please put emphasis on platonic soulmates in media. on unconditional love and loyalty based off of pure friendship. on heart wrenching breakups between best friends that change their lives. on knowing someone else better than they know themselves. on being a shining light for each other and finding happiness in the darkest places. on fighting side by side until the end, because a lover may visit your grave but your best friend will be in there with you

"eddie NEEDS to be in a relationship and he keeps DESPERATELY chasing after it" yes, that's why he's only dated twice since his wife of almost a decade died five years ago :) makes perfect sense :)

zendaya, mike faist, and josh o’connor for challengers

tashi is far and away the most interesting character in challengers, at least to me. all the takes i see where tashi is just a means to an end for the two boys to explore their attraction to each other. sorry thats just not the movie i watched. this girl is so tragic and the tragedy she experienced is a blackhole coming to suck all three of them in. everything she had was taken away from her, and she keeps going, but shes dragging along her stolen potential everywhere she goes. into her marriage. into motherhood. and its a buffer that keeps her from truly being with art, or truly being with patrick, or truly being with anyone. bc between her and anyone else is the version of her that should have existed. gone in one instant. through no fault of her own. and people might know that version of her is always there lurking, but shes the one that can feel it.

Peanut gallery social media commentary on Challengers is sooo funny to me.

“Art was the victim!” Did you miss the part where he started stirring shit up between his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend in the hopes they’d break up and he could get with her instead? Or how he chose to cut off his best friend entirely to side with Tashi because Tashi blamed said best friend for her injury (literally he doesn’t even talk to Patrick about the argument? Ever? Just kicks him out of his life because Tashi wants them to LMAO)?

“Patrick was the victim!” Did you miss the part where Patrick spends like 13 years willfully reinserting himself back into a relationship he no longer gets to be a part of all because he’d rather ruin them and come between them and repeatedly hurt them if it means he knows they still think about him, rather than taking ownership of his actions and coming to terms with the fact that they no longer think about him at all? Did you miss the fact that he’s a giant flop on top of being a giant asshole?

“Tashi is an evil cold manipulative bitch who doesn’t care about anything but tennis and comes between them!” Okay what we’re not going to do is 1) act like those two losers weren’t active participants in the vast majority of what was happening to them so that we can blame everything on the woman 2) forget that Tashi spends the entire movie both being incredibly horny for yes tennis, but tennis very much including Art and Patrick specifically, as well as bringing a wrecking ball down on her own life repeatedly because she physically cannot go on without having all three of them in her life.

“The three of them are ALL terrible, bad people!” Are they or they neither good nor bad but a secret third thing (messed up, regular people)? Are they or they all three simultaneously the one’s holding the gun and falling into the graves they’ve dug for themselves?

“The movie promised me a throuple and then didn’t even deliver!/it was just a regular boring old love triangle” Did you miss the part where Patrick was the person who taught Art to jerk off? Did you miss the part where Tashi encourages them to neck her until they’re close enough for her to back away and leave them kissing each other as she watches with horny amusement? Did you miss the fact that they’re both playing for her number? Did you miss Art molding himself into the person who could obtain the glory that Tashi was denied? Or how he saw his fiance/wife kissing her ex boyfriend who also happens to be his ex best friend in Atlanta and then spends like 10 more years doing absolutely nothing about it? Did you miss “Don’t I matter?” “Not to the most obsessive tennis fan in the world” “I’m not talking about tennis” followed by an Art who has stopped caring whether he wins or loses caring, by the end of the match, more than he’s ever cared before, because Patrick DOES matter and because he’s STILL playing for Tashi’s number? Did you miss the part where for about 15 seconds there they were actually playing tennis and they understood each other completely and so did everyone watching and it was a bit like they were in love or like they didn’t exist and they went somewhere really beautiful together? HUH?

“They’re incredibly toxic!” Well, yes! but you see, that’s part of the fun!

boys! kissing! on the big screen! everyone say thank you luca guadagnino

funny to think about tashi’s scene with patrick behind the hotel or art’s scene with him in the sauna because they are both so mad at him even tho it doesn’t make any sense like they’re the ones that shut him out over an injury that couldve happened under any circumstances art stole his girlfriend and tashi married his best friend and they’re angry with him and it’s literally because they want to fuck him so bad that it makes them furious

on that note it’s crucial to understand that there is no twosome from the challengers trio that could ever work. like patrick and art alone are repressed tashi and art alone are resentful tashi and patrick alone are toxic it simply does not work they always need the third to balance each other out this is is a throuple movie a threesome movie you’re literally not understanding

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

I never know how to say this without sounding condescending but when it comes to social media you can simply choose not to be around people who make you unhappy.

[146/547] — until we meet again, jungkook ♡ (cr. heytaebae)

[145/547] — until we meet again, jungkook ♡

and when I say Patrick’s loose barely-on towel that was placed there by request is a metaphor for him being comfortable and shameless in his bisexuality, and Art’s fastidiously tight towel is a metaphor for his internalized biphobia and repression, then what

one of the craziest scenes in challengers is when tashi and patrick are making out in her dorm and talking about how good art is like how good looking he is, how much better he’s gotten at tennis. i would almost argue that they both did everything For him in the end

No because, Art is a mediocre tennis player with 6 grand slams who knows that at some level he has only got them because Tashi has pushed him and coached him to that level of excellence. At the same time he feels responsible for living a career for both of them while knowing that if Patrick hadn't fucked things up he wouldn't have ever achieved what he did.Patrick has oodles of talent but has to deal with the fact that despite winning Tashi fairly he lost her due to his pride. You know he's thinking that 'if she was my coach I would have double the number of grand slams that Art does'. But if Tashi hadn't had that injury that day would either of them even have had the chance to have her as their coach? No. Both he and Art would have faded into mediocrity but probably remained friends despite it all. And don't get me started on Tashi. She knows that if it wasn't for her injury she would have probably won 15 grand slams by now and would never have considered stopping but she's reduced to just being the wife! Just being the coach! Just being content with being a hot girl who will be won by the guy who plays the best tennis!! And she has to somehow make herself feel okay with that. So no. She can't genuinely be okay with Art stopping but at the end of the day it's not her decision to make because he's the professional tennis player not her. It's not just about one of them winning or the sacrifice it takes. It's about disappointment, bitterness, the underlying inferiority complex, being manipulative enough to achieve your goals through different means and the inherent homoeroticism of having a best friend from the age of 12 who is the only one worth beating for you after playing 13 years of tennis. Anyway I'm chewing on glass rn. Challengers you'll always be famous

challengers written by justin kuritzkes