#and i don't even mean the people who obviously don't like the supernatural plot very much and who only like the show bc of byler
Text
opening tumblr following bylers and then complaining that everyone cares about byler too much does not make much sense to me to me sorry friends
#sometimes people make things that have nothing to do with the ship about the ship which is annoying but like#like yeahh it's not gonna be heartstopper because well it's literally stranger things there's a million other things going on#but you can't just blame people for caring about the ship they're here to enjoy too much😭😭#and i don't even mean the people who obviously don't like the supernatural plot very much and who only like the show bc of byler#idk#and like i say: brf slt
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sci-fi and Fantasy are linked in a strange way. Both deal with impossible premises and both typically have what we call "magic" but we don't normally call Sci-fi shenanigans magic, unless they are strictly spiritual. Sci-fi approaches the impossible as if it's simply not possible yet, and that this world has made a break through, allowing them to make this possible. Sci-fi also tends to spend a lot more time explaining how something works with science, or a modified version, while Fantasy explains it through the supernatural and mysticism.
Obviously no series in either category perfectly follows these rules. The cosmere explains that the supernatural is actually natural and measurable, therefore spiritualism is just another part of science. Star wars in my opinion does the opposite. It takes place in a society with future technology and all the trappings of Sci-fi, but it does it in a very fantasy way. Lightsabers are I think the best example, why would you ever need a sword when everyone else has laser guns, because cool fantasy that's why, it's a laser sword. The futuristic elements are portrayed with a mystic elements. And of course there is magic, they try to make is sciency later by explaining that the force is medicorians or whatever, but it still operates on a spiritual and mystical level, and truly isn't completely comprehensible. Which is in contrast to the Cosmere where all the mystical elements just feel like science that hasn't been explained yet.
Dune is where it gets a little weird to me. I think most people would put this in the hard Sci-fi camp, but I disagree. Yes this series is to Sci-fi what Lord of the Rings is to Fantasy, but I think there's a lot of Fantasy in there. I mean the voice? That's magic, Bene Gesseret being able to transmute substances in their body including poison? Magic. Prescience? It comes from a magic drug, made by magic worms! Yes the books do try to approach this from a very sciency way, but a lot of it just feels like magic, no matter how much Herbert tries to make it scientific. (Btw Sanderson's favorite book series other than the Wheel of Time is Dune, so you can definitely see a lot of his inspirations in this, in fact Taldain, the setting of white sands, is definitely just Cosmere Arrakis, like it even has its own version of sand trout.) There's also a shit ton of mysticism in Dune, and yes much of it is discussing the manufactured nature of religion and aspects of spirituality to control the masses, but there is also a sense that not all of it is made up, that the people in power are manipulating truth without really knowing what it is, just so they can get ahead and stay that way.
Obviously genre, especially in books are really just marketing terms designed to help find the right audience for a particular story. This is the same with YA. YA is an even less concrete genre as it requires very little. Mistborn was not originally marked as YA, it's an epic high fantasy, but after a couple years the boys at TOR figured out that it has a lot of the trappings of YA. It's fast paced, has a young strong female protagonist, a dark dystopian setting, and is written in pros that don't require an incredibly dense knowledge of vocabulary, making it easy to comprehend for all ages. It was a no-brainer for Tor to start printing a YA version(just a paperback with a different cover that is stylized in a way that is very common for YA). YA really just means a teenager could read this without feeling like it's homework. That's really it. There are a lot of people who hate YA for incredibly weird reasons. I personally am weary of YA, simply because I enjoy a slower plot with more room for nuance and sitting in the moment. YA tends to be more fast paced, which I enjoy, but it often comes at the cost of depth. There are a lot of YA books that I enjoy and a lot that I would enjoy if they were written to be a little more "boring". But some of y'all really just don't wanna read anything that is labeled as YA, and I'm positive it is just misogyny. Like y'all just don't wanna read books that are popular and "primarily" marketed towards women, and it's really, really pathetic.
I don't know how this turned into what it is, and I don't have a final point to end this on that will tie it all together. Enjoy this ADHD clusterfuck of a post where none of my points are truly taken to completion
I do not know how to end this, I just wanted to talk about it
#fanatsy#cosmere#dnd#brandon sanderson#scifi#publishing#star wars#dune#i really should get back on my meds
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
the fall of lucifer in spn canon: headcanons and speculations
so all this is just some headcanons based on what's in the show because obviously there isn't a very clear picture painted or i wouldn't have to make this goddamn post. anyway this post will prioritize stuff from seasons 4-7 because when you have a show like supernatural which really does not have a show bible or any worldbuilding rules or continuity enforcement, the longer a worldbuilding element exists, the less sense it makes, because people add to it as the plot demands without looking at the whole picture. this doesn't mean that no evidence will come from the later season, just that they will be engaged with selectively. furthermore, there isn't really a way to use all available evidence even in 4-7 because there really wasn't a coherent picture painted by the writers so anything i say will have to discard something.
okay, with that out of the way.
proposal 1:
this is what i always just sort of intuitively assumed happened. i'm going to list off some evidence.
the implication in season four is possibly? that only the four archangels have ever met god.
angels are soldiers, or at least, the ones we are meeting are.
despite that, they all seem super shocked when angels die, and "only an angels can kill another angel" is a revelation
lilith is the most powerful demon, and she is shaped from a human soul.
azazel's "right idea, wrong angel" speech in lucifer rising posits that lucifer's holy angelic glory tricked believers into thinking the site of st. mary's was holy and kind of implies? that lucifer is 1) metaphysically the same as other angels and 2) maybe the only angel who is an angel-of-hell.
non-archangel angels can fall, but this just means that they become human.
demons are functionally just ghosts with a little more juice. they are not matches for an angel in combat, or at least, not without the assistance of an angel blade (which is probably? a literal piece of an angel. and so qualifies as angelic assistance). we never see an angel go up against lilith or azazel, but we do see angels so up against other slightly higher level demons: alastair and crowley. alastair can take cas is physical combat, but can't kill him. they're not actually equals in this sense. cas tries to smite crowley in the man who knew too much and the only reason it doesn't work is that crowley is protected by raphael. demons - even powerful demons - are not the equals of angels.
lucifer explains to cas that god cast him down, and why. i.e., god was present when lucifer fell, and also cas doesn't know why lucifer fell.
as of season nine, knights of hell, who seem to be outranked only by princes (azazel etc.) and lilith, and are limited in number to single digits, suggesting that those who outrank them are even more limited, also began as humans. see: cain.
anyway, based on all this evidence, my intuitive interpretation of how lucifer's fall went is that it happened when there were only the four brothers, michael, raphael, gabriel, and lucifer, in existence. it happened when god was still present. and only after lucifer fell were other angels created, by the archangels (not by god) (which means probably primarily by michael and raphael? idk though), with the explicit intent of being soldiers in the apocalypse. (it actually provides a fun parallel to the tempting of lilith! demons and angels were created for essentially the same reasons!)
this explains why so many angels seem naive to the realities of angel-angel warfare, and why there don't seem to be any fallen angels in the classical sense (i.e. angels who rebelled with lucifer rather than angels who decided to turn human). this also makes sense in terms of like.... keeping the fall of lucifer as a family drama. god and the archangels are meaningfully a family in a way that the other angels really aren't.
the only real evidence against is uriel's "do you remember how beautiful he was" line in 4x16.
but this also means that lucifer's rebellion can't really be conceptualized as warfare/civil war in the way it traditionally is, and that the civil war in spn season six is the first time that's really happened.
it also means that conceptualizing the season five apocalypse as a "war" as such is a little strange since angels can easily overpower demons. there's definitely some implication that it's an issue of numbers, i.e., battles between angels and demons mean one or two angels vs. hundreds of demons, because demons are a plentiful and renewable population while angels are both limited and non-reproductive, but it's still kind of strange, especially since both knights and princes, the high-ranking demons who seem easily able to handle angels (if not kill them), are so rare. obviously there are other high ranking demons who can maybe hold their own against angels (see alastair) but. hmmmph.
proposal two:
this idea literally came to me as i was mentally laying out my evidence for this post, i had never thought about it before. but the best counterpoint i can think of for the previous point is that cas falls in season five because he's cut off from heaven. not because of his own choice but because heaven cuts him off. he loses his grace and wastes away until he's basically human. so if lucifer did actually lead a faction of angels in a civil war. potentially that would have cause them to fall in the supernatural sense. meaning that they would have become human and died and gone to hell. meaning that some demons (the princes perhaps?) are fallen angels, humanized then demonized. there don't seem to be enough princes though, so maybe the fallen angel demons are more garden variety. or maybe fallen angels go to the empty.
final note:
i am aware that the timeline does not seem to match up on any of this shit at all. cas was present for the first creature to crawl onto land, and yet he was created after god asked lucifer to bow to humans? lucifer's rebellion was at the beginning of time and yet there were human bodies around for his angel soldiers to fall (as in: become human) into? what the hell! well, my answer to that is that imo the way reality experiences time and causality and the way god and angels experience time and causality are kind of different. i've talked about one way this is maybe true here, but i'm also just inclined to believe that like... the version of humanity that god wanted lucifer to bow to was an idea, a concept. that the garden and cain and abel and all of that existed on a conceptual level as a kind of blueprint. that that was both true and they also literally happened on earth because causality works differently for god and angels. and stuff like that.
59 notes
·
View notes
Note
I was honestly expecting the most romantic season of tv I'm not kidding bc what do you mean soulmates who are separated by a love curse that's such an incredibly good plot, the stuff of dreams ships never get. But let's be real they kinda botched it, no matter how it turns out, we had half a season where they barely interacted and we're never going to see their big moments together and them being madly in love and solving crimes together and protecting each other and moving in together and getting engaged( I had this wish that it would be Nancy who proposes bc it would be such a big thing coming from her and for ace to see someone actually want that with him, it would mean so much growth for both of them). Now all we can hope for is they don't slap us with Tristan and Nancy as soulmates, give us as many moments of them together and give us a flashforward of their happily ever after ..
I was expecting that too, especially after the first 3 swoonworthy episodes of the season. I thought, this is THEIR season. But boy, did it go downhill fast. Episode 4 had NO Nace interactions, and then 5-7 just had painful ones (how many times did they break up again?). Episode 8 seemed promising...but then 9 and 10 ruined it again with no interactions. Now we're heading into episode 11 with both Nancy and Ace seemingly falling for their new supernatural love interests and it's like WHAT? With only 3 episodes left to go? Make it make sense!
Obviously, they were hoping for a season 5, and they wrote the season with that in mind. But that tells me if we had gotten a season 5, this still would've been dragged out well into next season. So the only solace I can take with all this is that it's a good thing they found out the show was canceled before they finished writing the final episode. Because if it had been canceled after, then the series would've ended with Nace not together. And even if it had been renewed for a season 5, with the writers/actors on strike for who knows how much longer, there's a chance next season would've eventually gotten cancelled anyway, or it would have at least extended a Nace endgame for another year or more. This way, although it's going to be rushed af, we're still going to end the series with the knowledge that Nancy and Ace are together and in love.
I am hopeful we'll get a little flash-forward epilogue that might show Nancy and Ace married, or at least engaged. Bonus points if they show us one of them proposing. I'm just not sure how they would fit that into the finale, but it's really all I want at this point. I'm so sad that so many opportunities were wasted this season (that should have been NACE slow dancing!). This was supposed to be their season to shine. And it started out so promising! I have no idea how or why they lost sight of the plot so heavily, but they did. And I know some people will say, "You know, this show isn't just about Nace" and while that's true, once you make your titular character and another main character star-crossed lovers and add in something like a curse keeping them apart, you're kinda making them the main focus—especially when you drag it out until the very end. So, it's understandable that a lot of us are solely focusing on Nace and how disappointed we are. We expected more. We deserved more. But that's just my opinion.
#i can't believe how polarizing this season has been for the fandom#i was so sure we were all going to be happy and love it#but really it's just depressed a lot of us#oh well#nace#nancy x ace#ace x nancy#asks
17 notes
·
View notes
Note
Hi! I just wanna ask if you're from India? Just wanna make sure cause I saw it once on the blog description. The reason I ask is actually for a stupid reason. And feel free to ignore.
Lately, I've been coming across Indian tv scenes meme where people die by getting strangled ridiculously by the scarf getting caught in a fan of them getting slapped and pushed into it. Or one where a girl rescued a guy who fell and did many backflips in the air, by riding a large kite. Are these really what's in Indian tv show? I wanna know who their target audience is. And what they think about it?😅 I find it quite humourous and it gives me a good laugh.
OMG. Lol. Okay. I'm gonna rant okay! I'm also gonna be referring some tv shows and use show hindi terms that are very popular among these shows.
Indian tv serials or Indian tv dramas are EMBARRASSING AS HELL and I'm not proud to say that. If I could describe it in one sentence I would say---"It will give you a brain tumor, so please don't watch it."
About 90% or more, Indian tv serials are like that. I'm not joking. Let me tell you why?
Ekta Kapoor. Ekta Kapoor or Ekta didi (we'll call her like that!) is a very infamous name in India. She's basically a producer and has produced more than 100 tv serials. Apart from two or three good ones, the rest are dog shit. Also, all of them are soap operas. The problem with her tv serials is that, they don't have an identity. For example, let's take K-dramas or C-dramas. They have shows for different genres like romance, mystery, thriller, horror, historical etc. But when you take a look at most of the Indian shows, almost all of them have 'saas-bahu' melodrama ('saas' in hindi means 'mother-in-law' and 'bahu' in hindi means 'daughter-in-law') and nothing else. There is no actual plot or goal or even an ending. They don't even have a genre. For example, there is a tv serial called 'Sasural Simar Ka'. It started a normal soap opera melodramatic show, but then out of nowhere it ventured into supernatural stuff. Yeah, I'm not joking. Simar is the name of the main protagonist and is a normal human being who got married into a rich family (like every other ekta kpoor tv shows) and then after IDK 1000 episodes later, she turns in a fly. .....yep, I wish I was joking. You can check that on youtube if you don't believe me.
Seriously, the writers don't know what they're writing. They're just doing whatever to milk-out each episodes. Another problem with these shows is that, they just never want to end. Some shows starts with a good message but then after like 50 episodes when the message is conveyed and the goal is achieved, the best thing we must do for the show for it to remain as good as it is, is to end the fucking show, right? But Nope! They just keep going and going and going and going and going...I remember when I was nine years old, my mom used to watch this one serial called 'Yeh rishta kya kehla tha hain'. I finished my school and started college and the show was still going on. After reading your question, I simply googled to see if the serial was still on going but thankfully they ended it after 14 YEARS! WITH 4000+ EPISODES! 4 FUCKING THOUND EPISODES!!? WTF IS THIS EVEN ABOUT? One piece could never. Oh before I forget, 'Yeh rishta kya kehla tha hain' is also a soap opera. So as you see, unlike k-dramas that ends with about 20 to 22 episodes per season, Indian tv serials doesn't end. This also burdens the writers because they have to keep churning out new drama for each episode and after some time, its clear that they are running out of ideas. Writers are also human beings. If they are ordered to writer each episode everyday, they would obviously feel burned out and run out ideas, which would lead them writing shit like this:
youtube
and also the funny clips you saw on youtube. Unlike K-drama, whose episodes are once or twice a week, indian tv shows are daily (except for sat and sun) and there would be a watch party in my house which starts right after 6pm. 6pm is when my family pray and the tv would be on around that time, because my family members don't wanna miss a single scene. It starts at 6pm and ends at around 9 or 10pm on avg. depending on the number of serials they watch.
Now earlier when I said about Indian tv shows having no identity, well, almost all tv serials are centered around 'saas-bahu' drama. No matter what the story is, everything ends up being a story about a rich family wearing heavy makeup and saris and their boring household affairs where the daughter in laws and mother in laws try to conspire against each other for no reason and the men in these serials are nothing but props. Also there is always this grandma character who for some reason never dies despite having grandkids and those grandkids having grandkids and even if one of those grandkids die, this old lady never does.
Another thing, which I'm quite embarrassed to say is that, Ekta didi had been trying so hard to remake many popular american shows like the Vampire dairies and the Game of thrones. Now personally, I have not watched either of them. Ekta didi has tried remaking Vampire diaries and Twilight 3 times! The first one is called 'pyaar ki yeh ek kahaani' was something my sister used to watch. It was fine at first but soon becomes boring as hell. There is no story or setup or mythology, nothing. She just made it because she wanted to copy Twilight, because it was a blockbuster around that time. Her second attempt was 'Fanaah' and I don't remember it at all despite it having well known actors, it flopped so hard. Her third attempt and the most embarrassing one is the recent remake of the Vampire diaries who's name I don't even remember and I don't care to look it up, because I'm so embarrassed to even talk about it. Yeah, that's why.
You what's the best and worst thing about India? India is a country that has people speaking many languages. I come from the South and I speak Malayalam. There are other languages like Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati etc. Although I don't speak most of them, I do understand them. That's great. But you know what is not great? The tv shows that I mentioned above, they are all in Hindi. Which means....THERE ARE TV SHOWS LIKE THAT FOR OTHER LANGUAGES AROUND INDIA! Like I said, I come from the south, so my family watches Malayalam tv shows and although they are not as cancerous as the hindi ones, they are still shit and the writers doesn't know when to end it. I swear to god, if my grandma understood every languages in this world, she would watch every tv serials like this forever.
Now the audience. Basically all ages can watch these. But, not everyone wants to. Especially we young teenagers and people with brains, don't wanna watch these kinds of serials because we know it's not worth our time. Instead of watching that, we'd rather waste our time watching a normal anime or manga or play games or even study. The only people who watch these are kids (as in babies) who don't know what the fuck is going on but watches them because others are watching it, grandparents because they don't have anything to do in life so they just watch for entertainment, and people who have no job irl and watch these shows just to taste that spicy drama that we don't get to taste irl. I mean, I won't blame them, who the hell would wash laptops in real life with a dish soap? They all gather and form a watch party and once this starts, no one is allowed to disturb them. My grandpa was bedridden, so my grandma would feed him dinner before 6pm every night so that he won't disturb her during her shows. My dad told me that the watch party is so intense that they won't even be conscious about their surroundings. He said "Even if a robber enters the house, steals the things around the house, makes coffee and leave, these idiots still won't know." and he's not exaggerating.
Also let me tell you, its not always been like this. In the earlier days, before Ekta didi became a producer, Indian tv serials were not like this. There used to be good tv serials with good messages and not to forget the epics 'Mahabarath' and 'Ramayana' these are literal gold even to this day. But now, Ekta didi is the Queen to indian television, so we can't do anything about it. :(
18 notes
·
View notes
Text
Arguing with strangers on the internet about whether or not fictional characters are "good people" -- especially supporting characters in network television, whose actions often vary wildly from episode to episode depending on the needs of the plot -- seems like an incredibly unwise and unfun use of a finite lifespan.
That being said, every time I stumble into a post positioning Giles as the Good Parent and Joyce as the Bad Parent I end up wanting to break something. Especially when people suggest that this is also how Buffy herself relates to them. Because that is simply not what the show depicts and it is hard not to be uncharitable about why you might claim otherwise.
Yes, without question Joyce is shown to do some genuinely terrible things as a parent (largely because the writers don't care enough about her as a character to write her consistently from episode to episode). The more seriously you treat the metaphorical reading of Buffy 'coming out' as a Slayer to her mother in Becoming -- and I think it's a reading that's very much intended, given the language used -- the worse Joyce's response is. And the retcon in Normal Again that Joyce had Buffy institutionalized and then, well, just forgot about doing it, is obviously horrific. (Crucially, though, it's also pretty much impossible to reconcile with how Buffy's relationship with her mother is portrayed in the first five seasons of the show. It's not evidence that Joyce is "actually" a bad parent: it's just laughably bad writing and the only sensible option is to ignore the retcon entirely.)
Yes, Joyce reacts badly to Buffy being a Slayer while Giles doesn't. That's because Giles has known about vampires and slayers being real for decades before he meets her, while Joyce found out about all that stuff earlier that evening. It's not because Giles is somehow naturally a good and accepting person while Joyce isn't.
(Within the reality of the show, it is entirely understandable that Joyce is angry at Giles for signing her daughter up to be his footsolider in a supernatural war that he knows will end in her early death. It is entirely understandable that she blames Giles for sending her daughter out alone every night to fight vampires and demons while -- at his urging -- lying to her mother about what she's up to. Not only might Buffy have died alone in some underground vampire nest without her mother ever knowing about it, she actually did die, and Giles never even thought of telling Joyce. Do you really think the woman who faced down Spike with an axe and no powers in School Hard -- "you get the hell away from my daughter" -- is just going to be okay with this?
It's fun to point out that Joyce's claim to have "tried to march in the Slayer Pride parade" in Season 3's Faith, Hope & Trick is a little disingenous, and it's true: Joyce does eventually come to terms with Buffy being a Slayer, but she's definitely not there yet. But her talk about "hating" the fact that Buffy is a Slayer in that episode comes when Buffy has just admitted that she was killed fighting the Master and -- thanks in part to Giles -- she never told her mother. It is not at all surprising that Joyce is upset by this!)
Yes, Giles gives Buffy various comforting pep talks throughout the show and obviously cares about her a lot, even being willing to risk his life and lie to the police to protect her. Guess what: Joyce does all this too, consistently, even not knowing why Buffy is acting the way she does. (And, again, as a fictional character Joyce's primary purpose on the show is to be Buffy's well-meaning but slightly clueless parent. The fact she doesn't notice the signs that Buffy is sneaking out to fight vampires every night doesn't make her an idiot, it is just part of the fundamental conceit of the early seasons of the show.)
Yes, Joyce almost gets Buffy killed in Season 3's Gingerbread. That's because she's being possessed by a literal demon (compare and contrast with what Buffy herself almost does to Dawn three years later in Season 6's Normal Again). What's Giles excuse for drugging Buffy, robbing her of her powers, lying to her about it and almost getting her killed the very next episode of Season 3? Oh, his employer told him to do it? He was just following orders? Cool. Excellent A+ parenting there.
("But he confessed to her at the last minute! When he thought the test was no longer valid and he wouldn't suffer any consequences for talking about it!" Well, sure. I guess the father of the year award is a shoe-in then.)
Yes, Joyce is excited for Buffy to have gotten into Northwestern and thinks she should try to go there after high school, but … oh, wait, despite the fact Joyce's detractors on this site repeatedly bring this up as some kind of criticism, it is actually not a bad thing at all. Joyce's reaction to the news that Buffy was accepted into Northwestern -- "that's wonderful" -- literally mirrors Giles's later in the episode; and Buffy herself tries to arrange things so that she can go to Northwestern after the Mayor is defeated (Buffy herself applied for Northwestern, after all!).
Buffy wants to have as much of a normal life as she can and not just be the Slayer. This is a very central part of her character. She wants to do well in school: this is the whole reason she befriends Willow in the first episode of the show. It is frankly ridiculous how often people suggest that Joyce wanting the same things for her daughter is actually a point against her. (It is meant to be sad that Buffy can't take part in ordinary school activities, that she struggles in class because of the Slaying, that she ultimately can't manage to go to Northwestern, that she has to drop out of college altogether later, and that she can't get a more fulfilling day job. We are supposed to want better for her. )
Like, obviously the writers care a lot more about Giles than they do Joyce, and obviously they expect us to care about him more too. We know much more about his back story and how he spends his free time, we get to see multiple recurring characters from his past, we're encouraged to care about his romantic relationships. The writers can't even be bothered to keep track of what Joyce's sister is called, let alone show us where she works or let her have any friends who live beyond one episode.
And yes, sure, Giles is a more interesting character. He appears in twice as many episodes and has more than four times as much speaking time, so it would be a little weird if he wasn't! But it is simply not true that Buffy cares about Giles more than Joyce. Nothing she ever says or does suggests it. The highest Giles ever rises in her esteem is when she tells him in Season 6 that having him around is "a little like having Mom back". And then he abandons her.
Ultimately, though, I think you have to approach Joyce Summers the way you should approach Buffy's friends. Yes, they do some terrible things (Joyce telling Buffy she won't be welcome back home if she leaves to fight Angelus; more or less everything that happens in Dead Man's Party; Giles's actions in Helpless; Willow and Tara living in her home rent free while telling her she needs to get a job to pay the bills; Xander ... well, being Xander; all her friends and her own sister collaborating in kicking Buffy out of her own house).
The thing is that you either have to believe that these are to some extent unusual or out-of-character actions -- that the show doesn't always do a good job of depicting conflict between friends and loved ones and is sometimes just poorly written -- but that nonetheless these people all genuinely like and respect Buffy and want her to be happy. Or, alternatively, you end up arguing that Buffy Summers is an idiot who doesn't have any real friends and wastes her affections on people who don't even care about her.
And I have too much respect for Buffy to think that about her.
(Even if she is a fictional character I've just wasted time arguing about on the internet.)
27 notes
·
View notes
Text
Romance Tropes Bracket, Sweet Sixteen
In this round, we have:
Blue: Bodyguard vs. Workplace, and Second Chances vs. Nanny/Governess
Yellow: Mistaken Identity vs. Only One Bed, and Kissing Lessons vs. Forced Proximity
Red: Grumpy/Sunshine vs. Just To Get It Out Of Our System, and Holiday Romance vs. Soulmates
Green: Marriage of Convenience vs. Friends to Lovers, and Sworn Off Love vs. Supernatural
Find out tomorrow who's getting ahead! Tell me who your favorites are!
Under the Readmore I'll tell you why all of these won out against their opponents, and I'll link a few fics in which I've used these tropes!
Blue
Bodyguard was up against Love Triangle - and that was an easy choice. I don't GET love triangles; my first impulse will always be "porque no los dos? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" and most stories don't deliver that. It just doesn't grip me if someone feels themself drawn to two and "has to make a decision". (Am I poly? Probably. Am I happily married? Definitely. Anything else is between me and my wife. :D) (Have I been thinking for some time about a Bering and Wells Bodyguard fic? Most certainly.)
Workplace was up against High School: not quite that easy, especially since I wrote a High School fic myself! In the end it won out because (a) a lot more of my stories qualify as workplace stories and (b) there is just a lot more variation that's possible with a workplace story vs. a high school story. People can have so many different jobs, after all, which can inform the story!
Second Chances defeated Made A Promise (90s style) very easily - first of all, promises don't really hold my interest, especially when they are treated as set in stone for all eternity no matter how much the circumstances and/or persons involved might have changed. Second, and much more importantly: second chances are The Best. Let's face it, we all mess up, and sometimes incredibly badly. And you can do so much with that, narratively! It can move the plot, it can show the characters' character, it makes them change and grow, it is a fantastic source of conflict AND resolution! Top Tier, honestly (and a lot of my stories are that; most obviously the Strata/Commutata duology)
Nanny/Governess beat out Sibling's Best Friend only narrowly, because "employer/employee who's charged to care for employer's kids" is dynamic I just like ever so slightly better than "someone who's been hanging around our house since forever and teased me when I was a kid and ganged up on me with my sibling and now I ~like~ them". Just, nah. Both of them are pretty low on the list, though.
Yellow
Mistaken Identity *easily* vanquished Age Gap; I've never really been a fan of the latter. I like my protagonists to be in a similar place in their lives (which is also, by the way, why "Person A's first queer relationship, but Person B has been out for decades" doesn't grip me at all; at least not if the story focuses *entirely* on Person B helping Person A navigate this situation). I'd *MUCH* rather read Mistaken Identity Shenanigans!
There could only ever be one winner in the Only One Bed vs. Love Potion/Aphrodisiac fight: the latter is fun for a smut fic, but we're talking romance here, and I'd rather that does not start with overruling someone's agency. Although I have to confess I did write that 😅 (47K words of it, even! With not even all that much smut in it!) But nothing beats "there's only one bed" as a trope to get two characters physically, intimately close to each other!
Kissing Lessons won over Amnesia, even though I wrote a Tumblr fragment about the latter! But the thing is: that is fan fic about two characters we already know, so it hits hard; amnesia as a trope usually means that Person A starts out amnesiac or is only introduced with very broad strokes, and that just doesn't grip me. Whereas Kissing Lessons is something that I have done myself, so... *grins*
Forced Proximity also easily defeated Secretly A Celeb/Royal - one of my absolute faves, and thoroughly explored in my Road Trip Series linked above (Strata/Commutata). In all seriousness, though: Only One Bed is Forced Proximity too, just one specific instance of it, so that's a bit unfair - especially since the Green sector has yet another one (Snowed In)! But yeah, faced with this, what's a celeb or, sheesh, a *royal* (insert dripping snark here)...
This is getting so long that I'm gonna put the other two sectors in a reblog 😅
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
The dual settings of Yellowjackets really highlight for me how even well-written media centered on depicting women as complex, multifaceted people struggle with imagining or depicting scenarios where women's emotional struggles are not based on their relationship to men.
In the comic that inspired the Bechdel-Wallace test, Wallace's expy specifies that the last movie she was able to see was Aliens. That means, the last circumstance she knows of where a movie believed it was plausible that two named women would talk about something other than a man is a situation as dire-- and unrelatable-- as being attacked by an intergalactic space monster. In Yellowjackets, it takes an all-girls team, a plane crash, AND a supernatural threat to provide enough justification to imagine interpersonal dynamics between girls that don't solely revolve around boys.
And even then, when the girls become women in the "normal" world of 2021, the show seems unable to think of ways to move the narrative forward or progress the women's characterization without disproportionate focus on their relationships with men.
Obviously, many women have multiple, very important relationships with men in their lives. I have no issue with depicting that, and Yellowjackets depicts it in more honest and dynamic ways than most other media. That's why I'm using it to make my point: even with the best, this still happens. And even as someone annoyed by it, it still takes me one episode into season 2 to even notice it.
At the beginning of season 1, the first time we meet Natalie, she reveals that she thinks the motivation behind her self-destructive tendencies is that when she left the wilderness, she "lost her purpose," and implies that she thinks she's found it again. Based on the context we're given, we can perhaps assume this purpose is to hunt down whoever sent her the threatening postcard. Which, yes, she does focus on doing for the rest of the season-- but that purpose becomes convoluted very quickly with her mourning & needing to know what happened to Travis. That's a real, frequently occurring dynamic outside of fiction, and it really is related to the overall plot, so I don't mind it much. I mind goth freak Kevin Tan is conveniently a cop, but not much more, and like some parts of it for similar reasons related to exploring the complex messiness of grief. I mention these instances primarily because of their small piece of an overall pattern.
A pattern maybe best exemplified with Shauna. Now, Shauna's narrative subverts and inverts a lot of sexist tropes, and I give credit to it for that. A teen boy is given next to no personality because he exists only as a catalyst to analyze the relationship between a friendship between two girls. A manic pixie boy is fridged by Shauna for her womanpain and to progress her narrative. Her husband actually loves her despite her moral depravity. I love all that!
But when I look at the Adam arc from the perspective of someone who doesn't know what greater purpose it might serve in the narrative beyond S2E1, it's inclusion and construction really makes me marvel at how easily we, as audience members, are limited in imaging women having relationships outside of men. Because while yes, Jeff dealing with loan sharks is played for laughs, and realism is not an innate virtue in entertainment (especially in fantasy/horror)...if it turns out the only function of Adam's existence was to have Shauna accidentally murder someone/create further distance between her and Callie, would it not make more sense for that character to be...literally anyone besides a guy weirdly unfazed by being rear-ended, who inexplicably has no interest in promoting the art he rents an entire studio to regularly create, and who also doesn't come up on Google as a staff member at an autoshop for some reason?
I'm not trying to rewrite the show, but go with me for a minute here: why was I, as an audience member, willing to suspend my disbelief for all of that at the end of last season, even as I raised an eyebrow at it seeming a bit unnecessarily convoluted? Why did the writers imagination go to money troubles= mob= misunderstanding= deus ex machina boyfriend = callie strain + stabbing the wrong person, before it went to money troubles= moving back in with in-laws= callie strain + stabbing the wrong person?
Again, I'm not trying to rewrite the show, and I think the psychosexual element of young Shauna/Jeff/Jackie completely justifies the narrative wanting to give her an affair outside of that dynamic to explore. My point of contention is mostly with myself, and a larger pattern in media. How many shows and movies would sooner introduce loan sharks & manic pixie deus ex machinas before it considered a subplot entirely focused on the dynamic between a mother or mother-and-law and a 40-something daughter or daughter in-law, and how it impacts their respective relationships with a teenage [grand]daughter? Why did "thinking the judgmental, overbearing old lady whose house you live in might have stolen your journals & snitched to the cops, but turns out she didn't so you killed her for nothing & yr husband and daughter are gonna find out" not occur to me as an alternative possibility for the length of the entire season break?
Moreover, why is every conflict within Taissa and Simone's marriage centered around Sammy, with little to no commentary about their relationship outside of motherhood and the campaign? I don't think Sammy's gender is relevant here-- but Simone's is. While I don't believe it makes sense the show to give Simone POV scenes (although, credit where due, it does in the S1 finale), none of her scenes with Taissa characterize her outside of her roles as The Good Wife or The Good Mother. The most Taissa has to say about Simone in a confessional manner to Shauna is that she lacks the It Factor of Van-- characterization as vague as it is disposable. There's no divorcing this dynamic with Simone from the show's anti-Black colorism (the only other deep-skinned Black woman or girl we've seen is a JV whose name I can't recall and who I didn't see in the cabin during S2E1). It must be acknowledge that when media asks, "who can be the Black Best Friend to a Black Girl?", the answer a lot of media comes up with is "an even darker girl" (see also: JV and young Taissa). That being said, I think this dynamic exists in tandem with Simone and Taissa being More Than Friends. Since Simone can't know about the details of the plane crash or the supernatural elements going on, the writers would have to actually consider what two adult Black women who don't appear to have any men in their professional or personal lives talk about. The only answers we are given is: child, and a campaign that, by definition, has only been going on for much less time than their relationship. What else exists between them? We don't know, and my point is, it's horrifying how infrequently it seems to occur to people to ask. We know Jeff sells sofas and likes Sports Center. We don't even know what kind of apology present Simone would like, because it doesn't even occur to either Taissa or the writers to bring her one along with Sammy's.
Finally, Misty. If you've read this far, 1) thank you, holy crap, and 2) you might be thinking "what about Misty! Adult Misty's narrative isn't tied to any man!" And you're right, no matter what ends up happening with Elijah Wood's character down the line (although I will admit to a bit of anticipatory side-eyeing.) I have no issue so far with the Young Misty and Coach Ben stuff in terms of her focusing on him, and I'm not sure if Adult Misty ever says more than 2 lines to a man in season 1. But frankly, while I don't think this specific show should play this specific character any differently, there IS a broad pattern, I think, of shows looking at an adult, single woman with no kids, and deciding that her plotline therefore must be that she's ✨Crazy✨ in a quirky, endearing way that is as intentionally ironic as it is legitimately frightening. There is a vague backstory to provide even vaguer explanation for Why She's Like This, but never anything concrete or broad enough where you could picture years of therapy having any kind of effect. She's the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (Dark Reprise).
Again, I'm saying none of this to shit on Yellowjackets, or even ask them to change anything (except the colorist misogynoir: That's Gotta Go.) What I'm wondering is, if it takes a show as good at portraying women and girls as Yellowjackets is to get me to even CONSIDER such basic possibilities-- what would TV and film look like if less fantasy-based projects also considered exploring the POV of women over age 30, who talk to other women over age 30, about their relationship with each other?
17 notes
·
View notes
Note
Tbh S4 created more questions than answering them. They made it seem like the lab tried to create kids like Henry so many people think all kids powers are from him or something experiment based. But we know Kali was taken from the UK and her origin suggests that other kids probably got taken from other places, their races were also very diverse. Kali must have exhibited natural powers when she was a kid. Then how come the other kids are just experiment based? Because it is not like only Kali was natural. And if she is then it kinda creates a loop because we do not know. Heck we do not even know why she is the only one who exhibits illusion powers but not other kids. And she doesnt have telekinesis. And if the kids powers are connected to the UD, then how does Kali even have powers since she was a kid in the UK? Does the UD extend to other places on Earth or just Hawkins? I guess you can say they are not that connected to the UD but just have a supernatural relation by necessity? Because it is not like their powers only exist bc of the UD, they exist bc of experiments. Like idk what is going on but I think they screwed it up with Kali's plot and it screams like"we didnt know what to do with Kali". Because they just didnt think further.
I think people just misinterpret the "recreate me" line. We must remember how Henry was "created". (at least, to our knowledge).
He wasn't born in a lab and experimented all his life. He faced some kind of hardship, awoke to his powers, trained for a month using his own family as testing dummies, and then killed all but one.
To "recreate" Henry, all you have to do is scour the world for children with similar circumstances as him, see if they have potential, capture them, and then train them using the same methods Henry used to train himself.
I made a gifset of it before, but this moment is a great example of what I mean:
Henry trained using animals and whatnot, so of course Brenner would force his test subjects, especially El, to do the same. To his surprise I'm sure, El didn't need to do all that to get stronger. She skipped right to kill the assholes who tried to lock her into the cell.
As for Kali's powers, we can't say for sure if she has telekinesis, but telekinesis and "finding" people obviously wasn't her strong suit. She specialized in illusions. I remember it being explained outside the show that all the kids have similar powers, but some excel in some areas and are weak in others.
We can see this play out when Brenner forces them to fight telekinetically. We never see most of these kids perform any telekinesis, they got pushed away immediately. Telekinesis was probably 002's specialty, so you can imagine his anger when El upstaged him in his own specialty.
We also have a glimpse of 010. He's very good at finding people it seems. He's the only kid we witnessed doing this other than El and Henry.
So it's safe to say, all these kids were quite talented, including Kali, but none of them were a jack of all trades like Henry. Which is why Henry preferred El, because though she was lacking the illusion power, she is also a jack of all trades and even had a power he didn't. (not that he knew that until she blasted him to another dimension)
There is no indication their powers are from the Upside Down. I see people say that a lot, but I just don't see the connection there? Maybe people are pulling from some d&d lore that I'm unaware of where "magic" comes from a specific dimension?
I believe powers just exist in the world of Stranger Things. It's very rare and some people will never even realize they have powers and continue to live an average life. The experiments didn't create these powers, they just pushed them further along, like training for a sport. With these powers, you can access other dimensions parallel to ours, but it doesn't mean powers come from there.
Just my thoughts.
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
supernatural s12e4 american nightmare (w. davy perez)
was that pointed, longing look at the mom and her son just him being upset over mary or something more plot relevant
oh, dean, honey.
DEAN
Cass is chumming it up with Crowley.
SAM
Hmm.
DEAN
They're hunting Lucifer together. That's right – one's an angel, one's a demon, and apparently, they solve crimes.
very cute
sam is looking extra beautiful today, i think part of it is the messier hair (and length). good lighting and coloring. lovely. oh oh, lame excuse for his more questionable haircuts. i too know the hazards of the random supercuts haircut that he must get on the road. let's blame it on that. maybe they advised him on the sideburns too
(oh god that reminds me. i think the worst haircut i ever got was before my mom's funeral. it was long at the time and i just wanted a trim because it was kind of scraggly, so i was moderately presentable for the funeral. i was in phoenix from out of town so i went somewhere random. and i got a very bad version of a Rachel haircut! in 2012! talk about insult to injury.)
SAM
You sure? 'Cause ever since Mom left, you've been a little, uh... cranky.
DEAN
Cranky, huh?
SAM
Yeah. I mean, to the priest, to Carl. Heck, on the way here, you wouldn't even make a pit stop.
DEAN
So now your tiny bladder is my problem?
tell him, sam. stop taking it out on everyone else, dean-o
BETH
You don't make a lot of friends when sometimes what's best for a family is to split them up.
little on the nose there, show :p also that is one fancy cps office
DEAN
What about her? What, she took some cash, she took a cellphone she doesn't answer, and she bailed on us.
SAM
I mean, think about what she's going through. After everything, she probably just needs some space. We've been there. We've both had times where we needed time apart.
DEAN
And we both came back.
SAM
You don't think she's going to?
DEAN
I don't know. She hates the way that we were raised. She hates the fact that we're hunters. Maybe she starts walking and she doesn't stop. You know, she obviously has zero interest in keeping this family together.
SAM
Well, you know, sometimes families do better after a little time apart.
dean upset and jumping to conclusions, sam being calm and the voice of reason. wondering if instead of brother angst, we get mom angst? because if i had to choose between the two, i vote mom angst a million times over (sorry mary but i've had enough sam and dean angst to last a lifetime) also that red sweater on sam looks great. grandpa cardigan on dean is leaning in to costume maybe a little too much :p
ABRAHAM
The things you do for family.
i snorted. one of those episodes where they're gonna repeatedly bonk us over the head with a parallel
SAM
So what happened to your daughter, was that God's plan?
GAIL
Yes.
SAM
She didn't have to die. She was sick. If you had taken her to a doctor –
GAIL
God does –
SAM
God doesn't care what kind of life you live. Trust me. And God didn't kill your daughter. You did.
you're not wrong, sam, but i think that's better kept to yourself in this situation :p
were they selling supernatural candles?
man, she's gorgeous. and dean was being legit creepy. glad we got things cleared up without any shooting. was half expecting him to slide into flirting with her
this scene with magda in the basement with sam is heartbreaking. also the irony of knowing exactly where the devil is and 100% not in the poor abused girl
SAM
Magda... You're not the Devil. You're just psychic. There are others out there like you, like – like me. I have powers, too. I'd get these visions sometimes and – and I could move things with my mind.
MAGDA
You can do that?
SAM
Well, no, not anymore, I don't think. But that didn't make me the
Devil. It – it – it just made me who I am.
MAGDA
Then you are evil. Mother says I'm evil, 'cause I hurt people.
not that we've really touched on it in a long ass time but it's also nice to see sam confident in being one of the psychic kids does not make you evil or a freak. back in simpler times that was definitely a struggle
ok mom i don't think you're going to heaven what with the killing your husband thing, not to mention the violent abuse against your daughter. this whole, tying him up at the dinner table and mom going all murder rage, kind of like a less grotesque more jesusy benders situation
oh, my heart
<3
DEAN
Yeah, you were right. This whole mom thing, it's... I mean, we get her back, and then she leaves. I hate it, but I get it. I do. I guess I just...still working through some of that crap. I'll try to be less of a dick about it.
SAM
Deal.
look at us being adults and dealing with (some) feelings. good job, boys. and dean gets his reward directly after with a reply from mom
okay, little pissed that in order to establish how cartoonishly evil the british men of letters people are, they had to kill magda. i think the horrific torture was enough to establish that, thanks. she didn't survive years of torture to get that cheap and pointless of a death.
good moments and lovely production value this episode. little shaky on the story but i'll take it
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
so I never learned my lesson about getting attached to supernatural characters that aren't Sam and Dean so Jack became my late in the game new favorite and I am outraged by how badly the narrative treated him!
truly the most heinous shit happens to him constantly, and it's never even about his character development or story arc because the writers don't care enough to give him his own arc. like I said on that other post season 13 is entirely about traumatizing as much as possible as fast as possible (because that's the only way they know to make characters interesting) while also using him to advance the plot with all the apocalypse world Lucifer vs. Michael round 2 stuff.
then in season 14 the overarching plot is so weak and all over the place that it barely even feels like they're using him for that so much as hurting Jack to hurt Sam and Dean and Cas. he gets sick so they have to go through the pain of losing a child. it's discussed in those terms way more than how Jack feels about it is brought up. he gets brought back with the Lilly Sunder spell so they'll have to grapple with whether risking his soul to save his life was the right call. they say they're going to let him decide but the whole situation with the empty makes it so he doesn't really have any options while also letting them set up Cas dying/destiel confession in what should be an episode about Jack.
him choosing to burn out his soul to kill Michael and save the others could have been a big moment for him, but the way they wrote him up to that point made it a little unclear if he fully understood how dangerous loosing his soul could be (which I mean is fair. his only reference for someone without a soul is Donatello who was always nice to him, Jack wasn't born yet for soulless Sam or Amara leaving a bunch of soulless people around, and he was in apocalypse world when Donatello went crazy. he's physically 18ish and chronologically 2 so as much as he's a smart person and not actually a baby you can't really expect him to have the best understanding of consequences and his own mortality. him not fully getting the risk could also be interesting for his character but they didn't commit to that either, they just had him say he got it while repeatedly using his powers and never seeming all that concerned about it.) the show focuses so much more on the Winchesters and Cas being worried and guilty about his soul than having Jack react to or deal with that loss.
and then he kills Mary. the one thing he was always afraid of, the one thing he never wanted to do, was hurt his family. and the writers made him lose control for one second and kill one of the most important people in his life and break the hearts of all the other people he loves. and again it's all about hurting Sam and Dean to drive them to try and contain or kill him, while also driving a wedge between Dean and Cas. like of course, of course, that's devastating for Sam and Dean, I'm not trying to minimize that. but even after Jack gets his soul back his trauma and grief around it are never addressed. even his guilt is only touched on so far as it's the motivation for him sacrificing himself for them again. directly afterwards when talking to Rowena and imaginary Lucifer he's horrified and maybe not sad or guilty exactly (no soul) but he obviously understands the magnitude of what he did. but then for some reason when he's talking to Sam and Dean in Jack in the Box he's very casual and dismissive, all like well it was an accident, anyway let's move on. that scene is really the only time he acts like a lot of the other soulless characters. for the most part he seems to understand emotions and morals much better than anyone else without a soul, and almost feel a little even if it's not the same as someone with a soul. (I think the angel grace mitigates some of the effects of not having a soul. angels don't have souls but do have the capacity to feel and tell right from wrong. Jack tells Donatello that he feels different but doesn't feel nothing, and I think that's because the emotions coming from the grace are different than the ones from a soul and it takes practice to identify and develop them to be as strong as what he was used to.) it feels like between Mary acting pretty out of character during her last scene and Jack being so weird about it when he talks to the boys I suspect Chuck was supposed to have been meddling before he actually showed back up, but they never outright say that. regardless they fridged Mary Winchester for the second time and forced Jack through his worse nightmare because they needed to motivate Dean with pain.
his second death was explicitly meant to punish the rest of team free will. Dean couldn't and wouldn't kill Jack, so Chuck did it to hurt his dad's. they wouldn't play his little game so Jack had to die so they'd learn their lesson about defying him. even when he was dead his corpse gets puppeted around to hurt the others. like I also like belphegor as a character, he's bitchy and funny, but narratively making him possess Jack's body was just a way to hurt Cas specifically. (Sam and Dean were way less bothered. maybe the whole casifer situation had numbed them a bit to the horror of working with something evil that has your loved ones face for the greater good.)
then when he comes back it's all "kill yourself to save the world" which is a pretty common plot point for supernatural, but it's also "die to absolve your sins, it's the only way Dean will ever forgive you" which I find significantly more fucked up. and then that plan fails, and Cas dies so Jack loses the only parent who never gave up on him, and then he becomes God.
and Jack becoming god is like...it doesn't really work any of the themes of the show, and it also is the worst way to end his story. he's always been powerful, but he's only ever cared about that in as much as his powers can help his family. when he loses them he's upset because he can't protect the people he loves anymore, not because he isn't special or whatever. all he wants is to be with the people he loves without having to worry about his powers hurting them. and the end they came up with for his story is to get a massive power boost and have to leave his family so he can "be everywhere" or whatever. it's so dumb!
this post got super long, and I'm sure that people have already said all of this better than me, but it's driving me nuts. I just love Jack so much, he's such a good character, and supernatural has so many instances of wasted potential, but Jack's story could have been amazing if there were more than three or four episodes that treated him as an actual character instead of a plot device or a prop for other characters stories.
#supernatural#jack kline#im ripping my hair out#they wouldn't just let him be happy for five minutes#but they also didn't bother to give him a real story arc#so all the suffering just feels pointless#the writers and show runners didn't care about him#but I care about him a whole lot
8 notes
·
View notes
Note
read your tags and. (probably) not a girl but anything else you'd recommend rn?
....How do you feel about telekinesis-based witches in very violent Korean supernatural action horror? If this sounds interesting to you, you might enjoy The Witch Part 1: Subversion and The Witch Part 2: The Other One
How about a claustrophobic, tense, atmospheric suspense horror in the vein of Alien but at the bottom of the ocean instead of deep space? Does Kristen Stewart with a butch haircut work for you? If so, watch Underwater.
While we're on the subject, Alien and Aliens. If you've never seen them, change that immediately. Alien is correctly regarded as one of the best horror films ever made, and the (imo superior) sequel Aliens is in my extremely correct opinion the best sequel ever made and one of the best movies of all time. Ellen Ripley in Aliens is my GOLD STANDARD for character arcs. Just masterful writing. Fuck Alien 3. Alien Resurrection is hot trash and VERY OBVIOUSLY a prototype for what became Firefly if you squint, but apart from a few VERY WHEDON lines it's better than Alien 3 honestly. This is not saying enough to count as a compliment. FUCK ALIEN 3. The new films (Prometheus and Alien: Covenant) are OKAY, but a completely different vibe and generally most people either only like the old movies or only like the new ones. Covenant is better than Prometheus imo. And I will say that Covenant has some of the most interesting/inventive xenomorph kills in the series. They do NOT have the same feel as the old movies, though. The design fails HARD to capture the essence of that 80s junk retro-future vibe that makes the old movies so timeless. They're supposed to be PREQUELS but the tech is way more advanced for no reason, which imo was a bad choice.
Supernatural action drama with an interesting plot that will make you wanna read the graphic novel it was based on? The Old Guard.
Wanna see the best and most underrated animated film of the last decade? I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH how much Kubo and the Two Strings was ROBBED during awards season.
Like robots smashing each other with an unexpectedly solid plot? The Bumblebee movie from a couple years ago was shockingly good, in stark contrast to every other Transformers movie.
Want some really well done scifi with a PHENOMENAL concept behind it, framed in a different way than any other first contact style movie, that will make you think about the nature of consciousness? Arrival is a masterpiece.
What We Do In The Shadows remains the best thing in the vampire genre. If you haven't seen it yet, fix that. The movie is great but the show absolutely blows it away.
Star Trek is a good evergreen choice. I don't have as much experience with it as I'd like, but I very much enjoyed TNG up until it hit writers' strike territory and things went really off the rails (mid season 5). Started DS9 but my progress got interrupted pretty hard when my dad was in the hospital for the last time. The different series have different feels to them. Not liking one show doesn't mean you won't like another one. There's plenty of Star Trek to choose from.
I am tearing through The Vampire Diaries at an impressive rate. Is it revolutionary? Not remotely. You can tell a LOT of the character archetypes were pulled from Buffy. But to be fair, it does a lot of those character archetypes better. I got into it partly for a specific character (Katherine Pierce) who is like Evil Girlboss incarnate, and partly as backstory for the world so I can eventually progress to Legacies for ANOTHER supernatural superpowered character (Hope Mikaelson). So far I'm very pleasantly surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. It's actually a good show. VERY straight, but at least the straight vampire drama is better than Buffy's (even if it's very obvious that Stefan and Damon are basically rehashed Angel and Spike).
Have you seen Shin Godzilla? It is, bar none, the best monster movie ever made. An absolute MASTERPIECE of atmospheric, slow terror as the world fails to comprehend and respond to the physical and emotional impact of a nuclear catastrophe on Japanese soil. Absolutely PHENOMENAL movie. The version with all the deleted scenes in it is even better. Incredible film.
Do you like speculative fiction about artificial intelligence, and also think Alicia Vikander is pretty (who doesn't?). Ex Machina is really interesting and good.
Like the classic stuff? John Carpenter's The Thing and the 70s Invasion of the Body Snatchers definitely live up to their reputations.
Want to turn your brain off with a comedy about morons who are in over their head? The Three Amigos is pretty good and has one of my favorite jokes in any comedy movie. (It involves a veranda).
Wanna turn your brain off with goofy kaiju bullshit? The old Toho Godzilla movies are very fun. Be mindful of the older ones, though. If it was made before 1970 and features an island setting, there's usually some outlandish degrees of racism. King Kong vs Godzilla is the worst offender, but a BUNCH from that era had very severe colorism and "primative island culture" vibes. Also probably avoid Godzilla vs Megalon, which even manages to beat King Kong as hands down the worst film in the entire series. It was filmed in under two weeks and Godzilla is only in it for the last forty seconds because it wasn't even supposed to be a Godzilla movie at all. I'm a big fan of the Heisei era movies (1985-1995) personally, with the Millennium series (1999-2004) being a close second. But if you want maximum goofy kaiju cheese, you want Showa (1954-1974). It's all rubber suit bullshit and it's a good time.
The Maleficent movies are fantastic, if you haven't seen them.
The Mummy and The Mummy Returns are cinematic masterpieces. Do not watch The Mummy 3: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I mean it doesn't even have Rachel Weisz, what's the point.
The Resident Evil movies are very bad. But they're a guilty pleasure if you're into really bad 2000s cheesy action. If you're into it, they're fun.
The Underworld movies are kinda like that but with vampires (and werewolves) instead of zombies. They're awful movies, but they DO have Kate Beckinsdale in a corset so you win some you lose some.
Want action cheese but more 80s? Demolition Man is fun. The original Judge Dredd is also better than it has any right to be. The NEW Dredd is genuinely a good and cool movie.
Want to watch a shitpost? Romancing the Stone and the sequel, Jewel of the Nile. Very fun to watch with friends because of how batshit insane they are.
GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE. I can't believe the post got this long before I thought of it. It's a great story about a female assassin and a polycule of librarians with guns. Sometimes a family is a little girl, the woman who shot her dad, and 4 gay aunts that love books guns and each other. Great music, too.
For turn your brain off but cute, charming, and low stakes/drama, Kiki's Delivery Service is one of my favorite Ghibli movies. It's about equal to Totoro with how gentle the world and story are. Also has some anti-capitalist vibes and a lesbian artist who lives in the woods. Plus it's about a witch, and who's not a sucker for decent witch movies?
Person of Interest is a really interesting show if you haven't seen it. It's about a national security algorithm that gains sentience and a small team of independent ex-spec ops agents use it to save people because its creator refused to let the government have access to it.
Do you want to absolutely lose your goddamn mind wondering how something ever got made? Try watching Zardoz. Holy fucking shit I've never been more confused.
Do you want that feeling but good instead of bad? Kung Fury.
Terminator: Dark Fate is the best film in the series THERE I SAID IT. It does every single thing the series NEEDED it to do to be good and relevant and fresh for a modern audience. The series has been stagnating for a long time and Dark Fate is EXACTLY the direction the Terminator franchise needed to go.
14 notes
·
View notes
Note
you're the only person i follow who mainly posts about kripke era spn so i just gotta ask, is it just me or does season 2 already feel vastly different from season 1? like obviously they went through a lot of crap in the span of a year but i just restarted the series and something about the way Sam talks to Lenore (the vampire lady in bloodlust) is so different from how he used to be in season 1. (i also hated that that was the beginning of his style change but whatevs no more silly tees and hoodies for Sammy cause he's a big serious hunter now i get it). and Dean, i can't really put my finger on it but he's also changed so much from the guy who whacked his brother on the arm and called him a control freak after literally not seeing him for two years. like i get that trauma changes you but going straight into s2 from s1 it just feels slightly off, even the vibes of the episodes. i talk a lot about how the first five seasons are superior to the rest of the show but i think i'll just forever be a s1 supremacist. honestly idk if this is something other people are aware of too or if i'm just crazy. maybe it's because supernatural first starts becoming very comical in season 2, like introducing casa erotica, that stupid p*rn website dean is obsessed with, and probably more, all this making the series less realistic (i mean it's a show about monsters but still) than it was in s1. in my opinion, spn was a lot better before it was trying to be all self-aware. genuinely would like to know what you think about this tho cause i know you're amazing with your words :)
WOO BOY, have i been stewing on this ask for a bit. i didn't want to rush to answer because i wanted my response to be thorough, but i have SO many feelings about this. i never make spn meta posts (if this could even be considered that) cause I'm not the greatest at articulating my thoughts on the show, so bear with me. i could also be throwing stuff at u that u already know, and in that case ignore me lol
there is a pretty big gap between the first and second seasons, but it's not something i immediately thought about reading this ask because, technically, they're the closest plotwise. the hunt for yellow-eyes begins in season 1 and ends at the devil's gate with season 2. we have the overarching apocalypse arc that has its feet in the first five seasons, sure, but s1 and s2 specifically share the same villain and the same cross-season motivator: kill the thing that killed mom.
but i thought on it a little more and i agree with you!! there's a clear tonal shift from devil's trap to in my time of dying, and i think that's born mainly from factors outside the show's plot. supernatural moved from being a potential one-and-done to a whole multi-season show, and the showrunners had audience reactions to reference when writing too! the monster-of-the-week cycle was interesting, but people watched the show to see, y'know. sam and dean drinking beers and crying on the hood of the impala. the plot was the most fascinating part, so naturally, the show became more involved. while season 1 was clearly a monster-of-the-week type beat, season 2 keeps that rhythm while weaving plot-heavier episodes throughout. i also think that killing off john is as clean and concise a shift as the writers could manage: if the entire first season hinged upon finding dad, and dad dies s2e1, well. any step away from the waters the show was born in, that endless hunt for john, is going to feel foreign. and john's death is a huge hit to both boys, so automatically their characterization shifts for that season too. sam loses the boyish haircut and dean irons out into an even grizzlier hunter. i don't trust kripke or anyone at the CW to make writing choices this purposefully, but you COULD say that the effect you're talking about is supposed to reflect the boy's lives when john dies. off-kilter and standing up on shaky legs. but i refuse to give them credit for that <3
if i'm telling the truth i really like when the show gets more involved. but i think why others might feel the opposite is because, after 14 seasons layered thick with plot that only gets messier and messier as times goes on, the disconnected adventure from season one feels more special!! they don't have heaven to worry about yet!! or an apocalypse!! things were simple, and the show was just about two brothers on the road trying to rebuild their family. it's uncomplicated. s1 is also the landing strip we hit every time we return to the show as a whole, so it's more familiar, and therefore more intimate than any other season!! (for those who watch in order at least lol).
#i was so relieved that this prompt came up bc I've had NO ONE to talk about spn this week#okay i'm exaggerating#but#THIS WAS SO NICE#I LOVE TALKING ABOUT STUFF I LIKE#uncouthspn#supernatural#spn#dean winchester#sam winchester#uncouth babbles#anon ask#sorry for the delay on this one baddie
16 notes
·
View notes
Note
WELL now I have an excuse to talk about it.
My url is a reference to the novel The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov written between 1928 and 1940. Bulgakov was Ukrainian (if anyone calls him "one of the greatest Russian writers" I will be UPSET) but obviously then it was the Soviet Union and well. Things were very very censored.
Wikipedia describes it as "The story concerns a visit by the devil to the officially athiestic Soviet Union. The Master and Margarita combines supernatural elements with satirical dark comedy and Christian philosophy, defying categorization within a single genre. Many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, as well as the foremost of Soviet satires."
So yeah basically the Devil, Woland, and his crew including a talking cat who plays chess and owns a gun and who is veeeery witty and sarcastic named Behemoth, a vampire demon succubus lady called Hella, a guy who wears checkered suits and it's implied he used to be an angelic choir conductor (he's the least violent one) called Koroviev (fun fact sometimes they call him faggot lol, фагот means bassoon in some slavic languages), an assassin with fangs called Azazello and yeah that's it I think, visit Moscow. In the first scene an editor and a poet are discussing how Jesus wasn't real, and Woland sits down beside them and basically says "no, he is. I've met him."
The novel switches between the stories of Woland and co, Ivan (the aforementioned poet, but only for the first half of the book. Sad. I like him 🙁), and some biblical chapters mostly from the point of view of Pontias Pilate. Another plotline that comes in about halfway through is about the Master and Margarita themselves (woo title characters!)
Basically, it's never really revealed who exactly the Master is. But a lot of people think he's some reflection of the author Bulakov himself. Idk I think there is definitely some truth to that. Especially when you're told about how the Master wrote books but burned his manuscripts (hence the line "Manuscripts don't burn). How does this tie in? Ok now for history:
Obviously, everything was horrifically censored in the Soviet Union. He started writing the novel, then was terrified that it would be found and he would be killed, the novel destroyed. So, he burned the manuscripts in 1930. He kept repeatedly writing manuscripts, I'm not sure how many but like.. a LOT. And the plot was pretty different in some of them. Actually, in one, margarita didn't even exist. A veeeery censored version was published in the Moskva journal in 1966 after he died (he died in 1940), and then basically it became this whole underground thing. A manuscript was smuggled to Paris where it was first published, the Moskva version was smuggled to Estonia, translated to Estonian, and published there, and for decades it was the only version that existed in the Soviet Union. Mick Jagger wrote Sympathy For The Devil about it after he was smuggled a copy.
It's quite literally the most colourful peice of art ever. It's wild, satirical, colourful, loud, so full of culture and it is, literally, life changing. It's my dad's favourite book and it is in my BLOOD to reccomend it to everyone. Thank youuuu for listening to my nonsense ♥️
i thoroughly enjoyed reading the entirety of this <333
THIS IS SO COOL I DIDNT THINK IT WENT THAT DEEP i have literally never heard of this before in my life Koroviev Is So Me (фагот) I WANNA REAS THIS NOW ☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️ THAT SOUNDS SO SO INTERESTING AND RIGHT UP MY ALLEY AND mick jagger jumpscare
#did NOT know pontias pilandbsjwhayever was a bible guy#thought mozart was just going crazy writing lyrics for coronation mass credo#anja tag 🥀#THANK UUU FOR TELIMG ME ABT THIS
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
April 16: Some Shauna and Jackie Thoughts
Okay, finished Yellowjackets Season 1 and now I just need to CHILL OUT and not think about it too obsessively because I need to go to work and accomplish things and, like, move on with my life. Start trying to get back to doing the stuff I was going to do this weekend but whatever.
Two thoughts about the show after having just binged S1 once, and then read a couple long reddit threads:
First: I think Jackie's death was really well done. I knew she died and was really dead from S2 spoilers but I also thought it was pretty obvious from the first season itself. Like it's weird to think that people were actively theorizing ways she could still be alive and stuff--that just didn't seem to be in the cards in any way from the text, either on a plot level (the way her parents treat Shauna) or on a thematic level (Jackie as the civilized world dying etc.). So then it's just a question of if her death is satisfying or not. I definitely think it was.
On the one hand, it was totally stupid and could have easily been avoided--something frustrating and random and chaotic--and on the other hand, it immediately followed an obviously climactic moment for Jackie and Shauna specifically, and the group as a whole to a lesser extent--something fitting and well-timed to the plot. This is the moment when Shauna and Jackie confront each other and stop being passive aggressive. It's the moment when the cult starts forming, and one person tries to stop it, and cannot. It's the moment that was foreshadowed: "cold as in you fall asleep and don't wake up," the inevitable coming winter. It's the team disintegrating and reforming: "freezing out" another member, this time the captain, this time their most obvious tie to the old world and the old ways. It's the moment that Jackie devised for herself: she's so ill-adapted to the wilderness that she can't even start a fire. It's also perfectly devised to create the most guilt possible for Shauna, coming after their fight, and because that fight created a situation where only one of them could stay, and she determined that Jackie would be the one who left.
I read some reactions along the lines of, it was unconscionable for them not to bring Jackie back in, or stupid for Jackie not to come in to save herself. I don't think so. This is late September/early October at the earliest. It's fall. That's a very early and unpredictable (supernatural?) snow, even for that area probably but especially from the POV of Jersey girls. I mean a bunch of them slept outside in flimsy dresses just the night before! They could not see this coming. Further, as others mentioned, this is THE most appropriate petty-high-school-fight way for a teenager to die, thus believable for that reason.
The final fight was also so satisfying because you could see both of their sides. I definitely think Jackie was misunderstood to an extent. I think she was a selfish mean girl more because she was 17 than because she was actively, consciously, trying to be selfish and mean. Had she lived, she would have grown out of it, imo. She had moments of real kindness, like doing Misty's makeup, and most of her mean behavior in the wilderness came from being just so terribly unsuited to it and also a bit naive, and a bit...unaware of her appearance to others. I don't think she was aware of the deep fissures in her relationship with Shauna. She was really hearing them for the first time in that argument, and that's partly because SHAUNA never shared them. Jackie saw her as "the sidekick" but she also deeply loved her, and time and again looked out for her and put her safety and well being first. She was also objectively right about the recent behavior of the girls: she must have felt really gaslit, being the only person who both knew about the bacchanal and didn't condone it. On the other hand, Shauna's long-term simmering resentments were fair. And I can't blame her for not saying them aloud before. She's only a kid, too, and that's hard stuff to say, especially in the context of that kind of lifelong attached-at-the-hip girl-friendship. The way that she and Jackie are is something she's known her whole life.
In other words, I think Jackie was right in that moment and about the more specific stuff, though she phrased her opinions badly, or chose a bad time to talk about them (re: Jeff) and Shauna was right or at least had understandable grief with Jackie in the long term, but she also picked a bad time to bring up all of this, like, 17 years' worth of slow-simmer interpersonal issues.
Second: I'm intrigued by the debate over the anachronistic journals. There were people getting big mad about the mistakes on reddit. And yet to hear the creators say so simply, no, they were never intended to be written by Jackie, really made me so much more curious abut them than I'd been either while watching or while reading the reddit debates. When I watched the ep myself, and saw the journal, my first thought was 'Jackie kept a journal? LOL OOC.' and my second was 'oh it's blank, that makes sense' and my third was 'oh it's not blank, okay, cute girl journal whatever.' And then I just took it as Shauna looking at her friend's stuff and feeling her frozen in time. Then when I read about the inaccuracies I just figured it was a prop error whatever.
But if they were not at all intended to be Jackie's...and of course, they're not, they have a lot of late 90s and early 2000s stuff in them... My assumption is it had to be Shauna who wrote them. That Shauna keeps a journal is one of my favorite things about her because I think there is always something mysterious and intriguing about a person's private thoughts written down (I say as someone who does a lot of that lol). We also know that she writes creatively, and that at some point, at least, this writing (both fiction and non-) was a big part of her self-identity. It figures prominently in her fantasies about Brown: she'd date the editor of the literary magazine, he'd fall in love with her over her stories, etc. And finally, we know that Jackie is a part of her, that she's been trying to connect with her, be her, be close to her, consume her since even before the crash.
It does not surprise me at all, then, that she tried to keep Jackie alive after returning home by writing in her voice, taking on the persona of her to create artifacts in her name--artifacts that she doesn't keep with her but deposits like museum items in the bubble-wrapped, well-preserved Teen Girl Room where Jackie used to live. It's not just the grieving parents who treat Shauna as a surrogate-daughter. It's Shauna herself who, at least at one time, inhabits Jackie to keep her alive in at least this one sense: a personality who can create objects reflecting her thoughts and feelings. A process of creation that Shauna does all the time as herself, that is a Shauna-thing, now distorted to match Jackie: her voice, her thoughts, her opinions. Then the artifact remains, 20 years later, as if Jackie had lived longer than she had. It's not evidence of her friend frozen in time, it's evidence of her own grief, and of their once-entwined selves, frozen in time.
#the year 2023#2023: fandom thoughts#2023: yellowjackets#yellowjackets spoilers#for s1 which i know came out a while ago but like big spoilers
3 notes
·
View notes
Text
~September & October's Books Reviewed~
So, as one might be able to guess, it's been two rather slow months of reading... or rather there was a period of slowness in the middle as in theory I read one book in September, had a moment and then read two very quickly at the end of October. Rather than having two very mini posts though, I felt it was better to have one at least vaguely substantial one! So yes, here is September and October combined!
Bewitched by Laura Thelssa
(443 pages)
Objectively, and subjectively, crap. I try not to unreasonably bash on books since I know that just because I didn't enjoy it doesn't mean others wouldn't, and vice versa. For example, I know that many of the books I love and have reread several times are objectively not that great, and similarly, having looked at this book on Goodreads I know lots of people love this book and the authors style. I, unfortunately, am not one of them. I really didn't enjoy any of the characters, nor their relationships, and the plot wasn't nearly engaging enough for me to forget about that. As such, I would easily say this was the worst book I've read in a long time (or certainly the least enjoyable reading experience I've had). That being said, if you're into supernatural romances and willing to look past some morally grey situations then you might enjoy this more than me. It is 100% an 18+ book (you have been warned), and also, I really struggled with the dubious consent throughout it in regards to the main relationship, just to also put that warning out there. I think based off this review it can be no surprise to anyone that...
I gave this book 1 star ⭐
Four Seasons in Japan by Nick Bradley
(326 pages - hardback)
I'm contrast to the previous book (which can maybe be blamed for my break in traditional literature for a hot minute there), I really really enjoyed this book! It was rather different from the usual books I'd pickup, but I'd seen it recommended everywhere and I have to say it was everything I was needing from a book in this grey autumnal time. It was really gentle and comforting and just all around gentle. I did find the ending a little sudden, and I was waiting for the two storylines to become a little more interwoven to be honest (or at least the two principal characters from the two storylines - although I understand that they realistically couldn't actually, I was just waiting for a bit of a plot twist in the reveal of the characters I think - I realise that isn't very clear but I don't want to spoil it for anyone!). However, like I said, I truly loved this book, I wish I had read it quicker, or at least all in one go rather than starting and then accidentally taking an extended break from it because then I think it could even have been in contention for a full five star rating! I would really recommend this book to the majority of people, I've recommended it already to both my mother and my flatmate, two people with very different tastes in books generally, so that should be testament to the overall easy feeling and gorgeous prose of this book that I think makes it very accessible and enjoyable to a large audience.
I gave this book 4 stars ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️
Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang
(322 pages - hardback)
I finished this book and felt weirdly chilled and illeasy. It definitely freaked me out in a very subtle manner. It is incredibly well written and you have no way of knowing who to root for, or even what to believe at times. It raises so many important moral questions, especially around racism and xenophobia, as well as around ownership and intellectual property. I think that's in many ways why it left you feeling weirdly uncomfortable at points as it forced you to confront a lot of unfairness and the corrupt nature of society that is still so prevalent and ingrained. I also especially enjoyed it for its setting in the publishing world which is obviously my own industry. It was largely very accurate about a lot of the technical sides of the industry, however I am thankful to say that my experiences on the other side of the industry from Juniper have not been nearly as fraught or riddled with controversy!
I gave this book 4.5 stars ⭐⭐️⭐️⭐️🌗
#book review#book reccs#claireelizabethsblog#laura thelssa#bewitched#nick bradley#four seasons in japan#rebecca f kuang#yellowface
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
nymph-of-light
Airin's Rabbit Hole
cprfetishgr
CPRFetishGR
submariini
live, laugh, lidl
cleo-the-catillac-cats-blog
Cleo-The-Catillac-Cats
fuckpoetics
MY MIND IS ON THE BRINK.