mutilated corpse are men. In the beginning of the episode we see very brief shots of mutilated peasant women scattered around, but at least they’re clothed like the male characters are. The most upsetting and disgusting part was halfway through the episode we see the nude corpse of a woman, her body fits conventional standards of sex appeal, she’s clearly young and skinny with large breasts, but she’s a mutilated corpse with her entrails hanging out, she’s tied up and restrained in a way reminiscent of sexual bondage with her legs tied spread eagle apart but wrists bound together. We get plenty of shots of her large exposed breasts, but also her entrails hanging out. I was too upset and disgusted that the only woman we see for more than a second in the entire episode is the tied up mutilated corpse of a young skinny large breasted woman that I couldn’t even fucking finish the episode. Fuck that. Most of the warnings I see for this episode only mention the gore, but fail to mention the specific misogynistic implications of having an episode where the only women shown are mutilated corpses and in one case the unnecessarily nude mutilated tied up corpse of a young skinny busty woman.

Shit I feel like it would have been less misogynistic to have just not shown any women at all the entire episode than to only show one woman, and she’s nude, and tied up, and mutilated, and dead. Fuck, how much does whoever made The Secret War hate women?

Can you imagine the male tears and outcry if an episode only showed women the entire episode, and the one shot we get of a man the entire episode it’s the corpse of a young and conventionally attractive man, we get plenty of shots of his glistening chiseled abs and ass, and also see he’s been violently gored and has his entrails hanging out, meanwhile living and clothed women stand around him and get plot and personalities and dignity? Can you fucking imagine that ever even being made in the first place?

This show might be trying to angle itself as “girl power” in certain episodes but with all the gratuitous sexualized violence, I’m not buying it. It’s actually deeply misogynistic and gratuitous. An especially big FUCK YOU to whoever is responsible for making the misogynistic garbage that is The Secret War

The only episodes I can really recommend if you really want to watch it are Three Robots, Lucky 13, Zima Blue, and Fish Night.