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coshayphinelove · 7 years

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now that the finale afterglow has faded, i’ve been kind of looking back on the series with a more critical eye than a “PLS DONT LEAVE ME” eye.

this is by no means the last time i’ll write some kind of long-winded essay, i’m sure i’ll find other things to overthink about on rewatches and as i write more fic, but it is a direct reaction to the finale and the five years i have spent with this show.

in short, the finale was amazing. it was probably the best finale of any show i have ever seen. it was satisfying and true to the characters that we had grown to love. it was realistic insofar that the problems didn’t end with the evil being defeated. it was bittersweet and made me emotional where i didn’t think the show could anymore.

(although i still haven’t watched the last two episodes of frin/ge so it’s rank may change).

if the rest of the season and the previous two seasons had set it up, it would have been even better. it is, to this day, my firm opinion that season 1 was the tightest, most well thought out season of television i have ever seen. like, if you had asked me in season 3 where i thought the finale would be, i would have had such a different answer. (please do ask me, i have so many thoughts.)

most of my criticisms are on the co-phine/delphine front bc that’s where i’ve curated the most facts, having a few transcripts saved to my computer for ease of access. and the first thing i have to talk about is the plot holes this season, bc wow, so many. like, delphine was only there when it was convenient. that much was clear.

like she only helped siobhan bc there needed to be a good guy survivor to tell the rest about what happened. she was only invited to the big house so cosima could invite herself along. she was only put in the dress so that cosima could be in the suit so that the pr team could tease a wedding.

and she was only in the final clone scene to reinforce that ‘’we can trust her now guys’’. like she and cosima never talked about anything. not the shay snafu in season 3, not the lying, not the spying, not the secrets. which are really big things. and i’m not saying it had to be 45 minutes of therapy jargon but i am saying that they should’ve said... ‘sorry’ or explained what happened and where they were coming from. bc to this day i don’t actually know why delphine did what she did in season 3. what happened in frankfurt? why did she threaten shay like that instead of just asking? why was she suddenly working for topside? none of that ever gets mentioned after it happens.

and as much as the sarah hug helps me with my sarcoshayphine struggles, they hadn’t spoken since ‘piss off delphine.’ how did they get from there to hugging? ‘we’re doing all of this on account of bloody delphine?’ to soft hugs and kind words? like yeah, it fit and it worked and it was touching. but when you think about it, it kind of dissolves. which is kinda fitting for a lot of the plot this season.

and to me, that left this season of c0p/hine feeling kind of empty. we reused the ‘can we trust delphine’ plot. we reused the ‘delphine’s off in a foreign country and therefore unreachable’ plot (eighty times this season, right?). i still stand by my point that in season 4 she could have been in hiding, having driven off into the sunset to do mrs. s’s bidding. like they could’ve had delphine funneling info for all of season 4 through mk/siobhan completely off screen. but she just.. did nothing for all of season 4. right. boss ass bitch corporate delphine just... sat around getting told what to do... sure..

or in 5x09 she could have just been around the corner at the grocery store rather than france. and why even bring that up if you’re never going to do anything with it? she went home right when cosima would’ve needed her and she was free to be there for her? what the hell? and there was no setup for it either. one second they’re ‘on the precipice of doing anything they want’ and the next delphine went home? without cosima before the fight is over? like, season 2 delphine would’ve been doing The Most: cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, chores, snuggles, etc etc. but instead she hears the news and hops on the first plane out of the country?

like you guys do realize they didn’t say ‘i love you’ this season at all, right? delphine is ‘motivated by love’ but she doesn’t say it at every possible opportunity? cosima thought she was dead, but doesn’t blurt it out the first time she sees her after waking up? like fuck a sex scene, normalize wlw couples saying ‘i love you’ to each other first.

idk... i know there were scheduling conflicts and i know they had to keep rewriting as the schedule got rearranged, but come on. i can, right now, change a few key scenes that do something for both cosima and delphine’s character, that keeps them both active and doesn’t just ignore 3 seasons of characterization.

which is another point. there was so much they could have done with delphine’s character. not just this season, but for a while. instead of like.. idk following up on the threads they presented (affair with l**kie, changing sides, the girl who slit her wrists which was implied to be delphine herself, seeming to be worth shooting and kidnapping and nursing to back to health to neolution, what she was doing before cosima got there, what she did in geneva, etc etc) they only brought her back to kiss cosima. like bottom line. like, she didn’t really do anything active that someone else wasn’t doing elsewhere except warn siobhan about kira. which they didn’t even listen to her about.

and several times they referred to her as a lesbian when in 1x08 she clearly and fully called herself bisexual. and they shot her. for being in love with cosima. regardless of what they have recently said about ‘knowing about byg and always intending to bring her back’ they... still did it. and right afterwards said some really gross stuff about fans who were upset about it. i don’t really remember all of it, but i do distinctly remember the word ‘reductive’ used to say that fans were reducing her to her sexuality and that was the real problem. which... see the above several paragraphs. pot, kettle. kettle, pot. (i have separate thoughts on the season 3 debacle..)

which brings me to my main thought. i think they were too hyperaware of the fandom. they tried to roll with the scheduling conflicts and make a nice new shiny ship for us. but when there were complaints (*cough* hate *cough*) thrown at creators/cast over it they waffled and changed their minds. which then led to a shay shaped plot hole. also a shay shaped hole in my heart.

and i think someone around season 1 told them they were being progressive and they just... didn’t try to learn new things? idk how to phrase this. like season 1 was genuinely feminist. and the fact that they saw this story unfolding from a female perspective was incredible. and sarah’s storyline throughout the seasons was incredibly feminist. and the fact that they thought to include characters of genders other than cis and sexualities other than straight was fantastic. but after they got a pat on the back for being progressive, they stopped actively trying to call themselves out. they were like, ‘yes i am progressive and feminist therefore everything i produce is good without a second check.’

but this past season was all about petey and the clones were only used to further reinforce his evilness. and felix was more active than sarah, the protagonist. and tony actually got mentioned but he never actually showed up. and their ‘stand-in for the patriarchy’ got to violently murder two women (of two different underrepresented minorities, ASD and middle aged) while going back and abusing another woman (and praising him and saying he actually loved her!!!!). and their lesbian character centric episode was primarily focused on her romantic entanglements rather than, say, her and her character. (which i’ve been learning is actually kind of a problem in the wlw community, is losing yourself to new relationship energy and they could’ve actually taken a stance on this and said something important, but... anyway..)

and the creators were touting this as the most feminist season ever.

...

like okay. by walking0 de..ad and game- of9 thro///nes standards it is. but what they said in interviews and what they put on the screen did not match up. and i think that’s my main problem. like when i turn on my tv i generally turn off my feminism eyes and my lgbt rep wants. bc i generally know that not every show is going to be perfect and as long as it’s not like last man standing then i can tolerate it. but season 1 and their interview presence just got my hopes up. and they just didn’t deliver on their promises, imo.

and that wouldn’t be so bad, but they were so close, like this close!! you can’t see my fingers rn, but they’re almost touching... like they had the perfect setup, a meatball straight down the plate, just begging to be a home run, but they shanked it to right field and got stopped at second base.

like implying in interviews that some characters are nonbinary or confirming characters sexualities is really cool!!! i used to be a r//izzl//es fan, i know how awful it is when cast/creators genuinely don’t want you in their fandom. getting a confirmation is super cool.... but technically it’s not canon, it’s not In The Show. like it’s not untrue either, it’s not not canon. but being Progressive and Feminist and Positive LGBT Rep would’ve been.. idk saying it on the show, in the character’s own words? bc i can go anywhere and get coded representation, i can go back to the fifties and watch stuff with thinly veiled metaphors and small little nudges in the confirmation direction. it’s not something you get to pat yourself on the back for.

like, imo 1x08 was probably the best handled lgbt scene. like delphine stated her identity. and cosima just went along with it. and they got to talk candidly about it. they said ‘gay’ and ‘bisexual’ in the same scene. like??!!?!??!?! that was amazing. but for some reason they couldn’t do that for sarah, or felix. or let tony talk about being trans rather than having it be a hushed whispered conversation between two (then believed to be) cis people without him.

and it was just so frustrating to me, as a viewer, knowing what they meant and seeing what they put out there.

bc they are two different things. i can say whatever i want about this post, but at the end of the day it is just a grammatically incorrect, rambling, walk-about way of saying i have insomnia and was thinking about this enough to try and organize my thoughts. the creators can say whatever they want about the show, but eventually those interviews and those panels will get buried in the internet and all that will stand is their product. which doesn’t have confirmations of those themes within it.

like i’m forever going to love the show and i’m always going to go back and rewatch. it’s always going to be an influence on my writing. it’s just not... me trying to replicate and be like this show it’s trying not to make the same mistakes. which is kinda sad, bc it used to be the other way.

and at the end of the day it is feminist. like it’s about women told from a women’s perspective about allegories for womens’ issues. it’s just not by women so it missed the mark. same goes for the lgbt stuff. it is progressive that they thought to include it, but the stories they ended up telling were closer to the older stuff than what they thought.

i just wish they had brought in a third showrunner that was a woman and had lgbt writers come in to tell the lgbt stories. that doesn’t mean that it would’ve automatically been 100% Unproblematic™ but i think it would have been a lot closer to what they had promised.

anyway, i miss it already.

#thinky thoughts #this has been stewing for the better part of 5 years

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misterbitches · 3 years

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Im not intelligent at all. In the conventional sense. The ramblings of a girl who just has sooo much going in in her head it's constant. But im not a genius. Or that confusing.

It just sounds like I am bc fandoms have this issue where they can JUSTSO point out the issues in soletiing. They can pick and prod and go oh problematic! But then you go to name the problems and the difficulties within society like for ex: the idea of representation in general. Salivating over it. How fucking sad that is. How we are trained to accept it. So in a BL and also RACE in the bl genre they exploit viewers naivete both domestically and internationally. Ive seen tons of people liken being asian to being a person of color. However, in their predominantly homogenous society (or intentionally publically homogenous society), they are not "poc" (also name the of color; i dont use bipoc idc if u do but it's called being asian guys cos yall aint talkin about black ppl lmao)

They as humans seeing other humans who look like them everywhere, engage with the world differently than an american in asia or asians living outside of their home country (like bae doo nanwhen she worksnin the US is not the same as the bae doo nanworking on a korean program) I dont complain about it in everything i see bc ppl say it ALL THE TIME. but it is NOT the same. Being a person of color is very distinctly an american concept. This is all stuff people will get to know on their own if they choose to dig more.

I do my best to underline what my ugly little eyes process. How i figure things out as a black female american artist too! Im hard on shit cos i should be. I take it seriously. And even if i dont take it seriously bc THEY dont then thats their problem.

I know this is a complaint that I am not alone in. I know it's the internet. I just don't get how people can write really heavy analysis but they refuse to actually probe the underlying issues. Not everyone is me, or like my friends, but if there's way fewer people talking about this stuff it seems absolutely glaring when theres few people engaging in the way i do. It seems like im the glitch but I am thinking just as much just differently.

I really loved where your eyes linger but there was little deep class analysis. I remember few convos a bout it. I know a lot about korea (sigh being a black ex kpop fan lol mess) and i love the history but all ofnit matters! Korea's relation to labor!

People bringing up thai actors snd actresses leaving the industry and doing acting as something quick. As an artist~ who went to film school with insanely wealthy ppl and isnin tons of debt you have to understand how shitty that is. People have monetary access and they just fucking do whatever just because they want to. Meanwhile you have young people being coerced into this bullshit mainstream life to LITERALY just make money bc they dont come from a rich background. The wealth gap in thailand is BAD, theres a dictatorship, they had a fucking coup. The governments like here do not respect their people. Their marginalized groups. Trans thai women, black thai ppl, poor thai ppl. And it LITERALLY CANNOT DO ANYTHING EFFECTIVELY IN CAPITALISM. No nothing can be perfect but if it's going into our eyeballs and we can view the worlld critically then why the fuck not!???

I dont say the things i see are wrong always. I reply when i think i need to. I try and engage with others but not to kuch avail. I just want to rb stuff and tdhink lajfhhdjwhjej.

But like yea theres a lot of just wrong or misguided stuff. A lot of the times it is just historical inaccuracy in framing or idk. A refusal to think outside the box. I dont care. Theres more to life than just sort of looking and not thinking especially for othrr artists.

Idk im sorry. I dont see how i can change how i view things. I really wish people would expand their palettes too and go deeper into other means of art from places! Things not in the mainstream! Theres a lot of good thai artists and a lot of them critical as fuck about their country as they should be. Authority, austerity, patriarchy, capital, racism etc like that is central to a power thats interested in growing gains and fiscal and social power. Theres rly radical or left leaning etc ppl out there in the world and these countries in these communities. So they exist. No people in these countries dont have NO clue whats going on. Cultural relativism is alsos something people should understand. I had a good talk with ppl on here a while ago about that. Talking about shit, critiquing, but being respectful to a group. Part of thay is realizing these groups CLEARLY know their own issues and all our cultures share the same goal. Guess what it is. It rhymes with acquiring wealth. Money means you hurt people. In the post, we talked about use of "wife" and "husband" which is a stupid joke that has been "explained" a billion times and yet the explanations still dont seem to answer or justify a minor problem (it's very funny to me that a language that doesnt have gendered pronouns is now very specific about two men. Hmmm wonder why. It is annoying.)

So im not the only person on the planet doing this. Or the few ppl ive seen that do. Im not new my thoughts arent new. Ive gotten to see another side to a culture i knew not much about and that means i can put the context of my beliefs and life and try and understand thheirs. For ex i learned from ITSAY because of a sign that said 'french food' that they were the only country to not be colonized back then. Do you know how integral that history is to their region? That was an interesting detail (i didnt finish itsay bc ihad a lot going on and i was rly upset that i would see hownrich they are and i hate that.)

Anyways thats my complaint. It used to feel like a sting of rejection. I left online for months in 2019, i started organizing more, joined a union, trying to do some panther work shit like that. I learned a lot in those months and it changed my life! But when I came back, I felt so isolated. It wasnt my true friends tho sometimes theyre ANNOYINGGGGG (love u) but it was me being like "if we are going to complain guys then lets put our money where our mouth is" lets be fucking serious about it then. No say it with your chest dude. It isnt difficult. Go with the fucking flow, talk about it, critique it, think. You can still fucking like itnor love it.

I am BLACK ok and i love rap. I am a black woman. I will continue to clown black men that cant seem to not clown themselves and listen. No i wont support monetarily: drake is a creep and i hate him but i bump that niggas song. Thats fucking LIFE. I got so sick of hiding myself and it became clear that it wasnt that i wasntthinking well or hard enough. They just didnt like that i said we need to commit class suicide and inspect out middle class sensibilities and middle class wealth hoarding (google it) if thats what we engaged with. Every part of you, antagonize it. I still have my privileges; class, skin color, even my father being a nigerian immigrant, me being cis, im not str8 but not a lesbian and those are differences.

Insecurities in general but some shallow thoughts (?) on discussion in "fandom" space. FYI, this will most likely stay the same. I tend to stay in my own bubble socially IE me and my friends are similar in our views. During this awful year while running my union's account, im surrounded by like minds. Me and my friends? We changed together. We grew up and saw what we didnt like and what we want. We do our best.And i CHOOSE my life to be that way bc it should be. There is no solution. I dont believe in solutions because the solution is to abolish capital or just divest. Abolishing capital and labor are a huge one and i will die before that happens (but so help me as long as im alive? Black women to FREEDOMMMM is my motto!) so making your own path in life is the best thing an artist can do IN MY OPINION.

However with technology and stuff this puts another layer onto things. Tech, social media, this shit....it THRIIIIIIIVESSSSSSS off of conflict and shallow readings of the world. We are literally primed for it. Engagement in bites. Impossible for me with my brain; i got used to it and i paid for it by limiting my scope. Not being encouraged to THINK AND READ before just speaking

(For ex i am in iww, i helped form a branch here. It is a radical union. Unionism is imprative to me-if ur interested u should read up on some. Look up peter cole! Google inthesetimes Ilwu. Gives you some understanding. Ive always been progressive and now i am....very left idk ic ant label myself. But even in my progrssiveness i had the gall to tell my white friend, whoa has her privileges but i had mine with our class disparity, that we dont need unions, i have WORKED retail. Ive done barista work for sonoing and i do gig work. So i wasnt out of touch. I had been stiffed even with a shoot i was working on by rich kids. So i had a frame of reference . But i didnt know what the FUCKa union was and why it is imperative. Then learning about anarcho syndicalism and all these other things. It changed my fucking life but two years earlier i was this idiot spouting shit like that making one of my best friends fucking upset. We DO AND CAN CHANGE. Think!!!!)

So were i a creator for tv id just constantly try and push the buttons if i need big money. Make them sell into me (thank you sonic youth!) theres Endless possibilities guys which means theres SO MUCH TK EXPLORE!!!! When i wanna have fun with it i just have fun. When i want to think i do. I dont understand why we are so dedicated to upholding things and doing mental gymnastics to end up in a space you dont need mental gymnastics for. What about these critiques makes you uncomfortable? Saying we're all part of the problem as spectators? Im sorry but we will always be. Thats LIFE. God fuck. Fuck me. I feel so fucking worthless and stupid sometimes. I know I am not. I know i am talented and intelligent. I know my friends and family. I know how to approach ppl. I know how to tell people if they are rich but want to be progressive whatsup. I choose how i live part of that is being ok to say what i want.

Ironically consrrvatives say this shit alot. But they arent ever alone bc their ideology is default. But yea it does feel shitty. It even feels shitty when ur in left circles but people STILL dont even wanna do that. These perspectives really arent ss many as they should be. I dont want to feel so alone with it. I know there are more. I just love art and the world so fucking much, endless possibility. Endless pain but endless good.

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