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pebblysand · 1 year

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[on writing] the corruption of alicia florrick (or: 'show, don't tell' pushed to the brink)

i've touched on this really briefly already but i've recently engaged in a partial re-watch part of TGW (s1 to s5e2 - if you've also seen the show, you know why i stopped there) and i've been having a lot of thoughts about it, lately. this will probably be of interest to no one (apart from @tessiete, maybe, hello 👋 tess) but i still reckon it felt like something i wanted to write about, so here, this is my tumblr, and i can ramble on about whatever i want.

rewatching this show has led me to a lot of reflections about the portrayal of anti-heros in media. particularly: how to introduce one, and how to write one. and that's what i wanted to talk about here.

BACKGROUND:

for anyone who hasn't seen it, the good wife is a political and legal drama that ran on CBS between 2009 and 2015. it follows alicia florrick, wife of peter florrick, former US state's attorney for Chicago's Cook County. at the start of the show, she is presented as a housewife and a mother of two who, due to her husband's unconscionable behaviour (cheating on her with a sex worker and being accused of corruption in his office), is thrown into a sex scandal and turmoil that basically upends her life. she loses her house, her husband goes to prison, she has to go back to work as a lawyer - a profession she gave up to care for her family ten years ago - in an incredibly cutthroat and competitive environment, worsened by the 08 financial crisis.

now, as you may already know, a few years before the show aired, the early/mid-00s saw a resurgence of the anti-hero trope in american television. characters like gregory house or walter white became incredibly popular, as well as other main protagonists whose behaviour was portrayed to viewers as objectively immoral and objectionable, but for whom they were still encouraged to cheer (a more recent example of this would also be tommy shelby in peaky blinders). generally (though not always), these characters existed in a world of crime and/or drug trafficking, killed hundreds of people on a good day, but - deep down - kind of tried. had a good heart. or, at least, a moral code you could understand and relate to, or valid reasons for doing the things they do - even though the overall behaviour itself was criminal. even in the case of gregory house (who is not a criminal but still very much an anti-hero), he is someone whose impact on the world is at least partly positive because, well, he is a macho arsehole who treats people like absolute scum but, you know, he saves lives.

for a lot of viewers (and people who enjoy this trope - myself definitely included) the main appeal of these stories is this obvious tension between good and evil. no one is pretending these characters are good people - often, not even themselves. the interesting part is actually in whether you can (and should) root for a good person. and: this question as to whether good and/or evil exists, and this grey space in between. god knows i love reading (and writing) about that grey space. in the case of house or tommy shelby, there is something deeply fascinating about the knowledge that this person whose struggles you're coming to understand, and who you do empathise with, is objectively very problematic and questionable. these shows work because the viewer is constantly driven to question their own takes on the world, their own morals, the main protagonist's behaviour, and to try and understand their point of view. as a person, i'm generally pretty fond of this trope, because when done well, i find it very engaging.

MY POINT:

now, when it comes to the good wife, on the surface, alicia florrick is the complete opposite of the above. from the very beginning of the show, she is purported to be a Good Person™. she is dedicated to her marriage and to her children. she is intelligent and kind. she is a good lawyer and someone who exhibits a lot of empathy for her clients (in fact, the firm often assign her to "hand-hold" them). she is a bit of a relief. someone you can always root for, without having to check yourself and be like "omg, didn't she just kill three people in cold blood?"

and, of course, that is not to say she has no flaws. alicia is a fully-fledged person, and a very good character at that. she is a Good Person™ but also someone who is chronically incapable of making decisions. she can sometimes be cold and quite calculating. but, generally speaking, she is a Good Person™. she is trying to get her life back on track, to prove herself in her work, to raise her two teenage children as a single mother, and you end up rooting for her very easily. because her life is hard and even if you wouldn't necessarily react the way she does, or carry yourself the way she does (i - personally - probably wouldn't have tolerated peter's behaviour, etc.) you understand where she's coming from. the show tells you she is a good person, who is struggling and she is trying. it is mostly told from her perspective and really helps you see that she is always doing her best, and always having the best intentions (even though they don't always materialise). she's not some mass murderer, or sociopathic doctor who hates her patients, where you're constantly thinking: "omg, why am i rooting for this arsehole?" she is someone who tries so hard to be kind, and who tries so hard to always treat everyone with respect. because - again - she is flawed, but a Good Person™.

except, well, if you've seen the show, you know: she isn't.

and, if you have watched TGW, i'd be interested to know: think back. when exactly did you realise that? i don't mean: when did you start having doubts? i mean: when did you sit there and think "omg this woman is unbearable". for me, on first watch, it was probably somewhere between s5 and s6. on re-watch? probably as early as s2/3. i think everyone who was in the TGW fandom (and, to a larger extent, everyone who watched the show) had this thought once: when did this start? and where did Dark!Alicia (a characterisation i am stealing from @tessiete) come from?

and, honestly? looking back, i'm sorry to tell you this but: she was always there, you just didn't see it.

i only really realised this on rewatch but alicia is pretty much unbearable from the very start of the show. because, i mean, sure, she's a bit traumatised, but she's also: arrogant, self-centred, and incredibly hypocritical. she is (unlike peter, actually) a terrible parent. she is unforgiving of kalinda for Literally No Reason (other than archie and juliana not getting on, but that's a different conversation). she treats will appallingly, exploiting and toying with the fact that he's been in love with her for twenty years (which she very clearly knows), and after the event that must not be mentioned i am not over it romanticises their relationship like she ever gave a fuck about him. objectively speaking, and this throughout the show, alicia florrick isn't a Good Person™. she is a Fucking Bitch™.

and, as a writer myself, what i find very interesting about this show is that until the very end, you're never actually told alicia is a terrible person. you're shown it, and in hindsight, given Many Many opportunities to make that determination yourself, and yet, didn't it take us all So Long to stop excusing her behaviour? to stop being like "oh, but peter cheated on her," and "oh, but she loves them both." as an example, in s5, the show even almost succeeds in making you think will's reaction to her leaving the firm is an overreaction when omg if you look at the facts, it Really Isn't. think about it this way: if you were one of will's mates and he was telling you this story, you would be Out For Blood, wouldn't you?

rewatching this show has really made me realise that the "education of alicia florrick" (which the writers pitched was the overall arc of the show - or, also as you might see it, the "corruption of alicia florrick") is actually an example of how 'show, don't tell' can be pushed to the brink. because, this isn't even 'show, don't tell', it's 'show one thing, and tell another' and let the viewer come to their own conclusions. and, whilst i think that most people started out going with what the show was telling the viewers, there is a point where they stopped empathising with alicia and constantly excusing her behaviour, even though the show kept telling us she really was a Good Person™ and was #trying. there is a point where #trying becomes #pretending, and #pretending becomes fake and unforgivable.

and, this revelation arrived earlier for some than others but generally speaking, i think took a really long time to dawn on most of us. to realise that actually, alicia florrick is an anti-hero with very few redeeming qualities who is constantly and inexcusably toying with people's feelings and then excusing her repeated fuck-ups by the fact that she's #wounded and #trying, while still being presented like a hero. she is a Fucking Bitch™ because on top of this, unlike people like house or tommy shelby who are, in no way, shape or form, pretending to be good people[1], alicia and the show keep insisting that she is good, (really, trust her), and there comes a point where as a viewer, you have to look at it critically and say: nah, you're full of shit. and, i think that is what is most disconcerting about the show.

and, don't get me wrong, in hindsight, i believe this was one thousand per cent intentional. i don't believe this is an emily in paris type case where the writers wrote a character as a hero when she was in fact an awful person, and it took thousands of outraged comments for them to realise it. i think with TGW, it was definitely done by design. you see examples of alicia's terrible behaviour very early on in the way she parents her children (zach "watching" porn, for instance) but she always finds excuses for herself, and you initially lean into that as a viewer. like: oh, well, she's just a bit conservative. or: oh, well, it's hard being a single parent. the fact that this escalated into her appalling behaviour of going no contact with her own son because, oh my god, he got his girlfriend pregnant and dared hide it from his mother, shouldn't have come as a surprise. it's there from the get-go. and, it's not that the writers didn't know this, it's that they gradually made it more and more heavy-handed until it became unavoidable.

and, i think as writer, what's also interesting is: when alicia's true nature was revealed, it actually alienated a shit tonne of people. they truly lost a whole chunk of their audience because of it. i even stopped watching the show, and that's someone who wrote thousands of words of fanfiction for it. i remember telling a friend "ugh, she's just become too unbearable." and, i wasn't the only one. i know so many other people in fandom who dropped off around s6/7. whereas, there is a case to be made for the fact, as someone who actually loves rooting for Bad People™ and loves the anti-hero trope, i probably would have been able to stand her, had the show itself portrayed her as a problematic person to begin with.

but the fact that we had genuinely rooted for, and excused the behaviour of, someone who was objectively unconscionable for so long was so disconcerting and disgusting and disappointing that we... stopped caring? and so, whilst in hindsight, i do think the general idea of this was brilliant, objectively, the execution... wasn't much of a success, was it? it cost them a lot of their dedicated viewership. or: was it such a success that it rightfully alienated people? was this the objective all along?

because: is the main goal of a piece of art to cater to its audience or is it to make a point?

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[1] small caveat with tommy who does sometimes seem to think he's a good person, but it never lasts very long.

#the good wife #tgw #meta #tgw meta #anti heroes #thoughts on writing

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personinthepalace · 2 years

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Hey. Hey. How old do you think Lucy is. In the goes wrong stuff. I’m haunted by this I genuinely don’t know how old she’s supposed to be.

haha I am also not sure! But I am going to try to reason it out: We know that Lucy is younger than the rest of the Cornley cast. And during Play That Goes Wrong, most of the cast were taking classes in Cornley Polytechnic, which from what I understand is like uni. I'm American so my best guess is that people would start uni/college around 17 or 18. Let's round up a bit and say that as of Peter Pan Goes Wrong (BBC 2016), most of the cornley cast were around 20 years old.

We are operating under the assumption that as of ppgw, Lucy hasn't started uni or polytechnic yet (I believe there is a play program somewhere that says that she is part of a youth program??). I am going to assume that she is at least 5 years younger than most of the cast, making her 15 years old during ppgw.

Now we are going to fast forward to The Goes Wrong Show series 2, which came out in 2021. That is 5 years later so we can assume that as 2021, Lucy was at least 19 or 20 years old

Hope that helps! So basically I think that Lucy was 15 years old during ppgw (2016) and 19 or 20 years old during There Is No Escape (tgws series 2) (2021)

But this is just my own speculations! I am curious to hear what other people think :)

#and basically I think that lucy is at least a young adult by tgws #but yeah who knows how old she (or anyone else haha) really is #lucy grove #cornley headcanon #cornley polytechnic drama society #how old is lucy grove #lucy grove meta #mischief theatre #mischief comedy #peter pan goes wrong #the goes wrong show #the goes wrong show series 2 #there is no escape #thanks of the ask!#let the whump commence #answering asks in the palace

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tgrailwar · 1 year

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Hi, I’ve been wanting to participate in this blog because it looked fun but I wasn’t sure if I was allowed since I wasn’t there at the beginning. Am I allowed to join regardless if I was there at the beginning or did I have to be present when it started to join?

(Regardless, I’ve been reading a bit so far and I’m enjoying this so far. If you ever made a another Grail War after this then I’d definitely be there to participate next time)

(Honestly, this is a really good question! This Grail War has been going on for a bit, but now that we're reaching a sort of 'intermediary' phase, if there's ever a time to hop in and get involved- it's now!

Participation has always been both 'optional' and 'drop-in', with people able to come and go as they please.

Each Servant's journey has been kept up in their respective Servant class tag for easy backreading, so for Mandricardo it'd be #team rider, for Musashi it'd be #team saber, and so on. With the inclusion of Angra and Van Gogh, #team avenger' and #team foreigner have been added to the mix.

For general rules and housekeeping, #overseer post.

For following the 'meta-plot' with 'Ruler', it'd be #ruler adjudication, and now a new tag has cropped up: #tgw: another start.

So... just pick a Servant, and follow along! I'm sure whatever team you join will be happy to have you!)

#overseer answer #overseer post

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florrickandassociates · 2 years

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hello -- I wanted to thank you for your brilliant metas, I wanted to read something of sonia saraiya's red team/blue team episode analysis calibre and it's so wonderful to have found this tumblr archive. Love it when someone loves a show for the same reasons I do (the pleasure in TGW for me has always foremost been seeing well-drawn characters interact with each other in ways that are pleasurably predictable/unpredictable). I'm rewatching s4 for the 4th time now and I was wondering about (1/2)

your take on the kiss. Josh Charles' acting choices in that moment suggest (apart from lust/heat) someone who has understood, oh shit, Alicia is *hurt*. Maybe she *is* the injured party here. It feels like the kiss is part comfort, or the only comfort Will knows how to offer Alicia. Alicia is blazingly wronged here and so magnified, which makes me think of Will in the 5x10 fantasy sequence saying "I don't like it when you're weak" (is he saying the truth? or does he have a soft spot for her weakness? I also imagine Peter, per your excellent observation of his feudal psyche, would love to help Alicia in a truly weak moment; I don't know if he'd be so all right with this blazing spitting martyr version). Anyway, do you have any thoughts on Will's motivations for kissing Alicia in that moment?

Hi hi hi and thank you for the excuse to put back on my TGW-meta-writing-hat – it's been a while and writing about TGF just isn’t the same. It’s been a while since I’ve rewatched season four, but I’ve seen RTBT a ton of times and just watched the key scenes again, so I’m ready to go!

So, the first thing I need to say about the RTBT kiss scene is that... I don’t exactly think it’s the best example of character-driven writing on TGW. It feels very TV to me, and also like it has to happen when it happens to motivate the return of the love triangle and drive the central conflict of the rest of season four. I’ll try to set that aside, because as annoyingly cliché as I find the scene... it’s also a good scene.

Second, I have a vague and possibly incorrect recollection of the writers saying that Will and Alicia had a ~passion~ that never faded and the line between a passionate emotion like anger and a passionate emotion like wanting to kiss someone is a thin one. So there’s passion in the moment and it suddenly transforms into a different type of passion. Meh. I’m not satisfied with that; it’s not specific enough for me. Also, it feels a liiiiittle questionable and Kalinda/Nick-esque (oh wow I had not thought about that in a while), but since I might be misremembering it, I’m just gonna let it slide instead of arguing against something it’s very possible no one actually said!

Here's an idea I'm toying with: Will is furious because he knows Alicia’s right and he’s wrong – and he’s pissed that she thinks he’s the enemy when he’s not the one who decided to take away her partnership. He likes to think of himself as Alicia’s protector, the one who hired her when she was poison (I know that line’s from later on, but I think it’s safe to assume it was on his mind long before Hitting the Fan!). It upsets him to see that she’s angry and raw; it gets under his skin that she thinks HE – the one that fought for her! -- is the appropriate target for her frustration.

But he knows that he and his partners did something that would piss off anyone – he says this himself in an earlier scene. He loses sight of that when Alicia acts out in mock court. She makes a snappy comment about not getting partnership, and his first thought is to clarify that he, personally, didn’t have anything to do with it? Who cares! Alicia doesn’t know the specifics, but she knows (actually said out loud, like, two scenes prior!) that Will and Diane aren’t totally free, either. That’s objectively the wrong thing, as a managing partner at a company that just fucked over an employee, to say.

He continues to see the tension as an interpersonal conflict between himself and Alicia up until the moment just before the kiss. He seems to think that Alicia should’ve brought her concerns to him and trusted that he’d help her out. She didn't – and he feels a little betrayed. So he goes to confront her, feeling confident and justified in his anger, and then she calls him out. She looks passionate and she’s making no attempts to conceal her emotions. It startles him. He sees her weakness, he sees her pain, and he recognizes the truth of what she’s saying. She IS the injured party. She is obviously the injured party. Maybe she’s acting out in borderline (?) unprofessional ways, but she’s ABSOLUTELY the injured party. He looks at her for a few seconds, and then can’t resist reaching out to comfort her with a kiss. After all, he cares about her, he needs her to know that he's not the bad guy, and he hates seeing her this way.

That brings me to the whole “I don’t like it when you’re weak” thing, a line I have always struggled with. I’ve probably interpreted it, like, fifty different ways over the years, and I’ve read countless great takes on the line before. I think it’s a fantastic line... but I also don’t really know what it means. Where my head’s at now: Will doesn’t like it when Alicia’s weak because of what it brings out in himself. On the most basic level, he hates seeing her be weak because he doesn’t like watching someone he loves suffer. He can’t stand to see her diminished and arguing against herself (like the job interview in 5x14) and he can’t stand to see her victimized by a company that bears his name (in the RTBT scene). He doesn’t like it when she’s weak, so he does whatever he can to give her comfort and strength. But that doesn’t really explain the tone he uses when he says the line in The Decision Tree. He's not saying that he can’t stand to see her suffer; he’s admonishing her for showing weakness!

But what if, taking into account the context of The Decision Tree and Will’s feelings of betrayal, that line is Will re-contextualizing all of his earlier interactions with Alicia and realizing that there’s a pattern? Alicia shows weakness, he swoops in to save the day, he suffers for it. In this new view, Alicia uses her weakness to her advantage; she acts weak to manipulate men (yeah, this would be a super misogynistic view for Will to have, but a looooot of his thinking in The Decision Tree is misogynistic, too). Will, instead of blaming himself for being unable to keep himself from comforting Alicia in her moments of weakness, blames Alicia for showing weakness.

To bring this ramble all back to RTBT, I think he wants to comfort her and acknowledge her pain. At this point in the story, I don’t think Will is thinking about his own behavior or patterns: he seems Alicia’s pain, he hates it, he reacts. He doesn’t want her to feel pained and he certainly doesn’t want her to see him as the one inflicting it, so he tries to offer her comfort in the form of a kiss. And in doing so, he makes things worse for everyone.

#the good wife #this is a ramble but it was so fun to write!!

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andgreeneyesmaybe · 7 years

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I am writing this in an attempt to make sense of, or rationalise if you like, the mess that the Kings have made of Diane and Kurt. I spent the better part of a year filled with rage about the way the end of The Good Wife left the characters but when The Good Fight was announced I decided to withhold my judgement, for the most part, and see what the writers were going to do. Well, I’ve now seen the first season and had a few weeks to think about it and I can’t say I’m entirely happy. That’s not to say there weren’t things that I loved, because it’s Diane and Kurt we’re talking about; even with horrendous and unfathomable writing decisions the characters and relationship are still evocative. (Basically, if the end of TGW didn’t destroy them for me, then I think they’re probably untouchable.) However, since I believe that they deserve better than what’s been written for them thus far on TGF I felt I had to write something, a rant perhaps, whatever ‘this’ is, to try and understand exactly what the problems I’m having with the relationship are. I can see though, that for some people the events of TGF could have been a balm to the serious wounding McHart shippers suffered in 2016, and so if anyone wants to avoid reading this because the ship is in a relatively good place right now and they don’t want to think about negative stuff anymore, I completely sympathise and understand. (Although I do talk about the good things too!)

I want to make clear though, that regardless of how things have played out on TGW or will in the future on TGF, I’m actually really grateful for this ship. They are so lovely to watch and I adore both characters intensely. So while I will have a bunch of negative things to say, I want to make sure that anyone who reads through this overlong and aimless post realises that whatever I end up saying, I really love Diane and Kurt and am grateful to the Kings for creating them.

Now to preface my (already) obvious bias upfront: before the last episode of TGW, I really thought Diane and Kurt were perfect. Just something about their contrasting personalities really clicked and felt right; his intensity and her poise; his stoicism and her mannered speech; country versus city; rustic versus elegant, Kurt’s willingness to throw his lot in with Diane relatively early on in their relationship while she was far less committal, and, oh yeah, liberal versus conservative. I almost forgot that last one, seriously. There’s just so much to point to and go ‘look how different they are’ but it never felt like these things would or could ever be a problem. That’s how right for each other they are. The political differences were like the sweet glace cherry on top of a gorgeous sundae: a grown up relationship for a grown up world. The inclusion of McHart was also one of the more feminist decisions in a show that was often touted for its feminist credentials. Gosh, it seems silly that this should be so but the fact of a mature woman at the top of her profession having a stable, drama-free but undeniably hot marriage is really fucking rare in fiction. I would love to have other examples pointed out to me but I really can’t think of many comparable fictional relationships.

The passionate certainty (which seems an odd phrase but it’s the best I can come up with) at the heart of their relationship, even from the earliest days, was one of the many things that made me fall so hard for them. So many ships I gravitate towards tend to be angsty couples with huge personal obstacles to overcome before the relationship can work, if it ever can; so McHart was a welcome change of pace. I had no doubts about them. Even from season one it was very hard for me to envision Diane with anyone else. Rewatching ‘Bang’ now makes me laugh because during their initial meeting they are so completely made for each other and it’s so obvious in retrospect, once the viewer is more familiar with the characters and how they interact, the way they act at this point is incredibly telling; Diane is hilariously unprofessional and off-kilter and Kurt not only puts up with it but he actually seems to enjoy this behaviour in a sort of bemused fashion even though despite his usual unflappability it clearly gets under his skin. Let’s not even mention the Sarah Palin picture in a frame thing and Kurt’s little ‘on the phone’ performance later in the episode because does anyone really think this falls anywhere on the spectrum of typical behaviour for him? Anyway, suffice to say – you can totally see them meeting ‘the one’. I know that the writers probably never intended any of this and the relationship actually grew organically from episode to episode but… I don’t know, maybe it’s just Christine and Gary’s impeccable chemistry at work but the longevity of McHart seems almost inevitable now. When they introduced Jack in season three I was genuinely confused because what was the point? Despite the fact that Kurt was hardly ever in the show, I couldn’t fathom the prospect that perhaps McHart wouldn’t be endgame. Diane and Kurt would assuredly end up together; this fact was never in doubt, even if Diane hadn’t quite worked it out at that point.

Sadly, it was this faith in the relationship that caused me to be so blindsided at the end of TGW. I have spent years stressing over other will they/won’t they ships on other shows but I barely had a moment of anxiety about McHart, because how could it ever end badly? Especially once they were married. After that point it made no logical sense from a character or overall plot point of view to break Diane and Kurt up. Once they’d finally, finally, got to the place where they were both emotionally ready to commit fully to one another, it would be totally unsatisfying to mess about with their relationship considering the kind of people they had always been depicted to be. Well boy, was I wrong! And it’s not even that I had any particular trust in the Kings as writers for that matter. I’ve been screwed over by the majority of shows I’ve watched at some point. Hell, I’m a Buffy fan. And I know that many people in the wake of TGW finale made comments about how the Kings are incapable of keeping an untarnished good and solid relationship on their shows, and looking back at TGW in retrospect, this is true, but you see because I wasn’t overly interested in the other relationships on the show I was never particularly affected when they got gutted, it was just unconnected passing drama to me and not part of a disturbing pattern. I obviously underestimated the writers desire to push cheap drama at the expense of well-drawn characters.

However, the cold truth is, the writers wrote the ending that they did and so now I have to make sense of canon and make it fit with my understanding of the McHart relationship. But I find that I just CAN’T! (Even with the added information from TGF.)

Now I realise that it is quite possible to point out various issues Diane and Kurt could have that they never properly dealt with. Obviously. But I don’t see how those issues translate into random infidelity. Of course, we can extrapolate that Kurt was unhappy that they didn’t spend more time together and maybe even that Diane had a tendency to prioritise work, especially after they were married. There’s more than enough textual evidence to make an informed guess about this. But couldn’t the writers have done something else with that idea? Okay, I get that it had been decided that Diane desperately needed to be left with nothing at the beginning of TGF (even though wrecking Diane’s personal life ended up being basically irrelevant to the setup of TGF in the end. I don’t see why she couldn’t be broke and jobless but with a support system at home; that would still be devastating for her? Anyway, I digress…) but even if they were dead set on splitting McHart up couldn’t they have used a more organic reason? Perhaps the fact that Diane’s ambition or professional life was driving a wedge between them; hell, they basically did that in season 7 anyway when she asked Kurt to compromise himself on the stand for her. They could have gone further with that, at least it would have been in character. Or they could have written about how difficult it is for two people as different and as set in their ways as Diane and Kurt to change their lives enough to accommodate another person on a full time basis. I mean, hesitation to commit because of other priorities was a factor throughout their entire first five years of knowing each other. It would make total sense that the issue didn’t just magically go away once they were married. Honestly, almost anything would have been better than the plot the writers went with. I would even have preferred Diane to have the affair (if the writers were so convinced one needed to happen) not because I think the idea is any more palatable or likely but because Kurt’s constancy was such an important part of his character. He made his feelings clear to Diane pretty early on in the show, he sort of asked her to marry him in ‘Silver Bullet’ for God’s sake, and when she shows up on his doorstep after a year in ‘Gloves Come Off’ he is… pretty happy about it I’d say, if taken aback. By that point he’s fully realised any relationship he has with Diane is going to be on her terms but he’s totally willing to go along with it because y’know… he loves her. And that feeling ain’t going away.

Of course, since it’s not like the writers spent much time developing his character maybe it was just presumptuous of me to draw these conclusions? And this is the crux of the problem for me; it’s not just that a relationship I liked got ruined by some leftfield infidelity (although that’s bad enough), it’s the fact that they had to basically assassinate Kurt’s character, as the audience understood him, to do it. For example, a decent part of the humour and tension in Diane and Kurt’s relationship came from Kurt’s friendships with his students and what Diane perceived this to mean. Which is all well and good when the truth is that the whole thing is totally innocent, because then the plot serves to highlight Diane’s insecurities even though we, and she, know that she should be above feeling like that and has no reason to anyway, and it also serves as an interesting character point for Kurt. Why are all his friends young women? It doesn’t have to be a negative thing. And I think it’s this that sticks in my craw most of all; it’s not only that they used his student relationships in the most lowbrow and predictable way possible (one of the few facts we actually knew about him keep in mind) but also simultaneously forced the older guy cheats on his wife with a younger woman story on us. It’s such a fucking cliché I could choke. I would hate that they did this to Kurt’s character enough on its own but honestly they did this to Diane too and just… WHY? On the most shallow level Diane is hot as fuck and smart as hell and basically WHAT? OMG I’m never going to stop being angry about this am I? Their story went from being really quite progressive to incredibly regressive in the span of one episode. One. I can still feel the emotional whiplash.

From the moment Kurt was introduced to us we were battered over the head with the fact that integrity is his defining feature. He will only testify on behalf of people he believes to be innocent. Whenever one of Kurt’s current or former students was brought up, the resolution was always that there was nothing dodgy going on. Diane directly asked him if he had slept with any of his students (or, at least, the ones she met in the bar) and he said no. He doesn’t lie or prevaricate on the stand, not even to protect himself. He agreed to help Alicia with a case because it was the right thing to do for the client despite the fact that Diane was unhappy about it. The only times we have ever seen him compromise himself then Diane was always the deciding factor; showing her the demonstration in ‘Running’ because of his feelings for her, and then later on, in season seven, agreeing to testify the way Diane wanted him to. (Interestingly enough, both of these incidents backfired on him spectacularly.)

Now, Kurt may only have been a supporting character of a supporting character on TGW but it still amounts to seven years worth of consistent characterisation down the drain for the writers to then say ‘oh actually he was a total hypocrite all along’. Because where does it end? If he lied once, then it’s feasible he lied a million times. And not only does this go for the affair itself but why did he not tell Diane about it immediately after it happened? Expecting me to believe that Kurt slept with Holly is almost beyond my comprehension but to then take it further and expect me to buy that he kept it a secret is just… madness. Keeping quiet about it is both completely out of character and really, really stupid; he knows Diane is whip-smart, it’s one of the reasons he fell for her after all, so why wouldn’t she be able to work it out? If we in hindsight say that Kurt was willing to lie on the stand when she asked because he was feeling guilty about the affair, then wouldn’t this be relatively apparent to his wife, if not at that moment then at some later point? He would realise this. He’s not an idiot. And not only was she bound to find out about it, considering the world in which these characters live and Diane’s position in it, there was always a strong possibility that it would happen in a really public horrific way. (Another reason I hate the writers btw is because Diane and Kurt had so many cute moments in court during their relationship and now that’s all tainted. And it also plays like a kind of nasty bizarro symmetry, considering the fact that Diane and Kurt’s relationship was initially outed in court when Kurt was testifying. I can’t even imagine deciding to write something that on the nose and crass.) I’m not saying that Kurt should have been expected to know that Alicia would be able to make the assumption of an affair having occurred and then stoop low enough to use that hunch in court, but I never got the impression that Kurt liked or trusted Alicia AT ALL. So again, I ask, why wouldn’t he consider this as a possibility? The only conclusions I am able to draw from this is that he’s either stupid (which we know he’s not) or callous, which is ridiculous because we know that he loves Diane. So… what am I supposed to think? Don’t the Kings realise what they’ve done? The affair plot completely undermines the entirety of Diane and Kurt’s relationship and by extension Diane herself somewhat. And considering they were planning a spinoff featuring Diane at the same point when they were writing the end of TGW, it seems insane that they would want to damage her character like this. Why did she marry him? Was she just wilfully blind to what he was really like? Did she not see it? Or was the affair supposed to be a random moment of weakness in reaction to a kind of emotional neglect and therefore more understandable (if still utterly ridiculous)? Wasn’t their attraction to each other based on the fact that despite their many ideological differences they each found many admirable qualities in the other person; Kurt’s Tea Party Republican schtick didn’t matter to Diane in the face of what a good and honourable man he was. Right? But if he doesn’t have his integrity then… what is the relationship based on? Sexual attraction? I don’t know. I genuinely can’t understand why the writers would want to throw it all away in the manner that they did. Was it really because of TGF? Or was it because by late season seven of TGW Diane and Kurt’s marriage was the only healthy and beautiful thing the show had left in it with any depth, and the Kings had run out of things to burn? If it’s the former, then it’s annoying, because as I’ve already pointed out, Diane’s situation in the TGF didn’t really require the sacrifice of her marriage. If it was the latter then I don’t know what to say other than TGW was ending and there was more than enough drama that could have been created around Alicia, who was the star of the show, without involving Diane. It’s not like the writers devoted that much time and energy to her in the last couple of seasons anyway and I think it was incredibly disrespectful to mess with Diane’s character just so the weird slap framework could play out. I genuinely believe that Diane would have been above all that shit anyway. I also think that if the writers had bothered to spend more time developing Diane’s character, and by extension Kurt, then maybe they would never have had to resort to such a poorly planned storyline in the first place. But obviously this was never going to happen on The Alicia Show.

Now, talk of character development leads me to the state of McHart in TGF. Look, part of me is just grateful they wrote Kurt into it, I was half-convinced that they were going to give Diane a clean romance slate for the new show. But now that they have actually allowed a situation where we could, and should, get some resolution to the affair storyline, they’ve basically done the exact opposite. Having said that, yes, I admit it: I loved seeing them together in ‘Inauguration’. I was ready for it but I wasn’t ready for it. Seeing him waiting outside her house, being almost unbearably Kurt-like, filled me with joy. (It’s a weird phenomenon but when I think about McHart in my general life, post TGW, it really stresses me out because of what was done to them, but then when I see them onscreen I can barely remember what bothered me so much; the way he looks at her, so intently, like he’s constantly trying to figure her out and the way Diane changes in Kurt’s presence, the way she emotionally opens up like a flower - they are just meant to be.) And while I knew the conversation they were about to have wouldn’t be particularly pleasant, in a lot of ways it felt okay, he was there for her, she kind of allowed him to be, she let herself be vulnerable with him despite everything. It was definitely better than many of the scenarios I had envisioned during the hiatus. The fact that she wanted Kurt to be the one to initiate divorce proceedings was a positive sign, clearly she wasn’t ready to let go of their marriage entirely despite her insistence that the relationship was over. I was interested in Kurt’s assertion that in his view he’d never left Diane and also his reaction when Diane pointed out that he had because of the affair with Holly. He actually seemed kind of… annoyed? I don’t know? Was he tired of having it thrown in his face? Does he think it’s an unreasonable thing for her to say at this juncture? Weird, because it’s really not, even if it did happen a year ago. Diane just seemed resigned and tired, and this could indicate that they’ve talked about the affair endlessly with constantly diminishing returns, but it’s more likely that it was a reaction to all the other bad things that had happened to her already that episode. We’re not told how often they’ve seen each other since the end of TGW, if they have at all, although the nature of their interactions in this episode suggests that they have at least spoken from time to time. It’s hard to tell though, they’ve always been able to fall seamlessly back into casual intimacy after a long time apart. Nor do we have any idea as to what the confrontation that they must have had after the scene in court back in TGW was like. Did she ask him why he did it? What did he say? Did he give her an explanation for anything? We don’t know because the writers chose to tell us exactly nothing. Kurt wasn’t exactly remorseful, but again, it’s been a year, he can’t make his whole life about a mistake he made. The problem is, since we haven’t seen these characters since ‘End’, the affair is fresh in the audience’s memory and it seems like we’re only getting half a story. I mean, if McHart is going to carry on being Diane’s primary romantic relationship in TGF then these are pretty important problems to be glossing over.

After this Diane and Kurt seemed to fall back into their old pattern; he reaches out to her, she gets swept up in it, and then she pulls back. Of course, it’s different now, she has an actual concrete reason to be hesitant with him. But they didn’t discuss it, of course! I’m not even saying this is out of character behaviour, but it is frustrating to watch.

Which leads me to ‘Chaos’, and this is where my problem actually lies. I know, I know, they reconciled; and it was lovely, and Diane was adorable in the hospital, and Kurt told her he loved her, and ‘Wild World’ played but… I’m sorry, the set up for the reconciliation irritated me. Juxtaposing Kurt’s ‘everyday heroism’ with Diane being morally compromised because of her job is pretty dreadful, especially if this incident is what leads to Diane deciding that she can now be with him again, in whatever capacity. For starters, I don’t see how Kurt rescuing a baby gets him off the hook for the affair; one has nothing to do with the other. We already know Kurt’s generally a decent guy (or at least we thought we did), this is not some shocking revelation. Or is the carjacking supposed to prove to us/Diane that Kurt really is a cowboy after all? Secondly, of course Diane has to make compromises as a lawyer, she’s been doing the job a long time, and therefore has probably come to terms with and found a way to compartmentalise most moral qualms she may have; I don’t see why Kurt putting himself in danger selflessly would make her feel bad about what she does. And thirdly, I can totally see why Kurt having to go to hospital and Diane not knowing the extent of his injuries would lead her to put the feelings she had for him in perspective; he may have betrayed her but she doesn’t want to lose him forever, obviously. However, was it necessary for the writers to artificially rush their reconciliation with this? They haven’t worked through anything as far as we know; Diane clearly still seems incredibly hesitant about moving forward with their relationship, she tells him he hurt her and he says ‘it won’t happen again’. Umm… okay? Is that it? Why won’t it happen again? I mean really why should we trust this statement? It would help if I knew why the affair happened in the first place, and what Kurt feels about it. But since I don’t and the show doesn’t seem inclined to tell me, the only thing I know is that Kurt had an affair and then lied by omission about it for an unspecified period of time. I want to trust him and I want Diane to be able to trust him again, but the writers have to give us something to go on other than his previous good character and unrelated acts of heroism.

Interestingly, writing this has made me feel better about McHart than I have for a year, it’s still much harder to ship them now though. If anyone has anything to add to what I’ve said or wants to take issue with something I’ve written then please feel free to say your piece.

#kurt x diane #mchart #the good fight #the good wife #diane lockhart #kurt mcveigh #tgw meta #tgf meta

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arofili · 4 years

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i think we, as fandom people, would benefit from analyzing the stories around which we create as works of literature as well as entertainment

#tmi anna #quoth the english major #i just. hmm. i have some Thoughts about this.#and the assertion of meta/hc as canon when it's not #and 'problematic' fandoms and characters and ships #i also think we should analyze adaptations of original material as Big Budget Fanworks #but that's just my take #fan culture #idk if i'm ready to actually Write About This esp with tgw going on rn but.#i do have some Thoughts.#save

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aspecardaweek · 3 years

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Frequently Asked Questions

Index: The Basics || Aspec Questions || Participation || Modding Questions

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THE BASICS

What is Aspec Arda Week? This is a week-long event to celebrate the interaction of the asexual and aromantic-spectrums and Tolkien’s Legendarium of Arda. Though these experiences are not explicit within Tolkien’s work, many fans across the a-spectrum see themselves in Arda, and we are here to appreciate any and all interpretation of characters, relationships, and events through an aspec lens.

When is Aspec Arda Week? Aspec Arda Week will run from May 3-9, 2021.

Who is running this blog? That would be me, Anna @arofili. I am an aroace and nonbinary Tolkien fan (they/them), and I’ve been dreaming of an event like this for years. I have run multiple week-long tumblr events, including @kilielweek, @finweanladiesweek, and @tolkiengenweek. TGW actually began with my desire for an aspec event, but I didn’t think it would have enough interest to be sustainable—I am beyond excited to finally have this opportunity!

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ASPEC QUESTIONS

I’m not aspec. Can I participate? Yes, absolutely! While this event is by and for aspecs, allo people are welcome to join in the fun.

Do you count ____ as aspec? If you count it as aspec, then we do too. This is a gatekeeping-free zone; we believe in self-determination and the freedom to label yourself however you want - and the freedom to label your favorite characters however you want!

What do all these terms mean? Here are some resources on the a-spectrum.

What is asexuality?

Aromanticism 101

Asexual and Aromantic Resources

Aro Resources

Ace terminology

Aro terminology

Queerplatonic Relationships

our resources tag

If you have further questions after perusing these resources, feel free to reach out to the mod on their main or their aspec positivity blog.

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PARTICIPATION

For further information on this subject, check out the Code of Conduct’s section on Submission Guidelines.

How do I participate? In any way you want! We accept art, fic, meta, graphics, gifs, headcanons - pretty much any fan creation you can think of! There are optional prompts for each day, but feel free to let your imagination run wild. You can submit your work directly to this blog or make an original post on your own blog with #aspecardaweek in the first 20 tags (minus the hashtag). You can also @mention this blog or send the mod a DM with a link to your submission. For additional information, please read our Code of Conduct page.

What kind of content qualifies for this event? Any fanwork that focuses on Tolkien’s Legendarium through an aspec lens. This includes but is not limited to: aspec pride moodboards, fic about characters being aspec, queerplatonic shipping fanart/fanfic, fanart/gifs/graphics of characters you see as aspec, etc. If your work is about anything a-spectrum + Tolkien, it qualifies!

Can I submit just a headcanon without any art/fic/etc attached? Yes, headcanons are welcome. However, please give at least one sentence of description/elaboration to the headcanon rather than just stating it. Basically, have some substance to your headcanon beyond the bare bones statement of it. For examples on what format of headcanon is acceptable vs. not, see the Submission Guidelines section of the Code of Conduct.

Can my fanwork include sex, romance, and/or shipping? This is not a ship-centered event, but ships of all kinds are welcome so long as they include aspec content. For example: a romantic relationship with an ace character, a sex scene with an aro character, a queerplatonic ship—all of these are fine! There are, of course, other ways to include this kind of content, but everything aspec is accepted, even if there are other elements. If you are creating content that includes sex, romance, or shipping, please mention that in your submission (in the tags/summary or at the top or your post, preferably). Romance (including background romance) and sex (including implied sex) will be tagged for so people may seek it out or avoid it, whatever their preference. If you are interested in solely gen content, check out our sister event, @tolkiengenweek.

Can I submit NSFW content? Yes. See the section above and the Code of Conduct page for guidelines on submitting this kind of content.

What if I don’t want to see ship-related content for this event? I will be tagging for ship-related content and other sensitive topics, both for ease of blacklisting should you want to not see such content, and for ease of searching if you’re specifically looking for it! See the Code of Conduct for more information.

Can I focus my fanwork on OCs? Absolutely! We are OC-friendly!

Do I have to participate every day? Nope! You can participate as many times as you want to, whether that means submitting one creation or 20 or just consuming other people’s content. We are happy to have you here no matter how involved you want to be!

What if I don’t like the prompts? Then don’t use them! The prompts are there to inspire you, not to restrict your creativity. We accept all kinds of content, related to the prompts or not.

Can I contribute an in-progress work? Yes! You can contribute whatever kind of fanwork you want, even if it’s not finished. We want to inspire you to create aspec content, and if that means you continue on with it after the event is over, that’s great! Additionally, if your work is already in-progress and you want to update it or promo it during the week, that is also encouraged, so other people can find and consume your content!

What if I don’t finish my fanwork in time for the event? Feel free to post what you have and tag us anyway - we accept in-progress works! Alternatively, tag the blog whenever you are finished and ready to post it - we will be happy to promote it even outside the event.

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MODDING QUESTIONS

Why haven’t you reblogged my post? Posts are queued as the mod encounters them! Your post should be reblogged within 24 hours or so. If you see a like on your post from the mod @arofili, your post is in the blog’s queue! If it’s been 24 hours and you don’t see a like and your post hasn’t been reblogged, we may have missed it - feel free to send it to us or ask us if we’ve seen it! We want to boost your content, but tumblr’s tagging and @ing mechanisms can be faulty.

Is there an AO3 collection for the event? Yes! You can find it here.

Are there any other rules? Yes. Please check our Code of Conduct page for the rules of the event.

I have another question… Contact us via an ask, or reach out to the creator @arofili on their own blog :)

#aaw21 #faq

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hellyeahomeland · 7 years

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Dreams I’ve had about Homeland that I’ve shared on social media

From most to least recent. Consider it an inner line to my psyche.

I woke up at 5am from a homeland dream last night. This is what I documented then (time stamp is me editing it for clarity because 5am) pic.twitter.com/Xs4bE5UgMT