My God, just fuck already

Person of Interest 4.21 — Asylum

I’m gonna be right there beside milevens cheering if there is leaks about casting for a young male teen, presumed by fans to be Will’s love interest, but for different reasons 😅

paul by big thief (masterpiece, 2016)

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚ thank you @fionnagallagher and @shamelesscreencaps for the screencaps ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

speaking of fucked up overly hated female twdg characters i find it Super Interesting how people will say carver was the best villain in the whole series, but when lilly is literally just a successful carver (iron fist leader of a community turning children into soldiers) suddenly shes a bad/lame villain for some reason 🤔

speaking of interpretations i don't like i hateeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee the idea that lifesteal characters are somehow different people or lose memories between seasons i hate it so bad

would

would Yugo officiate the otomirga wedding

that'd be hilarious

lifestealtober2023 day 15 - revival

remember when in s4 someone (i think leo?) said woogie revived parrot... i do....

version w/o the darkness + parrot closeup

TDP couples + hand over heart in 4x09

I clipped this from your post because it’s easier than trying to inaccurately summarize! But I was wondering what you think about this dynamic. Whether you see it as a core part of his characterization and what you think it says about him, or whether you see it as kind of a visual shorthand in the series that isn’t indicative of anything about his approach to sex? It seems to me to be very consistent over the years and I’m curious about your take.

Yeah I think the repetition/consistency in how they show this makes it a super deliberate and very core part of his character, at least in how I read it – wouldn’t be nearly as fascinated with the story if it wasn’t.

And I don’t think it’s an accidental visual shorthand because of that repetition. I remember reading somewhere CM said that in S6’s TxL hotel sex scene they actually filmed two full sex scenes, one on the sofa and one in the bed – but in the end they only showed the last few seconds in the bed focused on the faces, as better articulating the purpose of that scene. I think they are very particular about how and what they show about Tommy having sex.

The particularity does add to this sense of overly-performative sex (EVERY sex scene feels performative and slightly contrived to me, even Tommy with Grace, even him using passionate sex with Grace in S3 to distract her XD, even him drunkenly/passionately sealing the ‘transaction’ with Lizzie in S5’s My Property scene) but I think they manage to stay on the side of the line that it feels like Tommy being consciously performative/contrived, rather than feeling like I can see the director’s hand. It’s the same sense when looking at Tommy’s various desks: yes his desks absolutely reek of being a contrived stage, but it’s *Tommy* being conscious about setting the stage, not the set designers/directors.

My reading / what I think the sex says about his character:

his ‘thinking mind’ constantly tries to frame sex as a transaction because he sees himself/his labour/his work/doing killings/offering sex – basically any act of his body as the fundamentality/essentiality of labour – as a unit he can trade for something else he wants. There’s some kind of less thought-out complex/trauma background thing here, where he believes that his worth is only what he can bring in and do for the family – labour, killing, smarts, sex, whatever. Mostly that’s his intelligence/schemes/business smarts, or his ability to push through risk/stress for high stake outcomes (stretching to do things they won’t out of fear), but sometimes that’s also his body (if combined with intelligence - trade your goods smartly, not stupidly, for advantage worth more than the momentary loss of bodily boundaries).

his ‘unthinking mind’ does actually want sex physically because it feels good. Physical release/oxytocin/endorphins etc? libido? I assume this, because otherwise they just wouldn’t bother showing him seeking out prostitutes; he’s not doing that for ego because he was satisfied in S1 that people thought he wasn’t having sex even though he was. But he is also sort of scared of sex because it leads to an intimacy that he can be used or hurt through it, hence why he defaults to prostitutes (S1, S2, S4 - or even the Zelda fling/no possible relationship) when he’s most wounded. Could theorise this is due to actual sexual abuse, but seems more like it’s because he hurts so deeply every time he’s connected deeply with someone – he loved Greta and was broken when she died, he loved Grace and was broken when she died - so, this supports his transactional approach because transactions are conditional, negotiated up front, well defined and ‘safe,’ they can’t get intimate or personal. He can use the transactional approach to justify himself seeking sex, while at the same time netting him something which feels good.

But whatever’s in the middle of the above two, is actually madly desperate for personal connection and intimacy. Despite him trying to apply sex transactionally or as a feel-good-only thing, he falls into some kind of intimacy and connection with the people he has transactional sex with, so frequently it’s a definite pattern. (I could write absolute buckets about May right here)

Even when he tries to avoid intimacy/connection – prostitution - returning from war, he sticks with one prostitute and has a very intimate connection with her? All right that's not typical?? And between S3 and S4 when the family’s shunning him, instead of just being promiscuous and anonymous, instead he has a relatively small rotation of regular prostitutes, knowing their names by preference to anonymity? Even the scene we see where he insists on someone new that he doesn’t know, this sparks from Lizzie pushing him about family/intimacy/connection. I read that almost as a “look at me Lizzie I don’t NEED connection stop pushing me” in front of her to try to make a point (to her, who used to be his intimate sexual connection, in a way that hurts her too to put her in her place? to himself?), immediately followed by him handing Lizzie cash/emphasising transactional approaches.  And this is then followed by that absolutely hysterical fail of a sex scene with the ‘someone new’ prostitute, which I swear is filmed to show Tommy did not, in fact, have any sex, or if he did, it was so lame they didn’t even muss the bed.

Even S6 and the prostitute in America, it’s fascinating they make the effort of showing that having happened, but then focus so much on all the intimacy/connection in the phone call with Lizzie/kids. He needs sex but he's hungry for connection and made vulnerable by intimacy.

(And I could go on about the number of ‘woman on top’ scenes and why that particular position, or specifically the filming/dialogue with May which is one of the more fascinatingly filmed and verbalised transactional relationships because of her class, or why I think Lizzie, the actual prostitute, has the least amount of flesh/nudity showing at all from all his women while he's often MORE naked/exposed in their scenes -- I’ve only been able to watch properly the once through, but had so many thoughts on how they dealt with the framing/camerawork.)

But all up, it feels like it’s trying to show him as a character who performs sex to get something out of it that’s not sex (transaction/treats self as a fundamental labour unit of exchange), but still needing/wanting/enjoying sex (because otherwise why would he pay for prostitutes/why even put sex on the negotiating table men don't do this??), but also constantly he cannot shut down this tendency/urge of his to more softly want/need personal connection almost more than the sex.

It’s just not a common way to portray a guy ruthlessly heading a gang, and that’s why I think it’s so deliberate. They take the expected image of how a guy heading a gang would approach sex (prostitutes, seduction, sexual prowess etc) but it feels like they’ve turned that expected image/action well on its head (cares for prostitute/s, suffers the Mosley-threat and Diana-rape, sexual prowess is mostly in service of women, attempts to depersonalise himself to a unit of trade), and then they use camerawork and the pre-post conversations to show this intriguing drive for intimacy instead of sex.

I hope that’s answered the question? It’s tricky; some of these thoughts more suited to a conversation/branching dialogue than a single post or I get repetitive XD

Tangentially, there’s more thoughts too on how they weave prostitution through as a theme, or the way he’s often in conflict between those motivators of ‘transaction/physical/intimacy’ -- he trips himself up; he gets hurt by trying to lean into one or two of those, and forgetting the other/s, and can’t really ever get them in balance.

Oh to be John Resse and fight criminals in a nightclub with the Bi lightning in the background and music to accompany my moves

I am both Ben Gross's deeply adoring fan and his #1 hater and it's a trip

no thoughts, head empty, just mabel's smile when tobert kisses her cheek.

Can you imagine what it must all have been like for Gray though?

Like. Picture this. After getting badly injured on your job, you get out of a long, long hospital stay. We're talking months. You don't remember any of those months. You don't even remember the accident.

So you get back to your boring little life. It's the same as it was before, but after brushing so close to death you do have a better appreciation for it. Or you try to, anyway.

And then you meet this weird young woman for whom you feel an inexplicable fondness. You talk for about 4 minutes. Later, instead of meeting you again as promised, she slips away. You think you'll never see her again. Well.

A few months later, she appears out of thin air again and says she seeked you out specifically to help with her job. You want to help, so you say yes, and you fly to New Zealand. There, everything seems straightforward until it- doesn't. It looks like you've been tricked, but for what? Then you find yourself into a situation more sinister and dangerous than you thought possible, yet you're not scared. When someone threatens the woman (your friend? It feels weird to call her a friend when you barely know her, but you feel close to her), you don't recognize the voice even though it evokes contradictory feelings in you. Happiness, fear? When you're in front of that weird bomb-like device, you don't know what it is but you know how to disable it, instinctively, confidently, like muscle memory.

Back in Sydney, you still don't get all the answers you want. The woman disappears again, but it's okay. You think this won't be the last you've seen of her. And maybe then you'll get your answers.

are there any narrative decisions/themes in twdg (the entirety of the series) that you really disliked/thought could be handled better?

*gestures vaguely at seasons 2 and 3* i dont think i really have anything new or groundbreaking to say about the ways those seasons were handled

honestly for the most part though even when i find the narrative decisions to be lacking or disappointing theyre able to at least stick to their themes and emotionally come to satisfying conclusions. clems personal running narrative throughout the series i think holds up pretty well. and her journey is like... the whole point of it all. so other characters or aspects of the series falling through the cracks is unfortunate but acceptable for me if its still working towards developing clementine as a character. seasons 2 and 3 might be messy and contentious among fans but like.. regardless of the issues i have with them i like where they push clem emotionally

leads to the kind of situation where i might not agree with the decisions that got us here, but i can at least appreciate what the Intended goal was narratively and thematically

but since im talking about clem the ONE thing i will say is: they pushed the "mother" shit especially in s3 way too hard. she got called a big sister Once and then they promptly moved on. other characters telling clem how motherly she is? sick ew yucky nasty. clementine herself choosing to raise aj because hes all she has left in this world and wants whats best for him? yes and also im crying. at least if you take the alone endings you dont hear that dialogue from kenny or jane so its less in your face but ugh 🙄 i actually liked in s2 that after aj is born clem can be uncomfortable with him or completely uninterested, but by the end of the season (especially if shes left all alone and its partially why i like the alone endings so much) clem decides to look out for him regardless, because theyre all each other has. hed die without her. and she needs something to fight for, to remind her that theres still good out there, because the toll this world has taken on her only continues to rise. they need each other equally. in a normal world they could have just been normal siblings. but in this one? shes ajs everything. and hes hers. and we can see All of that without characters telling clem what a "natural mother" she is 😒

Watching people compare kenstewy to some milk toast wonder bread ass gay pairing I’ve never heard of….*takes a long puff from my cig and stands outside in the cold* you don’t get it….

I miss her. (Stewy Hosseini)