#I just didn’t like how the first season’s ending conflated the two issues | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nalyra-dreaming · 1 year

Note

Sorry to be party pooper when you were theorising and having fun, but I think I need to vent.

Anyway, we all can agree that this fandom has recently gotten a very toxic discours/discussion environment which just sucks. I mostly blame the writers for this, mostly because of ep 5. Not only did this add to obvious power imbalance between loustat, but also did make POC and especially black audiences understandable very uncomfortable. Not only possibly by the relationship (that is supposed to be endgame!) but also of Lestat (a future “hero” of the story).

As a white person I obviously cannot comprehend what it must have felt to see that from a racial standpoint, but it was very upsetting to see from my point of view alone.

Now, there are of course debates on if that scene were “out of character” for Lesta or not…I am still debating over that. (I mean, show!Lestat is a bit different from book!Lestat after all?)

What I find most frustrating about ep 5 is just “did they not think?!”. No but really, what did they think that was going to look like? How people would react and feel? Like??? How??? They didn’t at least have to make the DV so severe and brutal, especially when they have such powerful dynamics to portray. Right?

Idk. Maybe I am just salty because I really just recently joins this fandom (for real) that I thought would be chill and a safe place for many people and meanings discussions…and then there is this black cloud that didn’t have to be here in the first place. I feel frustrated for everyone😕

... I'm sorry you're feeling frustrated by all of it. *hugs*

Still - welcome to the fandom?! 💕

*sighs* So this is difficult. I can understand the frustration, I knew when I watched this would hit the fan, so to speak.

BUT. I have talked about it, too, several times, how this episode served other purposes (imho). In this post there's two articles linked by Linda Codega, which I recommend reading. I can link more posts by @showmey0urfangs and others on this, too, if you're interested.

The show... puts its finger into wounds, and worries them. Lestat does abuse. Lestat does rape. Lestat does force-feed. Lestat chops off digits. Canonically. He doesn't do that to Louis, canonically. Which is, imho, exactly the point.

By making it happen to Louis, and in this way, it forces us to look. By using certain imagery it gets waaaaaay beyond our comfort zone. On purpose.

However, in the context of the story(!) and here's the catch to it all - we do not know if it happened. It's a tale, and one deliberately torn apart in the end. Throwaway lines of episode 1 come back, to suddenly make sense and hint at the truth. Continuity errors and the very way people are held build parallels. I'm saying it again, this show does details, and it does not serve to conflate the issues imho.

And one thing re the writers and what they say: Imagine you're doing those big arcs, with full knowledge of the Chronicles, and the way you want to shake the narrative up... and then the season gets split. And you get asked why you did episode 5 the way you did. And you cannot say anything re the reveal in episode 7. You cannot say anything re what's to come in season 2, what you've been planning for (now) episode 12. You cannot say anything in regards to the parallels you've set up, or what Armand did (or not). Your viewership is mostly unaware of what's in the books (there was a poll the other day, like only 20%? have read a few books?!), as the reactions to Louis / Armand have plainly shown imho.

So what do you say?

This is not to defend them btw. I do think some of the answers especially by Rolin were... well. (And the missing content warning is its own fuck up.) But I also think that this is something that has to be factored in as well. Because of course they do not wish to give their game away.

Imagine if people (I am included here) are correct with episode 5, that the latter half of that "fight" was a modified memory, because something like this happened between Armand and Lestat, but not Lestat and Louis. As a writer, getting asked re the cloud gift... what could you say? You couldn't say "well, we're building a parallel for the big showdown in season 2, when Armand throws Lestat off a tower and later Armand is thrown off a roof by Lestat". And you cannot say "well, there's this scene in TVL, which will be in season 3, where Armand force-feeds on Lestat, and Lestat then beats him to a pulp and drags him by the throat". You just cannot say that, because it would the give the game away, at least to those who do not know the books?

And yes, I am aware that this is (book-canon based) speculation, and that we'll see.

But given the setup of the interview in Dubai you cannot even trust that part of the tale :)) Much less what is narrated. Which makes the OOC discussion void imho. We haven't seen the real Lestat, the real Louis, or the real Armand yet.

We haven't seen anything objectively true yet. Except maybe Daniel's apartment in the beginning^^.

So.

Feel free to come in and rant at anytime :)) But... personally... I think there is much, much more to it than the DV discussion alone, or the OOC discussion alone. And if that is actually true... then we're watching the show of the decade unfold. A true piece of art. And art... can be challenging.

Still. Said that before, too - I could do with less toxicity in the fandom, too. Especially on these so important and difficult subjects. I would prefer we could discuss them in a productive manner. But maybe that will only need ... time and perspective, (right, Louis)^^.

#asks #iwtv #interview with the vampire #fandom #I guess #future season speculation #ask nalyra

16 notes · View notes

somanyerikas · 3 years

Text

Nostalgia sells - or does it? About BBC’s rehiring of a previous showrunner for Doctor Who as a marketing strategy

All, right, this is the one where I deal with my issues about RTD’s rehiring from the standpoint of BBC’s business strategy . Brace for passive agression, swearwords, brief history of british television and numbers. So, so many numbers.

Allright, so I already wrote a post about my problem with RTD’s (re)hire from the creative standpoint (it’s here in case you’re interested), but hey, I can bitch about it all I want, but we all know what caused the BBC to make this decision, right? You’ve heard about it for sure. The Dropping Ratings. You’ve read about it on so many posts, lots of them probably oh-so-gladly conflating this fact with their own opinion about the deteriorating quality of the show. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to that.) So Obviously the execs at the Big BBC Quarters needed to do something about it, and what better way to go than rehire a guy who’s run at Doctor Who is a warm childhood memory for so many in it’s fanbase? After all, it’s what we’re seeing nowadays: from Star Wars return to wave of 80′s nostalgia to every old blockbuster star doing a comeback, there is but a single conclusion - nostalgia sells.

Or does it?

Part One: Moving with the change; or very much refusing to.

Let’s start this off with some facts about the ratings for Doctor Who. (Well, I warned you there’s gonna be numbers, didn’t I. Stick with me, I’m going somewhere with this I promise.) In it’s beginnings, in the sixties and seventies , the series flown high, averaging a viewership from 8 up to 10 million viewers per season. Collin Baker’s series 17 brought in a record of 11.21 milion viewer asses in front of a good ol’ TV screen, real champagne opener here. But, as it happens, things were downhill from here. During the eighties, the rating started dropping steadily, reaching an all-time low of 4.15 milion couch-warming bottoms in 1989, the last season of the classic era.

Years passed, 16 of those years to be exact, and here comes our saviour RTD. Under his wings, the revived series premiered, bringing in over 10 milion viewers to the premiere episode of season 1, Rose. A viewership this high did not last for long, but still, RTD’s seasons averaged between 7 and 8 milion viewers per season, which seemed pretty respectable. But then, as the story likes to repeat itself, not unlike the bbc execs just did, along came the decline again. Ever since 2010, the ratings began steadily dropping again, from 7.95 in 2010 to 5.46 in 2017. Then DW experienced an unexpected peak in 2018 with the premiere of Jodie Whittaker’s first season, which averaged 7.96 viewing asses, but then continued the dropping trend on the next season, averaging 5.40 viewing butts.

So what went wrong?

You see, part of the reason that Doctor Who was bringing in such great viewership numbers in the 60′s and 70′s, was that, to put it simply, BBC did not have much competition. Or, to be exact, only had one competitor. ITV was literally founded in order to break BBC’s monopoly over British television. But in the 80′s, with the launch of Channel 4 and Sky, the british viewers had more and more options to choose from. So logically speaking, they no longer had to watch BBC’s programming just because there was nothing else on. There was more and more new programes to boredom-watch. And here’s something y’all need to know about the tv industry: the boredom-watchers, the casuals? That’s the most important demographic. As hard as it might be to swallow, us hardcore fans, forum dwellers and Ao3 gremlins, we’re not as big of a group as we’d like to think. Loving fans are important to the tv execs as providers of word-of-mouth advertisment, but the real numbers come from the casual, everyday viewer who will just put on the next episode cause the other one was kinda fun I guess. Or more fun than the other options, anyway.

And this is why, by the way, when someone is conflating low viewership with the show Dissapointing The Fans, they’re full of shit. I’m sorry, but we’re really not that much of a force here, definitely not enough to make such a big impact on the numbers. Another factor, that some of you probably noticed already, is that the numbers I’m quoting are from british tv only, while the online fandom is very much international, so our opinions matter even less to the british execs, I’m sorry again, hard pill to swallow I know, but true nonetheless.

But I digress. So, to sum up the previous paragraph, Doctor Who’s viewership decline in the 80′s was the effect of the changing landscape of the TV industry, with which the BBC struggled to come to terms with.

Sound familiar?

Let’s move on to the 2010′s, shall we?

2010 was is actually a good marker of a year to choose, because it marks one important thing that begun a big change in the industry. This was the year in which Netflix expanded their services overseas, from being a DVD rental company to providing VOD services. Over the next decade streaming services grew in importance, from being an add-on to your cable TV that you didn’t really want but they were throwing it in for cheap, to very much self-sustainable media services you might very well buy instead of buying the cable. And if you look at the numbers for Doctor Who viewership declining over the last 10 years, that’s precisely what’s been happening. It’s not that people don’t want to watch Doctor Who on tv, they don’t want to watch tv in general. Do you know what was the most popular channel in Britain this year? Can you guess? Fucking Netflix that’s what. It’s just slowly-yet-steadily ceasing to be the way we use home entertainment anymore. Again, not much to do with the audience approval, because for that matter, let’s see about the specific episodes that saw the spikes in viewership.

Rose, which i mentioned at the start of it, was for the longest time the unquestionable queen when it comes to viewership, at 10.81 milion. The next episode, The End of the World, pulled in 7.97 - almost 3 millions worth of lost viewer-butts in one week? Is it because it was so much worse than it’s predecessor? No, it simply did not have the smell of Newness, the Event You Must See, and as such brought forth less of the casual viewers who were simply curious about The New Thing. The next season followed the similar formula, peaking at the premiere, when the marketing was at it’s strongest, going down during the season, sometimes rising slightly for the finale, sometimes not. The most popular episodes are, of course, the specials - yet again, the vibe of The Event To Be Seen worked here, but one more thing working to their advantage is they often aired in spaces between seasons, serving as both a long-waited Crumbs of Content for the fans, and the basically stand-alones for the casuals. Do you know what the single most watched episode of revived DW is? No, it’s not Tennant’s goodbye with the role (yeah I know, I thought it had to be that as well). It was Voyage of the Damned, between seasons 3 and 4. The perfect standalone for the casual watcher. And last but not least, you know one more special feature that brought, maybe not as much, but definitely more than expected? The 1996 movie Doctor Who, with 9.08 million. Again, a perfect standalone.

But the standalones aren’t the only way to grab the viewership. The currently-highest viewing non-special episode of DW? The Woman Who Fell to Earth, Jodie Whittaker’s introduction. In 2018 no less, in the year when the streaming was the ruler supreme, this episode brought a whooping 10.96 million buts to the good ol’ TV again. Let me reiterate: this episode brought in more viewers than Rose did in 2005, while having WAY more competition and way less favorable circumstances of release that RTD’s debiut did. Not only that, it managed to bring on some numbers for the entire season as well, not as good of course as the premiere (because again, the Event vibes faded), but still brought a better average than the last six seasons did. (Again, let me reiterate: more than the last SIX seasons. More viewership than any series since 2010, since the Streaming Wars.) So clearly, this must be the way, right? Catering to this Weird New Trend, that saw directors notice there do in fact exist other actors than white men, that surely brought in some profit, even Marvel does it now, right? Out with the old, in with the new!

Part 2 The Deceitful Charm of Nostalgia

Well, it turns out the whole Doing New Things deal didn’t work out that well after all, now did it? The second season penned by Chibbnal averaged 5.40 milion, that’s 2.5 million drop from the previous one! It must mean it didn’t work, right? Well, yes and no. As much as the refreshment of the formula as simple as Let’s Put A Woman In It absolutely worked for one season, it very visibly did not hold up for longer. An Event-Episode is something that can still happen on TV, Event-Series? That’s pretty much reserved for streaming now, if you think about it, and it’s honestly kind of a miracle that Series 11 did as well as it had. Two consecutive Event-Series on network tv? Flat out impossible.

So how to make those ratings great again? How to get those butts in seats of the Good Ol’? Well, the execs of the BBC have a plan for that. They brought in a devouring beast, and it’s name is: Nostalgia.

Without a doubt, there is a number of people who feel nostalgic about RTD’s era of Doctor Who. It’s a lot of people’s fond childhood memory, or the series they started with, and judging by the numbers, there should be quite a lot of them. So the new plan, as it appears, is to get to those who maybe lost interest in the show and lure them with the promise of the thing That Is Totally Like The Thing You Used To Love, Remember? (This is why I don’t actually think that RTD will be allowed to do anything new and interesting, that’s not what they hired him for. And that’s why I think this is bad from the creative standpoint.) So there are two questions here: One, will the people be lured? And two, for how long?

Nostalgia as a marketing strategy is something that you’re probably sick of seeing already (I know I am). But it has very much been effective on many levels, especially the eighties-baiting, Stranger Things style, can bring a new IP up to relevance. But what about old IP’s that want to have a comeback?

It’s kind of dificult to find another TV show that I could compare to Doctor Who. Most series that have been running for that long are mostly soap operas, that operate on slightly different rules, and are also targeted to a different audience. So as much as the movie series is still not exactly the best comparison, when I think about a big IP, campy sci-fi, family-oriented (at least in theory) on its path back to relevance, I think about Star Wars, obviously. The Force Awakens gambled on that nostalgic feeling and won big, but the next two movies, while still financially successful, were nowhere near the astounding success of the first one. And that’s because - you guessed it - it created the Event You Must See again, The Great Comeback, but merely two years later, the comeback became old news. So what we can gain from that is that nostalgia can create an Event as well as a new trend, if not better. But the question remains: how long will that last?

That is, after all, the main difference between a movie franchise and a TV series in the traditional, network TV sense of the word: movie franchise must bring in the viewership every year or two, and TV series must bring in viewers every week for at least two months. Is RTD’s Nostalgia Vibes enough to provide for that?

I’ll say this: I’m absolutely certain that the 60th anniversary will be very popular. I still don’t think it will break any records because, as I’ve been trying to explain for this whole post, it is not 2007 anymore no matter how much the tv execs would like it to be. But ironically, the almost-certain success of the special is the very thing that could undermine the effect of bringing their precious Nostagia Boi back onboard. Remember, the first Event Episode is The Big Oof. That’s the one that gets asses to the Good Ol’, if anything ever does. After the first big event one, that’s the point when things start going down. They’re wasting their Special Event Boi for something that already would be an event, dear fucking gods, I hate your plan and I would still execute it better. Either have RTD be the Anniversary Guy and then hire someone new, use that hype and keep it going, OR have RTD come in after the anniversary, then at least you get the Event Effect for the premiere of his first return season. Fukin’ amateurs.

But even if they did that, here’s the thing: do you think that the people who departed from the show years ago actually want to watch another three to five seasons of The RTD Show? I mean, I’m sure the thought warmed some hearts, for sure. A number of people will definitely gladly watch the anniversary, probably the first few episodes of the first return to the basics, but after that? In the world when, due to streaming, they have an easy way to revisit the actual thing they’re nostalgic towards? I honestly don’t think so. And you’re not really gonna get many new people by going back, if that nostalgia factor isn’t there. And then there’s casual viewers, the backbone, as we established. And here’s the thing: lots of those people don’t even know who the current showrunner is, cause they’re not Terminally Online like we are, and the second thing? Lots of those people ARE JUST NOT WATCHING NETWORK TV, IM SORRY GARRY. They’re just. They’re just not. I don’t know how to spell it out better. Even my mum has netflix now. Your biggest base is in another castle mate, gotta get moving and gotta get moving quick, cause here’s another thing: all the nostalgia in the world will not do SHIT for you if your target, people who were kids/teens when the RTD era was airing, PROBABLY DON’T EVEN HAVE A FUCKING TV ANYMORE CAUSE THEY MOVED OUT OF THEIR PARENTS FLAT AND LOTS OF YOUNG PEOPLE JUST DON’T BOTHER. Just. I’m sorry but you’re trying to resuscitate a decade-deceased corpse there buddy. It just won’t work. The times have changed and you gotta swim or drown, and it’s just not gonna be 2005 again, no matter how hard you pretend it is. It’s not your content it’s your business model. Just push more marketing for your iplayer or whatever, focus on streaming as your primary not your secondary cause that’s just what it is now, and maybe don’t rely on the viewer-counting systems of the yesteryear to evaluate your business. Or else you’re gonna get stuck sacrificing the creative growth of your show for a marketing strategy that probably won’t even fucking WORK.

There, I got it of my chest. Feel free to reblog, and also: you somehow got to the end of this, congrats! I’ll make numbers nerds out of y’all yet.

#it's like. my sister and I were #watching a movie lately. the one with multiple will smiths and the de-aging tech #(don't recommend it it's real boring)#but when Youngened Will Smith appeared on the screen my sister got my spiting my tea laughing by innocently saying:#"oh i don't know this actor. it's nice that they're giving opportunities to the young actors. great to see a new face in the biz''#and u know what #this rehire is the same fucking vibe to me #some cunts from marketing plastering make-up to an old man's face and pretending its 2005 still #anyway #doctor who #i guess.

44 notes · View notes

booasaur · 3 years

Note

the residents' reactions to leyla saying she was living in her car was especially cartoon villain like too. it's a little laughable that the three of them complained about having to share an apartment when leyla didn't even have /that/ 6 months ago??? or even an ipad to study from?? and she should be humbled by their hardship??? tbh i'm hoping we see her bond more with the OG ED senior staff (turan, brunsetter, casey, etc). who needs the newbie residents.

And another anon:

“Sometimes the NA writers just don't think things through”. << a sentence I’ve said countless times over the seasons lol. Trying to tackle all the issues backfires, more often than not, because they usually fail to consider all the aspects of the actual character they’re using for the narrative and their analysis loses specificity and nuance, you’re so right. With the privilege conversation, I just found it so odd that 3 working class people wouldn’t at least pause their ranting once Leyla mentioned that not even a year ago she was homeless. Focusing on her so called come up and insisting that she was somehow now majorly privileged rubbed me the wrong way because the writing framed it like her gain was at their expense and conflating that with the assumed perks she’d get from dating the boss(something to actually be wary of) really rubbed me the wrong way. Because Lauren would have helped Leyla get the technology and resources anyway, just because she’s her girlfriend and Lauren’s just like that. I’d understand if they were bitching about Lauren giving Leyla preferential treatment but whining over her finances? Like are they annoyed at other residents that aren’t dating the boss but happen to be well off? It was just such clumsy reasoning and the writers really missed the mark there.

And another anon:

The residents' cattiness didn't make sense to me because a couple of fancy items doesn't make Leyla privileged *for dating Lauren*. If Leyla bought those herself, would she still be privileged? If she was using a leftover iPad from undergrad, would she still be privileged? Lauren treating her differently last episode was a valid callout, but as far as we know that got resolved. Redoing everything as trained attending is already enough of a setback.

I know, how could you not at least pause at hearing Leyla'd been homeless? Instead of somehow using it to make her look even worse? Silly.

And exactly, are they mad at Lauren for just being plain rich? At every other doctor who has more advantages than them? Or just Leyla? It just felt even worse because it's Leyla they're going after for being supposedly privileged, who we know has struggled so much.

Quite frankly, if they actually wanted to focus on the ethics of the situation, not knowing anything specific, it should have been Lauren they should have been suspicious of, not because she's rich--well, that too, but if I found out this homeless person was staying with her boss, the power dynamic direction they immediately jumped to is NOT the one that I would be thinking of. And ugh, I don't want to be all, damn, these bitter poor people jealous of, indirectly, Lauren's wealth so this is on the writers.

Which, yes, second anon, "they usually fail to consider all the aspects of the actual character they’re using for the narrative and their analysis loses specificity and nuance", yeahhhh, like, it's inevitable when you try to do these social justice one-offs. Like last season's, you can't just tackle racism like that by having Max decide to do a thing and then having Helen or individual patients explaining why that wouldn't work. I dunno, there was some good stuff, but at times it did the characters such a disservice and like, what's the resolution, then, if you're going to make all of systemic racism a discussion between two individuals. At the end of the ep, is that issue Solved?

I don't know what the fix is, is it better to NOT tackle this stuff at all? I wouldn't say that's the answer either. But at least focus on character first, yes.

#replies #femslash related stuff #sent on 20210929 #sent on 20210930 #Anonymous #new amsterdam #new amsterdam 4x02 #leyren

25 notes · View notes

masterthespianduchovny · 3 years

Text

Why I Write About David and Gillian’s Friendship

I have this one anon, and I do believe it’s the same person, who asks me, “if you’re so sure David and Gillian are friends, why are you so insecure?”

It’s such a peculiar statement to make because I’m merely expressing a dissenting opinion from a popular sentiment. I’m not attacking anyone or getting defensive, I’m just explaining my case.

I’d actually argue that antis are insecure because 1. They get hostile whenever someone asserts that Gillian and David get along 2. They send hate anon 3. They resort to slander and claim they’re being attacked for not liking David. 4. They’re actively watching my blog. :) I literally don’t tag any of my anon posts, yet they send in other anons responding to them.

If they’re so secure that David and Gillian aren’t friends, why do they care what I think, especially since it’s not harming or attacking anyone?

That’s called projection.

So, why do I write about David and Gillian?

For starters, they’re magic together and I’m clearly not the only one who thinks this. They’ve captivated fans, interviews, and photographers for almost 3 decades and that says a lot. For two people with such an enigmatic relationship, people cannot turn away.

Consequently, I examined my own fascination with David and Gillian by juxtaposing them with claims that they hated each other even present day.

And you know what?

I found that I didn’t agree with claims these two didn’t get along.

It’s not because I want them to be BFFs, which they aren’t, but because those who swear David and Gillian hate each other have an agenda.

I’m not asking for any, but I notice whenever I post about David and Gillian being friends, I receive hate anons usually shitting on David, yet none for Gillian. The remaining anons are usually clearing up facts or trying to understand what’s going on. But, like...96% of my anons, which I received around 30 within 24 hours, is about shitting on David.

How does that have anything to do with David and Gillian not being friends?

It doesn’t.

Even one of them reminded me of when Peter and Gillian got together, which has nothing to do with David and Gillian being friends. Funny enough, they went to bat for Peter claiming his was this oh so charming gentleman only to turn out he was a massive asshole--they propped Peter up to shit on David only for that to hit them in the face last year.

This misinformation campaign that David and Gillian aren’t friends is all because a small group of Philes hate David. I’m not here to argue if their opinions are valid or not because it's nothing I care to concern myself with. But, their feelings about David has nothing to do with his actual friendship with Gillian. Yet, they conflate the two to have Gillian mirror how they feel, which is inappropriate and false.

Their poor understanding of friendships is why they believe that since David and Gillian don’t see each other every day or talk regularly means that they aren’t friends. They believe since Gillian says she doesn’t know much about David, all while overlooking that Gillian has shitty memory, that this proves they aren’t friends.

In their minds, everything is PR and Hollywood BS.

When the simplest explanation is that they actually do get along.

Even if you argue that they needed to pretend to get along during the original run of the show, which have examples of this not being the case, it doesn’t explain their present behavior. It doesn’t explain them showing up to each other plays and promoting each others work outside of the x files even after season 1 ended. It doesn’t explain them casually bringing up each other when the question had nothing to do with each other. Or allowing the other to speak at the Hollywood star ceremonies.

Most importantly, claiming that they hate each other is calling Gillian Anderson a liar.

Gillian has stated on record that they do not hate each other. She has explicitly said that the work environment they had back then made shit tense at times. They have said that they’ve grown an appreciation for one another and wished they would’ve handled things differently. She has said she added to their friction back in the 90s.

Yet, her alleged fans call her a liar by dismissing her own words and running away with their own.

In their minds, every instance these two laugh together, smile at one another, have a good time, speak highly of the other, etc is all bullshit. They’re acting.

They say that people like Mark Mann who has personally spent time with them doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but they, internet stalkers know better than him. Their claims even goes against Jimmy Kimmel’s observation who was notably surprised at how well they got along. It was something that stuck out to him on at least three different occasions: behind the scenes, when the interview first started, and later on in the interview when he called them out again.

Again, all acting. :) It’s PR and Hollywood bullshit.

IMO, it’s absurd.

I write about Gillian and David’s friendship because I’m refusing to allow antis to continue to control the narrative and taint every interaction with their lies. To contextualize any blatant misrepresentation they’ve spewed these last few years. And to show that it’s okay to think D and G are friends, like it, and talk about it.

Because the only people who look delusional are those who keep insisting that two people who clearly enjoy each other actually hate each other.

How can two people who had a candid moment photographed into an iconic moment hate each other? Two people who a literal stranger said electrical energy surrounded them when they walked out of a room together? Two people where people (interviewers) remark on their chemistry (on and off screen)?

They give some of the best interviews together. They’re their most animated around each other. They bring out the best in each other (IMO). But, these two hate each other and aren’t friends.

When have we ever seen Gillian smile and laugh as much as she does with David?

My posts aren’t about romance, sex, or secret families (lol), just friendship and I receive hate anon for this shit. LOL.

The true insecure group are the anti David/anti gillovny folk (gillovny means more than romance so don't start).

In conclusion, altogether David and Gillian don’t talk frequently, from what we know, that doesn’t mean they don’t get along and/or aren't friends. There are different types of friendships with different frequencies and different expectations. But, these two clearly get along and enjoy each other’s company.

I’ll like to add something I forgot: Just like most relationships, romantic, platonic, or familial, people have their ups and downs. They don't always get along and sometimes issues are drawn out. That doesn’t mean two people hate each other, it means they need time to handle their own shit. Whatever crap David and Gillian may or may have not been arguing over in the past or present is their business. Neither have had issues saying how they’ve felt about each other before, so why now?

It’s because they don’t have an issue with each other, it’s all fandom bullshit.

#david duchovny #gillian anderson #David and gillian #Gillovny #:)

28 notes · View notes

revasnaslan · 4 years

Text

My reading on Hordak’s flashback scene from S3E2 is this… I do not believe it’s an accurate telling of the situation. To be clear, I don’t mean that I think Hordak was lying intentionally. On the contrary, I actually think he was being as truthful as he could have been, given the circumstances. He believes what he was saying to be true, even though I think canon was framed some things differently that throw his flashback into question when it comes to accuracy.

The tl;dr here is that I think Hordak has conflated his health issues with Prime’s dismissal of his agency and autonomy, due to memory issues brought on by previous mind wipes and/or his crash landing on Etheria.

One thing I’ve noticed is that all of the other flashback sequences in the show (e.g., the entirety of Shadow Weaver’s flashbacks in Light Spinner) are animated in the same style as the show proper. In contrast, Hordak’s flashback in animated in an entirely different style, one that is very sketchy and rather vague. In his flashback, faces do not have distinct features aside from their eyes, and the palette is rather simplistic. It is also told in the span of only a few minutes (if that), rather than spanning an entire episode’s B-Plot like Shadow Weaver’s flashbacks did, or how the entirety of Promise was framed. This could be interpreted as a stylistic shift that indicates how vague his memories actually are, in comparison to someone like Shadow Weaver or Catra, who remember their own memories very vividly.

I believe this vagueness is due to the aforementioned memory issues Hordak might have that were caused by a previous mind wipe. I do not imagine that having your brain stem hacked into really does anything good for your ability to recall old memories or create new ones. There is evidence that Hordak has had his mind wiped in the past. We see it in the flashback sequence I previously mentioned. During that sequence, Hordak is clearly lifted by his neck by Prime. Without any additional context brought on by the S4 finale, you wouldn’t be able to tell what was going on aside from Hordak being grabbed.

I highly suspect what we saw there, was Hordak being mind wiped by his brother. However, Hordak does not remember the context of it fully. You’d think he’d mention being mind wiped if he remembered it happening, but he doesn’t, and I suspect that framing is intentional. The only thing he remembers is being grabbed by his brother.

The context we have for why Prime grabbed Hordak in the first place is also sketchy to me upon deeper examination. Hordak tells Entrapta, and the audience, that his defect became apparent during a strategy meeting which caused him to faint in front of Prime. However, we have seen Hordak faint exactly once in canon, outside of that flashback. It was the result of him being upset and/or angry at Entrapta intruding on him when he was in a very vulnerable state. I suspect Hordak fainted during that strategy meeting because he was upset about a plan that Prime was trying to push through… as in, he didn’t agree with what it was Prime wanted to do.

So, he fainted, and Prime was angry because Hordak had argued against him, rather than because of his health issues.

Now, it is not my intention to suggest that Hordak is stupid for conflating his health issues with dismissal of his agency and autonomy. On the contrary I think Hordak is actually pretty intuitive, which is why I suspect he did the conflating in the first place. He was trying to put two-and-two together as best as he was able, with what context clues he had, and ended up coming to a conclusion that makes sense but was ultimately wrong.

And that is because Hordak is an unreliable narrator. However, I only came to that conclusion after the finale of S4, after seeing Prime for the first time. Most of my assumptions about him came from that flashback sequence, as I think a lot of people’s did. There’s a reason we all assumed that Prime would just look like a taller version of Hordak, perhaps with a couple more scars. I’m not going to go on a two thousand word long explanation for why I think Prime was and still is fond of Hordak—which I feel the need to stress, is not a good thing—but the tl;dr for that would simply be that Prime’s main motivation is control and the framing of his relationship with Hordak strikes me as that of a possessive family member who feels entitled to them.

I also want to be clear here. Hordak does not have plot armor. If you are unsure of what constitutes plot armor, I direct your attention to Catra, who survived the season finale despite having Hordak shooting his arm cannon at her for half an episode, which she proceeded to break with her heel. That is plot armor. Hordak doesn’t have it. If he was going to die, he would have done so in the season finale when he was reunited with Prime, and his death would have actually served two narrative purposes. The first is that he would have been fridged for Entrapta’s development, as a gender flip on the much more common trope of a woman being fridged for her male love interest’s development. The second is that his death would have easily set the stakes for the final season, for both the audience as well as Glimmer and Catra who would have witnessed it.

Which brings me to an important question. If Prime wanted Hordak dead so damn badly (as is implied by Hordak’s flashback), why didn’t Prime kill him? Hordak has already proven himself to be a liability at least twice that we know of, and yet Prime did not kill Hordak. He merely sent him away for reconditioning. I have my own theories for why, ranging from Hordak not actually being a clone at all but rather Prime’s younger sickly brother to Prime genuinely being fond of this one clone in particular for whatever reason…

But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see when season five rolls around.

#hordak #horde prime #meta #rev's rambling again #i apologize if there's any typos i wrote this up really quick

110 notes · View notes

cjrae · 5 years

Text

Fear And Loathing In Los Angeles; Or, When did Lucifer forgive Chloe?

So, something that’s been sticking with me are questions that I’ve seen popping up around Tumblr looking for clarification about Chloe conspiring with Kinley and whether Lucifer has (or even should) forgive her.

Spoiler alert, if you’ve watched Season 4 the answer is yes, Lucifer has forgiven Chloe. However, I think there’s actually something to the argument that he doesn’t fully forgive her until the climax of 4x10. After all, Lucifer continues to throw Kinley in Chloe’s face multiple times throughout the back half of the season. That’s not dialogue of someone who’s completely forgiven the other person.

Others have pointed out that the whole point of 4x05 is to bring Chloe and Lucifer back together as partners and they’re absolutely right - there is a certain amount of forgiveness that happens within that episode.

The big question is; what exactly has Lucifer forgiven and when?

The Plot To Send Lucifer To Hell

Chloe’s betrayal of Lucifer is actually not her working with Kinley to send him back to hell. The fact that she doesn’t actually go through with the plan to drug him is irrelevant to the hurt that she causes. But, because it’s the physical action that represents her betrayal, it’s easy for the audience (and Chloe herself) to try to backpedal and say that she almost betrayed Lucifer, but in the end, she trusted her own judgment and put a stop to it.

There’s no doubt that Lucifer is hurt by the plan to send him back to the one place he’s spent so much effort to escape forever, but Kinley’s plan exposes the real betrayal - the fact that Chloe is terrified of him. Worse - that she pretended not to be and lied to him that she had processed seeing his Devil face and that “what I saw was my partner.”

She gave him hope and then that hope was revealed to be a lie.

Watch Lucifer’s face and body language after Chloe screams the line, “Because I’m terrified!” Before that he’s hurt, he’s angry, but he’s facing her and prepared to have this fight out. He’s willing to fight for their relationship until this moment. But that line is the betrayal. Because the poison that’s been introduced is fear - and that can’t be removed as easily as Kinley’s vial.

That’s the moment he turns his back, unable to look at her except to finally confront her once more with incontrovertible proof of his identity after she tries to deny to him that he is the Devil. Cain’s words must be ringing in his ears at this moment. “Neither can you.” He’s been running from the Devil ever since his Fall.

But he can’t escape who he is, and the fact of the matter is that his past glee in “sowing chaos and destruction for his own amusement,” has grown into every awful story that has terrified Chloe – with good reason. Indeed, arguably the most famous of those seeds is going to show up in the final scene of 4x03, when Eve steps into LUX.

Apologies

Ella puts her finger on Lucifer’s pain in 4x05 - that idea that Chloe doesn’t care about him anymore. After all, she certainly wasn’t acting like she cared in front of him in 4x04 - she flat out told him she didn’t actually need him, she used his help and then left him without the necklace he needed to fulfill his end of the deal. From his perspective, it must feel like she only wants him back to work when she needs something, like one of his vintage cars.

When Marco bursts into LUX, demanding to be given a chance to apologize to his ex-wife it is, as always with the procedural elements, symbolic for the apology that Chloe owes Lucifer. When Leona comes in and apologizes to Marco for ghosting him, it’s powerful - until the apology is proven false. Chloe is confronted with a mirror in the form of Leona, using what Marco desperately wanted to hear as a distraction to get close enough to kill him. And Chloe doesn’t much like what she sees.

Her apology in the famous ax scene of 4x02 is important for her (and her realization that Kinley is wrong), but it doesn’t actually address the hurt that she caused because Lucifer had no idea what she was actually apologizing for. The act of throwing herself between Lucifer and the anticipated explosion serves the purpose, even as she ostensibly says “I’m sorry” for hurting him by landing on top of his wound.

Through the show we’ve seen Lucifer literally die for Chloe - this is the first time that she actively proves to him that she would do the same for him, without hesitation, since knowing exactly who and what he is. It’s the ax scene in reverse. Ella’s lines echo in parallel to Lucifer’s declaration;

“You two care about each other so much! What do you need her to do, take a bullet for you?”

“And I would do it again. And again. Don’t you know that, Detective?”

The core of their relationship may be a raw, exposed nerve right now, but it’s still there and intact. Having proof that she still cares that deeply is enough that Lucifer can forgive her for her direct actions in response to her terror - actively considering hurting him and lying to him.

But that amount of forgiveness is only enough to rescue their partnership. The core betrayal – her fear - remains.

Diet Devil

The second half of the season opens with Lucifer tearing himself in two in order to keep Chloe from being frightened.

Eve is absolutely right when she points out that Lucifer has been holding himself back, just mistaken about his motives. She conflates the self-restraint Lucifer has learned with his simmering resentment at Chloe only being able to accept the pieces of him that she views as “good” - resentment that finally spills over when Lucifer confesses to Chloe that he’s the one who broke Julian’s back.

Lucifer has spent months being patient, careful, considerate and feels like he’s barely treading water. In 4x07 he confronts her with the Devil at his coldest and most cutting, not caring anymore whether he scares her. He dares her to reject him again so he can finally snap the tension and drown his pain and self-loathing in the Devil that Eve is encouraging him to be.

This moment is the turning point for Chloe. This is the moment that she sees Lucifer at his absolute worst - wrathful, vengeful, seemingly proud of what he’s done and absolutely daring her to criticize him for it.

Instead of crumbling against his resentment and anger the way she would have at the beginning of the season, she stands her ground. Lucifer is the one who flees back to his penthouse with Eve to “plan” Tiernan’s punishment, already stalling in the face of Chloe’s disappointment in him.

Chloe Decker, a “nobody,” holds the Devil to account with no power except her faith in Lucifer’s conscience.

By the end of the episode, her faith is justified - and she’s finally capable of confronting Kinley on her own, no longer frightened and lost, but secure in her faith that Lucifer is a good man - which she throws in Kinley’s face.

Once again, Kinley attempts to use fear to bring Chloe back into line by telling her about the prophecy, appealing to her best instincts to protect others, the corner of his mouth twitching in an aborted smile when he sees her respond to “Lucifer’s first love,” knowing that he’s succeeded in frightening her.

Except this time Chloe goes straight to Lucifer to confide in him.

Lucifer himself doesn’t quite appreciate this at the time because seeing her afraid at all rubs him the wrong way, as does the fact that she tells him about going to see Kinley after the fact. His own fear swamps him, encouraging him to be sarcastic and her throw her complicity in the plan to send him to Hell in her face as a visceral way to remind her not to trust Kinley. While he’s forgiven her actions, Kinley himself has become a symbol of Chloe’s fear of him, which he has not yet forgiven.

In fact, I’d argue that it’s not possible for him to forgive Chloe yet because the offense is ongoing. We the audience can see that she IS conquering her fear and re-learning who her partner is from the ground up – every part of him this time. But acceptance is an ongoing process and Lucifer is far from objective on the subject.

Where Is My Beast?

If 4x07 is where Chloe sees Lucifer at his worst, 4x09 is when she confronts the monster. As each individual piece of Lucifer transforms, Chloe handles it, not with perfect calm, but by confronting and conquering her fear to focus on helping Lucifer – and proving that she does know exactly who Lucifer is, responding to the question that was put to her in the previous episode with actions, not words.

At no point does she kick him off the case, despite him falling into his usual pattern of projecting his issues onto it or the fact that his transformation is becoming increasingly difficult to hide.

Instead of letting him brood in his penthouse, she arranges a masquerade party for the sting so that Lucifer can go downstairs masked when his Devil face inevitably pops out because she knows just how social Lucifer is and that being alone will only make him spiral down faster.

When he loses control of his mojo and the masquerade at LUX turns into a nightmare, Chloe is there to take control, shepherding Lucifer to safety while also having the presence of mind to keep her ear to the ground for the case and asking the question “Why did you desire...” when Lucifer is unable to make eye contact.

When Beth verbalizes Lucifer’s own self-hatred, his Devil face is fully out - and while he walks behind Beth’s back, Chloe watches him without a hint of fear - only concern.

The full transformation DOES shock her, and she has trouble looking at him - and that’s by design. His full transformation is designed to shock and terrify anyone who looks at him, including demons. The camera is very careful to watch Chloe’s face when Lucifer steps out, fully transformed. We see her eyes widen in horror and she takes a step back before looking away (echoing the initial fight in 4x03), before focusing on how she deliberately looks back at Lucifer when he says “I’m poison to anyone who dares to care about me. And especially you.”

This is where the traditional Beauty and the Beast recognition of the man and the beast being the same person has been shuffled and flipped on its head. Chloe’s been struggling to reconcile what has felt to her like the two opposite sides of Lucifer’s personality – the good man (angel) that she knows and the monster (Devil) that is lurking underneath. This is the moment that the two sides merge for her – when she realizes that the beast is a manifestation of Lucifer’s declared self-hatred.

What does she do? The exact opposite of running away. She goes after Lucifer. She’s able to use her own journey to acceptance to help him start down the path of his own. This is the first moment they both begin to reap the fruit of the season’s emotional labor. Lucifer’s revelation that he doesn’t want to be trapped in this destructive cycle anymore allows the Beast to melt away, revealing the man underneath to Chloe and finally allowing Lucifer full control over his body.

The Vial Reappears

The pure joy that Lucifer exhibits in the beginning of 4x10 is just as much about Chloe having demonstrated that she won’t run away from the monster as it is his overly optimistic hope that wanting to forgive himself is the same thing as actually doing it. Which is why he’s so startled when he seems to run smack into the exact same issues with Chloe that’s been plaguing them all season – and in response, backslides.

Chloe seems to care enough to face her fear of the monster, but Lucifer can’t bear her pulling away in the aftermath. So, he promises her that she’ll “never have to see anything monstrous ever again.” He shoots down her idea to bring Dan and Ella into the loop because of how long it takes to recover (or not recover) from that kind of revelation, making it utterly clear to Chloe that he believes that he’s damaged her permanently.

Meanwhile, Chloe’s had a better bead on the threat that Hell represents since she heard Kinley’s prophecy. Where Lucifer used the prophecy as an excuse to break up with Eve, Chloe has put the pieces together and recognized that if;

a.) The Devil is a good man and b.) demons could potentially roam the earth then, c.) what logically follows is that the Devil would have to do something about it.

The Devil is no longer a threat because he’s a monster. The Devil is a threat because it’s the title of the responsibilities that could take Lucifer away from her.

Of course, Chloe is terrible at articulating all of this. No one can blame Lucifer for interpreting the scene at the penthouse as Chloe’s fear of him once again coming to the forefront, even as she tries to backtrack and say what she actually means. In trying to protect him, she’s ripped open the old wound.

Once again, she’s been keeping something important from him, working on her own instead of with him as her partner and, once again, Kinley is the cause.

At this point, Lucifer’s had it. Even in expressing his irritation there’s fatigue and resignation - he’s given up and accepted that Chloe doesn’t want to handle the monster and that she shouldn’t be forced to do so just to satisfy his own need for acceptance.

The fact that Lucifer has kept Kinley’s vial hidden in his safe all this time is symbolic of the fact that he hasn’t finished letting any of this go yet. He’s got a perfectly good explanation for why he had it, but it’s a kernel of poison hidden deep within the heart of his home. A hidden reminder to him that even the person he loves most could turn on him. And, just as symbolically, it’s ripped out of his home by force.

Kinley’s plot to send Lucifer back to Hell has come full circle and now threatens a baby – the definition of an innocent victim. There’s no more avoiding the subject; Lucifer needs to know exactly what the full plan was to send him to Hell and how he phrases it is interesting – his tone is accusing, but he uses the past tense. “Back when you wanted me in Hell?”

This is the first time Chloe defends herself. “Well, as you know, I didn’t go through with it.” Pointing out to him that by the time he found out about the plot, she had already abandoned it, recognizing that she was wrong.

It doesn’t really buy her any quarter, now does it? The expression on Lucifer’s face never changes because the roofie was never the real issue. But, with the vial gone, he’s able to acknowledge that the incident is in the past and confront it head on with Chloe to save Charlie.

Forgiveness And Acceptance

It’s not until Chloe abandons all thought of common sense or good timing, going in to check on Lucifer (despite him telling her explicitly to say outside), with the two symbols of her fear literally behind them – the vial on the altar and what’s left of Kinley – that they come full circle.

“I don’t want you to see me like this. I know it scares you.” His voice is harsh, still shaking with battle adrenaline and terror, his body language braced for rejection.

Finally, Chloe is able to spit the truth out - and is immediately called on to prove it. The actual monsters are swarming them and the only thing that can save them all is an even bigger monster. This isn’t Lucifer transformed in the penthouse, where he’s doing his very best to not threaten her, his voice still perfectly familiar and dripping with self-loathing.

This is the first time Chloe sees Lucifer as the King of Hell in the moment he reclaims the title.

His wings are outstretched to intimidate, his voice booms with the power to instantly command his subjects to kneel leaving him completely unrecognizable. He can’t afford to focus on her in that moment, but the camera can.

She’s NOT calm. Her eyes are wide, she’s gasping slightly and she’s trembling. But she does not look away – her eyes stay RIGHT on him until she sees the demons obey and she glances around as they fall. Then she looks back and she sees Lucifer, staring at her, his heart in his throat.

This time the question, “Can you accept me like this?” is silent. And so is her answer – her mouth closes, she stands up straight and she smiles at him.

She’s proud of him in that moment. And her pride in him reinforces his own pride. That tiny nod he gives Chloe at the end, when she’s not just declared that her fear is gone but proved it? That’s the moment Lucifer forgives her entirely. Because that’s the moment she’s made the only restitution Lucifer would accept – her own acceptance of him.

So, Your Point?

Forgiveness and acceptance are major themes of Season 4 and they’re not easy to achieve, nor can they happen in a single moment. One of Lucifer’s biggest mistakes of the season is trying to force the issue of his identity with Chloe.

Forgiveness requires not only the recognition of wrong, but also action to be taken to address the cause of the offense. It is an active process, not a passive gift that can simply be given out as a reward for good behavior.

Acceptance, like forgiveness, is also an active process that can’t be rushed. Neither Chloe nor Lucifer receive the rewards of their emotional labor until the very end, when they have both forgiven and accepted each other as they are. Lucifer finally receives Chloe’s love and Chloe finally sees Lucifer’s angel wings. It’s bittersweet, but earned.

#lucifer meta #lucifer analysis #lucifer season 4 #lucifer on netflix #lucifer morningstar #chloe decker #deckerstar #lucifer season four spoilers #forgiveness #acceptance #long text post

281 notes · View notes

hollenius · 5 years

Text

re neurodivergent headcanons in Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul, I think the first time (a year or so ago) I read something where someone online suggested Chuck was somewhere on the autism spectrum (high functioning/Aspergers), I laughed it off as a ridiculous suggestion, because he didn’t “fit” many of the stereotypical traits seen in other fictional characters or in the popular conception of the topic…but in retrospect, I think that came more from my misunderstanding of the “spectrum” part of it than anything else. It’s definitely a plausible/possible diagnosis comorbid with the anxiety disorder(s) he canonically has.

· We know Chuck’s a good actor (e.g. his ability to fool Jimmy in “Klick”) and is able to mimic and slip into different sorts of social behaviors (e.g. his ability to social climb from a working class or lower-middle-class family to the world of white shoe law firms), so he’s probably capable of using masking in most public settings. This is apparently a more common trait in autistic women, but men do it as well, if less frequently.

· Studies asking about the long-term effects of masking seem to imply it takes a physical/emotional/mental toll on the person using it, which might explain why, by the time we see him in BCS, the stress of acting “normal” in meetings and the like, when compounded with the worsening of his anxiety problems, leaves him curled up under a space blanket for hours or even days afterward. Trying to compensate for multiple issues at once is probably even more taxing.

· He seems prone to getting overwhelmed by things and either shutting down or lashing out in reaction. The most extreme form of the former is when he goes catatonic for hours/days in response to being tazed or put in the CAT scan machine; the most extreme form of the latter is probably him completely losing it and shouting/crying/having to be physically restrained by the hospital staff because he’s so upset about being surrounded by lights/hooked up to an EKG/being recommended for a CAT scan.

· Contrary to stereotypes, Chuck is decent at reading people (or at least he’s extremely good at reading his brother and knowing how he behaves) and he interacts well with people within a work context, but he doesn’t seem to have any friends outside of it, or much in the way of a social life–the other lawyers hold him in awe as a sort of glorified animate law encyclopedia, rather than someone they would want to hang out with or chat with informally. (Though Chuck doesn’t come across as the sort who would be interested in chit chat with coworkers anyway...) Being totally housebound and cut off from the outside world is upsetting to Chuck primarily because it interferes with his work as a lawyer–we never get the sense that he’s upset about it having any effect on his interpersonal relationships, because he doesn’t seem to have any. This is probably why losing Rebecca hit him so hard. He’s got almost nobody else, besides Jimmy and Howard, and he’s really not emotionally open and unguarded with anyone.

· He’s got problems dealing with his emotions in general. Even when he’s trying to do his little pain/emotion/medication journal as part of his psychiatric treatment towards the end of season 3, he seems to struggle with articulating his emotional state–he’s just got “average” written down for most of the incidents he’s logged, but he’s not able to write down what his emotion is after he’s unable to sleep after insulting/lying to Jimmy to drive him away for the final time, and he seems to abandon writing in the journal after that & rapidly deteriorates psychologically. From what we see of him in the show, he seems to alternate between being extremely repressed and completely exploding and freaking out.

· Some people have no interest in having or wanting friends, but I don’t think Chuck’s one of them. He seems pretty lonely. He remarks to Jimmy at one point in season 1 that he doesn’t really mind him hanging around to work on the Sandpiper case in his house because he’s glad for the company, which makes his systematic driving away of Jimmy and the few other people in his life all the sadder. The whole root of Chuck’s jealousy of Jimmy in the first place is that people like Jimmy, and they don’t like him. He makes attempts at being friendly, but struggles to do it on anything deeper than a surface level. (Of course, a lot of Jimmy’s friendliness and charm tends to be pretty shallow too, but I don’t know that Chuck really appreciates that or can tell the difference–all he sees are the results.)

· He’s tone-deaf with jokes–he famously botches the attempt at a lawyer joke to his wife in the opening flashback in “Rebecca”, but he also makes an awkward attempt at humor when talking to Kim in a present-day scene later in that same episode (“the early bird gets the worm, which is good if you like worms”), which leads to some uncomfortable forced laughter from her. Some people are just serious by nature, but they probably wouldn’t bother trying to make jokes in the first place if that were the case. The fact that Chuck keeps trying to make jokes and failing suggests that there might be some impairment in that area. He sees Jimmy do it, and he sees it work for him, but can’t really manage it himself. (He seems to do ok with deadpan sarcasm though–that comment about young people loving local print journalism is probably my favorite Chuck quote.)

· He’s very verbal and articulate, but his speech patterns can be a bit odd. He can be indirect and overly formal, which may or may not be an overcompensation for the more stereotypical autistic behavior of being too direct in speech as to be insensitive. He usually winds up still coming off as elitist and assholish anyway, though he may not be intending this/aware of this. When he’s nervous or upset, he tends to devolve into talking at people rather than to them, such as when he starts rambling on about probable cause and assorted legal precedents to the police officers who show up at his house in “Alpine Shepherd Boy”, without noticing that they aren’t even standing at the door anymore. He’s got a lot of information rattling around in his head, which he throws out as a defense, but not always in a way that is helpful; I don’t think talking about Latin translations of the Hippocratic Oath to the doctors sedating him without his consent before sending him in for a CAT scan is doing him any good (NB: the actual Hippocratic Oath is in Greek anyway, and the phrase Primum non nocere dates from a later period, so either Chuck has no idea what he’s talking about, he’s conflating two related things, or he’s freaking out enough that he doesn’t really care at this point).

· He seems to ignore other people when they’re talking to him altogether if something sets him off or distracts him–when Howard tells him about Kim quitting HHM and teaming up with Jimmy, Chuck immediately tunes him out, to the point where Howard has to ask him if he’s still listening. Chuck says he is, but then walks off in the middle of Howard talking because he’s still distracted by what he said before, sending a confused/concerned Howard following after him. This is at its most extreme when he goes into his rant in “Chicanery” and is totally oblivious to both Galley pleading with him to stop and everybody else in the room staring at him in growing horror/disbelief until he’s far past the point of no return.

· I’m actually sort of curious about Chuck’s abilities in court prior to the visible deterioration of his mental health, because although he clearly knows a lot about the law, his personality is a bit off-putting. I don’t know if he just sort of brute-forced his way through things because of his knowledge of obscure case law, because based on what I know from the lawyers I’m friends with, there are all sorts of subjective factors that can come into play in a court setting. The sort of things that would drive someone like Chuck nuts, like jurors who deliberately choose to ignore evidence because they’ve decided in advance that they don’t want to convict someone of a crime. (To be fair, this would also drive me completely insane, because I have a really hard time at my own job dealing with people who think the rules shouldn’t apply to them for various reasons.)

· Chuck has an EXTREMELY black and white view of the world, and a sort of obsession with the authority of law and the importance of following the rules. He’s got really strong perfectionist tendencies within himself. I think a lot of why he gravitates toward the law is that he seems to find all the rules and procedures comforting, in a way--there’s a uniformity to the way the legal world works, and a framework in which everything proceeds--constraints which are equally binding on all participants.

· Maybe he just knows a ton about the law because he’s a lawyer, but it might also fall into the case of it being a special interest, since his knowledge of obscure case law seems to be regarded as extensive and superlative even by other lawyers. (He reads FEC and ISO reports for fun!)

· There’s something slightly elliptical about his thinking, and he doesn’t seem to realize that other people aren’t following his thought patterns. (He repeats his “One after Magna Carta!” justification for knowing the Mesa Verde address to Kim and Jimmy in season 2 as well as to the officials from the Bar in season 3, which seems to suggest that he thinks it is a very obvious and logical connection that other people should grasp, though I’m not sure that it actually is outside of his head.)

· I’m not entirely sure where the line between nervous tics and stimming is drawn, but he’s got a lot of little fidgety behaviors that come out especially when he’s stressed, especially scratching or shaking or wringing his hands. (The script to “Chicanery” indicates that he’s nearly drawing blood from digging into his hands while on his big rant, but it’s not visible onscreen because we’ve got that wonderful/agonizing slow zoom onto his face instead.) It's not clear if it predates the EHS or not. Sometimes there’s a clear tie in his behavior to perceived pain from electricity, but sometimes there’s not--sometimes it seems to result from him trying to distract himself from the electricity instead, like when he’s trying to stand outside the house for two minutes in “Bingo”. Sometimes he does it while he’s standing around in his house, thinking about something else, like while rehearsing arguments against Jimmy before he heads in to court in “Chicanery”.

· There’s a pretty strong preference for routine/predictability & distress when it’s altered. (Most people probably would not get so suspicious if a single newspaper wasn’t delivered one day, for example. If it was repeated or frequent or a pattern, yes, but not for a single paper.) His control issues are brought up pretty frequently in fandom discussions; maybe he’s a jerk, maybe he’s just not able to function well in unpredictable situations, maybe it’s a little of both (e.g. Chuck being really bothered by Ernie bringing him the wrong kind of apples, then saying that it didn’t really bother him that much...but then telling Ernie to write it down so that he would get the right apple the next time, indicating that he actually WAS bothered by it)

· It’s possible his perceived sensitivity to electricity grew out of an existing natural sensitivity or aversion to extremes in light or sound or anything else, but this is pure conjecture because we get so few flashback scenes. (Speaking only from personal experience, I don’t think I’m hurt by electricity, but I can hear lights when they’re turned on, and get uncomfortable/anxious under certain types of light, like fluorescents in big box stores when out shopping, so maybe someone who’s more sensitive to sensory things in general might be more prone to developing a sort of learned distress out of that.)

All of this is very inconclusive! But it’s totally plausible as a reading of the character.

#long post #meta #better call saul #chuck McGill #long posts about loathed characters!

32 notes · View notes

sophygurl · 5 years

Text

WisCon 43 panel Antisemitism at WisCon

Over the course of its existence, there have been many examples of antisemitism at WisCon—a trend often echoed in other leftist spaces, where microaggressions to naked hostility to just plain erasure keep occurring. Let's talk about why this continues to happen, why it's so rarely talked about, and what we can do to prevent it.

Moderator: Becky Allen. Panelists: Gerri Balter, Paul Goodman, Jessica Plummer

Disclaimers: These are only the notes I was personally able to jot down on paper during the panel. I absolutely did not get everything, and may even have some things wrong. Corrections by panelists or other audience members always welcome. I name the mod and panelists because they are publicly listed, but will remove/change names if asked. I do not name audience members unless specifically asked by them to be named. If I mix up a pronoun or name spelling or anything else, please tell me and I’ll fix it!

[Quick Notes: 1) This panel was created in large part (though not exclusively) due to a panel that I also attended last year and wrote my notes up about - which can be found here for my tumblr post and here for my DW post - each having their own replies/comments for anyone who wants to see those. The panel last year, called The Desire for Killable Bodies, went sideways when one of the panelists started spouting nazi apologism and other awful things. There’s a context for all of this, which is why I’m linking to my panel write-ups as they served as a space for others to share what they heard and experienced so that you can understand this context and also understand that this wasn’t just a couple of people upset - there was a large audience for this panel and lots and lots of us were upset, and lots of us made reports to the concom, and there is a consensus about what happened. 2) I add all of this because the panel I’m about to write up also had a disturbance in regards to what happened last year and I want to make sure there is full context for what happened with That, as well. 3) Also of note: I had to edit out the tags “nazis” and “antisemitism” for my linked post to appear in my own tags on my own tumblr blog so fuck that noise. I’m getting angrier and angrier about tumblr’s tagging rules - we should be able to tag shit like that for content warnings for fuck’s sake. Anyway, on to the actual write-up. 4) Well, one last note - the panel is, obviously, talking about incidents of experienced antisemitism at both WisCon and in other leftist spaces and it was hard for me, who is not Jewish, to take that all in. So be prepared that this is a difficult, but very important, conversation about to be reported on.]

Notes:

Becky began the panel by saying she was both sad and glad to be doing this. Everyone on this panel is Jewish, and everyone on the panel has experienced antisemitic microaggressions here at WisCon at some point or another.

Jessica said the incident last year was the most extreme one, but certainly not the first.

Paul introduced himself as a lawyer for public policy at a non-profit and said that he has experienced antisemitism here and in every progressive space he’s ever been in.

Gerri introduced herself saying that she is 74 years old and that she has experienced antisemitism her whole life. Her parents escaped the Ukraine after WWI and she grew up hearing horror stories.

Becky gave some background on what happened at the Killable Bodies panel last year. She added that safety did a good job at handling things after it all happened.

Jessica added that she proposed this panel due to what happened at that panel.

At this point, someone in the audience popped in, asking if we were going to talk about the specifics of that panel and arguing about what was really said. It was clear that this person was friends with the panelist who said the offending comments last year and he was defending her and arguing with the panelists about their own experiences at that panel. Both Jessica and Becky worked to shut him down, and I noticed several folks in the audience standing up and getting ready to escort this person out if necessary. Becky finally said that if he kept on, he would have to leave - or he could be quiet and remain and listen. He chose to remain quiet, and remained so for the duration (at least to my knowledge - he was seated a bit away from me, but I didn’t hear any more interruptions, at least).

Jessica went back to explaining about how she proposed this panel. She was worried there might not be enough people to be on the panel - some of the people she approached had said maybe, to go ahead and suggest the panel and put them on as possibilities.

[As a side note - there are a couple of ways of staffing a panel like this. One, which is what Jessica did, is to suggest some possible panelists and programming can see about adding them to the list but other people can still volunteer to be on the panel. The other is to hand-staff a panel, which means the person proposing the panel has already specified who should be on the panel and it is otherwise closed to other panelists. This is often done when a panel absolutely has to have a certain demographic - such as a panel like this which necessitates an all Jewish panel or a panel about trans issues where you want everyone on the panel to be trans, etc.]

So, Jessica had gone with that first way and suggested some possible panelists, but there was a mix-up with programming and all of the names of the suggested panelists were listed as panelists, the panel was closed to volunteers, and private communication that Jessica had submitted to programming was also added to the published panel information.

This was problematic for a number of reasons. One reason is that the people Jessica has suggested were all people in her own friend group, which included mostly people similar to herself. This was keeping voices different from herself from being on the panel, including people marginalized for other reasons.

Another problem was the listing of names of people who had not decided if they wanted to be on the panel or not. For obvious historical reasons (and the panel gets into this in more detail a little later), public lists of Jewish people causes a lot of anxiety for Jewish folks.

At this point, Becky and Jessica acknowledged that most microaggressions are not intentional. They don’t think, for example, that programming did any of this on purpose.

Gerri said that she wasn’t here last year, but that she’s been coming to WisCon for a long time. She said WisCon used to be mostly people talking about books they’ve read. She remembers many years ago when she’d read Wandering Stars: A Jewish Anthology of Fantasy and Science and Fiction by Jack Dann and she was excited to be reading stories about Jews in space.

Gerri recommended the book to someone at WisCon and that person kind of took a step back and said “I didn’t know you were one of those.” Everyone else in the group walked away, leaving her to confront this on her own. He then asked her if her name was her real name.

Gerri was raised by parents who were always telling her to get ready for when she was no longer welcomed. But even living in a world with a lot of overt antisemitism, she didn’t really believe them about that until the moment described above.

Paul talked about how 11-20% of Jews in the US are POC, that Jews are poor and middle class at the same rates as everyone else, and that these are things people don’t always understand. He also said they were not going to discuss Israel on this panel, adding there could be a whole entire con just about that, but that one thing that happens, especially in leftist spaces, is a conflation of Israel with Zionism and Zionism with Judaism and Judaism with every individual Jewish person.

Jessica told about a panel a few years back about Agent Carter. The focus was on the lack of diversity, which was true. But season two heavily implied that Howard Stark came from a Jewish family who had changed their name. The moderator of that panel waved it away as not very important. Jessica, in the audience, had tweeted using the # for the panel about how significant that representation was to her. The mod saw the tweet during the panel and apologized.

Jessica also said that friends of hers who were not here shared their own stories about incidents involving everything from off-color Anne Frank jokes to serious incidents that were brought to safety.

Becky said that they all kept repeating that they know most of these things are not malicious, but she wants to acknowledge that they still hurt. She wants people to think harder about these things, but she’s not trying to call specific people out right now.

Becky added that as a white Jewish person, she’s in a liminal space of privilege and oppression. She notes that leftists do these kinds of microaggressions a lot, but they’re the ones that should care about Not doing them.

Gerri talked about how fandom began with a lot of Jewish people. So when she got into it, she felt it would be safe. Many cons used to have spaces for services programmed in and one even had a Passover room with food they could eat during the holiday. She’s not sure how or when that went away, but she misses it. Some of it might be the lack of ability to accommodate all religions.

Gerri also talked about conversations that end up leading to “those Jews and their banks”. She objects, but has been told she doesn’t understand because she’s Jewish. “I understand I didn’t have toys as a child because we were too poor.” People try and take it back and it can be hard not to just say it’s okay.

Jessica talked about more of these things people believe falsely about Jewish people. One is the “Christ killer” thing. In a poll she saw, 60% of Americans believe that Jews killed Jesus. Actually - it was the Romans.

Paul said intent in these things doesn’t always matter. For example, he was told Jews make the best lawyers - this is supposed to be a compliment, but it isn’t.

Paul and Jessica talked about some of the antisemitic dog whistles that people use such as “globalist” and “lizard people” - it used to be “Hollywood.”

Becky added that there are a lot of fannish memes that use the lizard people one - folks don’t get that it originates from antisemitism. (Example: “I, for one, support our new lizard overlords.”)

Becky also talked about growing up in a small town where hers was the only Jewish family. She was asked if she had horns, and was asked to come to church with friends so that she wouldn’t go to hell.

Becky said that Jewish people are always in fear of when it might be time to pack up and leave. Trumpism is making that fear feel very real right now. The idea of knowing there are people in her neighborhood who want her dead is hard. But it’s also hard that with the people she organizes with politically - events are often held on Jewish holidays. “I can’t organize on Yom Kippur - I’m too hungry!”

Jessica talked about a time she was in France and didn’t want to go with friends to the Jewish museum because she didn’t want to telegraph her Jewishness. She grew up in Brooklyn and believed when she was younger that all white people were Jewish. Then she moved to NJ and heard her first Jewish jokes, and learned about “looking Jewish.”

Jessica told a story about a boy she and her friend both had a crush on. But then she heard this boy make a joke about someone who was Jewish, saying “oh he must be hiding in the oven.” Her friend said it was no big deal and that Jews should get over the holocaust.

Jessica said that the holocaust was the largest manifestation of antisemitic genocide, but that is because technology allowed it to be. Jewish history is full of examples of genocide. The joke about Jewish holidays is “they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.”

Paul brought up the concept of generational trauma. Even if it hasn’t happened to you or in your lifetime, knowing your culture’s history and being told about it from your elders instills trauma all the same.

Becky posed the question to the panelists of how they would like to see WisCon and other spaces supporting Jewish people.

Paul talked about Jewish holidays not being recognized. Also - when antisemitic microaggressions happen - someone else needs to step in. It can’t only be Jewish people doing the work themselves.

Gerri said to simply think before speaking and if something comes out bad - apologize and mean it. Then work harder at it.

Jessica said she thought the idea of services was a good one. She added that she requested this panel be on a Sunday due to Shabbat.

Jessica would also like more recognition about the pluralism of Jewishness. And generally just more axis of diversity when it comes to all religions.She notes that even discussions of atheism tend to come through a Christian lens.

Becky said that a lot of things that are considered to be secular or neutral are not. For example: Christmas.

Jessica added she’d like the removal of the phrase Judeo-Christian. It means nothing. If you mean Abrahamic religions, say that, and make sure you’re including Islam.

Gerri advised asking questions so that you don’t unintentionally hurt people.

Becky talked about a panel this year about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Good Place. Someone had said that Judaism was not used in the main character on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Becky had raised her hand to say that no, her Judaism was important. The panelist apologized and admitted they were out of their lane. It was a good exchange. If something is said wrong in good faith - it’s not an issue for it to be brought up.

Jessica added that one of the core values of Judaism is asking questions.

That said, Becky said it was time for audience questions but set some guidelines first. No talking about Israel, as that’s a derail. No oppression olympics. The panelists are allowed to stop or to just not answer if they wish. And there will be no denying any of the panelists experiences.

The first audience question was about how to better understand Jewish experiences.

Gerri didn’t have a specific rec because each book or perspective is just one out of many.

Jessica talked about the difficulty in rec-ing a list of Jewish authors without creating a Nazi hit list. But she added that a lot of our pop culture is Jewish - comic books, comedy, musical theater, etc.

Gerri rec’d an old movie - Gentleman’s Agreement with Gregory Peck.

Paul said that a useful exercise is when watching media and a Jewish character is on screen - how are we being treated? Often, it’s not good.

An audience member rec’d the wikipedia article on antisemitism.

Becky said - what if we stopped having space Jews who are greedy, such as the Ferengi.

Jessica said the only good Jews in space is Mel Brook’s Jews in Space.

Someone in the audience discussed the conspiracy theories about cabals and Jewish people having secret privilege. This undercuts the actual oppression of Jewish people. Antisemitism is getting bolder again, so we have to be more loud about confronting it. There is a culture of assimilation due to the fear of “being on the list” and the trauma around that. The audience member acknowledged they were layering questions within questions, but Jessica said “no, this is very Jewish, keep going!”

Gerri said that when she was growing up, Jews were loud. Her mom would tell her to be more quiet or they’ll think you’re Jewish. She was like, well I am Jewish! But there can be a real fear that being loud might cause you to die.

Paul recommends punching Nazi’s every day.

Jessica advised allies to ask how to best support. She gave the example of the triple parenthesis issue on twitter, which was something supremacists were using to designate people they thought were Jewish. Some people started using the triple parenthesis on purpose in protest, but this was very upsetting to a lot of Jewish people due, again, to the issue of the list, being publicly Jewish, the generational trauma there, etc. Jessica said to speak for Jewish people when necessary, but never over them.

Becky asked the panelists for last words or rec’s.

Gerri said Isaac Asimov

Paul said there are lots of resources at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.

Becky said Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, also the author Katherine Locke - specifically The Girl with the Red Balloon, a time travel book with Jewish characters.

Jessica said there are too few YA speculative fiction books with Jewish characters. She does recommend early comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, etc. Superman, Spider-Man, and others are all based on Jewish themes. She also recommended the first Independence Day movie and Rose Lerner’s romance novels.

And that’s all I got! Also my last write-up for this year. The other panels I attended, I just didn’t get enough decent notes down to make a write-up worthwhile. Might make a round-up post and add some comments on the panels I was on, but not sure.

#wiscon #wiscon 43 #antisemitism at wiscon #grar idek how to further tag this without the post disappearing in tags and on my blog #wcantisem

6 notes · View notes

zalrb · 6 years

Text

K. Let’s do this.

In the past few hours there have been a few asks in my inbox regarding Bonnie’s treatment on the show and became about misogyny vs. racism and instead of answering everything in individual asks I’m going just going to answer everything in one post.

I think the problem with TVD is that the misogyny was so horrific that it was 'easy' for people to focus there and act as if racism was not an issue when it was. But the one shouldn't excuse the other or used as a blanket over the other to push it under the rug. This happens in general many times in the media but in TVD both misogyny and racism were taken to extremes so Bonnie had both but Elena and Caroline had the one out of two so people focused there. It was a mess.

First of all, misogyny and racism can’t “be taken to an extreme” there is no such thing as non-extreme racism and misogyny. Second of all, while this anon acknowledges that Bonnie experiences both racism and misogyny because she is a black female character and therefore intersectionality exists, which seems to be something people don’t understand but it’s why misogynoir is a term:

noun

the specific hatred, dislike, distrust, and prejudice directed toward black women (often used attributively): misogynoir attitudes and comments; The media’s erasure of the contributions of black women to the project was called out as an instance of misogynoir.

The argument here is that the misogyny towards white women was so horrific that people could only focus on that and act as if the racism didn’t exist. There just seems to be this resistance to call out the fact that people would rather focus on white female victimhood because even if people don’t call out the racism, Bonnie isn’t even included in the conversation surrounding misogyny, it’s only about Elena and Caroline and that isn’t a coincidence. It’s not like Bonnie’s treatment is subtle

and to compare, when Caroline is tortured

she gets the calvary after her

whereas Bonnie has to rally right away or is left alone or ends up comforting other people

but the fandom doesn’t consider the show’s consistent torture of Bonnie an issue because they don’t consider Bonnie to be a character worthy of critical thinking

That is the issue.

The misogyny in TVD was horrible though. Caroline and her rapist and they used as an incubator without concent. Elena ended up a portable trope in a coffin either she was there or not was the same. Let us not start on Bonnie. But the racism was EVERYWHERE. Trevino was an actor of color but made him the white guy. The Salvatores were Italians and that was erased. We all saw how Bonnie was treated and the ratio of PoC vs Whites plus how PoC were treated and how they died and their survival rate.

OK first of all, the Salvatores not being Italian has no and I mean no place in this conversation, that is not an example of racism.

Second of all, who said that the misogyny on the show wasn’t horrible? I never said that it wasn’t but the fact that people feel the need to come into my inbox to redirect the conversation to white female victimhood is problematic because we’re talking about Bonnie who as a black female character suffers from misogyny and anti-blackness and therefore experiences a different level of marginalization on the show than Caroline and Elena.

How many times have I brought up how fucked up it is and problematic it is and misogynistic it is that Caroline is forced to befriend her rapist and had a pregnancy plot line that bypassed her agency and consent? How many times have I brought up how fucked up it is and problematic it is and misogynistic it is that Elena is used as a trope for Damon and that the sirebond is insidious? The point is next to the fact that TVD had a long history of brutalizing Black bodies in a way that is inherently more violent than how they kill anyone else

compared to the quick and effectively painless deaths of the others (and yes there is a black man amongst them but the fact remains the show chose a black man to die slowly while Penny and Matt bantered)

and that they reiterate stereotypes and tropes like a mute Beau who used to sing for white patrons before he was mute,

the aggressive dark-skinned black girls who the show always has Bonnie face off with

the show also consistently and with glee emotionally and physically terrorizes Bonnie while unabashedly speak about how her worth and her role on the show is to labour for her white friends or to be the hope for her white friends or to suffer.

DRIES: We’re going to see Bonnie continue to try to adjust to life in the prison world. She tried to have Christmas, and it just made things worse for her. She’s going to have a birthday in the prison world, which is going to be worse. She’s really going to hit rock bottom before she pulls herself up by the bootstraps and says, “You know what? Let me get out of here!” She will finally find her way back, and it will come at the perfect time for our friends, who are in need of a friend rejuvenation and beautiful reunion. So, she comes back and is emotionally scarred from it.

“"Bonnie will continue to be a loyal friend to Damon and a very supportive person for him to lean on as he goes through the drama of the second half of the season,“ she explained. “But their relationship will also face its own obstacles down the road. Bonnie and Stefan are grounding forces in Damon’s life. So for him to put his relationship with Bonnie at stake would have really, really bad consequences for Damon, for sure.”

4. …. and Bonnie is their chaperone. “She’s been empowered by her best friend Elena to kind of follow her… to become this stronger woman that she’s become, but also take on the role of being Damon’s moral compass,” Dries says. “With Elena sidelined, Bonnie’s worried: ‘Is Damon going to go off his rocker? Do I need to keep an eye on him?’ Then there’s Damon, who’s obviously grieving the loss of the love of his life, and the big question is, ‘Is he going to become the monster that we saw in Season 1, the real villain of the show?’”

Like Damon, Bonnie is now doing what she wants. “And so, she’ll kind of get involved in Alaric’s storyline a little bit,” Dries says. “But as she’s working with Alaric and helping him through the grief of losing Jo, Bonnie starts to get herself embroiled in a little bit of a love story. And so, that’s been very fun to watch unfold.”

That is the issue. That is what we are talking about.

My issue was the lost potential. Even offensive storylines could've turned up very interesting as storytelling if the writers were not such racists and misogynists. Bonnie was a goldmine. She could have very interesting romances, plots, empowerment, dynamics, reactions. Caroline as a rape survivor, even the body autonomy issue with the babies. Elena and the triangle if done right/realistically could have worked out much better. Vampires should have been more twisted. Wasted potential everywhere.

I don’t even know if this even requires a breakdown because, yes, there was potential in storylines. Bonnie had a lot of potential in the storylines she was given, Bonnie could’ve been a lead with the storylines she was given and with Kat’s acting. The Bennett coven would’ve been a logical storyline considering that all of the magic in TVD basically stems from their bloodline but instead what we get is the Gemini coven and Jo who worked with Grams, anything to avoid centering black characters. And yes, Elena with the triangle could’ve been better I’ve said that many times and I’ve said the same thing about Caroline and the baby plot line but of course, they sitll had more personal storylines than Bonnie did. For instance, in season 1, Caroline is affected by the supernatural via Damon but her emotional and personal storyline is about working through her insecurity and finding safe spaces. Elena is affected by the supernatural but she’s trying to rebuild after her parents’ death, that is her personal journey. Bonnie is learning how to be a witch. That’s it. She does not have a personal journey entwined with her supernatural one. Witchcraft.

What if Bonnie had been white? How about what if Caroline was black and given the same plots (with Damon, Stefan, Alaric). Something tells me that somehow and I do not even know how she would have been in a thousand ways worse and more offensive positions than the one she was now. I can't even comprehend it. Although if Caroline was black she wouldn't be getting as many love interests as she had now that she was white right? So maybe those plots wouldn't be an issue.

I find this question moot because Bonnie wasn’t white and Caroline wasn’t black, the whole point is that their roles would not have been written the way they were if things were different. Things were not different so why are what-iffing, what is the point of that?

All in all, it really boils down to the fact that as a black female character Bonnie’s character went through a particular problematic treatment that is a result of the conflation between misogyny and anti-blackness and the fact that people are unwilling to see that or see that but try to mystify it or the redirect the issue is a problem that isn’t the entire fault of the writers.

#bonnie bennett #kat graham #anti blackness #the vampire diaries #anti blackness in fandoms #anti blackness in television #tvd #anti tvd #anti julie plec #anti caroline dries #misogynoir #black feminism #anti white feminism #white tears #legit

162 notes · View notes

ettadunham · 5 years

Text

A Buffy rewatch 3x05 Homecoming

aka nobody wins

Welcome to this dailyish text post series where I will rewatch an episode of Buffy and rant about it in 10-3k words. What you can expect: long run-on sentences and disjointed observations, often focused on one tiny detail about the episode. What you shouldn’t be expecting: actual reviews that make sense.

And in today’s episode, Faith asked Buffy out to be her date at the dance, and she said yes! But then Buffy ended up going with Cordelia, because everybody’s doing this dating thing wrong anyway.

I mean, let’s take a tally here. Buffy’s going out with Scott, but she sneaks out to meet Angel. To whom she’s talking about Scott. And then Scott dumps her.

But that’s okay because Faith asks her to be her date. (She’s being so faux-casual about it too… Oh, Faith.) Except the gang interferes for Buffy and Cordelia to go together and work out their differences. A suddenly dateless Faith then masterfully sabotages Scott and his new date to get back at him for hurting her girl.

Oh yeah. And the Willow/Xander disaster ride has left the station. Which I guess will be my main subject for today, because I love a good trainwreck.

Homecoming is one of those episodes though that has a lot of good stuff going for it, so one should at the very least acknowledge that before attempting some very specific character deep dive.

Buffy has one of her greatest speeches here for instance.

Buffy: I just thought... Homecoming Queen. I could pick up a yearbook someday and say, I was there. I went to high school, I had friends, and... for one moment, I got to live in the world. And there'd be proof. Proof that I was chosen for something other than this. Besides... I look cute in a tiara.

It’s a great storyline for Buffy, about her trying to reclaim her place in the world as a young high school teenage girl, rather than someone burdened with all these adult conflicts and responsibilities.

But what I also like in this scene is Cordelia. You would normally expect her to cut the tension with a snide candid remark, but she remains silent during Buffy’s speech. She even seems understanding and empathetic listening to her! That’s growth.

Before that though, there’s also this weird thing happening earlier as they’re competing with each other for the title. Cordy remarks that a Homecoming queen should be someone who’s part of the school and has friends. And I was like…

Cordelia, your friends are Buffy’s friends. And in season 1 you complained about how none of your pals from before were actual friends you could connect with. That’s sort of why you started hanging around the Scooby gang in the first place.

I guess maybe Cordelia meant having general connections at the school as well, which she probably still has, despite falling out with her clique earlier… But then again, she lost the vote, so who knows.

The weird thing though is that as it turns out she was right about her having the friends, as the gang ends up helping her instead of Buffy with her campaign. But that’s entirely on Xander and Willow, and Buffy needs about 2 seconds to break Willow to help her out too.

And yes, finally, it’s time to talk Willow and Xander.

I’ll admit, I’m obviously coming into this episode with thoughts and feelings on these characters that reach far beyond the current point in the show. I also sat down already thinking about what I was about to see, so I somewhat predetermined what my read was going to be on it.

I will say though, that the whole HORMONES take does seem a lot more valid after rewatching the episode now. There’s definitely this pattern of them trying to fight the ~~~attraction~~~, and then feeling super guilty about it whenever they ~~~give in~~~.

But saying that it’s just “hormones” and them doing “young stupid shit” is also a boring take. What them being teenagers in this situation essentially means is that they don’t really have the ability yet to self-reflect and try and figure out what they’re acting on. They’re too busy feeling guilty, and guilt and introspection are definitely not interchangeable.

So I’ll do the analyzing for them. You’re welcome.

I used to think of cheating as the ultimate show of a lack of respect for one’s partner. Which it is. But it‘s often also a reflection of how the person doing the cheating currently feels about themselves and the relationship they’re in.

And yes, there’s also the question of who they’re cheating with and how they feel about them. Which I will get into.

I feel like it is noteworthy to point out too that once Willow and Xander get caught, they’ll never again pursue any sort of romantic relationship with each other. We also won’t see them cheat on any of their future partners… but they will manage to self-sabotage their relationships in other ways, proving that they still have plenty of issues to work through.

And some of their baggage can actually be followed back to the same root: wanting to be loved. But how that manifests for each of them is significantly different.

For Willow, being loved means being special to someone. Being the first choice, the person who they’d never abandon. She clings to that feeling and to the people she experiences that with. And we’ll see just how bad that can get, especially once you put power into that mix… but safe to say, that that’s why she held that torch for Xander for so long.

Xander and Willow grew up together, and they’ve been essentially the most important people in each others life since childhood. It’s possible to read then Willow’s crush on Xander as a desire to make sure that that bond would never break, and that she wouldn’t end up being Xander’s second choice. Or worse, someone he would leave behind.

Anyone who knows me even a tiny bit should already be aware of this, but for the record, I’m not saying with this that romantic love is more important than friendship. But I definitely feel like in Willow’s mind and subconscious these things might get conflated.

I imagine then that for Willow, the feeling of Xander finally reciprocating all these confusing emotions is pretty intoxicating. She knows that there’s something wrong with this picture, that Xander’s still in a relationship, and that she’s with someone else who sees her as special and wonderful… But she’s also not putting any effort into figuring out those emotions beyond her guilt. As a result, she has trouble putting a stop to what’s happening, because she doesn’t have a full understanding of herself and what she’s feeling.

And that’s very much Xander’s issue as well. But he’s approaching it from a different perspective.

Xander’s coming from a pretty bad home situation. It’s largely only hinted at during the show, so we can mostly guess at the nature of abuse he grew up with, but it’s pretty obvious that he didn’t receive a lot of love from his family. He learned to cope through sarcasm and desperately trying to be noticed by someone.

The problem is that while Xander wants to be loved, he also hasn’t really experienced what that feels like growing up. So he doesn’t really know what he’s looking for, and instead ends up constantly chasing after something new and unattainable.

The tragedy of course is that he’ll never actually be able to find that missing piece of himself. He’ll never feel the security that comes from growing up being surrounded by unconditional love. He can only learn to accept the people he surrounds himself with as his new family, and share the kind of love he wishes to have always had with them.

In this moment however, much like Willow, he falls into the trap of conflating the nature of his feelings. He’s always loved Willow, she was one of the few positive influences in his early life. But the idea of her as a romantic interest just wasn’t alluring to him, because she was already there. All he had to do was reach out - which is why he never did.

But as soon as Willow became unavailable, Xander’s interest became more and more apparent. He was visibly jealous of Oz, and in the end of s2, he seems to come to a realization of just how important Willow is to him. (A moment which will then be reflected back seasons later where Xander’s “I love you” will bring Willow back from the brink once again, this time completely free from any romantic connotations.)

For me, the fact though that neither of these characters will make any effort to try and figure out if they could be in a relationship together past this little affair they got going on, is what confirms that they’re not really acting on a romantic interest. They love each other, deeply, but mostly, they’re just conflicted about their lives, and about where they and the relationships they’re in are going.

There are definitely reasons one can list on why they’d be self-sabotaging their relationships too. For Xander, I already detailed his chasing the unattainable to find what’s missing from his life mentality, which means that he might be trying to get out of this relationship on a subconscious level. And with Willow, we can easily retrofit her sexuality into this discussion. Especially since it appears that she and Oz were approaching a level of physical intimacy that could’ve given her a lot of anxiety she wasn’t ready to deal with.

Out of the two, Xander will also be the one who won’t make much of an effort to win Cordy back. And sure, Oz might hold less of a grudge too, but there’s still a very clear distinction in how Willow and Xander will be handling the fallout. But as discussed earlier, it’s also very much in character for Willow to cling to these relationships, so this should come as no surprise.

But I might just be forgetting some details about this storyline. We’ll find out soon enough, I guess.

Like I said, I love a good trainwreck.

#buffy rewatch 2k19 #btvs talk #btvs

3 notes · View notes

uminoisthebest · 6 years

Text

The Final Battle Between Light and Dark: Pledge of Love for the Future

Season 2; Episode 88

So we start the epic showdown with red flashes of the Melific Black Crystal. Darth Sidious claims his true title of Death Phantom! He also asserts it’s time to destroy Earth.

We next cut to Luna and Artemis. Lun asked Artemis for a status update on how things are going. Luna, wouldn't you know if Artemis knew? I assume you two have been together since the Guardians went into the Black Crystal. Wait! Can Artemis communicate telepathically with Sailor Venus?

Artemis also mentions other things about Nemesis shooting stuff at Earth, but that’s not really important. We all know we’re here for Wiseman.

And finally, we cut to where the action is. Sailor Moon & Friends are confronting Bad-A Chibiusa. Black Lady directs Wiseman to channel her the Power to destroy the world. She continues on about not being loved. Once again, Where’s Momo?

Sailor Moon begs Black Lady not to be fooled any more. Black Lady is done with her voice and attacks her. TM blocks the attack. SM is really good at getting guys to meat shield for her.

Fine. I admit it. This part is fantastic and makes a lot of sense. After seeing TM sacrifice himself for Sailor Moon, Sailor Moon & Friends all agree that Chibiusa is one of their friends. This forces Black Lady to confront the cognitive dissonance between what she’s believed with what she’s seen. Outstanding writing. (Stop making me act like I’m not a curmudgeon!)

Wiseman/Death Phantom/Darth Sidious speaks to Black Lady, telling her that he’ll send her the Malefic Black Crystal energy again. Black Lady chooses to side with her preconceived beliefs over new evidence and attacks the group.

Side-thought: At this point, I’m torn. I feel that the Sailor Guardians begging Black Lady to realize they’re her friends is getting old, but I also understand that most people when faced with cognitive dissonance choose to ignore the new evidence. So the writers’ story makes sense, I’m just annoyed by it.

TM recalls Prince Endymion’s words that his and Sailor Moon’s love must be like my love for pizza. TM walks over to Sailor Moon and helps her up, and they face the problem together. Sailor Moon uses Moon Crystal Power.

We now are in the future looking at Neo Queen Serenity.

And we’re back to the Black Gate, and Sailor Moon has become Neo Queen Serenity, and my analytic powers are failing me, but I’m so intrigued, I don’t care that much.

Battle of the memories! We get a replay of the flashback to Chibiusa falling in the rain with a voice over by Neo Queen Serenity ‘explaining’ her actions. She didn’t help because, and I quote “it’s because you needed to know you had the strength to stand on your own.” Unfortunately for the show, my analytic abilities have returned and I hate this explanation. Chibiusa wasn’t doubting her strength, She was injured and wanted comfort. Usagi of all people should have understood this distinction.

She then offers this further justification, which I still don’t buy. She’s still conflating loss of confidence with legitimate physical pain.

While I’m not convinced, Black Lady seems to take the lesson that they didn’t help her because they loved her.

Wiseman returns and encases Black Lady, Neo Queen Serenity, and TM in the power of the Malefic Black Crystal.He rambles on about not being loved and only trusting the darkness. Once again, we’re back to Black Lady possibly believing they’re her friends, and then not believing they’re her friends. Using this motif once or twice is fine, but I think they’ve utilized this 4 or 5 times, and it’s leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

In the vortex, we see a blue-haired Chibiusa. Minus 49 quality points.

Black Lady attacks Neo Queen Serentiy and TM. It’s a very inefficient attack as Neo Queen Serenity continues to talk very calmly to Black Lady about how she needs to leave to protect herself. Black Lady tells Neo Queen Serentiy to leave, but Neo Queen Serenity says Black Lady’s survival is all that matters.

We get more flashbacks to happy memories of Chibiusa’s past with Sailor Moon & Friends and I don’t care about Black Lady any more. I’m sorry. I know I’m probably supposed to be all like “Ah! Look at Usagi’s resolve! How sweet!” but I’m not.

We get a scene with Black Lady, Neo Queen Serenity, and Tuxedo Mask that is them having a.conversation about why Neo Queen Serenity cares about Black Lady. The music is fantastic! Black Lady loses the Dark Moon clan symbol and I hope that this fiasco is over.

They return the the Black gate with Black Lady transformed into Chibiusa, I never thought I’d be happy to see Chibiusa, but I am. Strange...

We have only now reached the halfway point.

We return to the Black Gate with Chibiusa realizing they have always been there for her. Usagi is a little tipsy and Chibiusa reminds her she used the Silver Crystal. Thunder starts to sound around them

Wiseman returns and says that the Black Gate is already open. They vow they’ll stop him and he attacks them. With how much they get shocked, I’m surprised there hasn’t been at least one casualty.

I love this shot. When the Black Crystal’s power begins to spread across Earth, Sailor Moon stands up and is not about to take this crap. She does say she lives everyone on this planet, which seems a little crazy, but it’s fine. I’ll let it slide. It’s an awesome scene.

This show is at it’s best when Sailor Moon with all her faults, is the hero. Now we’re getting to see her really embrace it, and I love it.

Wiseman attacks her but she transforms back into Neo Queen Serenity. Once again, the left hemisphere of my braim has shut down. Then we get this music? Dance Rave! (My right hemisphere has taken over). I I love the calm resilience in her eyes. Also, as @uglygreenjacket as my witness, I recalled that Chibiusa has a Silver Crystal too.

Neo Queen Serenity and Wiseman have a battle of wills and power. When it looks like Neo Queen Serenity isn’t going to be able to overcome Wiseman, Chibiusa cries and the Silver Crystal appears from her tear. See, I'm not too dumb for kids' show! (I’m looking at you Petz)

The rest of Sailor Moon & Friends join in the fight. Their power combined is enough to overcome the malefic black crystal and bring the world back to peace. (It really is a lot more epic than that, I just don’t know how to make it seem that way without giving a tedious play by play)

Sailor Moon and Chibiusa wake up in a pink pool, thinking they died but saved the world. Neo Queen Serenity tells them they haven’t died. What is this place then? Is one of them dreaming? Is it a weird non-physical plane where consciousness can interact? Is that even possible?

We see the black crystal in modern Tokyo shrink while the sun rises. Artemis sounds way too surprised that they succeeded.

Sailor Moon & Friends take turn saying goodbye to Chibiusa. Of course Ami is only known for studying, cause she’s the smart one. Also, Venus says “remember not to wet your bed,” which I don’t think is a memory issue at all. Chibiusa calls Usagi “mommy” and I’m kinda uncomfortable with that. I bet they go to school the next day.

We see Crystal Tokyo and it’s beautiful. Chibiusa walks up the Neo Queen Serenity and King Endymion who welcome her back. Is it just me or are those leg to body ratios crazy?

FInal Thoughts: Fantastic Episode! I was a little bitter towards the end of the first half but the second half completely turned it around. I love that Chibiusa played a valuable part in saving the world. I love that they let Sailor Moon have her moment to shine. I loved the music. Fantastic episode! Note: The next episode is a recap and sneak peak combined. It’s going to be a little difficult to summarize but I’ll make do. Next week, the Start of Season 3! (Or S, as it’s actually titled)

54 notes · View notes

knightofbalance-13 · 6 years

Text

https://rampantlytyping.tumblr.com/post/174581718969/for-fuck-sake

“Oh, it gets worse. Because I’ve read the archives of KOB’s reddit account. (Link here for reference, someone may wanna archive this in case KOB pulls a Delete Fucking Everything)

Never before have I seen something that would backfire so hard.

First of all, I’d recommend a look at the very first comment on that Reddit account, which was a screed about FatManFalling’s Volume 3 review. So much of modern KOB can be traced back here- has hatred of the word “the” and insistence on trying to replace it with “teh,” his long paragraphs, condescending attitude and personal attacks/insults (Also, for the record, “Fatass” is one of the worst mocking nicknames I’ve ever see on Reddit).

Actually-

https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/5jdst1/cowardly_lion_taiyang_fanfiction/

This is. Thing is: this would HUMANIZE me. But god knows you can’t think of your opposition as human.

First is mischaractization.

Second is not a moral argument.

Third is conflating me being angry with who I am normally.

And fourth is downplayed since this whole post is nothing BUT a personal attack.

Also: Never said I was clever.

There’s also this post after Volume 4 which is basically “So the RWDE tag sucks amirite?”

No, the title is what I meant.

But a relevant comment that Caddeter and @psyga315 should see is this one. I’ll quote it directly, emphasis mine at the end:

Backfire in 3...2...1

“Now I know many of you are thinking “Why should I care?”

Well, because these people are in a dangerous mindset of ignoring everything that isn’t their opinion and warping that to justify their feelings.

I gave a comment on this journal pointing out the flaws in his work. The closest thing I said to an insult was saying that his usage of the term “man-pain” was stupid in any context. And when I admitted I wasn’t aiming towards him but his audience who weren’t sure about V3’s finale, he blocked me, deleted my comments (EDIT: he’s admitted to being wrong about teh previous two and has restored my comments. Still blocked but I have a way around it that he knows) and warped my words. Something he claimed Miles and Kerry did, minus the last part.

I ask of you: Say what you think about this. And not just the journal, what you thought of Pyrrha’s death. Not what he said, not what I said. But what you want to say.

Now GO!”

Now, if I was a generous man, this in context could be KOB asking for discussion on the Reddit.

I am not a generous man. To me, it looks like KOB deliberately inciting the Reddit post-Volume 3 (when they were most protective of RWBY as it was the last season that Monty would have definitely worked on) and encouraging them to dogpile the journal author.

Yeah...

Three things:

A. The time period this was made is post Volume 4, Not 3. So that’s bullshit.

B. https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/5khw9y/my_thoughts_on_pyrrhas_death_rwby_and_rt_by_jswf/dbo9z0v/

Oh hey look, there’s someone disagreeing witrh me and I ENCOURAGED them. So that’s also bullshit.

C. https://www.reddit.com/r/RWBY/comments/5khw9y/my_thoughts_on_pyrrhas_death_rwby_and_rt_by_jswf/dboysk7/

Okay everyone, I have to ask that no one goes to the link and comments. The author is getting too stressed out by his debate with me and I don't want him to break.

So please, keep your discussions here.

Outright contradicted. Three strikes, you’re out.

And the worst thing? He had no empathy to the situation. Quote (again, emphasis mine):

“Well, don’t fight him. He’s…not right in the head.

Like I was arguing with him and he…wanted to kill himself.

And I didn’t even try being mean.”

Remember that in the Deviantart comments, KOB said that he could be “far far far crueler.”

As evidence by this post, where I am going to turn EVERYTHING against you. https://comments.deviantart.com/1/619991269/4290345087?offset=25#comments “*Sigh* Look, I never meant for you to get this stressed out. Hell, I understand where your coming from. Thinking about killing myself is such a common occurrence now I'm not even fazed by it anymore. So putting aside my feeling towards you and your conduct, I want you to listen to what i have to say: Your life matters. No matter what you think I've said, no matter what other people have said, no matter what you say, your life matters. You have friends and family who love and care about you and if you kill yourself, all it will do is wound those around you. It's painful I know but it's true. The best thing you can do is seek help above all else. Trust me, psychiatrists maybe be expensive by by divinty' sake they are miracle workers. And I know you're sick of hearing about this anime but really, look up Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. That anime is a large part of why I get out of bed in the morning even thought I know there's a very good chance I'll choke to death on my breakfast, lunch or dinner or that my life probably doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. It taught me to keep moving forward no matter what I lose or what I suffer because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The journey is hard and long but it's worth it. I never intended on hurting you. Had I known you were this psychologically fragile or you were this invested in Pyrrha I would have said nothing. I understand where you are coming from and I'm sorry I did so much damage to you. I was wrong and you were right. Good day.” No empathy huh? “Also while I’m here, how about this long callout post about RWBY Analysis after she was angry at some art from Dishwasher that had Enabler undertones (complete with the classic “I used to respect you” card which you can always imagine someone saying within the context “I used to respect you when you agreed with me.”). And here’s her reaction, which should be recorded alongside the Great Fire of London as one of the greatest burns in history.”

Ah yes, a callout post...Where I didn’t call her out once...

But I guess the actual post looks pretty fucking bad for you (https://knightofbalance-13.tumblr.com/post/172361707730/httpsrwby-analysistumblrcompost172345982047) since it is short and-oh yeah-SHE WAS SLANDERING SOMEONE. Good job completely missing the point eh?

But sure Knight of Balance. Tell us all about how you never meant for any of this to escalate and how sorry you were. It’s not like your own accounts show you to be a liar who instigated a harassment campaign and showed no empathy upon hearing that it was partially successful. You can surround yourself all you want with your little cabal of white knights like Sunder the Gold and MageKnight who will go to bat for you when they can. You can claim all you want that what you do is a crusade to purify RWBY and Make The FNDM Great Again or some bullshit like that because you seem to think that if you kill RWDE, Miles will personally fly out to thank you for saving RWBY. And you can even run to other fandoms like Darling in the Franxx or FLCL where your name isn’t poison. But we all know what you are.

I didn’t mean for thing to escalate as evident by how I TRIED TO STOP IT,

No empathy when I actively tried to call him down MYSELF.

That sounds pretty fucking ironic considering that you surround yourself in haters like Dudeblade and Cadder there who will never ever think to question you or themselves. But as for that Sunder thing.. Well I’ll get to that latter but let’s just say, it’s a show of self control how I’m not screaming my head off.

Oh and you’re any different? You probably think ‘I f I get rid of all the fanboys, M&K will HAVE TO listen to my obviously not biased criticism and I’ll Make RWBY Great Again! Then Monty Sempai will rise form the grave to thank me for saving his legacy!’

Please, I’d sit Miles down and give him a lecture on how a timeline is VERY important for a long running show and keeping time skips vague to ‘avoid plotholes’ would in fact make MORE of them. Though I’d probably force him to attend a writing class, Just because I respect the guy doesn’t mean I see him as flawless.

Yerah, doesn’t work when I did the EXACT SAME THING I did here in Franxx. I obviously do not care about my reputation worldwide.

Here’s the thing: I do not regret many things in my time on the internet. I regret not asking about internet customs so i could know things like alt accounts were a bad thing. I regret my raging outbursts at innocent people because I was an immature fuckhead. I regret interacting with RWBYcrit. ... That’s it. My fight against RWDE? My battle against shitty critics? I do not regret that one bit. I fought for what I believed was right and got to meet amazing people along the way. I think I’ve even grown as a person. So no dice bitch.

You’re a schoolyard bully with a stick and anger problems. You’re a child throwing a temper tantrum, unaware of how if Miles or Kerry saw what you’ve said and done, they’d be disgusted in you and would shame you for the world to see. You are nothing. In the grand scheme of life, this will be your legacy. You will never amount to anything significant in this lifetime, and your life peaked before you even hit your twenties. KOB, I really hope you realize how in just under two and a half years, you have made nearly the entire fandom hate your guts.

... And?

Oh you thought this was gonna hurt me? You think you saying I have anger issues is gonna hurt me when I’ve acknowledged that as one of my worst traits. You think telling me Miles and Kerry would be disgusted with me is gonna hurt me when I am not them, they are not me and I am fighting primarily for myself? You think you calling me worthless and saying I will never amount to anything in my lifetime when I’m a fucking existentialist AKA someone who believes that there is no inherent worth in life? Bitch, I say worse things about myself every day.

And the rest is either lies (the fandom as a whole, even on Tumblr, DOESN’T CARE ABOUT ME.) or shows you’re projecting onto me (’You’re a bully!’ says the bullies.)

Let me break this down: We all hate you on Tumblr,

God, stop projecting your ego onto me, I know the fandom as whole on Tumblr doesn’t care about me.

You haven’t shown your face on Twitter

https://twitter.com/KOB13x

Shows what you know.

and when someone cited you in a Reddit post, everyone warned them not to link to you because you’re a toxic influence.

Considering how you’ve been posting links throughout this whole post, why should I believe you if you suspiciously DON’T provide proof of this. And again: stop projecting your ego onto me.

For Christ’s sake KOB, FatManFalling can get his stuff posted on R/RWBY. It’s extensively mocked, yes, but it’s still allowed.

To the point it regularly gets kicked off reddit for having massive downvotes.

You’re so bad you haven’t even got that privilege. Let that sink in and realize what it says about you.

A. Proof

B. Not the same context.

And C. I don’t care.

Because this is coming from someone who tried throwing Sunder The Gold under the bus by saying he associates with me. DESPITE the fact that we haven;’t talked to each other in MONTHS. Why did you say this then? Oh right, Sunder is a fan of RWBY ergo he must be eliminated right? Because anyone who doesn’t conform to your fucking hivemind and treat the show AND ESPECIALLY the creators like shit is a heretic right?

That’s why I do this. Because you people are fucking AWFUL in every sense of the word. Everything you just tried to pin on me applies to YOU instead and then we can add on EVEN MORE and EVEN MORE DISGUSTING shit to that pile.I don;t like Steven Universe but I am JUST as disgusted by SU‘s fandom and it’s bullshit. This has nothing to do with RWBY anymore, this has to do with you people DESTROYING INNOCENT LIVES. That is YOUR legacy: the ruins of people’s lives and the destruction of a show people hold dear all because you decided to embody the WORST aspects of humanity.

In short: Fuck you.

Oh, PS:

https://knightofbalance-13.tumblr.com/post/162724070290/rampantlytyping-knightofbalance-13-hey

Guess you’re in the same boat as me eh?

#rampantlytyping

21 notes · View notes

incarnateirony · 6 years

Text

The reaper non-retcon(undrum)

Old meta/plothole issue has resurrected itself now with "Wait, if there's only X amount of angels, what about reapers? Reapers became angels in later seasons! Are they retconning that retcon?!"

There was never a retcon.

There was a lot of headcanons assumed into meta and canon understanding that were (understandably) read as canon that then got etched out and here's why.

STARTING POINT: The word “angel” simply means “messenger,” and while we’ve equated it to species, in 4x1 itself Castiel clarifies, “I’m an angel of the lord.” - an angel in service to and created by God. It seems like “of the lord” is an unusual qualifier if there’s no other kinds of angels out there or like he’s from The Master Angel Race with other subsets all just being beneath whatever he is. It enters casual usage as the most present, but these angels still identify Chuck as their father.

On the other hand, we have “angel of Death,” which do clearly operate under Death. And Death HIMSELF, before he ever popped up in the show, was called this in SEASON FIVE.

Supernatural 5.10 BOBBY Not this guy. This is—this is the angel of death. Big daddy reaper. They keep this guy chained in a box six hundred feet under. Last time they hauled him up, Noah was building a boat. That’s why the place is crawling with reapers. They’re waiting on the big boss to show. (…) BOBBY The angel of death must be brought into this world at midnight through a place of awful carnage.

Death was referred to as the Angel of Death even before (and for) his release, as far back as season 5. This is in no way a retcon.

Okay then, obviously season FIVE was where the retcon was, and we just... missed it? Cuz Kripke said no angels before S3!

No, actually.

1.12 Faith

Sam: You really think it's THE Grim Reaper? Like, angel of death, collect your soul, the whole deal?

Even before Kripke said “no angels”, which I’ll address later on, and shows literally proves this point about the fandom conflating things based on their assumptions.

Also,

I know there was some confusion. I get WHY people read into the "angels are reapers and working for heaven," because April just further flummoxed everybody. However, April was hired, and rogue reapers are also canon.

9.03 CASTIEL Who hired you? I assumed with Naomi gone, things were in chaos. APRIL New sheriff in town, Cas. He hired a bunch of us. I got lucky.

Tessa’s gripe was the inability to cross souls over the threshold once the gates closed, which again has marginal relevance in comparison to serving God or being the same type of messenger. This has always been part of reaper duties, even before the word "angel" baffled everybody despite it being used in S5 as well.

In fact, what the angels did with April in 9.03 literally inspired how Castiel got his hands on converting Tessa to their forces in 9.22

TESSA When Castiel came to me and told me what I had to do, he said I was chosen because I was strong. Others...they couldn't handle this. They're too weak. [she looks at HANNAH] (...) DEAN No, forget Cas. Why are you doing this? What would make a person want to pop their top, huh? I mean, look, I've been in bad shape. I have. But I have never been that damn low. TESSA I guess I just can't take the screaming. DEAN Who's screaming? TESSA All of them. The lost souls. The ones that can't get into heaven now that it's been boarded up. I hear them. They are so confused. They're in so much pain. All I want to do is help them. It's what I do. It's my job. But I can't. So I suffered... Until death, nothingness. Suddenly, it didn't seem so bad. It seemed quiet. DEAN So, why don't you just jam an angel blade in your throat and call it a day? TESSA I thought about it. But I was too weak. Till Castiel gave me a reason to die.

That’s it. Just a reaper that couldn’t do her job and was tormented by it to the point that Cas merc’ed her into cooperating in taking back heaven.

That’s it. That’s all that says.

Oh look, Metatron takes over and angels hire a reaper and Cas gets ganked, then learns from that, and turns around and recruits reapers to do things to get back at Metatron.

But they were RECRUITED.

GADREEL

Tessa, Constantine -- I recruited them, and you brainwashed them into blowing themselves up.

Also,

5.21 DEAN Well, I got to ask. How old are you? DEATH As old as God. Maybe older. Neither of us can remember anymore. Life, death, chicken, egg. Regardless – at the end, I’ll reap him, too. DEAN God? You’ll reap God? DEATH Oh, yes. God will die, too, Dean.

Death is clearly independent, and at least equal to, if not above God in his presence. Chuck did not create Death. Roughly as old as god (probably even 'before time', though that is unconfirmed), chicken or the egg, unable to tell what came first; Death also has its own respective domain now seen in 13x5, much as God had Heaven. The origins of hell are curious, and vague, but only ruled by fall and things created after the fall. It isn’t part of the Light-Dark-Nature balance really, as much as “how to sort souls” and punishment. That’s a whole other topic-bag but Death has its own domain like God had Heaven. Reapers have NEVER been implied to be part of heaven's order, but Death's natural order.

Death, and God, are two very different important forces. God is Light, Amara is Darkness, Death is Natural Order, so to speak. Messenger of Divine Order vs Messenger of Natural Order. These are all three very canon elements. Reapers have always been assigned to death and "angels" as WE identify them (see: Angel of the Lord) to God, however, there is the qualifier of Angel of the Lord, Death HAS been called Angel of Death from go despite NOT being under Chuck's domain (clearly), and these are all existing since S4-5. And frankly, since S1.

While calling out plot holes has its points, one must make sure there are actual plot holes, and not assumptions of plotholes based on pre-existing headcanon (such as the exact limits or definitions of angels versus potential inconsistent or shorthand dialogue, versus what we've seen on record and in effect). Yes, it takes some viewer-end explaining and line-drawing, but that’s also a good deal of entertainment. Not everything gets ELI5′ed. But with regards to “why aren’t the reapers angels in heaven if they were in S9~” - that’s because even then, it was never implied they were. That was an assumption. There were a lot of fandom end assumptions off of partial lines, when pre-existing lines give solid corroboration. Death-Angels report to Death (and possibly the Thanatology area if at all, it's implied that their relationship with Death is much like angels with God, and few have seen God), Divine-Angels report to Chuck and Heaven.

So no. There’s no evidence to say it’s an oversight that Reapers aren’t being counted in angel headcount.

TLDR it’s extremely presumptuous of fandom to keep projecting this as a plot hole off of projected headcanon interpretations of what was there rather than original substantiating quotes, mechanics, and even earliest-form revelations (Kripke era.) There is no evidence there was ever a retcon, no evidence that reapers REPORTED to heaven (some go rogue and run back doors or take bunk jobs, but that is being a renegade), and no evidence whatsoever to make this actually look like a sequentially dropped ball on the parts of the author as much as a serial misconception from viewers. Is it somewhat unclear? Yes. But a gaping plothole or retcon? Or even now a retconned-retcon? Nah.

This is just a failure to differentiate “Angel of the Lord” which runs heaven and is the species we casually refer to as angels, and “Angel of Death”, starting as far as S1 in use, and never-once applied as working for heaven. Just assumed against bold dialogue choices.

There was never a retcon. They hired reapers. People are conflating the use of “angel”. That’s it.

Yes, Kripke said no angels before S3; no, that doesn’t mean Reapers were never called angels of death (1x12) (this ALONE differentiates the usage in dialogue, as Kripke already used Angel of Death for reapers, but said “no angels”, meaning Angel of the Lord as we casually call angels is SOMETHING DIFFERENT, although BOTH ARE CALLED ANGELS.); no, canon never said they were part of heaven’s function beyond the delivery of souls at any point; no, they have never, as a whole, reported to anywhere but Death, spare for those hired or merced onto other roles (rogue reapers, like fallen angels); no, reapers are not, and have never been, canonically tied to being the SPECIES we know as Angels (angel of the lord, distinct from angel of death, both of which are age old lines, and the angel of the lord being S4+ only.) Reapers were never adapted into angels of the Lord. Ever. That’s all in the fandom’s head.

Nothing ever had to be changed or tampered. Nothing had to even be underwritten. There was never a retcon, just a lack of understanding from the viewership turned widespread fanon.

This starts in S1 and continues through current. Insisting otherwise despite all of the various information above is more trying to demand erasure of multiple blatant elements under “interpretation”, in the interest of claiming they’re retconning the retcon, instead of having maintained a consistent continuity the fandom misinterpreted in the middle despite dialogue. They aren’t retconning a retcon, because there was never a retcon, and I’m honestly not sure how this was taken so widely into fandom circulation that there was with these sentiments already committed to screen.

Reapers have never been Angels of the Lord, as we identify Angels as a species. They have been another angel/messenger type dedicated to Big Daddy Reaper. Since. Season. 1. And never committed to heaven as much as were hired and/or recruited temporarily. They are not part of heaven’s works. Canon never implied this. That’s all headcanon.

#supernatural #spn #canon #retcon #angels #reapers #meta #mine #my meta

46 notes · View notes

boombitxh · 6 years

Text

The Tragic Toxicity of Scandal’s Abuse

I was severely triggered last night by the Olitz scenes, but even more distraught by the audience response if that’s even possible. I kept reading people’s takes and my mind was blown. In fact, I even opened my DSM just to double-check if what I was seeing and interpreting made psychological sense. The last Olitz scene cemented it for me in terms of all the psychological damage that these two people have endured, how they are opposite sides of the same coin, albeit a toxic one, and how we as the audience can be misled by appearances.

Abuse is intergenerational. Olivia & Fitz are doomed to repeat the behaviors that are ingrained in them from childhood because we as humans repeat what we are shown, and in partners we tend to attract people that are like us. At first I only realized this about Olivia’s character, in fact her verbal abuse of Fitz is what prompted me to open the DSM. The scene in which Olivia implies that Fitz is not worthy of being her friend triggered my thoughts and I raged when I saw the first leg of the Olivia Apologia tour.

I saw comments ranging from “this is unconditional love” to “yes, she is abusive but what can he do? He knows this and loves her” Made me feel like I was taking crazy pills on a trip over to crazy town. Wooooooooooh. The scenes last night were nothing different from what we have seen before, Olivia yells, Olivia breaks down, Olivia goes to Fitz, the don’t communicate and then proceed to have sex. She has displayed vulnerability before, only to arrive back at square one.

None of this is meant to imply that I don’t understand that Olivia is hurting or that she’s a victim, but last night was a full display of dysfunction on both their parts. I don’t care to make excuses for her behavior anymore because I see no changes within her and I see no intentions of introspection yet. I can’t for the life of me think back to an episode in which she wasn’t self-righteous, or condescending, especially towards Fitz in the past 2 seasons. I don’t mean to equate his acceptance of her treatment as weakness on his part, which I admit I may have incorrectly interpreted at first, but after thinking about it and observing the last Olitz scene I got a sense of what’s going on.

The last scene was intentionally awkward. Awkwardness mixed with familiarity. Olivia and Fitz both come from similar backgrounds. Both suffered at the hands of their fathers, had no maternal presence in their formative years, and as such have gravitated towards one another.

It’s often said they are two sides of the same coin, and last night was just that- a meeting between an active victim and a passive victim. Also, you know what they say about familiarity: it breeds contempt.

Olivia is the active victim of abuse. She seeks to control, she always has, and this is a direct mechanism of trying to recover from her victimhood. Every aspect of her life has her as the decision-maker, but how much is she living if she doesn’t allow any room for life to organically happen instead? We know the answer. She is a mess, the disaster we are witnessing is the culmination of her quest to control, arrange, dictate, fix… EVERYTHING. Even love, which as we know is irrational and unpredictable, so to control love is an exercise in futility. Every reunion, and every breakup has been on her terms, there is only one exception to this: Defiance, which is understandable. Olivia resumes her relationship with Fitz when she wants, and he is a willing participant which only makes him an enabler not only to the misery that this brings him when the relationship ends once again, but an enabler of her control issues. Fitz isn’t helping.

@tied-knots and I were having a conversation the other day and she mentioned to me something very important. I want to thank her for triggering my train of thought. She mentioned how earlier in this season we established that people believe Fitz’s value lies in how he can help you climb the ladder of success. Fitz is borderline transactional.

I mentioned a passive victim of abuse and that victim is Fitz. After I thought about it for a while I realized that Fitz clearly has low self-esteem, otherwise how could he still be here pining after all the verbal abuse and heartache he receives? We accept the love we think we deserve- this is him. His history of being on the receiving end of diatribes confirms this for me. He was emotionally neglected by his father, as was Olivia, he was emotionally neglected in his marriage to Mellie, and he is out here getting scraps from Olivia’s love whenever he can.

Fitz’s own validation comes from how he can be of service (thanks again @tied-knots ) while Olivia’s validation also comes from that but in an active manner, i.e. taking control and fixing. Two sides of the same coin. A fatal attraction at this point if you will. Fitz only knows how to interact with people when they are somehow extracting something from him (read transactional), and Olivia at this point is herself depleted, and has actively emotionally depleted Fitz over the course of their relationship as well. Don’t worry, he was an active participant. These two people didn’t happen to one another.

Now I’m not saying all this to be negative or anti-Olitz, but I think that last night I realized just how dysfunctional these two people are in their attraction and love for one another, in a way that is deeply unhealthy.

@tied-knots used the word “addicts” in our conversation and she is entirely right. It is a consistent and established pattern that they keep falling back into. They just don’t know how to functionally be in each other’s orbit, both failing miserably time and time again because they love each other but without an understanding of their true selves. Tragic. If you cannot contend with your inner demons or at the very least have a basic understanding as to why you behave a certain way, then it is impossible to progress in your own life. I say this from personal experience.

In no way, do I want to imply that Olivia is not deserving of love or compassion, she certainly is. I have a feeling that the audience tends to conflate any criticism of Olivia’s behavior as a denial of her personhood, but it isn’t that at all, everyone on this show is flawed, but none have been taken to the extreme as she has. We all are deserving of love and compassion, but there was a lot more than met the eye last night, and making these excuses for her behavior as the audience makes us enablers as well. We can understand her, her issues and where she is coming from and still demand accountability from her, it’s not hard to merge those two things, they can coexist in us as viewers.

Last night we watched two very complicated people fell back into the same pattern. Of course, they’re so, so, soooooo pretty to watch, but the reality is that until Olivia allows room for some introspection, nothing will change. Fitz has established boundaries with her since S5, but obviously not enough if he crumbles at her every whim. At first when she arrived at his house (?) he just stood there, without touching her, and that reticence on his part, which he eventually gives into, tells me that try as he might he just can’t help himself. That’s addiction. This is the tragedy of their relationship.

#scandal #scandalabc #olivia pope #oliviapope #olivia and fitz #scandal7X08 #Tony Goldwyn #TonyGoldwyn #Fitzgerald Grant #Olitz #fitzgrant #kerry washington #KerryWashington #scandal abc

201 notes · View notes

buffyverse-rewind · 3 years

Text

Buffy S6 Ep - Flooded

How do I hate thee, let me count the ways...

Right off the bat, turn off the fucking water! There should be shutoff valves all over, along with the main. Sure, Buffy was still fair young and may not know some of these things, but Xander would have. Yet they clearly don’t, ever, since Buffy’s running the sink without issue, even as Tito is wrapping up in the basement; and has seemingly only done an estimate and not the actual repair work. No, they have to go for the cheap, over the top, cartoonish gag of every fucking pipe bursting, no mater how absurd the position of the water source; and the basement ends up waist deep full of water.

Now, I could have sworn there used to be dialog where Willow offers to fix the pipes with magic and Tara shoots it down. Maybe I’m thinking of a latter episode where they call back to this; or I’m conflating it with the look Giles gives her when she suggests a locator spell. I’m not sure, but it’s apparently not in this episode at any rate. Regardless, should they have used magic to fix the pipes? Sure, why not? Now I know what you're going to say; yes, Willow's magic is far from perfect and it's just as likely she could make it worse somehow, BUT if Tara actually helped and made sure Willow didn't cut corners, it'd be more likely to succeed. In which case there's no reason not to use magic to fix the pipes, or the house later, or any of those insignificant things; rather than paying huge amounts of money they don't have. I know later in the season Tara grouses about every Willow’s every little use of magic, which is probably why I assumed there was a discussion of fixing the pipes that way and Tara shooting it down.

Then there’s the Scoobies dropping a house on Buffy. More specifically, they drop the Summers house and the spiraling debt that comes with it.

Honest to God, why does no one at any point say, “Hey, here’s a novel idea. Move.”? Ostensibly Joyce’s estate didn’t pay off the mortgage; especially since the loan officer later tells Buffy she can’t refinance. Between mortgage and property tax alone, much less utilities, it’s far too impractical for Buffy and Dawn continuing living there with no income; not to mention Tara and Willow, who by all accounts don’t contribute anything financially to the household – yet another reason to fix the pipes with magic; since then they’d at least be earning their keep…

Admittedly, getting an apartment present similar problems on the lack of income front, even just a two bedroom apartment, or three if Tara and Willow tag along and actually chip in, would be the most sensible solution; yet no one, not even Giles when he returns, broaches the subject of whether they should even be staying there.

The first sign of bad writing is when you have to make the characters dumb in order to make the plot work; and that’s exactly what they do when discussing how Buffy can make money. They have Anya express the most obvious and basic idea – to find some way of leveraging her powers as Slayer and mission to help people, to also support herself financially; achieving a mutually beneficial outcome. Just because there are ways she could have monetized the hero gig, doesn’t mean she’d only ever save someone if they paid; it would mean not burning the candle at both ends b working during the day and Slaying at night, effectively working two jobs and only getting paid for one. She could have offered self-defense classes in the back of the magic shop. My preferred idea is that she could have opened a funeral home (ostensibly with Giles’ help.) There’s no shortage of the dead in Sunnydale. It’d be an excellent front for a Slayer and explain her coming and going from the cemeteries; and give her early notice of attacks. The point is, they boil it down to Anya saying only, “you should charge,” because it was funny, and to side-step an otherwise valid point. And then they compound that with everyone else dismissing the idea out of hand and mocking it on its face.

Now we get to the bank – why the fuck is Buffy at the bank seeking a loan she has absolutely no way of repaying? How did none of the others point out that this was never going to work? Not Tara? Not Anya of all people?

But of course, we need Buffy to be where the action is to make the plot happen; because naturally when she’s there looking to get money from the bank she can’t give back, the trio are there essentially for the same reason; only with a more effective, if albeit less than above board method of achieving their goals.

Which brings us to the next terrible part about the episode – the introduction of the Trio. I mean, Warren certainly seems like the type that would do this shit, and Andrew is a new character who can be whatever the writers want him to be, but Jesus Christ, yeah, Jonathan’s made some mistakes; Superstar being a huge one, but now he sees no problem robbing banks and being criminal masterminds taking over Sunnydale?

This time around, I actually feel like they might have been decent big bads if they had been made competent. Like, each of them as it turns out, brought their own special skills the table – Warren’s cybernetics, Jonathan’s apparent knowledge of magic and Jonathan’s control of demons. On paper, they could have been a force to be reckoned with; yet they have to take these characters, whom they’ve established must have some level of intelligence to do what they do, and make them morons. Because that’s their super power, but it’s going to take all fucking season for Buffy to stop them, making the Scoobies dumber than the Trio. Warren alone had the potential if done right. His arc basically mirrored Willows, with his own form of abusing power and magic; and was more self-aware than the other two, but still written as a joke.

And why…? Because when Willow suggests using a locator spell to find the person or people who sent the demon to kill Buffy, Giles shoots her a dirt look and she drops the idea that would have benefited them in the long run; would have saved Tara and Katrina’s life and (probably) stopped Willow from going dark – at least, yet.

And that’s part of the problem with Willow’s arc ad abusing magic. Whether it’s Giles or Tara, they don’t make any distinction between reasonable use of magic, and unreasonable abuses of that power; and a locator spell that would have lead them to people responsible for the attack is entirely the proper use of magic.

I don’t know remember noticing before that when Giles and Buffy sit on the couch together, after “making the bed,” that Giles reached out to her and she walks away from him, as if she didn’t notice; and they linger on Giles for a beat. This feels like it has shades of Giles’ later concerns about Buffy getting along without him, but I’m not sure how it’s meant to be played that way.

So once all is said and done, the demon is dead and Anya’s presenting Buffy with a new figure of her overall debt – how is that not when Buffy and Giles go over her finances? Anya’s been sitting there for how long crunching numbers and Buffy and Giles are…? What? Oh, I see, Buffy’s been watching Anya crunch numbers and Giles… Jesus, is Giles just only now coming to? How long was he out, that Anya recalculated Buffy’s debt? Because that’s super bad if he was out that long and should probably go see a doctor. He probably has a concussion – but no, he wants to go over Buffy’s bills…. That Anya just went over…? Yeah, he’s definitely concussed.

Naturally, this is all for the effect that Buffy is shirking her responsibilities, which on the whole is kind of bullshit; especially when Buffy didn’t miss a beat returning to Slaying and at no point after this is Giles actually firm with her and just expects her to figure out his expectations of her telepathically or something. The same Giles who put his foot down and told her how it had to be in, “Tough Love,” when she did try to shirk her responsibilities.

That said, I hadn’t previously taken into account the state of the house when Buffy leaves; what with the broken stairway etc. Admittedly, Buffy’s response to Angel should have been, “My place has just been trashed by a demon, I need a day or two to get that sorted out before we can meet.” But again, the behaviors are dumb and forced; and that is why I hate this episode.

0 notes