ok i'm on a bob's burgers kick again and

do the kids feel bad that they don't have as much as some of their friends? This is probably me projecting but I was watching the episode where Rudy breaks his arm and at the end, he mentions to Louise that he's keeping his new bunk bed and his dad got him a trampoline. Watching that, I felt sad because that's something that would never be a possibility for the Belchers.

One of the reasons I like bob's burgers so much is that it's the only show I've found that's about working class people. They live in an apartment, not a house, have crappy phones and struggle to pay rent. And they make jokes about it and go on crazy adventures bc of it but it’s also so real.

Tina can’t go to the fancy horse camp or get a phone like her friends. Louise wanted a bunk bed so bad and it took them forever to get it bc it’s expensive. In one of the Christmas episodes, Bob was so genuinely excited that they could afford nice presents for the kids this year. They’re always having to choose between doing smth for the kids (like going to trampoline land) or keeping their business/house functioning (like fixing the deep fryer) bc there’s not money for both.

My family is working class and all of these things are so real. We’ve driven around and looked at the rich houses and pretended they were ours like the Belchers. My phone is secondhand and six years old just like theirs. We don’t go on vacation bc it’s too expensive so we just do activities within the city like they do. Idk it just makes the show so much better for me than watching another show abt a rich suburban middle class family. Tv almost never presents lower class ppl in a fun goofy light like the Belchers that doesn’t also make them feel lesser than the other characters bc of it. Idk where I was going w this anymore, I’m just so glad they wrote them like they did

hot chocolate | jyh (1)

part 1/3

𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 jeong yunho x reader, yang hongseok x reader

𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕 2.4 k

𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒓𝒆 angst, fluff / enemies to lovers au, tv news au, newsanchor!yunho x newsanchor!reader

𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 mentions of sex and cursing

main masterlist | ateez masterlist

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“Taeki is retiring”

Y/n snapped her head towards her co-worker, choking a little with the last bite of her lunch “Are you serious?”

“Yep” Minsoo nodded “They are even throwing him a surprise farewell party or something like that. Hyunsung is sending everyone a message, so you’ll probably receive one”

Just as she finished her sentence, y/n’s phone vibrated in her pocket, signalling she had indeed received one “You’re right” she responded, staring at the invitation like it was a lottery winning ticket “And who is replacing him?”

“No idea, but I guess we’ll know in a few hours” she shrugged, and finished her sandwich “Ready to go back?”

Standing up from her seat, y/n followed Minsoo out of the restaurant, continuing their conversation about how insufferable their boss had been the last month because of that new forecast lady who was still adapting to the Seoul Morning News. But her mind was elsewhere now.

She had always dreamt about being a news anchor. Ever since she was little, she admired those people on the T.V. who knew a lot about what was going on, and was fascinated with how fast they talked and never messed up. She had always enjoyed watching the same beautiful lady sitting on her fancy desk, wearing trendy clothing and styling her hair accordingly. Her make up was always on point and the smile that she wore on her face made little y/n feel as happy as she (supposedly) was.

So hearing that there was a vacant for the job of her dreams was something to be excited for. It was not like she didn’t like her current job, of course not. Developing the stories that Taeki presented every morning was a big deal. She liked to do her research and bring the public different views about diverse topics, stories that could make them reflect on their own lives, or just to make them aware of crucial matters like climate change, her latest report. But that didn’t change the fact that she was made to be in front of the camera. Her bright smile and outgoing personality made it clear from the start, and every co-worker of hers knew that sooner or later, she would end up being the morning news’ anchor.

“As you may have already heard, our news anchor Taeki is about to retire”

Every Friday, Mr. Jung held a meeting in the conference room with every department. Even though the Seoul Morning News had always worked well and rarely gone through rating issues, Mr. Jung believed that with no unity, the programme would rapidly fall from grace. These recurrent reunions were basically to inform everyone about what was going on in their own department and what was about to happen the following week in terms of interviews, reports and mini-documentaries.

“Next week is his last one here, so naturally we are looking for a replacement”

Y/n felt how Minsoo’s elbow pocked her side with enthusiasm, and she looked at the woman with wide eyes to make her stop.

“Sorry” she whispered “It’s just that Jaehyun is looking at you again. I think he fell in love” Minsoo giggled.

Y/n wished he just stopped for once and for all. Yeah, it had been a fantastic experience. Nothing would make her forget how good she had felt under his gorgeous body, under his hot touch and sweet scent. But it had been just that, a one-night-thing only. And she didn’t do one-night-things more than once with the same man, except for Hongseok. She would never get tired of him. But Jaehyun was another matter, and apparently he didn’t understand it, or maybe he didn’t want to understand it.

“…that’s why I have decided to propose the job to some of you whom I believe would be the best replacement. Of course you will have some tasks to develop, as well as some interviews and you’ll be tried”

Y/n quickly forgot about the burning look that Jaehyun was giving her upon hearing her boss’ announcement. Her heart started pounding on her ears, and her hands felt sweaty in a matter of seconds.

“Every director of each department have proposed candidates for the job and two names were always included in those lists. I know you all, and I am aware of who has potential for this job. That’s why I have decided to give the opportunity to both of them”

Her heart sunk. Her chance of being one of those two candidates was too slim. The number of people working for the Seoul Morning News was abominable, and off the top of her head she could name at least twenty people who would fit the job perfectly.

“I don’t want to waste more time. Jeong Yunho, from the Sports Department. Lee Y/n, from the Daily Reports Department. You are our candidates. May the best win” Mr. Jung grinned.

The girl’s eyes watered as soon as she heard her name leave her boss’ lips. Her surroundings felt like being on slow-motion. Some of her friends in other departments cheered for her from afar, clapping with passion and waving at her. Those who were around her congratulated her with smiles, some of them with envious eyes. It was too much for her to process. But that was not the whole issue.

She was competing against Jeong Yunho. The it boy from Sports, the man that every one loved and admired because of his intelligence, his fresh, easy-going personality, his perfect, bright smile and beautiful eyes. Jeong Yunho, her eternal enemy, who was looking at her from his seat with a lopsided grin and mocking eyes.

“So that’s why you were so eager to see me, huh?”

“I needed to celebrate” she giggled, making herself comfortable against Hongseok’s warm, naked chest.

“I always knew you were going to be the next Seoul Morning News’ anchor” he responded with a hoarse mumble, bringing her closer to his body and letting her tangle her legs with his.

“I’m not it yet” she sighed, drawing circles on Hongseok’s pectoral with her index finger.

“But you will be” he kissed her temple.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about it, Hong. You know Jeong Yunho. He’s going to try to destroy me if that gets him the job. He was always like that on college, especially when we were competing”

Hongseok stayed silent for a while, and if he hadn’t kept caressing her exposed lower back she would have thought he had fallen asleep “But you are as good as he is, if not better. I know him, yes, but I also know you. You are the perfect person for that job and your boss knows it. So don’t doubt yourself, okay, Y/n? Just trust the process and you’ll see”

“Can I kiss you for that?” she lifted her head from his chest and smirked at Hongseok, who quickly brought her head closer with his arm and sealed their lips together.

“I will never understand how you go about your life like that knowing that you can have Hongseok as more than just a hook-up but you don’t do anything about it” Minsoo murmured to y/n right after waving Hongseok goodbye.

Y/n shrugged, fixing her already messy bangs “I guess I am not used to commitment. I mean, we see each other more than I see my family really. But you know that I don’t just do sex with him, right?”

“What? Do you go on dates and kiss each other goodnight with your friend-with-benefits?” Minsoo chuckled, stopping by the elevator and waiting for it to come.

“I wouldn’t call them dates, but we do kiss” y/n mumbled, playing with the end of her red dress.

“You kiss Ho-?!” her friend screamed, and y/n had to put her hand over Minsoo’s mouth to shush her before he could hear them from her apartment “Friends with benefits don’t do that, y/n!” now inside the elevator and all alone, she could yell all she wanted.

“We do” y/n giggled, and turned around to fix her lipstick “And it’s not weird, you know. He sleeps with other people and I also do. It’s just that I like the way he makes me feel. It’s like having a boyfriend that doesn’t care about whether you fuck other guys or not”

“Is that an open relationship, then?”

“Maybe. I dunno. But I like how it is now and I wouldn’t change what I have with him for any other man”

Twenty minutes or so later, y/n and Minsoo walked out of the taxi right into the party hall. Most of their co-workers were there already, drinking and conversing with one another. Taeki hadn’t arrived yet, so for their luck, they were on time.

“Wow, look at you, doll”

“And that’s my cue to leave you alone now” Minsoo smirked, waving at Hyunsung, the party host, and running away from the scene as fast as she could.

“Fuck me” y/n mumbled, closing her eyes shut. She plastered a fake smile on her face and turned around, meeting Jaehyun’s stunning face. “Hi there”

“I didn’t know you were coming. I would have given you a ride” he smiled, shoving his hands inside his pockets.

“Yeah, Hyunsung was kind enough to invite me. And it’s alright, my friend brought me and Minsoo” y/n lied, trying to bring Hongseok up as her only way to get away from his offers.

“Oh, you mean the guy that you are seeing?” Jaehyun cocked his head, suddenly interested in y/n’s love life, like he always was.

“Yeah, that guy” she enthusiastically nodded “He’s picking me up later as well” she mentally slapped herself, because she knew that Jaehyun would be around the whole night, and of course he would see how she called a taxi when she decided to leave. Besides, Hongseok was covering a co-worker of his and had to be on the Night Show’s building until 2 a.m. at least.

“Well, if that is not the case you know I can always take you home” he smirked, licking his lips.

“Thank you, Jaehyun, I re-”

“Excuse me! Hi, I’m Jeong Yunho from the Sports Department, how are you doing? Can I take her from you just a little bit? Okay, thank you!”

The tall boy didn’t even bother to hear an answer from Jaehyun and simply took her by her arm, brining her to the other side of the room.

“What the hell was that?!” she asked him, looking at his hand that was still holding her arm hostage.

“Oh, sorry” Yunho released her from his strong grip and crossed his arms over his chest “I just wanted to congratulate you. It’s a big thing what you are doing” he grinned. But y/n knew that grin, and it didn’t entail pure intentions.

“Oh, yeah? Are you, Jeong Yunho, congratulating me, out of all people?” she scrunched up her face, demonstrating how suspicious he was appearing to her.

“Why not?” he scowled.

“C’mon, Yunho. You’ve always disliked me. Since when do you talk to me? I don’t recall a single civil conversation with you, even in college” she imitated his pose, folding her arms “And back then, we just talked when professors paired us up to work on assignments”

“Because you would always be around Yang Hongseok, and I never liked that guy” disgust was evident on this face, a rare sight to see. None of the people around them had seen Yunho like y/n had in all those years of sharing not only every single class, but also the same workplace for almost two years. He was not the angel he pretended to be.

“Then you wouldn’t want to know that I still hang out with him”

Yunho stayed silent, just looking at her with an unreadable expression. Y/n quickly realized that the boy was trying to mess up with her right from the beginning, playing all friendly and stuff so that he could get the position in the blink of an eye.

“I know what you are tying to do here, Jeong. You have always wanted that spot but you are not the only one. So I’m sorry to crush your dreams, but I’m fighting for it too. Just don’t play dirty. You deserve to be the next news’ anchor? Then show it”

“I’ll play fair. Just remember that I always won back then” he smirked, his eyes shining with greediness.

“Get over college, Yunho” she grinned, tiptoeing so she could whisper in his ear “And never underestimate me”

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S5 Ep5: Female Friends

So I was up hella late because of Daylight Savings screwing my sleep schedule, and I was on Twitch and one of the people I follow was speedrunning a Yugioh game (I think it was called Forbidden Memories like it was some Romance YA novel) and I was like “that’s a thing?” And I watched about 15 minutes of just complete nonsense. Like this game makes no sense when your scrubbing through 30 minutes of gameplay, but when a whole game takes 45 seconds and they have mechanics using like planets and astrology symbols? What?

What?

Y’all, I’m a little concerned your card game ain’t real. Like this is some ploy by knowing adults and this is some sort of Santa Claus situation where everyone else knows that this game ain’t real, but I’m the last person alive who’s like... “it is real though, right?” Hoping that I haven’t been played all of these years, despite having literally no empirical evidence that it is.

Just saying, I’m on to you, Yugioh.

Thanks dub.

I am pretty convinced (could be wrong) but pretty convinced that Grandpa was probably just normal horny in this scene. Like it just kinda matches what I know about horny grandpa tropes (that and Vivian is really talked up to be this hot stuff although she’s just youknow...some girl who exists.)

He immediately falls over. Like immediately, and I don’t know what’s up with Grandpa’s weird slipped disc, but luckily this is the one thing that Mokuba is prepared to deal with as a park manager.

Or what was his job again, Master of Ceremonies? That was the name of Mokuba’s actual chosen job that a 12-13 yo would choose?

Only Mokuba would have the choice to choose “a literal astronaut” and not choose an astronaut. This kid probably hates space though, with his family’s countless war machines now currently flying through the void.

The amount of times that the Kaibas have had to call a doctor for these guys.

(read more under the cut)

Bro was like “So Hawkins paid Grandpa to pretend to fall down so they could ditch Rebecca’s duel, right?” and youknow...probably. It was a pretty boring duel. They got off scott free.

Rex and Weevil do cartoon antics that actually feel like cartoon antics--which feels so weird for this show. Of course, it also has this Vivian plotline that is a little sus for a children’s show?

OK, show. You keep throwing women at Yugi Muto, and I get it’s a joke because he’s the world’s most undateable boy but there is a line of plausibility that even for a kid’s cartoon show it’s like “eh, probably not.”

Anyway, Vivian has Cho Chang energy of “I’m here for a problematic romantic conflict that never needed to happen and hamfisted diversity and uhhhhhh that’s it! I won’t exist after book 5!”

What a step down from dueling on top of the train, right? Like this whole time you could have just dueled next to it? What? In this show?

The rest of the party show up to the train station, where there’s really no other audience watching. Like where are Rebecca’s adoring fans who were asking for her autograph like 3 episodes back?

Card culture is brutal, y’all.

Vivian is not drawn like a 16 yo, being real. I was pretty surprised that she was under 25 according to a cursory Google search. Course, Joey Wheeler is drawn like a built adult, too, so I think the only convincing teenage child on this show is Pharaoh because at least he’s short. Just ignore how sometimes he’s got muscles on his arms that have no right to be there at the age of 16. (17?)

Then we had like a little Season Zero vibes where everyone just picks on Yugi for a hot minute.

And so Tea’s character development comes full circle as she realizes that this whole time, the Female Friend she needed was already here in the form of that small child who has a crush on her kinda boyfriend.

This was such an episode written by a bunch of dudes.

But at least Rebecca and Tea found something in common, although I really wish it wasn’t Yugi, considering how little on screen development he has with either of them. Where’s the reward for me as the viewer? If I cared about either of this love pentagon at all (well, hexagon...Bakura’s still in there.) there will never be a payout. You very well may be waiting forever for a relationship the writers clearly had never any intention to ever write except to act as a foil for our protagonists instead of like...a relationship.

And the show seems a little inconsistent with the relationship between Rebecca and Tea, too. They hang out a lot as the girls on the sideline, and appear to get along a lot of the time--but then they hate eachother a lot of the time as well because of jealousy? It’s just so weird.

I feel like TV shows in general have a really hard time approaching girl friendships, and speaking as a girl, I wish TV and books recognized more that our female friendships don’t have to be so freakin serious. We just act friendly and that’s freakin it.

That and these girls are going to go right back to hating eachother half the time after this is over because the main problem--Yugi not piping up and telling one of them to back the hell off--has never been addressed and never will be because Yugi is a broken, broken wet blanket.

Back at the base, Seto is also making up his own problems to be upset about in the absence of any apocalypses happening on screen.

Unless that hacker is Noah Kaiba, you’re probably fine. I really haven’t had too much of a reason to feel any fear over Zigfried von Schroeder. And maybe it’s because his character design was pretty complicated so no one wanted to draw it.

This was a ‘who’s on first’ joke but still.

...why do cards have to be like this?

Also, I didn’t see anything about this nonsense in the speedrun I watched the other night so, guys, this game ain’t real.

Anyway, Rebecca won.

We find out a little more of what happens to other duelists. Our Cowboy lost to a Sherlock Holmes boy, and I was very happy that I don’t have to come up with jokes about country music because I have none other than like...Taylor Swift jokes? Does she still count as country? I have no idea what’s going on in the country music scene.

On other side of the park, Yugioh decide to pay another tribute to the creative crotch shot with one of these:

Rex and Weevil are off to fight the big bad, and when you think “OK, we’re gonna get a wacky duel battle with these two balancing on top of eachother,” they kinda whiffed it before they made it to the stage.

And then I kind of whiffed it when I realized that Mokuba and Weevil have never spoken in the same place before and they have the same exact font color so fml.

The fact that Mokuba didn’t realize anything was wrong until they fell and revealed they were two small adults in a trench coat says a lot about most of the competitors in this duel.

It is incredible how both the Battle City Tournament and the Kaiba Corp Tourney (s that it’s name?) are both poorly managed, but in a different way. The Battle City Tourney unfortunately had a bunch of murderers in it. This tournament, no one is killing eachother, but they are still kind of sneaking in through the back door and being chronically late to everything.

(and I just want to point out that after the last match Mokuba oversaw that had Joey nearly miss the appointment, Mokuba decided to set this one in front of a Giant Clock just to get his point across)

So Zigfried has some sort of flying horse card that wiped them out right away, which makes you wonder........

.............why use any other cards?

Kaiba makes these cards, right????

Like he should be the last person who’s surprised????

Anyway, Zigfried top-decked a horse, and the guy who spends about 15 minutes getting ready his big ol blue eyes dragons every match he’s ever played was like “Yo I have GOT to get into speedrunning!”

And yes, the speedrun I was watching did not use Blue Eyes White Dragons. They were using a bunch of other stuff that I tried to look up just now and the art is completely different from what I recall so...unfortunately that means that your game is fake. Pretty sure it’s fake and you have no way to prove to me this is real.

Anyway, that’s it for now, not much to say since we’re still at the beginning of the arc. Next week I guess we’ll find out if Seto ever removes his ass from this chair.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

It’s Arrested Development: How ‘High Fidelity’ Has Endured Beyond Its Cultural Sell-By Date by Vikram Murthi

It’s easy to forget now that at the beginning of 2020, before the pandemic had taken hold of our consciousness, for a brief moment, High Fidelity was back. Not only did Nick Hornby’s debut novel and Stephen Frears’ film adaptation celebrate major milestones this year — 25th and 20th anniversaries, respectively — but a TV adaptation premiered on Hulu in February. In light of all of these arbitrary signposts, multiple thinkpieces and remembrances litigated Hornby’s original text on familiar, predictable grounds. Is the novel/film’s protagonist Rob actually an asshole? (Sure.) Does Hornby uphold his character’s callous attitudes towards women? (Not really.) Hasn’t the story’s gatekeeping, anti-poptimist approach to artistic taste culturally run its course? (Probably.) Why do we need to revisit this story about this person right now? (Fair question!)

Despite reasonable objections on grounds of relevancy, enough good will for the core narrative—record store owner seeks out a series of exes to determine a pattern of behavior following a devastating breakup—apparently exists to help produce a gender-flipped streaming show featuring updated musical references and starring a decidedly not-middle-aged Zoë Kravitz. I only made it through six of ten episodes in its first (and only) season, but I was surprised by how closely the show hewed to High Fidelity’s film adaptation, to the point of re-staging numerous scenes down to character blocking and swiping large swaths of dialogue wholesale. (Similarly, the film adaptation hewed quite close to the novel, with most of the dialogue ripped straight from Hornby.) Admittedly, the series features a more diverse cast than the film, centering different experiences and broadly acknowledging some criticisms of the source material regarding its ostensibly exclusionary worldview. Nevertheless, it seemed like a self-defeating move for the show to line itself so definitively with a text that many consider hopelessly problematic, especially considering the potential to repurpose its premise as a springboard for more contemporary ideas.

High Fidelity’s endurance as both a piece of IP and a flashpoint for media discourse is mildly baffling for obvious reasons. For one thing, its cultural milieu is actually dated. Even correcting for vinyl’s recent financial resurgence, the idea of snooty record store clerks passing judgment on customer preferences has more or less gone the way of the dodo. With the Internet came the democratization of access, ensuring that the cultivation of personal taste is no longer laborious or expensive, or could even be considered particularly impressive (if it ever could have been). Secondly, as one might imagine, some of Hornby’s insights into heterosexual relationships and the differences between men and women, even presented through the flawed, self-deprecating interiority of High Fidelity’s main character, are indeed reductive. Frears’ film actually strips away the vast majority of Hornby’s weaker commentary, but the novel does include such cringeworthy bits like, “What’s the deal with foreplay?” that are best left alone.

Accounting for all of that, though, it’s remarkable how many misreadings of Hornby’s text have been accepted as conventional wisdom. It’s taken as a given by many that the novel and film earnestly preach the notion that what you like is more important than what you are like when, in fact, the narrative arc is constructed around reaching the opposite conclusion. (The last lines of the novel and film are, literally, “…I start to compile in my head a compilation tape for her, something that's full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play. Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it's done.”) That’s relatively minor compared to the constant refrain that Rob’s narcissism goes uncriticized, even though the story’s thematic and emotional potency derives from what the audience perceives that Rob cannot. To put it bluntly, High Fidelity’s central irony revolves around a man who listens to music for a living being unable to hear the women in his life.

While Hornby’s prose immerses the reader in Rob’s interior monologue, providing ample room for the character to spout internal justifications of his behavior, the novel hardly obscures or conceals this conclusion. Moreover, the film makes it unavoidably explicit in numerous scenes. Rob (John Cusack) triumphantly pantomimes Rocky Balboa’s boxing routine soundtracked to Queen’s “We Are The Champions” after his ex-girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) confirms she hasn’t yet slept with her new boyfriend Ray (Tim Robbins), but doesn’t hear the part where she says she prefers to sleep next to him. When Laura informs Rob that she did eventually sleep with Ray, Rob completely falls apart. In an earlier, more pointed scene, Rob goes out with his ex-girlfriend from high school (Joelle Carter) to ask why she chose to have sex with an obnoxious classmate instead of him. She venomously informs him that he actually broke up with her because she was too prudish, an abrupt, cruel bit of business we actually witness at the film’s beginning. It was in her moment of heartbroken vulnerability that she agreed to quickly sleep with someone else (“It wasn’t rape because I technically said, ‘Okay,’ but it wasn’t far off,” she sneers), which ultimately put her off sex until after college. Rob doesn’t hear this explanation or the damning portrait of his teenaged self. Instead, he’s delighted to learn that he wasn’t actually dumped.

These are evidently low character moments, one’s that are comedic in their depiction of blinkeredness but whose emotional takeaways are crystal clear, and one’s that have been written about before. My personal pick from the film, though, comes late when Rob attends Laura’s father’s funeral. He sits in the back and, in typical fashion, turns to the camera to deliver a list of songs to play at his funeral, concluding with his professed wish that “some beautiful, tearful woman would insist on ‘You’re The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me’ by Gladys Knight.” It’s a really galling, egotistical moment that still makes me wince despite having seen the movie umpteen times. Yet, it’s immediately followed by the casket being lowered to the ground as Laura’s sobs ring out in the church. In a movie defined by John Cusack’s vocal timbre, it’s one of the few times when he completely shuts up. From two-thirds down the center aisle, Frears’ camera pushes into Cusack’s face until tears in his eyes are visible, but what you really see is an appropriately guilt-ridden, ashamed expression.

However, none of this evidence carries any weight if your objection to High Fidelity is that Rob suffers no material consequences for his behavior. While Rob is frequently called out for his actions, he is never actively punished. He doesn’t, say, receive a restraining order for continually calling Laura after they’ve broken up or end up alone mending a permanent broken heart because of his past relationships. By the end, Rob and Laura get back together and Rob even starts an independent record label on the side. It’s a stretch to characterize Hornby’s High Fidelity as a redemption tale, but it is a sideways rehabilitation narrative with a happy ending that arises at least partly out of mutual exhaustion.

Those two elements—Rob’s asshole recovery and the exhausted happy ending—rarely seem to factor into High Fidelity discourse. Granted, there’s credence to the idea that, socially and culturally, people have less patience for the personality types depicted in High Fidelity, and thus are less inclined to extend them forgiveness, let alone anything resembling retribution. I suppose that’s a valid reaction, one against which I have no interest in arguing, but it’s somewhat ironic that High Fidelity has endured for reasons that have nothing to do with its conclusions regarding inflexible personal principles and the folly of escapism. Both the book and film are specifically about someone who slowly comes to terms with accepting reality rather than live in a world mediated by pop cultural fantasies whose unrealistic expectations have only caused personal suffering. It’s not unfair to characterize this as a fairly obvious epiphany, but considering we currently live in a world dominated by virtual echo chambers with an entertainment culture committed to validating arrested adolescence, it retroactively counts as “mature” and holds more weight than it otherwise should.

Near the end of High Fidelity, the book, after Rob and Laura have gotten back together in the aftermath of Laura’s father’s death, Hornby includes a chapter featuring five conversations between the couple unpacking the state of their relationship. During the third conversation, Rob and Laura fight about how she doesn’t care about music as strongly as he does, catalyzed by Rob’s objection to Laura liking both Solomon Burke and Art Garfunkel, which, in his mind, is a contradiction in terms. Laura finally admits that not only does she not really care about the difference between them, but that most people outside of his immediate circle of two don’t care about the difference, and that this mentality is indicative of a larger problem. It’s part of what keeps him stuck in his head and reluctant to commit to anything. “I’m just trying to wake you up,” she says. “I'm just trying to show you that you've lived half your life, but for all you've got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I'm not talking about money or property or furniture.”

I fell for High Fidelity (first the movie, then the book) as a younger man for the reasons I assume most sensitive-cum-oblivious, culturally preoccupied straight guys do: it accurately pinpoints a pattern of music consumption and organizationally anal-retentive behavior with which I’m intimately familiar. I spent the vast majority of my early years listening to and cataloguing albums, and when I arrived at college, I quickly fell in with a small group of like-minded music obsessives. We had very serious, very prolonged discussions filled with impossibly strong opinions about our favorite artists and records. Few new releases came and went without them being scrutinized by us, the unappreciated scholars of all that is righteous. List-making wasn’t in vogue, but there wasn’t a song that passed us by that we didn’t judge or size up. I was exposed to more music during this relatively short period of time than I likely will ever absorb again. Some of these times were the most engaging and fun of my life, and I still enjoy discussing and sharing music with close friends, but I’m not such a true believer to fully feel comfortable with this behavior. It’s not entirely healthy on its own and definitely alienating to others, and there comes a point when you hear yourself the way a stranger might, or maybe even catch a glimpse of someone’s eyes when you’re midst rant about some stupid album, and realize, “That’s all there is of me. There isn’t anything else.”

This is what Rob proclaims to Laura in the conversation when she tells him she was more interested in music during their courtship than she is now. It’s a patently self-pitying statement on his part that doesn’t go unchallenged by her in the moment or bear fruit in the rest of the novel. Yet, it’s this type of uncomfortably relatable sentiment that goes under-discussed. If High Fidelity will continue to have a life well after its cultural moment has passed, then it’s worth addressing what it offers on its own terms. Near the end of the book, Laura introduces Rob to another couple with whom he gets along quite well. When the evening comes to an end, she tells him to take a look at their record collection, and it’s predictably filled with artists he doesn’t care for, e.g. Billy Joel, Simply Red, Meat Loaf. “'Everybody's faith needs testing from time to time,” Laura tells him later when they’re alone. Amidst Rob’s self-loathing and sullen pettiness, Hornby argues that one should contribute in some way rather than only consume and that, at some point, it’s time to put away childish ideas in order to get the most out of life. It’s an entirely untrendy argument, one that goes against the nostalgic spirit of superhero films and reboot culture, but it doesn’t lack merit. Accepting that some values aren’t conducive to a full life, especially when it’s shared with someone else, doesn’t have to mean abandoning interests or becoming an entirely different person. It just means that letting go isn’t an admission of defeat.

It’s why I’ve always found the proposal scene in the film to be quite moving, albeit maybe not specifically romantic. It plays out similarly in both the book and the film, but the film has the added benefit of Cusack and Hjejle’s performances to amplify the vulnerability and shared understanding. Laura meets Rob for a drink in the afternoon where he sheepishly asks if she would like to get married. Laura bursts out laughing and says that he isn’t the safest bet considering he was making mixtapes for some reporter a few days prior. When asked what brought this on, Rob notes that he’s sick of thinking about love and settling down and marriage and wants to think about something else. (“I changed my mind. That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. I do. I will,” she sarcastically replies.) He goes on to say that he’s tired of fantasizing about other women because the fantasies have nothing to do with them and everything to do with himself and that it doesn’t exist never mind delivering on its promise. “I’m tired of it,” he says, “and I’m tired of everything else for that matter, but I don’t ever seem to get tired of you.”

This sort of anti-Jerry Maguire line would be callous if Laura didn’t basically say the same thing to him when they got back together. (“I’m too tired not to be with you.”) It’s possible to read this as an act of mutual settling, but I always thought Hornby’s point was personal growth and accepting one’s situation were intertwined. The key moment in High Fidelity, the film, comes when Laura finds Rob’s list of top five dream jobs. (In the book, Laura makes Rob compile the list.) At the bottom of the list, after such standard choices like music journalist and record producer, lies architect, a job that Rob isn’t entirely sure about anyway. (“I did put it at number five!” he insists.) Laura asks Rob the obvious question: wouldn’t you rather own your own record store than hypothetically be an architect, a job you’re not particularly enthused with anyway?

It’s Laura who convinces Rob that living the fifth-best version of your life can actually be pretty satisfying and doesn’t have to be treated like a cruel fate worse than death. Similarly, Rob and Laura both make the active decision to try to work things out instead of starting over with someone else. Laura’s apathy may have reunited them, and Rob’s apathy might have kept him from running, but it’s their shared history that keeps them together. More than the music and the romance, High Fidelity follows the necessary decisions and compromises one has to maneuver in order to grow instead of regress. “I've been letting the weather and my stomach muscles and a great chord change in a Pretenders single make up my mind for me, and I want to do it for myself,” Rob says near the end of Hornby’s novel. High Fidelity’s emotional potency lies in taking that sentiment seriously.

Fate Winx Saga Review

This is the Winx Club

This isn't

Ah Winx Club, I remembering waking up early in the morning to watch it on Saturday, I thought that it was a cool show and my favorite character was Bloom during the first three seasons when it was under 4Kids. I thought that the characters were cool, the setting was pretty awesome as well and overall it was fun. Years later I was pretty shocked that it is still going on though from what I heard it has lost a lot of it’s quality with season eight being a mixed bag and an okay art style. Now Netflix has acquired the rights and there were two separate shows that they produce.

The first being World of Winx, an animated spin off show showing the girls hiding out on earth helping people and dealing with an evil version of Tinkerbell? In all honesty I was a little confused like how was this a spin off? Was it a spin off from season four as Roxy is a supporting character in this universe? That part confused me but overall it was a pretty good show but at this point I don’t think Winx Club fans wouldn’t mind a reboot that got the She-Ra treatment. Needless to say Winx Club is a popular show that was big in Italy and other countries but it is not what it used to be. Especially when we have this show to talk about Fate: A Winx Saga.

When I first saw the trailer I was pretty confused because none of the shots in the trailer reminded me of Winx Club. Also none of the characters were recognizable as they white washed and replaced Flora, and also white washed Musa. The only three characters that were recognizable were Bloom, Stella and Aisha. However there personalities have changed so much that I can’t even say that this is a faithful adaptation. I know in adaptations there has to be certain changes that you have to make because either to budget or they can’t fit it in and some stuff has to be cut. The least the show could do was get the fashion right, I mean the only one who should be wearing red is Musa while Bloom is the one that wears different shades of blue. Then again the fashion overall is a big joke and they really should fire the costume designer as I looked and she has had no experience dressing up teenagers. Rants out of the way lets see how they butchered the characters.

Let’s start with the leading Pyromaniac herself, Bloom. What the hell did they do to my girl? As a fellow redhead myself it is safe to say Bloom was the one I lean towards to the most even though I did see myself in Tecna, and Flora. Bloom is a stuck up bitch in this show and has to make it all about her, which was one of the problems in some of season four and later on. She is also unbelievably gullible and really stupid. She basically believes anything that Beatrix, a psychopath and a known liar about the whole Not Domino city, yeah I don’t care about the name of this said city in other world. She is a problematic Pyromaniac something that cartoon Bloom season 1-3 would be horrified about, and surprisingly bland.

Now, this Bloom could have worked if there were either more episodes or just better writers. Think about it, she is a girl who discovers that she has these unknown powers and when her emotions get the better of her and harm her family she could be a little distant and closed off. She is angry and confused because she doesn’t understand what is happening which can lead her to feeling a lot of emotions. Though I do hate the fact that they ruined Mike and Vanessa but I forgot that this is a teen drama and as a teen drama parents are assholes, it is the law of teen television. There could have been a nice arc of Bloom dealing with the fact that she has been lied to her entire life, feeling angry and betrayed but then going back to the Bloom we love from the first three seasons as she realized that she was the same person, she just now has a place where she can feel at home while also having awesome fire powers. However we got the worst of Bloom that is shown post season five.

Now lets get to Stella, and I will try my best to contain my rage when I am writing this. Did a person who worked on this show really thought that it would be a great idea to change Stella and make her Diaspro? You know we could’ve added Diaspro and Stella in the same show, she and Stella could’ve been friends due to the two girls being royalty, but then both Stella and Sky would realize that she is a toxic person and break away from her. This is not Stella and the cartoon Stella wouldn’t be caught dead in some of the outfits that she was wearing, maybe the last episode outfit but that’s about it. They could’ve done something with her wardrobe, they could have her dress up as a old woman when her mother was around trying to impress her, and then dress up in clothes that the original Stella is known to wear. Stella is a stereotypical mean girl and there is nothing nuanced about her portrayal. This is not Stella this is Diaspro with Stella’s name.

Now let’s get on to Aisha, she is a fine characters but this isn’t Aisha as she has none of Aisha’s personality she is not even a princess of Andros and well she has no story outside of helping her white friend. Aisha was a standout of season two and had one of the best character entrances in the series. She doesn’t get a story of her own and she is relegated to just being the best friend that get’s Bloom out of trouble. The actress Precious Mustapha deserves way better than what they are giving her.

Now it is time for everybody’s favorite white-washed duo Terra/Flora and Musa. There have been videos and posts that are going over how stupid Netflix and Rainbow for doing this. Just to give everybody context, Musa’s appearance is based off of Lucy Liu and Flora is based off of Jennifer Lopez. I think that speaks for itself in how Netflix and Rainbow screwed this up especially when there are plus size Latinix actresses they could have casted. Now let’s get into their character, weirdly enough they are the ones that have the most interesting friendship dynamic, Terra is a fine character but she is not Flora and Musa is a lot more cold hearted and instead of being a fairy of music she is a mind fairy who is an empath. Now music in a way can evoke emotions and connect people on a deep level but her empathic powers are so undefined. Terra is a fine enough character and her family is pretty interesting.

Now lets get into the boys, Sky, Riven, Dane, and Sam. If there is one thing that I could applaud the show is that anyone can be a fairy or a specialist, it’s just a pity that they excluded the witches. Then again the witches do get the short end of the stick even in the cartoon. Sky is bland, and the actor only ever had one expression throughout the whole show. Riven is, well Riven has always been a jerk but cartoon Riven had some more well likable features than TV show Riven. Dane, he’s fine I would have liked him more if he wasn’t taking so many stupid pills when it came to Riven and Beatrix, boy he needs to find a better man to crush on becuase, Riven is not worth it at all, even if I didn’t like his performance I could definitely see him crushing on Sky way more than Riven. Sam is a fun character and I was glad to see a male fairy added to the school but that’s all I can say about him the boys are okay. If there was one thing that I enjoyed about World of Winx is that they didn’t include the boys and there was nothing lost from it, it was just the girls kicking ass and taking names.

There is not much to say about the school staff and Dowling is a fine character that is a lot like Faragonda, only really ever helps Bloom and reassuring her she is special. I wish there was more done with Terra’s father and all but nope any positive family interaction is bad in a teen show. Overall the school staff, I don’t think that we can even call them a school staff they were a joke.

Now let’s get into the villains, if there is one thing that fans of the first four season can agree on is that the villains were always a standout for each season one. That being said the only effective villain is Beatrix, even though they could have just done the Trix. Let me just say this, The Trix were a great villain for the first season and well they went downhill like the whole cartoon show. Also what is the deal with Rosalind and Sky’s father. To be fair Sky’s dad in the cartoon show has always been a jerk but a jerk that raised a psychopath like Beatrix is too much. I am a little nervous about how they will do if they actually introduce The Trix, Lord Darkar, and Valtor or even the Wizard’s of the Black Circle. Needless to say the villains were just bland.

That is if they actually even use the villains from the cartoon show because so far we have the rather bland Rosalind, I just don’t care for her and there is no need for her to be in the show, Daphne does not deserve this. Then there is Sky’s father and I don’t care and Luna and wow does every teen show have to have terrible parents. How is a cartoon show from the early 2000s is more diverse and interesting than this? I just don’t care at all about the villains except for Beatrix.

There is also the fact that the show is only six episodes and that really does hinder the show as the show could’ve used more episodes to flesh things out then maybe just maybe this show would’ve been interesting. I also see that there are some writers and producers from the Vampire Diaries that are attached to this project and well that explains why some aspects of the show seems dated. Overall Fate, is a bland show that definitely does have better writing than Riverdale but that is not saying much. The characters are bad, and the fashion is terrible something that was a main aspect of the show. The world is generic getting rid of the epic sci-fi fantasy world and Rainbow should’ve just rebooted the animated show.

Brooklyn 99 and Copaganda: My Two Cents

I’ve been reading many of the posts about cop-propaganda and how Brooklyn 99 as a diverse comedy police procedural hits all the hallmarks of whitewashing the police, but I’ve been reticent to engage because a) the posts are getting oh so long already and b) my thoughts haven’t been fully formed until about now. Just disclosing my credentials I’m going to come at this from a bachelors of film- and media-studies with a minor in moral and ethics philosophy, as well as my many years as an educator. 

I will also disclose that I really enjoy Brooklyn 99, and anyone can continue to do so while being aware of the issues. Being aware of problems with the media you consume is not a weakness, it’s a strength.

I’m going to go, point by point on why I think Brooklyn 99 Ended up the way it did and what we need to be aware of as we move forward. I will however put a tl:dr up here as well as a more in depth conclution at the end.

TL:DR: Brooklyn 99′s copaganda is an unfortunate combination of socially aware creators using the show as a platform to raise awareness and being part of two genres (comedy and crime) with problems inherent in the way stories in those genres are told. It’s not deliberately trying to whitewash the police, they do so by trying to do the right thing as creators with a large platform.

The Case of the Creators and Cast

The first part is looking at the people who are showrunners, producers, writers and the cast. The originators Dan Goor and Michael Shur have many series to their names, and all follow similar patterns; starting with a comedy premise and then developing as the seasons continue, often using their platform to raise points about social and moral issues. Andy Samberg is also a big part, being the main lead and credited as producer.

The cast is racially diverse and the show brings attention to that, both for comedy and to highlight social and political issues. They also appear to have a working relationship with the writers and directors, so the cast are allowed a lot of input into how their characters are portrayed and how they develop.

It’s clear to me going through the series, looking up creators and cast in interviews and their social media presence that most of them are socially and politically aware and wanted to use their platform to highlight and raise awareness about injustices the see in American society today. This is something many creators have been asked to do for many years and it’s admirable that they want to actually at least bring these issues up in the time they have. However this brings us to the second part which may be the biggest contributors to why Brooklyn 99 is seen as not just copaganda, but even insidious.

The Problem of the Premise (or Faulty Framing)

This is the long part.

Much, so much, of the problems of Brooklyn 99 and it’s place in cop-centered media is the premise. And I don’t mean that it is cop-centered. No I mean it becomes a problem that it’s a comedy. I will take the cop-part first and circle back to the comedy to better show why.

Police procedurals as a form of media follows certain patterns and tropes, many of which are inherent to the genre. The structure of each episode being “awareness of crime - investigation - reveal and capture of guilty party”. This structure is very easy to work into three acts with a classical dramatic curve, following the conflict introduction, advance the conflict, and climax.

graph from kurser.se illustrating their course in scriptwriting

A police procedural follows the cops, detectives or investigators as they solve a crime and punish the guilty. For our purposes that is not in and of itself a problem, however it shapes our point of view of the events that transpire and how we react in the climax. The cops are the main characters, the heroes of the narrative, and we’re made to empathise with their struggles (to punish the guilty).

They also use many tropes. The Box episode is one such trope, where the entire episode is one long interrogation and it reoccurs in almost all crime and punishment TV-shows. Homicide: Life on the Streets had a very intense Box episode, and holds the same problems that the similar episode in Brooklyn 99 has (no lawyer, racing against the legally allotted time arrested, manipulation tactics et cetera). Police use of force, antagonistic internal affairs investigations, powerplays among the higher-ups and many other tropes make their way into Brooklyn 99.

One thing not brought up a lot is the episode where Peralta and Santiago track a criminal breaking into an upscale hotel. During capture of the suspect Peralta causes some collateral damage as he throws himself at the suspect. The jump hits a bystander and breaks his leg, and from the reactions and the dialogue it’s shown to be a very serious injury.

The ensemble of detectives are portrayed as socially conscious and (mostly) competent. Even the butt of the joke character displays this (Hitchcock: “He was arrested for being black. Get woke, Scully!”)

This is where playing it for comedy can be an issue. Comedy is a release of tension, a cushion to the impact of the narrative. It’s not for nothing that the funny person in otherwise serious media has been dubbed as the comic relief. This makes the unhealthy tropes inherent to the crime and police TV-show come off as less of a problem and more cute, quirky and fun. That I think is one of the main reasons why Brooklyn 99 in particular feel insidious when they tackle social issues because

1) whitewashing police in a cop show is expected. The story comes from a person we can root for catching a bad-guy.

2) simplifying issues in a comedy is expected. Comedy is difficult on it’s own, jokes are hard to write well, so when that is the focus much of the rest needs to be smoothed out.

3) when these come together, portraying cops as good and simplifying issues for the comedy, it downplays their importance and impact.

4) this becomes troublesome when tackling real-life issues of injustice and problems with society today. First we’re sympathetic to our main characters, being shown as good cops, second we have issues brought up in a serious manner, and some issues being very serious, but then they’re played for comedy.

The premise is flawed when they lean toward social issues and the framing of the show and the characters enhances that.

This is where I also want to note again that I don’t think this was intentional. The show wasn’t crafted to be propaganda. The cop-show as an entity, a type of media, is propagandistic because of how stories of crime and punishment is told.

Series and Syndication

This will be a short bit, but I want to bring it up. When Brooklyn 99 was created it was syndicated to run at Fox. The channels, not just their news network, has unhealthy connections to not only the police, but the military, conservative think tanks and political initiatives. To be green-lit they likely had to pass screeners with an extreme pro-cop filter. But it was green-lit, so how did that happen?

Media, art in general, is always a compromise, and I think the positive portrayal of the cops and the police as a whole (some bad apples, sure) was part of the compromise to get syndicated. Police is a touchy subject in American television. I already cited Homicide above and they whitewash planting a weapon on a suspect one of the main characters murders. They spend the season building up how bad the suspect is, but how they can’t find evidence directly connecting him to the crimes. They get enough to go in, and they shoot this unarmed Black man. Then they put a gun they brought in his hand to plead self defense. The audience is told this was a necessary evil, the only way to get him “off the streets”.

This is a worse example than much of the abuses portrayed in Brooklyn 99, but again, Brooklyn 99 plays the abuses off with comedy. Homicide did not, they framed it as morally right.

Media and Literacy

Media literacy is a problem. When I worked as an educator very few if any age group was able to read media and see connections to real life biases and politics. The way we consume media impacts the way we feel and react to things in real life.

I’ve explained framing countless times, and how media tells us who’s right and wrong and who we as viewers should sympathise with. This is illustrated really well in this video-essay by Renegade Cut concerning the framing in Rick & Morty.

https://youtu.be/X-8ICfWsUVw 

Consuming Brooklyn 99 without thinking about how the framing of the actions of the characters and the events of the stories impacts our reading and thereby out feelings towards cops in general is why some people have expressed that they “grown to understand and like” the police after watching it. This is again an unfortunate combination of creators and genres.

We do need media literacy as a part of our education, and it grows more and more important the more accessible media becomes.

Conclusion (or The Monkey’s Paw)

I think the problem of Brooklyn 99 stems from the cross between comedy, crime fiction and creators who want to do more than tell jokey-jokes and actually use their platform to lift issues they care about. This awareness isn’t bad, in and of itself, I actually think it’s something all creators should try. They had a platform and they wanted to do the right thing. 

This is in my opinion the cruel joke of this discussion. The creators know they should raise awareness when they can and they try to do so, but in doing so they’ve created a propaganda tool for the police geared toward the most vulnerable demographics, racial and sexual minorities. That’s why I find this conclusion to be a Monkeys Paw, we got a high performing show, with a diverse racial and sexual cast, that displays knowledge and understanding about topics of injustice, from a politically aware creative team... and it’s smoothing out the injustices committed by the people they portray.

l0chn3ss update

I feel like the last time I ever really active on tumblr was in the year 2016, so i want to address my absence between 2017-2020. Part of it is because I feel like I owe it to my friends and mutuals who I just basically left on read and another part is because I’ve always treated this blog as a personal blog that documents my life and my growth. I put off writing this for a long time but now that I have a huge paper due, now is definitely the time.

You are welcome to skip but I will address a few hard hitting questions I feel should be answered, especially since I feel like I departed like an anti-hero of a bad tv show.

Where I am currently: I am in grad school to obtain a master’s in library and information science. I have a full time job at different middle school libraries, though I work from home now. I also tutor kids on the side to pay for my tuition because I basically make minimum wage. Quarantine messed with my head at first, but now I’m feeling much better and I’m trying to reconnect with friends and close a lot of loose ends.

TLDR: I took an extended break because tumblr mobile sucks and my laptop needed serious repairs. I made a huge migration away from social media in 2018. I prioritized my education and in-person connections, which fell to shit because of my fandom involvement in the past. I did not like the direction of the main fandom I participated in and knew that many of the people I once respected did not respect me in return/ Us versus them mentality. I recognized that I treated my life on tumblr too seriously and took petty drama personally. I am sporadically on tumblr now because I genuinely enjoy the social connection and because I still like running fandom events.

Yes, you can reblog this. I’d love for this narrative to be heard.

Long version: To preface this, this post is being written to give myself closure and because I really am procrastinating on my final big paper of this semester. I’ll be tackling on the points in the tldr in a longer narrative that will appear to be in an expository fashion, which I recognize will be a source of contention, but my intentions are to throw it onto the table so that I can be freed. I can let it go and move on. I’m no longer a 20 years old who cared too much of what other people think and will think; I think differing perspectives are important and I want to give myself a chance to say my piece. That and I recognize that I lost the audience that I once had, so I doubt this will be an issue at all. It’s been 4 or what ever years, let’s just not.

Back in 2015-2016 there was a huge back and forth between three groups of people in the SE fandom. The reason why I’m not listing out the name is because I don’t want this to show up in the tags. I’d say that the three groups could be seen as quite literally the soma shippers (mostly white, demi sexual girls), lgbt centric bloggers (very kid or star oriented, very fed up with soma), and the people who were deemed as alright to soma shippers (c r ona, ste inm arie, jac k im centric people). There was a constant (and understandable) tension between the first two groups while the third was like the weird cousin that everyone in the social circles liked because they sprinkled in soma for the masses. Don’t argue with me on this-- this was literally how the fandom was in 2015 and you know it.

The main issue was that one group felt that they were being inclusive towards identities and sexualities while the other felt that they were not. I remember that one of the arguments was that soma WAS an LGBT ship because people headcanonned the members to be demisexual. However, the other side of the argument was that it wasn’t good representation of a gay pairing. Now that we can look back at this 5 years later, I have two things to say: 1, I now very much understand why the argument broke out because of how heated the topic is, and I do believe that I lean more towards the “other side” now that I’m not wearing rose tinted glasses, but 2, I need to make it clear that demi people are lgbt, but a headcanon is not fact and ship diversity was the main question at hand, not the ship itself. This argument lasted for weeks, destroyed my friendships, and no matter what I felt I did in the moment (which was to mend the fandom), it was taken as an insult.

(Side note: Somethings that I remember was being in someone’s DM’s to encourage them to participate in the large fandom events more, but once they twisted my intentions and rallied their friends, I became their enemy. I also became the mods’ enemy but then again, when was I not? I was made fun of for saying “queergender,” a term that is now currently being widely used, quite openly by someone I wanted desperately to be friends with. I was outwardly mocked by popular users who only apologized behind closed doors but didn’t bother to clear things up with their followers. Adults who were in their 30s quite literally attacked a 19 year old. It was in that moment that I realized I would never become friends with either side, and not because I didn’t want to.)

I bring this up because as I begun to stop writing soma fics, I also begun to see and understand why people moved away from it. It wasn’t the ship itself, it was the culture surrounding it. However, on tumblr we have the ability to connect intensely with the content we produce. Therefore, the ship itself began to be connected with the shippers and their attitudes towards outside pairings-- that attitude being tied into elitism.

I say this with every ounce of love I can because I once had the exact same mannerism. When you become so tied into one pairing to the point where other ships appear to threaten the existence of it and you react negatively towards it, you become rancid. The popular tag “everything is soma” takes a very dark turn. Even if readers consume another pairing’s work, they will be obliged to say “I ship soma more BUT that was cute.” They will read an entirely different topic and wonder why soma wasn’t inserted into it in the background. They will reject pairings that separate the two as if breaking them up is sin and an insult.

The only reason why I stopped writing my soma fics in 2016 was because I saw a real need to fill in the gaps of other pairings. I took what people were saying to heart and I wanted to change my ways and my perceptions. I saw the animosity of the ship culture and rejected it. I wanted to use what little influence I had to make the fandom just a bit more accepting. In 2016, I don’t think the fandom was ready for it. In 2017, they still weren’t ready for it. In 2020, I see hope, but I wonder sometimes if it’s masqueraded pity because of previous treatment.

In the middle of it all, I went from being the soma angst master to becoming the weird person everyone once knew. I was the friend that people excluded from group chats and I just “wasn’t the same.” Cliques grew extremely large in power in 2017 and exclusion hurt like a bitch.

The straw that broke the camel’s back and completely shut me down was in 2017 when I was graduating as a bachelor. There was a fandom event that I decided to go all in to. For context, there used to be a huge debate on how many times a person should enter in an event, but in my mind, the more exposure the better. My graduation and the event took place at the exact same time, which was cool, but what hurt me was what happened after.

I was lucky enough to be accepted into field school (when you travel to do outdoor excavating) for my major. I’m an anthropologist-- it was an honor. I didn’t plan in advance for it, and if anything, I thought that I would be committed completely to the events and my 5 or what ever entries at the time. I’ve always prided myself in communicating with others, so I made sure to let my partners in the event know what was going on. I was so excited to be going on my first ever excavation and no one at the time said anything otherwise, in fact, they all seemed incredibly supportive. 

What I didn’t know was that I would be called out by name in the event feedback response by one person who felt that I didn’t take the event seriously enough and that I should’ve prioritized my time accordingly. Two of the mods let me know because it referred to me directly, though the name of the submitter was not included. It was not only a slap in the face, but a dumbfound moment that reminded me that wow, fandom content really is someone’s life out there. My enforced silence because of lack of internet in the woods actually upset someone and made them believe that I wronged them, because I put my real life ambitions first before a fandom event.

It was then when I woke up and I remember very clearly thinking to myself: I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to treat my fandom life seriously. I want to participate in fandom for fun, not out of duty. I don’t want to prioritize this life because in the end, if I am hated for putting my work and education first, then I don’t want it.

(For context, I suspect that it was the same person who made a 200 note call out on me during the fandom tension. I respected this person immensely, but I also treated them like the flawed person I believe everyone is. I’m sure because of this, I’m pretty much trash in their eyes, which is totally fine. They have really cute cats so they can’t be all too bad. Don’t look into it too deeply.)

Once my month long field school was up, I was already used to not being on the internet or any of my social media accounts. I didn’t play my mobile games for a month. I didn’t read the news for a month. It was like going cold turkey on the internet, which reshaped my habits entirely. The only time that I had online within that time span was during the weekend, but I spent my time working on my projects and catching up with friends instead of being on apps.

I was also completely fed up with tumblr’s mobile app at the time, so one by one, I deleted my apps. Good bye to tumblr, snapchat, what little I used of instagram, twitter, everything. The only thing I kept was facebook, which was because it is the main platform that I use to message my boyfriend. That meant that any friends I retained from the fandom (who I still contact now) were also friends who had the chance to add me on facebook.

This was the cause of my 2 or 3 year hiatus on tumblr, and therefore the fandom. I occasionally checked back every 6 months to do a few fandom events, but I have several unopened messages and notifications that I haven’t been able to get to. I open my instagram for a few days once a year, and I only go onto twitter if my friends tell me (through facebook) that they dm’d me a post there.

When I left my online persona behind, I quickly strengthened my in person connections. New drama that erupted every other day became replaced with starbucks and boba runs. Reality TV shows replaced fanfiction. Text messages replaced the tumblr activity feed (which still doesn’t work on mobile BTW). I study at cafes unironically with friends instead of typing alone in my room. Overall, it opened my world considerably.

I still like making fun of myself and I try not to take myself seriously. I still make self depreciative memes to send to friends but then double up with kermit heart pics. I’m still a plot bunny, I still write my fics, I still watch my anime, I still play video games, I still sleep at 4am, I still take my depression medication, I still love potatoes, I still use my voice for people who can’t find theirs yet. But I think I’m in a much healthier mindset now, even if I still make stupid shifty posts calling out bad behavior.

Nowadays, I’m working on my Master’s degree in secret. My parents don’t know about it because my mom doesn’t like that I want to go out and do unladylike things like getting an education. I tutor kiddos and I’m really good with younger children, but I’m not going to do anything with kids because I just don’t want to. Instead, I want to work at an archive or a museum to bring my library interests and my anthropology background together. If I had my dream job, I would be a marine archaeologist; however I love my boyfriend of 8 years whom you probably all remember and I really came to terms with my grandeur dreams. I’m extremely happy with living in a small town with loved ones now, and I don’t need to move somewhere far away from my parents to be content. It’s a huge realization.

From 2018 to 2020 I got into actual drama in person while I was job hunting. Adult people suck and honestly it’s kind of embarrassing how ill equipped some people are. Even so, I currently work in middle schools as a media assistant. One of those realms is the library, and honestly it’s like fulfilling a prophecy. As much as I love the social aspect, public schools are an absolute train wreck.

I’m going to wrap this up now. This post is meant to help me close the past and move forward because the fandom culture feels different now. Things from several years ago don’t need to resurface. I want to enjoy my life fully, and fandom life is one of those aspects that I truly did enjoy. I’m going to keep using my voice and act like a fool, but I’m also not going to be losing sleep because of this. People are going to talk about you no matter what, whether positively or negatively, and it’s important to not take it personally.

Idk, go enjoy yourselves. Do things for yourself. It’s more fun that way.

Jamie Johnson 5x10 Review

Tonight was a surprisingly busy ep that did a good job balancing angst and levity. Let’s dig in!

Dillon finally went home tonight after what was probably a couple of weeks. The show continues to do great work with Dillon’s sexuality. Graham begins to make amends by coming of his own accord to the Walker-Cotton house and apologizing to Dillon but he hasn’t magically become a good person. He wants Dillon to keep his sexuality a secret which Dillon pushes back against but as loathsome as Graham can be he does have a point that being openly gay could very well derail Dillon’s football career; after all it’s the same conclusion that all the gay professional players in Britain have reached. This whole story line has been surprisingly nuanced especially for a kids show. Shaun Duggan mentioned that Graham would have a journey of his own and I would assume we see more of it in the final eps 

One thing I do think the show has failed to do is include Dillon’s mom. Presumably they don’t have the actress this season but we really needed to see her support Dillon on screen when his dad and brother are homophobes. Hopefully they bring her back in S6 (and bring back Elliot)

It’s a minor detail but I really liked that when Alba comes into the living room to share her news that through the window we can see Graham walking towards the front door; it shows a real attention to detail on the part of the production team. Also the ‘’We Are Family’’ poster with the rainbow on the kitchen wall while Dillon and Graham talked was an inspired touch

The small moment when Dillon asked Becky and Dawn what he should do was really cool; seeing adult lgbtq people give advice to kids dealing with their sexualities is rare on tv in general, on kids tv it’s virtually unheard of; Cami and her gf trying to help Bobby on Doafp being the only example that comes to mind. The show did a great job normalizing lgbtq parents and families and there was an excellent implicit contrast drawn between the loving and supportive ‘non-traditional’  Walker-Cotton family and the cold and strained ‘traditional nuclear’ Simmonds family

I’m so glad that Ruby and Alba have finally been adopted and the photo album Becky and Dawn made was very sweet. I wonder if they stick with Osborne as their surnames or start using Walker-Cotton

Dillon being second in the credits? We love to see it folks

Zoe gets a recruitment montage for a heist soccer game so her and Kat can have one last chance to impress Geri Seddon who apparently doesn’t work very hard at her scouting job if she’s missed all these players. In the first good deed Jamie has done in weeks he calls up Jack and she gets Archfield to play against Zoe’s ragtag team. To the show’s credit Archfield pretty easily wins the day at Goodfield as they realistically should. Zoe and Kat get into Hawkstone though and Alba gets flagged as a future talent so all’s well that ends well

Zoe vaguely apologized for being an ass to Jack and she finally did the right thing with Kat and returned the pendant which which Kat promptly lost again. Zoe treating other girls as the enemy has been a core part of her story since she joined the show back in S3 and it looks like that’s behind now as her and Kat are real friends

I think Mike calling for girl power was the funniest line of the night

This Eric/Aisha/Freddie love triangle is a right mess but I’m finding myself invested regardless. Freddie and Aisha have good chemistry and their commentating was cute. Freddie not knowing Kat’s last name was funny as was Aisha’s observation about Mike’s yelling. Aisha was also right about peanut butter and honey being a delicious combo

We got a refresher on Eric’s sad backstory, brutal that he hasn’t seen his mom in 2 years.  Well I’m sure that Eric’s issues with abandonment won’t come into play as Aisha and Freddie grow closer! Imagine tuning into a livestream for a football match only to hear two 13 year olds get into a pissing contest over a girl they both fancy

Also nice to see the kids be kids and go to the cinema

This show has really done a good job with diversity especially since the series isn’t set in or around London (S1 was filmed in Nottingham and recent seasons have been filmed in Wales). In particular, JJ has avoided having their two black male characters, Eric and Freddie, fall into stereotypes. As much as I can’t fathom why the show needs this love triangle, it is refreshing to see two black kids shown as the closest thing this show has to romantic leads. American kids shows have done a great job with female black characters but when it comes to black male characters things are much worse. Zay on GMW largely fell into the sassy black friend stereotype. As for Walker on Andi Mack, the less said the better about how he was romantically involved with two girls of colour only to lose out to two white boys before being written off as a shoe gifting player in a way that played into harmful stereotypes about black men being promiscuous 

Another ep where Jamie basically just makes a cameo but because the show has such a wide bench it doesn’t hurt the ep at all. Boggy is basically Jamie’s housewife at this point and it’s sad as hell to watch

I think this is the first time Jack has been back where she hasn’t had a scene with Jamie. The official insta account reposted someone asking the show to make Jamie and Jack a couple, we’ll one day learn if that was straight baiting

Interesting to think about how different the show would be if Jack was still a main, would Dillon’s story be getting nearly so much focus? 

Looking Ahead:

Liam thinks Aisha is Eric’s soulmate? I wouldn’t have pegged him for a romantic at heart. I love that he keeps bouncing around the friend trio trying his chances with a new member every week, at the beach he tried with Freddie and now he’s trying with Eric

It seems likely that Eric is denying that he likes Aisha because of his abandonment issues and it looks like he skirmishes with Freddie on the field. I wonder if he’ll be honest with anyone about his feelings

Boggy’s breakdown is upcoming, I really don’t think he’s Jetpac11. Looks like 5x12 is the video game tournament with the Jetpac11 reveal, I still think it’s Archie Royle, but Jethro Stevenson would be a great twist

I lean more and more towards Dillon signing with the Northport Rovers as a way to forge his own path and because he trusts our problematic fave Duncan Jones to stand firm against homophobia. It would also bring Duncan’s S5 story full circle, he was so focused on trying to bamboozle Jamie into signing for Northport that he overlooked the other very talented player he had right in front of him. It seems like Dillon’s story line is trending towards him wrestling with coming out publicly as a professional player in S6 and proving to himself, his father, and the world that an out gay man can be a professional footballer

Until next week Jamie Johnsoners

You know what’s scary? I came to tumblr in the height of fandom blog vs hipster blog, when superwholock was first getting started, before Disney had a choke hold on the entertainment industry, back when it was fun to get really really into tv shows and base our whole personality on what media we consumed. Looking back on it, it was... not a great way to be, but goddamn did it save me.

Not like in a dramatic “saved my life” way, but I mean.

I could go back on my main blog and find my pro-republican posts. I could find my anti-trans posts and my “well okay, gay people can be gay at home, but I don’t want them out where I can see them.” I could find those. They’re back there, years ago in my archive. Because that’s all I knew. That’s all I heard. My community - I mean my real life one, my local area, my friends, my church group, everything around me - is very... monoculture. There aren’t a lot of people around here who don’t look like me, have the same economic background as me, raised in the same beliefs I was... it’s just a whole lot of carbon copies of me. So I thought... “ew, how can someone be gay? That’s gross. They’re going to go to hell.” Because what the hell else would I think? That’s all I knew! And I thought “that boy wants to be a girl? What’s wrong with him? He should see a doctor.” And I thought “why do some people not go to work and the government just pays for them to eat? That’s not right. They shouldn’t be lazy like that.”

And then fuckin’ fandom. It wasn’t fandom directly, but when I got really into a show, I’d follow so many blogs that posted about it. Fan art, discussions, gifs, episode recaps, ask blogs... and inevitably, some of those blogs would drop the occasional political post. Mostly about how we needed marriage equality in the USA. And I thought “well. I don’t agree with that, but their fandom content is good, so I won’t unfollow them.”

It’s how I got exposed to more and more people. People who didn’t think like me. People who didn’t think like my parents. And they weren’t just political posts, sometimes it was just blogging. An artist I like would post about finally getting started on T. He was so happy that he was finally getting T. And I started to think things like “well, she— I mean, he sounds happy. So I’m happy for... him.”

More people. More stories. And I slowly stopped thinking about other people as political issues or religious problems, but as just... people who were trying to live their lives.

It was slow, and it was rocky. I still participated in church discussions that involved phrases like “hate the sin but love the sinner”. It made sense... until college, when I was face to face with people who weren’t like me. Looking at the man in my theatre troupe who was talking about his partner, I couldn’t make the “hate the sin, love the sinner” mentality work. I just couldn’t. I knew I was supposed to, but I just knew that trying to say “he’s a good person, but he just needs to stop being gay” didn’t work at all. I couldn’t hate what he was without hating who he was. And I just couldn’t, because he was my friend, dammit!

Marriage equality passed. My Facebook feed turned into the proverbial wailing and clothes-tearing from my church friends. And I very slowly... very quietly... started to post the “let’s remember that we shouldn’t hate other people” stuff. The very subtle nudging, still Christian-focused stuff that was juuuuust starting to lean left. Not too over the top, not overtly in support, because I was supposed to be one of them, a member of the church, I had to play along with the mentality.

Playing along got exhausting. Someone would deadname Caitlyn Jenner, and I’d consider for a moment that I should just let it go, that I should just pretend that it was fine. But... what about my artist friend? Would I be okay with someone deadnaming him? No, I would not. And if I was pretending I was onboard with deadnaming Caitlyn, would I have played along with deadnaming my friend? Just so I could fit in and be comfortable? So I corrected them. Her name is Caitlyn.

I learned to listen to more people. I learned why “I don’t see color” wasn’t as good a mentality to have as I thought. I learned that “feminist” wasn’t a dirty word, and it also didn’t mean what I thought it meant. I slowly learned that I was one. I slowly learned, and still learn, how to further expand all the things that covers. I learned about intersectional feminism. I learned about white privilege. I learned about so much and so many people because I was actively listening to them, I was hearing their stories, and I cared about them, wanted them to have good lives, wanted them to be able to make choices about their own lives without people like me saying “I know better.”

I learned about myself, too. At twenty-six years old, I figured out exactly why I was always so baffled when my friends talked about sex like it was this big important thing. Surprise: asexual. A second surprise a few years later: somewhere on the aromantic spectrum as well. (Where? Idk. I’ll tell you when I figure it out myself.)

The point is... it was less than a decade ago that I was exactly the type of bigot that gets chased off everyone’s blogs. I was the everything-phobe, the one who would specifically vote against any type of aid, because bootstraps, amiright? I was a whole-ass bigot. Bitch, I owned a confederate flag ring, and I’ve never lived in the south. (It’s in a landfill somewhere now.) I only learned because I first heard from people not like me, and then I learned to listen. I participated in communities that were diverse, not because I wanted the diversity, but because I wanted the content. The diversity was a side effect. And it’s what saved me.

And it fucking terrifies me how close I could have been to being some alt-right and/or terf radical new-nazi or whatever. Because if I had got on this site about two years later than I did, I’d have been caught right in that echo chamber of radfems and nazis preying on anyone they can get their talons in. I was so close. And now I see these radfems pop up in my notes, and it’s like... that could have been me. That was me at one point. I had the ideology, I just missed the identity of it all by a few years.

I don’t have a “byf” list on my blog for a reason. I don’t go through my followers and weed out the terfs and the nazis and the bigots. If they’re in there, fine. I want them to see my words. I want them to hear from someone who doesn’t think like them. I want them to hear from someone who used to be like them, but then learned (and is always learning) to be better.

And yet when I see them in my notes, I’m obliged to weed them out. I feel guilty when it’s a young girl who has clearly been targeted by the radfems on this site, teaching her that she’ll be stronger if she hates everyone they tell her to. Of all the people on this site, she’s the one who I most want to keep out of the echo chamber. But I also have a responsibility to make sure the people who follow me, the people who I follow and reblog from, don’t get caught by the shrapnel. A radfem liking my post just means I have to pay closer attention to what I say and make sure I don’t fall back on old mentalities. It keeps me accountable. But a radfem in my notes means she’s in the notes of my friends, in my reblog chains. And it is my responsibility not to turn a blind eye when people around me can get hurt.

But goddamn, if ever there was someone who needed a community outside of that circle of bigotry, it’s that fourteen year old girl who proudly calls herself a terf. And I really hope she finds one. I really do.

How to Make It As a Fitness Model!

Individuals that follow my stuff realize I for the most part expound on sustenance, enhancements, preparing, and different themes that are more science based than emotional points, for example, what is canvassed in this article. I chose to shuck my science nerd persona, and compose on a point I realize will be useful to a great many would be and need to be wellness models.

Also a known "in-your-face" science based no BS essayist, why I am composing what some will see as a "lighten" article? Throughout the long term I have gotten hundreds, maybe thousands, of ladies that ask me by means of email, letters, or in person "how would I become a wellness model Will? You have been in the business quite a while, irritable you, everything being equal, should know." I get this from novices and I get this from ladies that have been busy some time yet have been not able to "break in" adequately.

The truth of the matter is, I have been in the wellness, wellbeing, and lifting weights business quite a while, and however I am known as a science and nourishment based "master" type, I have prepared numerous a wellness competitor, and made a decision about wellness and figure/two-piece shows for the NPC, Fitness America, Fitness USA, and different alliances just as offered showcasing and business guidance to a wide range of competitors, including wellness models. Along these lines, it's not as unrealistic as it would appear to be that I will utilize this space to cover a non logical point, which is, the way one approaches being a wellness model.

This article will be valuable to both experienced and amateur sorts hoping to "break in" to the business. On the off chance that you are as of now an expert and fruitful wellness model, I am certain you may in any case gather some valuable data from this article.

First the awful news, there is nobody approach to turn into a fruitful wellness model. There is no single way or enchantment mystery. There are anyway some key things an individual can never really improve their odds of "making it" in the wellness business as a model, and maybe utilizing that accomplishment as a take off platform to more prominent things, for example, motion pictures, TV, and so forth

A few of the top wellness models (Trish Stratus and Vicki Pratt strike a chord however there are numerous others) have gone onto vocations in diversion, all things considered. Main concern, however there is no sorcery mystery to being fruitful as a wellness model, this article will be probably as near a plan for progress as you will discover.

"Do I need to contend?"

This is an inquiry I get posed to constantly and it is anything but a simple one to reply. Truth be told, the appropriate response is (drum move) yes and no. The individual needs to deicide why they are contending in any case to respond to that question. For instance, do you need to contend if you will likely be a fruitful wellness model?

The appropriate response is no. A significant number of the present notable wellness models have never contended, or they contended in a couple of little shows and it was plainly not piece of their prosperity as wellness models. Nonetheless, contending has its possible employments.

One of them is openness. At the upper level shows, there will frequently be editors, distributers, photographic artists, supplement organization proprietors, and other finance managers. In this way, contending can improve your openness. Additionally, contending can bode well in the event that you are attempting to fabricate a business that is identified with your contending or will profit by you winning a show.

For instance, say you have a private preparing exercise center you are attempting to construct. Indeed, having the title of state Ms Fitness America, or winning the NPC Nationals and being an IFBB star, will help your standing and the reputation of your business. There are numerous situations were it would assist with having won a show for a business or different undertakings.

Then again, it should be understood that triumphant a show doesn't in any capacity ensure accomplishment in the business end (and it truly is a business) of being a wellness model. The telephone wont ring free with huge proposals for contracts. Additionally, it's vital to understand that usually the fourth or sixth or eighth spot finisher in a wellness or figure show will get more press than the victor. Why? Despite the fact that the victor may have what it took to win that show, it's frequently different ladies the editorial manager, distributers, supplement organizations and so forth, feel is more attractive.

I have seen it commonly where the champ was stunned to discover she didn't stand out enough to be noticed she expected and different young ladies who set lower have stood out enough to be noticed as photographs shoots, magazine inclusion, and so on Something to remember when you ask yourself the significant inquiry "do I need to contend and assuming this is the case, for what reason am I contending?" Answer that question, and you will know the response to the heading of this segment. Winning a title or the like can be a venturing stone, yet it isn't in itself any assurance of accomplishment in the wellness business. It resembles a professional education; it's how you manage it.

Presently. On the off chance that you seek its fun, at that point by all methods put it all on the line, yet the above is zeroing in on contending as it identifies with the business part of being a wellness model.

Right body, wrong organization?

Alright, so in the wake of perusing the above you have concluded you will contend, or will contend once more. In the event that you don't plan to contend, you can avoid this part. The greatest mix-up I see here is such countless ladies have the correct body for some unacceptable alliance. Every league has its own making a decision about measures and a contender will do inadequately just on the grounds that they didn't try to investigate which show would be most appropriate for them.

I will give you an ideal certifiable illustration of this. As of late I made a decision about a show whose standards for the figure round was the ladies ought to be more on the awe-inspiring milder side with some tone, versus being more solid and athletic with less bodyfat that different organizations may permit. At this show perhaps the most wonderful ladies I have ever seen came out. She was extremely relative, extraordinary muscle tone, fit, and physically molded with restricted hips and midsection and more extensive shoulders. How could she do at this show? She didn't put in the best ten!

Why? Since she was not what we were told to search for and didn't fit the rules. After the show I educated her that she looked incredible, however this may not the organization for her. I revealed to her she had considerably more of a NPC type body, where somewhat more muscle, athletic form, and less bodyfat is remunerated.

The next week I was making a decision about a NPC wellness, figure, and working out show and there she was. How could she do? She won the whole show with all adjudicators casting a ballot her main consistently.

Then again, if your body type will in general be more adjusted and conditioned, yet with somewhat more bodyfat, more extensive (however not fat!) hips, you might be in an ideal situation contending in state the Fitness America Pageants. On the off chance that you will contend:

(1) discover precisely what the making a decision about standards is for that organization and

(2) go consider those to be as an onlooker for a few changed alliances and see which one your build, style, and so on will find a way into best.

(3) You need to choose if you genuinely have the athletic capacities to contend in a wellness rivalry (which requires a daily schedule) or a figure/swimsuit rivalry. 

I frequently see ladies who might do well in a figure show yet truly don't have the athletic capacities do the schedules needed to be serious with different competitors in the show. A few shows will permit you to do the two rivalries and some wont.

Systems administration 101: customs...

In such countless regards, this is the region that will represent the moment of truth you in any business, but, individuals in the wellness business do an incredibly helpless occupation at it. In the event that you don't organize and advertise yourself appropriately, you can essentially disregard having any genuine accomplishment as a wellness model, or an achievement in basically any business. For space, we will adhere to wellness.

At the point when I previously began, I was a self promoting machine. I could be found at each show I thought may be a chance, strolling the isles of expos, weight training, shows, wellness show, and others. I gave out a zillion cards and I took 1,000,000 home with me, and circled back to every single one. I went to as numerous industry related gatherings, trips, parties, and so forth as I could get into. I currently have the standing and involvement with the business that I don't need to go to such a show except if I have a feeling that it, or have gatherings, yet they were very useful before all else.

I'm constantly stunned at the quantity of wellness models who get in touch with me who have never at any point been to the Arnold Classic Fitness Weekend, or the Mr. Olympia, or the exchange shows like the NNFA Expo West and others. On the off chance that you need to make it in the wellness business you sure as hellfire would be advised to deal with it like a business.

I have seen numerous a beautiful young lady who needs to be a wellness model who thinks in the event that they remain there looking pretty long enough, somebody will offer to put their face on the front of a magazine. News streak, there are a huge number of delightful ladies out there and to be seen, you need to hussle to get that professional every other person by systems administration your butt off, or having a decent specialist (on the off chance that you can bear the cost of something like this) who is doing it for you.

Pick a couple of significant industry shows to join in (some of which were referenced above) and go to them consistently. Have an arrangement of assault of precisely how you intend to showcase yourself and organization. Numerous wellness models, jocks, and so on consider a to be as one major gathering. On the off chance that that is you, at that point have some good times at the gathering, however don't think you are truly showcasing yourself as a serous money manager or competitor.

Something else that consistently astonishes me is the quantity of wellness models who either have no business cards, or have a few cards they printed up on their air pocket stream printer at home! They request that I help them or what ever and I state "give me your card" and they see me like "I'm so beautiful I ought not need a card you fool." This demeanor kills editors, photographic artists, scholars, and industry individuals quicker at that point on the off chance that they discovered you were actually a drag queen. Try not to do it. For each lovely young lady out there who thinks the world owes them some help, there are 100 who are prepared to act like experts.

Housemates - 1

I’m going to be running a promotion about these guys on Patreon and if nothing else, go check out the inspiration board that goes with this chapter.  If I try to post it, Tumblr doesn’t let my post go up.  This is the current $1+ novel, it releases one new chapter a week, but I have two other novels running just now too.  

WANTED:

Housekeeper wanted for a species diverse household.  Duties include planning, shopping for, preparing and cleaning up after the evening meal as well as light housekeeping in common areas only.  Payment includes: room and board and as a small salary.  Perfect for a student attending Local University.   Campus is just a short walk out the front door and across Hyde Park.  Residents would provide a security escort to and from evening classes, if required. Contact Bazur at 555-2972 for more information.

“How are you going to get this past your mom?” Jenn demanded.

Vinny sighed, put down her coffee and leaned back in her chair.  They were in the coffee shop in the student union building.  It was nice.  Its was summer, so the fireplace wasn’t running, but the coffee was better than at the Starbucks across the street.  She stared at the vaulted ceiling and carded her fingers through her long, chestnut brown hair.  Then she sat up, put on her professional face and said, “It’s simple logistics.  Chem 403 requires a night lab.  It runs from 7:30 until 10:30.  While the busses as still technically running, it is down to slow service so-”

“It’s going to take you two hours to get home.” Jenn finished.

Vinny nodded, “I can’t even get on the bus until almost eleven.  Plus I have a transfer in a bad part of downtown at 11:30 where I have to wait twenty minutes for the next bus to come.  Then I don’t get home until 1:00am and I have to be back at The U for Math 476 at 8am.  I can’t afford a car.  Hell, I can’t afford school if I lose my scholarship.  I certainly can’t afford to get a place closer to campus.  This is perfect.”

“Depending on how much house work there is.” Jenn pointed out. “Some people are total slobs.”

Vinny nodded.  “But I won’t know that until I go for an interview and find out.”

“Assuming you get an interview.”  Jenn looked hard at her friend.  “You already applied, didn’t you?”

Vinny gave a head wiggle/shoulder shrug and grinned a tight lipped smile.

Jenn pushed her glasses further up her freckle covered nose as grinned back.  “Have you told your mom?”

Vinny’s smile faded.  “There isn’t any point.  If I don’t get the job or the house is a disaster, or if the people are creepy, then I just don’t say anything and we… try to come up with a different plan.    Fall term doesn’t start for two months, so if it doesn’t work out, I have a little time.”

Jenn nodded, slowly.  “That’s fair.  But what happens if you turn up for your interview and it’s a pack of werewolves and they eat you?”

Vinny gasped, “Jenn that is so speciesist!”

Jenn shook her head, “OK, then, what if you turn up and it’s a bunch of human men who are rapists and ax murderers?  The point is, how are you going to be safe?”

Vinny’s grin turned conspiratorial, “You could come with me to the interview.  That way you would know where I was and could call the cops if I’m not out in twenty minutes.  Or if you hear screaming.”

Jenn narrowed her eyes. “When is the interview?”

Vinny looked at the clock, “In about an hour.  But it is just across the park so we have time to finish our coffees.”

“Vinny!”

“Look, I already walked past the place.  It’s one of those big houses on University boulevard.  The really pricey one’s facing the park.  The is even a park bench basically right across the street from it.  “I’ll buy you a fritter and a tea to go and you can hang out and snapchat how you are a good friend while I have my interview.  It’ll be fine.”

“Ugh.  Fine.”

—-

It was an imposing three story, red brick manor.  It was across the street from the park, which meant it must have million dollar views.  Plus the university area was pricier to start with.  The whole building was intimidating.

Jenn whistled, “Well, you know whoever lives there can afford to hire a maid.”

Vinny nodded.  She took a deep breath.  “Wish me luck!” she said, before striding confidently across the street and ringing the doorbell.

The man who answered the door was somewhere over six feet tall.  The way he filler out his jeans and t-shirt suggested he had a serious gym habit.  He was also a gargoyle.  His skin was a light cement grey and he was taking the phrase chiselled features to a whole new level.

Vinny blinked, but recovered quickly, “Are you Mr Bazur?  I’m Vinny.  I’m here for my interview.”  She held out her hand.

He hesitated, then carefully shook it.  His skin was more leathery than Vinny was expecting.  She also knew that gargoyles, by preference don’t wear clothing.  There was no need.  Their hide was impervious to the elements.  He was dressed for her comfort, not his.  That was something to think about.

“Come in.  I’ll show you around first, then if you have any questions, we can go from there.”

Vinny nodded and stepped into an entryway that was like something out of an old Hollywood movie.  There was patterned carpet, a good sized foyer with a circle table, then a grand wooden staircase leading up towards a landing with a big bay window.  There was wainscotting.  There was decorative pillars.  None of it was new, it looked like a well cared for antique.  The took the doorway to the right.  “This is the dining room.  We actually eat here. There are six of us, you would be number seven.”

To the left of that was a set of pocket doors that opened to a pantry with a sink that they walked through to the kitchen.  It was, old but clean.  There was a gas range and a farmhouse sink with a built in porcelain drainboard.  “The job includes planning and cooking supper.  We are on our own for other meals.”

“Any special diets?”

Baruz froze.  “Tristan is a vegetarian, Derick is … not.  They are both raw foodies, so they will give you a list when you are grocery shopping.  Other than that, they will take care of themselves.  As for the rest of us, you cook, we will eat.”

“Tell me about Tristan and Derick.”

Bazur sighed.  “Tristan is a minotaur, Derick is a werewolf.”

Vinny nodded slowly.  “Are there any humans in this house at all?”

“You would be the first.”

“Oh.”  She thought about that.  “What is the grocery budget like?”

“$1000 a week, which sounds like lots, but we are big eaters.”

“What are you expecting the workload to be like?  The ad said it would be a good job for a student, but you are already talking about an hour and a half a day to prepare food, and wash up afterwards.”

“We have a rotation for dishes.”

Vinny frowned.  “And does that work?  Because I don’t want to be ready to start supper and find out I have to either chase down whoever didn’t clean up or wash them myself before I start the next meal.”

“I am expecting the workload to be about two and a half to three hours a day.  If we are more work than that, we will have a meeting and you can share a list of chores that you need us to do.  We all do our own laundry.  Housekeeping would be cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming and washing the floors, dusting, and organizing dinner.”

“Ok.  Tidying where?”

“The common areas.” Bazur replied.  “We are each responsible for our own rooms.”

“And I get a room in the house?”

“You get half the third floor.  There is a private bathroom up there.  It would be yours exclusively.”

Vinny thought about that.  “Let’s see the rest of the house.”

The kitchen opened on to the back entry way, which  had a door on each side.  The first opened onto a beautiful backyard.  “Tristan is in charge of landscaping.”

Heading back inside, Bazur pointed to the opposite door, “That goes to the basement.  It isn’t finished.  You don’t have to worry about that, but I will show it to you if you want.”

“Maybe next time.”

The last door opened into a TV room. There were three large couches, a HUGE TV and a collections of gaming systems.  The coffee table was clean, but there were drink rings.

“How long did it take you to clean before the interview?”

Bazur coughed. “A while.  But everyone is responsible for their own mess, you just need to vacuum around it.”

The next room has a fireplace, a set of french doors leading outside, one of which had been modified to include a doggie door.  It also had a futon and a dresser.  “This is Derick’s room.  He’s the only one of us who lives on the main floor.  He’s a werewolf.”

“The raw foodie who isn’t the vegetarian?” Vinny suggested.  Bazur nodded and kept moving.

The last corner of the house had a library/ music room, complete with a grand piano.  “We don’t really use this room, except to walk through to the TV room.  You don’t have to worry about it.  Want to see upstairs?”

Vinny nodded.  As they climbed the stairs, Bazur explained, “You don’t have to do anything with any of the bed rooms, so this floor is just vacuuming the hallways.”  He opened the first door to show a room with a bunch of plants, a display case full of trophies, and a mattress of on the floor.  “This is Tristan’s room.  He was a professional on the rodeo circuit.”

Vinny felt her eyebrows go up.  “Wow… um…. Not many people would admit to that.”

Bazur shrugged.  “You would find out anyway, if you google his name.”

Vinny wondered how she would explain to her mom that one of the guys was a minotaur retired from the rodeo circuit when that was basically code for bull riding porn.

Bazur continued.  “He doesn’t really like to talk about it.  He’s a little shy.”  Vinny choked at that.  “So if you don’t bring it up, he won’t either,” Bazur continued, ignoring Vinny’s faux pas.

“Right!  Next room is Dren’s.  He’s gelatinous.”  Again, no bed, this time it was a clawfoot bathtub that didn’t appear to be connected to anything.  There was a wooden chair.  Everything was hard surfaces, including the exposed floorboards.  

Bazur closed the door and opened the next one. This was even more empty, it looked like something out of a haunted house.  There were spiderwebs everywhere.  “Thea is a Drider.”

The following room was the most normal looking.  No dresser, but a desk and chair.  An armchair near the window with a floor lamp for when it was dark.  There were a stack of books on a side table next to the chair.  And a lovely, antique wooden bed with a patchwork quilt.  Bazur looked around, “Oh!  Sorry, Kevin.  I didn’t know you were home!  This is Vinny.  She’s interviewing for the housekeeping job.”

Vinny looked around the room and didn’t see anyone.  “Um, hi?”  There wasn’t any response.

“Sorry, Kevin doesn’t always have the best manners.”  Bazur closed the door.

Vinny whispered, “Bogeyman, right?  He was under the bed?”

Bazur made a face like he was trying not to laugh.  “Mimic.  He was the bed.”

“Oh.”  Vinny felt like her brain had shorted out and she was running on autopilot.  She barely registered the next room being a large bathroom that was probably a converted bedroom. It had a floor drain, a huge tub and a walk in shower.

The last bedroom was on the other side of the staircase from Tristan’s room was also a corner room facing out to the back yard.  This one had been decorated in military memorabilia. “This is Kogan’s room.  He’s a semi retired Marine.  He works for a security firm.”

Vinny nodded, and waited.

Bazur sighed.  “He’s an orc.”

Vinny considered all of this.  “So… six men living in one building.  How much porn had to get taken down/put away before I arrived?”

Two doors down, Kevin burst out laughing.  Bazur looked uncomfortable.  “Some.  But everyone keeps it in their own rooms.”

“Only one bathroom so far.  How does that work?”

“Um… there is another one on the main floor that we skipped.”

“That bad?”

“No! Not too messy.  It’s just, um, where we hid the porn.”

“Ah.”  Vinny was quiet for a moment while she tried to digest all of that.  Bazur was looking nervous.  “How many people have you interviewed so far?”

“Fifteen.”

“How many left before they saw their room?”

“Ten.”

“What about the other five?”

“One didn’t pass the criminal record check.  Two stopped returning my calls, one actually started but was so unpleasant about the level of diversity that we had to let him go.”

Vinny was slightly surprised at the male pronoun there.

“And the other two?”

“One left after the meet and greet due to… Kevin’s lack of manners.  One started sexually harassing Tristan.”

Vinny nodded slowing.  “You keep talking about Kevin being rude.  What did he do to the one he ran off?”

“He was a chair and she sat on him.”

“Oh.”

Vinny’s mind was racing.  She wanted to know if that was an ongoing issue in the house.  And who was going to be the person who would walk her home from night classes.  And what kind of porn was hiding in the downstairs bathroom.  Although, maybe she didn’t want to know.  And she was completely torn between wanting to go home and google Tristan and never, ever wanting to know that about her prospective employer.  She realized she hadn’t said anything in long enough that she was being rude.

“Let’s go see the top floor,” she announced.

The top floor was basically the attic.  The room at the front of the house had a balcony.  It was the biggest bedroom so far.  It had been somewhat divided into zones.  There was a bookcase and a desk in an inside corner, the sleeping zone was next to a fireplace and separated from the small area with a weight bench, yoga mat and free weights.  It was Bazur’s.  

Out of his room and around the corner there was a reasonably sized bathroom that smelled faintly of bleach.  “This will be your bathroom if you take the job.  It was mine, but I’ll be sharing the main floor one.  We all agreed it wasn’t fair to … um, make you share with us.”

The last room was hers.  The ceilings were vaulted.  There were huge closets under the eves.  She had a gas fireplace, and hardwood floors and huge windows looking out over the gardens.  There were heavy velvet drapes that ran across the whole wall where the windows were looking like old fashioned theatre curtains.  She experimented pulling them closed.  They slid easily and completely darkened the room.

Bazur coughed.  “Yeah.  This room faces east, so the curtains keep you from having light in your eyes at dawn.  Also, there is a bit of a draft in the winter.  They help with that at night too.”  He pointed to the radiator.  “Hot water heat comes all the way up to here, and you can use the fireplace if you need extra heat.”

“That is an awful lot of stairs to get furniture up.”

Bazur stopped looking so dejected.  “We would all help.  It won’t be a problem,” he assured her.

Vinny went over and sat on the window sill.  “Assuming you offer me the job, what is the salary?”

“Um… We thought that at max it would be three hours a day, times, thirty days in a month, is 90 hours, approximately.   Call it $15 an hour, would be $1350 less room and board would be… oh… $500?”

Vinny swallowed.  “Is that a question?”

“It’s nearly double minimum wages,” Bazur said defensively.

Vinny nodded.  “My math is - my folks are currently covering room and board.  I have a weekend job, that gives me time to study during the week.  It doesn’t sound like I will have much time for that with this job.  My current take home is a bit more but I would need to take a cab across town to get home from my night twice a week.  Plus, whatever  you say about the idea that you will eat what I cook, you have three different diets I would need to cater to and the fridge is pretty small.  I bet I would need to shop for groceries every second day.”

“Why don’t you come for dinner on Friday?  You can meet everyone and we can talk logistics?”

Vinny sighed.  “I may be twenty three, but I also still need to convince my Italian Catholic mother that this is a good idea.”

Bazur nodded.  “Kogan can take care of that.  He’s Catholic, he’s in security so he has the stats on crime rates for women waiting for cabs and buses on campus after dark.  He’s… mature enough to put her at ease and promise to drive you to mass every Sunday if she wants.”

Vinny nodded slowly. “I don’t have a problem with Tristan’s last job but-”

“You can honestly say he is a landscaper.  Unless your mom was heavy into rodeo three years ago, she won’t know.”

Vinny considered this.  “Do you want to just cut to the chase about the salary, or are we going to dance around first?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Vinny shook her head.  “You said $500 like it was a question, which would suggest you are willing to negotiate.  It’s close enough to $600 that we could back and forth for a while, but you have six people living here and I would bet that your target price point is everyone chipping in a hundred dollars a month not to have to cook or scrub the toilets.”

Bazur chuckled.  “Yeah.  So, six hundred a month, if you pass the meeting everyone test and if we all get the nod from meeting your mom?”

“Ok.  Just don’t let her sit on Kevin.”

Hey :-) In the new Anidala comic there is a interesting thing: the actress's museum is called "thousand faces museum" and I was never a believer in the reincarnation theory but in my opion, this is telling. Anakin and Padmè, both of them walking through this museum, which shows important moments of history. And on top of that, there is a picture of the place where Anakin and Padmè had married, but this picture is still "work progress" What do you think about all this new stuff?

Oh dear anon, these two issues from Star Wars adventures, issues 12 and 13, are so ripe with meta textuality that it’s not funny. This comic blew me away with the clever references and jokes. It’s all about reverse Anidala and the Skywalker saga coming full circle with Reylo. From the cover of 12 that looked so much like Rey and Kylo fighting back to back, to all the winks in there. This stuff is so great.

Ok, museum of the 1000 faces. Fans of GOT could love that one too because you have this idea of a character being able to wear the face of someone else and become this character in order to fulfill a mission, right? Given that the TV show (not sure what the book series will do) is following the path of descendants fixing the mistakes of the past (fire and ice, Starks and Targaryens), and of chosen ones coming back (Azor Ahai, the Prince that was promised), this is also a noteworthy parallel. Even more so that Arya, the one whose arc goes through the hall of faces, also becomes an actress (in the TV show she is fascinated by plays but does not become part of the troupe).

The idea in the Star Wars comic is that Madam Synata is a versatile actress that played all these many characters: hence the Thousand Faces Museum. She is also two-faced in real life since she is actually working for Dooku.

Funny anecdote, she is supposed to be this great famous actress in the galaxy, yet she is introduced to Anakin in the comic through an obvious parallel with faded silent film star Norma Desmond from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard

Besides the pose, the staircase, the dramatic walking down the stairs, actress Gloria Swanson, who plays Norma Desmond, would have favored this kind of feathered dress and hat…

I think the reference is here to point out everything that does not work out about her. She gets her facts all mixed up and wrong, as repeated over and over again in the comic, as we can see here for instance:

And of course:

If Risha does not get the end she was expecting because “she was not the hero of the story”, the idea that there are “two sides” to a story is still an essential one in the saga. From Obi Wan’s “certain point of view” sentence to the scrolling credits to ROTS that boldly state that there are “heroes on both sides” of the war. This is not minor and it indeed matters. So even if Risha gets it all wrong (beginning with the side she chose),  there is still some value to take away from this story. And mostly, this  comic raises a lot of question about where the Skywalker as a whole is headed and offers a bridge between the PT (where this story takes place) and the current ST.

Let’s come back to this Thousand Faces museum. Contrary to GOT’s Hall of Faces, the point is not really about the diversity of faces exhibited. Even though you get different dioramas of scenes presenting mannequins or animatronics with various settings, the point of the museum is to showcase Risha’s face in various poses and costumes over and over and over again. So these thousand faces are really just the one face of Risha in 1000 different settings, poses, and costumes. As you can see there examplified:

In terms of the ST, this should ring a bell. We got a thousand faces and yet only one face represented on screen, right?

And interestingly, Risha belongs to the Dark Side, like the cave on Ahch-To, and acts like a mirror, reflecting everything wrong: her stories are never accurate. Another huge wink at Rey we get earlier (so that Risha dons both Padmé and Rey’s costumes or attitudes in this comic) :

So what else do we get that should give us matter to pause and ponder upon?

You very rightly, dear anon, pointed out the “work in progress” reference to Naboo.

The comic is not even subtle about it, commenting right away about the meta aspect of this: our PT love story is a tragedy, we are a work in progress. Ok, gotcha. But what the story tells us too is that Anakin and Padmé are unfinished business, right? A part of a bigger story that still requires completion. Like a PT that can be completed with a ST? So what scene needs to get completed? The wedding scene of course, the exchange of vows, what normally constitutes the climax and perfect ending to any self-worthy fairy-tale.

Unfortunately, that is a fail for the PT, as we well know. Since Risha usually gets stories wrong, though, it’s a good thing this story still needs to be completed. Padmé bets that Risha would have ruined the scene with a tragedy, which, given that Risha gets things inverted, means that the story would have ended happily. Nope. So better leave it unfinished. The couple missing on the painting is not Padmé and Anakin. Possibly it hints at Rey and Kylo (though not necessarily wedding on Naboo, this is just symbolic). Also again, inversion of the story: Anakin poor boy falls for royalty, and Kylo royal boy falls for poor girl. Ummmm, subtletly be damned. Work in progress indeed, since the ST and the saga are not completed and are currently shooting.

More stuff. Funny how this sentence is repeated over and over again, even by a Yoda animatronic:

Padmé has escaped many dangerous situations and assassination attempts. Sure, she will still escape this time around, but eventually, we know that she won’t. It’s like the ticking of a clock, and clock ticking, well, that’s another way of talking about the need felt by some women to have babies…

Even better stuff; Have you noticed these little sceneries as our heroes run down the hall?

Ok… So they are running from Tatooine to Endor!!! Tatooine is the passageway to their escape. Sure, it’s the transitional planet between the PT and the OT, the only planet that they both feature. It’s the last one we get from ROTS and the first one we get in ANH. The Ewoks and Ewok village that’s unmistakably ROTJ. So the characters have escaped the setting of the PT to run through the OT (and the planet that sees the funeral of Anakin). What is the next scenery we get?

A snow planet. I would not necessarily pay any attention to the characters in the background. but look at the way Anakin and Padmé are flying about in a snow-covered landscape… Do you remember Kylo chasing Rey on Starkiller base?

And then in the next issue, it’s like going backward with this scene that could TLJ’s Canto Bight (which is oddly enough totally unrelated to Kylo or Rey):

And straight to the beginning of PM with Naboo’s sea monsters:

“We’re close”… meaning close to the final act, the end. And what is the final act about in this story?

Which does not work out for Risha, of course. Which does not work out for Anakin, but certainly did work for Luke in the OT and is bound to work for Kylo in the ST.

Cross this with this very important line from the TLJ graphic adaptation:

So we keep on saying the same references to the circle, to repeating history, to getting it right after many mistakes and failures, be it in litteral sentences or through the actions of the main characters. So, of course, Reylo. Look at the next two pictures depicting Luke’s death:

The light of two suns…Which fuse into one. 2 suns meeting to “step into a larger world”. This is not death, this is rebirth, this is birth. Womb/Tomb. The cave entrance. Death feeding life, right? This was an important part of the first lesson Luke gave Rey on that very spot. The utlimate metaphor of the two suns fusing, like two people becoming one through love, a wedding, sexual union, and creating life. A work in progress?

There is a lot to cover in these silly cartoons that are actually incredibly clever and thoughtful. I also love the tongue-in-cheek quality of such a line:

Does Star Wars produce too many shows?

And I had to edit this OP with the very important note made to me by @toawaterfowl. What work did Lucas credit for being essential to the concept of this saga? Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Of course!

Screenwriting Master Post

Online Outside Resources | These are websites that compile a lot of information for beginning screenwriters in the industry, have contests/other resources written within, and are just plain helpful and not really any place collected together. (Please let me know if there’s more because I’ve been collecting and learning for years.)

Screenwriting Contests/Representation

Writers Guild of America (WGA): Where writers for the industry work and organize, have contests, just general resources of information on questions on how to get started

Blacklist: Started in 2008, this website was a list of the most read scripts, represented and not represented scripts, that get compiled together for agents, producers, any other members to find stories on this website, it has been getting bigger for years, their twitter also posts stories from their submitted stories, always recommending one sentence stories that are popular from it

ScreenCraft: By far the most popular and stuck out contests, it has been getting bigger for years and the list of contestants give feedback for script submissions and different genre categories with industry lead ins for screenwriting contests

Women in Film (WIF): I only discovered this organization recently but right now they have a contest collaboration with Blacklist where they want more diverse scripts from women having labs for scripts for actors to read with industry lead ins so they are definitely a place to check out

WeScreenplay: This website was started by Ava Duvernay but it also has a lot of contests looking for diversity and is something to check out; also to submit scripts, you can get feedback at a small fee but I found this really helpful for anonymous feedback for my own scripts

Recommended Books

Basics

The Screenwriter’s Bible by David Trottier: This is what my screenwriting teacher recommended me to read first because it was a basic overview of the screenplay formatting, act structures, dialogue, story, etc for me and covers a lot of ground if you have never got started on this

Screenplay: The Foundations on Screenwriting by Syd Field: Definitely a useful resource that I still go back to from now and again if I have questions on what to do with my own scripts

Making a Good Script Great by Linda Seger: This was another read recommended to me and it still covers the basics of writing a story for movies from beginning to end

Story

Four Screenplays by Syd Field: Additional reading that helped me understand certain things to highlight such as character emphasis, themes that undermine characters and their actions, adaptations from a book to the screen, the challenges of it, along with the dramatic writing for an epic and how it was done

Bird by Bird by Annie Lamott: This doesn’t focus on screenwriting per say but I found very helpful to focus on why I’m writing on what I’m writing with her insight and come back to every now and then

Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee: I haven’t read this all the way through but LFTS refers to this book all the time in his videos and I am confident that it would help anyone with this 

Character

Creating Character Arcs: The Masterful Author's Guide to Uniting Story Structure (Helping Writers Become Authors) by K.M. Weiland: Learned about this from youtube but come back to this book a lot of the time because it’s useful at understanding character arcs and navigate on how you want them to be in your stories

YouTube

Lessons From The Screenplay (LFTS): Love LFTS for all his work on movies because everything is beautifully done and still entertaining to get you inspiring to write scenes and why we write them a certain way, explores story, themes, dialogue, etc and always will watch

Every Frame a Painting: This channel doesn’t produce any more videos but the ones still on this website provide a lot of insight for movie techniques and everything is artfully done and entertaining

The New York Times || Anatomy of a Scene Series: Very useful insight into how directors purpose and story behind key scenes of current movies that I find very interesting while writing my own

Vanity Fair || Expert(s) Notes on a Scene Series:  Useful and insightful to watch directors break down why they choose to do certain things with the story, the budget, the effects, and learn something new

VF: Actor/Composers’ Career Timelines Series: This is still fairly new but I think it is amazing how each person gets to comment and reflect on what has happened so early and so far in their own careers and stories that occur behind the scenes of movies they made

VOX || Pop Culture & History: I originally watched this for the film technique series such as how The Wizard of Oz was being made in technicolor and how cinematography has changed dramatically for the better to capture wildlife we would never have seen 50 years ago but there are plenty of series in this entire channel that provide interesting bits and pieces of stories that make you expand your mind and provide entertainment and learning that I find useful still

The Cosmonaut Variety Hour: I give it to the main guy who writes these a lot of credit for providing insight on what he loves and talks about story, it is hidden behind a lot of sarcasm and tiredness, which I can relate to, and believe he makes a lot of valid points within his videos, he loves what he loves and I respect him for it for making me believe in movies a lot and also very entertaining

Nerdwriter1: I don’t always watch every single video but there are some good ones nestled on this channel as well; focusing on several different topics in story

Wired || Technique Critique Series: Love this series in particular because it showcases experts who provide insight and advice on scenes, accents, movie magic, and such

GQ || Iconic Characters’ Series: Even though GQ is meant for the “men”, there are still interesting stories the actors relate and show with their movies throughout their careers and I find it very interesting through the filmmaking process

kaptainkristian: Love this guy and the way he edits all of his film essays, provides a lot of insight in stories, themes, and choices for films

Wisecrack || Philosophy of ... Series: Love this series in particular because it can sprout from film, tv, books, and culture in general and they’re all interesting to watch if you’re ever in a halt

Just Write: Love this channel’s way of editing and exploring themes of movies and such too

Pop Culture Detective: This channel explores a lot of themes throughout tv and film which I find interesting and wish more of this existed on the internet because they are so damn well done for a wide range audience

Patrick (H) Willems: Love this channel as well because it expanded my viewpoint of why we make films, love them, and how we can go further with film technique and what we can do about it in interesting formats and such

Screenwriting Tips, Tricks, & Other Useful Things

General

Read as many scripts as possible, read your favorite movies, read scenes where you want to emulate into your own scenes, analyze why they work/don’t work and keep reading scripts to understand how past writers wrote something to borrow something for your own

Read theatre plays and attend them if possible because they provide direction and themes to works people have incorporated in scripts for TV & film

While writing drafts of films, tv, scenes, have a trusted reader or reading circle who can give you feedback and insight on what to fix, what’s missing, spelling errors, word choice, actions of a character, you’ll need this to make your scripts better

Follow a close, inspiring niche of artists, writers, producers, actors, fans, organizations of inspiration on social medias: Instagram, Twitter,  Pinterest, etc; this will provide insightful knowledge and information for you to work on your own stuff instead of just walking around in circles

Especially recommend Pinterest to create storyboards/mood boards that evoke the feel and tone of your stories such as the aesthetics of movies you enjoy, get influenced from, and aspire to make, these will truly help give direction to the characters, setting, background, dialogue, and such to your screenplays

On YouTube, create a playlist of videos that give you inspiration, this can comprise of film scenes that make you not give up on life, movie trailers I definitely recommend since they hype you in two minutes, film edits, tv scenes, monologues, anything that can be played at a moments notice for writer’s block; if they are very important to you, I would download them to refer for your personal viewings

Format

Celtx: You can make a free account on this website where you can automatically make the script format and produce scripts with whatever you want to get started on

Final Draft: Another screenwriting program a lot of people in the industry use and have automatic formatted screenplays

Script Examples

Film

imsdb.com: This is the biggest website where all scripts seem to end up on for people to read

TV

The 100 Writers Room: I love this show so when the writers release some jpeg glimpses of their scripts from past episodes, I think this is very kind and useful to understand what they write comes to screen

alright, it’s getting late and I want to make it to church in the morning so I should get writing. today was pretty good. I set my alarm for 10 am to see how things were playing out, it was supposed to thunderstorm today but it was unclear when it would actually start, but when I got up the weather forecast said it wouldn’t start till 3 pm so we had some time. So I messaged Jess and arranged our plans to get brunch and go from there. So we met up in a few and wen to the vegetarian place. it was funny, apparently our normal waitress who has our orders memorized was in the bathroom when we came in so we had a new one and she like put the menus on the table and we were just like “oh we know what we want” lol and then our normal waitress came out and was like “I heard you had to actually tell them your orders, I’ll do my best to not be in the bathroom when you get here in the future” and it was funny and cute. Brunch was good as always, afterwards we walked back to my apartment and looked up the episodes of the korean reality tv show they have going on now that different versions of pop up a lot focused around a competition to form a boy band, and one of the band members we like was serving as a judge, which was funny because he used to be a contestant on one of them. so we had to watch him judge and it was pretty damn funny. once that was done we debated what we wanted to watch next, the BTS concert in London was about to start and there was a livestream for it, but it was like $13 just to see the concert and we ain’t about that so we ended up finding somebody livestreaming the livestream and watching from there lol. The feed was pretty good, it went out a few times but it was only for like 30 seconds or so and not on any important songs so it wasn’t a big deal. It’s the same concert we saw here of course, but it was cool to see it from a different perspective because our perspective was somewhat limited due to our (awesome but slightly inconvenient) seats, whereas this was right from the camera they’re always singing towards so it was very up close. I’m sure they appreciated not having to do the concert in the rain, lol. the stadium was also fucking huge, and was totally sold out- we looked it up and it had a seating capacity of fucking 90,000, where the giant ass football stadium we have in Chicago is only 60,000, so that’s kinda nuts, and they have a whole other concert tomorrow to do as well. Crazy. But yeah, it was enjoyable to watch, we got to see the one boy “fly” on a harness thing during his solo song which he didn’t do at the show we were at because it was fucking raining and that seemed like a very BAD idea, so that was cool to see. I was also feeling kinda soft about one of the boys I previously wasn’t very into but some really shitty stuff happened recently with him (it’s a long story, but basically during a performance he collided with like the groups best dancer and then when they were doing a Q&A the interviewer asked who the best dancer was and asked the audience, and then right after asked who the worst one was and they all said this guy, and he was like, visibly upset on camera and it was really bad, the best dancer went live later and was like “I was the one who messed that up, it was totally on me he didn’t do anything wrong” and then apparently was telling the other guy they were getting lots of “hearts” on the livestream and he was like “they’re not for me” so when they had their concert in Brazil last weekend some fans decided to be super awesome and cut out literally thousands of paper hearts for everyone in the audience to hold up during his solo song and like, it was so emotional and seeing his reaction was beautiful, and he looked so much happier this week) and it just made me feel very soft about all of it. The best dancer I just referred to actually had been kinda sick and his voice cracked during a song last week and he like, full on cried on stage about it and it was bad, and then again today he cracked and got really upset and it was difficult because he’s the only one with the range to hit the high notes so they can’t really give it to anybody else, so they ended up having to get another guy to do it down the octave and you could tell he was really upset and I was just like NOOO STOP DON’T CRY but he’s like generally considered the most popular and lovable member so I’m sure he knows how loved he is. So that was fun. Once it was over we went to get ice cream since we didn’t end up getting any yesterday, then headed back home and started the “Always Be My Maybe” movie on netflix while we ordered dinner from the ramen place and ate that. It was yet to rain yet and they kept pushing it back in the forecast, but it looked like it might start around 7 and Jess wanted to walk back before that for obvious reasons, so she ended up heading home when we had like half an hour left in the movie, so we’ll have to finish that at some point. Once she left I put on an episode of Friends from netflix as background noise while I took care of myself, then started watching the other big thing that had been livestreamed today, which was the funeral of Rachel Held Evans, who you might remember me mentioning last month was the Christian author who died suddenly at a very young age and it was a huge blow to the progressive Christian community because she helped so many people. I knew I was going to end up crying for a lot of it but I still wanted to watch it and honor her memory. From the beginning I was a mess, as soon as they were leading the coffin down the aisle and behind it was her husband with their two babies, holding the hand of their 3 year old boy and holding his daughter, who just turned 1 and can’t even walk yet, and seeing that of course made me really emotional. The entire service was done so well, it’s somewhat of a faith tradition I’m not super familiar with because after leaving the evangelical church she ended up finding home in an Episcopalian church, which I’ve had very limited exposure to, so that was interesting to see, and so much of it was just so very beautiful, from the eulogies to the hymns and the sermon, all a gathering of the people she made sure were invited to the table, with thousands watching along, many of whom credit her with saving their faith. Honestly it’s hard to overestimate the impact she had on my shifting from evangelical circles to more progressive ones, she was pretty much the first major Christian figure that boldly and fully embraced a LGBTQ-affirming doctrine and it made a massive impact on the community. The argument I now use with evangelical Christians when the subject comes up is one that was inspired by her writing (basically, the bible says “you will know them by their fruit” and the way the church has treated LGBTQ people has borne nothing but suffering, suicide, and people walking away from the church, and that is BAD fruit no matter which was you slice it- whereas an affirming doctrine brings together joy and life and community and a major decrease in suicides, especially among young LGBTQ folks. It’s an argument nobody has been able to refute thus far) which I’ve used so many times and it very truly uses scripture to back up an affirming doctrine. I know I’m basically ranting at this point but like, she was just so important to so many people and it’s such a tragedy that she’s gone at only 37 when we could’ve had so many more years of her beautiful writing and thoughts that we will never get now, and two little babes who are going to grow up without a mother. God I’m emotional. And like, the people putting on the service were all close friends who were incredibly diverse (the main sermon was given by Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, an ordained woman of color who is absolutely dynamic and game changing in her theology) and it was all just so beautiful to see. And of course there were the old hymns that I really have such a soft spot for, so I really enjoyed those and definitely sang along for most of them. So yeah, it was beautiful and lovely and so deserving for the amazing woman she was. Once I was done with that I randomly turned on “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” which was really good and I actually ended up crying at that too because I’m a super weepy baby today apparently. I watched like an episode and a half of that before starting to get ready for bed, and now I am here. I NEED to make it to church in the morning because it’s been way too long since I’ve gone, which requires waking up in t-minus 7 hours, so now would be a good time to go to sleep, so that is what I will be doing. Goodnight babes. Hope you had an awesome Saturday.

Kate Leth: The Frederator Interview

One of our top-most frequently asked Qs is: “Do I need to study art or animation to become a creator”? Our long-winded answer could really be replaced with: “Look up Kate Leth”. For many of you, this intro itself will be redundant. Since she began posting her personal Kate or Die! comics in 2011, the growth of Kate’s now-ginormous online following - as well as heaps of talent and hard work - opened doors for her to become one of the most exciting comic book creators and animation writers working today. It was awesome talking with Kate about her adoration for Plum, the rising tide of female and non-binary voices in animation, and witches - lots ‘n lots of witches.

Kate: So now, where are these being posted?

Cooper: On our Tumblr! We have a long-running Studios blog. Do you know the Frederator // Tumblr origin story?

K: Maybe??

C: David Karp launched Tumblr from his desk at Frederator when he was an intern! Fred Seibert was one of its first bloggers and investors.

K: Oh that’s funny! I still use Tumblr sometimes, as like a less stressful platform than Twitter. Which it used to be much more so?

Yeah, Twitter’s really taken over, huh? Do you like Twitter or does it feel like a chore?

Half and half! I like the fun side of Twitter but it is also pretty depressing. I’m starting to use Instagram more, cause it’s just happier. It’s like a nice break, scrolling through pictures of my cute friends!

Has social media been very important to your career?

Oh yeah - all of the work I’ve ever gotten has pretty much been through social media. I come from a super small town in Canada, which makes it harder to network and connect with people. It used to be you’d meet people at Cons, but now you meet everybody online. So many of the connections I’ve made and so many of the jobs I’ve gotten have been through Twitter and Tumblr. I don’t know where my career would be without those platforms!

That’s amazing. Did you know those opportunities were out there when you started posting?

I got into Tumblr just to follow people. I worked at a comic book store at the time, and my boss knew that I was drawing and encouraged me to put my stuff online. So I did, and slowly started to amass a small following. It got bigger, and that was how I got discovered by BOOM!, which is how I did my first published comics—including the Bravest Warriors comics, which is kinda funny!

Whoa, cool! From comic book store employee to comic book writer - how was that transition?

I started working there in like... 2009 or 2010? It was part time; I was also working at a dress shop. But I got fired from the dress shop (laughs) so I became full time at the comic book store. My boss, Calum Johnston, was a really engaged member of the arts community. He pushed people to make comics and share them, and that’s how I got started.

He must be so stoked to see where your career is now.

It’s really wild to look back on. When I wanted to self-publish my first zine, I had no money. I was a super broke art student. Cal sold his original art of the cover of the first volume of Scott Pilgrim and used the money to help me and a bunch of other people self-publish our comics. He’s a really good dude.

That’s so generous! Do you stay in touch with people there?

Yeah, I try to! His daughter is in animation school now. I’ve known her since she was like 14. It’s cool cause now I can promote her work and help her get a foot in the industry, so it comes full circle!

When you got the job at the store, were you just a fan? Or did you know you wanted to be a creator?

Just a fan! I was really big into autobio and self-published comics. Kate Beaton, Lucy Knisley, Erica Moen, and Jess Fink were all creators I was following at the time. Kate Beaton is from Nova Scotia like me, and I watched her get successful on LiveJournal and things as a comic artist—and yet she had studied history! She had no formal arts training; she’d just started making comics for fun. I had always thought that if you didn’t go to art school, that wasn’t an avenue for you. Seeing what she was doing made me realize, “Oh, people can do that!? Maybe I could too!” I’d been reading web comics since junior high, but it was never something that I thought I could do, until I started doing it. Being on Tumblr was also really encouraging; seeing so many other people just starting out and at a similar skill level with their art.

How did the path from self-publishing to BOOM! go?

It was sort of accidental. An editor came across Kate or Die!, and I was offered a backup strip in one of the Adventure Time comics. Only like 2 pages - super short. And then they came back with an offer to write a whole graphic novel? I’d never written anything longer than 4 pages in my life. But I was like, “Sure, I can do that!”. So I wrote Seeing Red, my first Adventure Time comic. And it did well, so they asked me to write another one. And all of a sudden that was my job! I was like, “Oh, okay, I better get good at this.”

Wow, so you taught yourself how to write comics? And to screenwrite?  

Oh yeah, I didn’t go to school for any of this. I went to school for makeup and photography. I was a professional makeup artist for a couple years. Then I studied photography for two years. Then I dropped out. A college dropout made good! At first, I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing. I’ve been writing comics for 6 or 7 years, and I only now feel like I’m good at them (laughing) I know people will disagree! I’m very self-deprecating. But I definitely feel like I understand what you need to craft a story now. When I started, I didn’t think about stories as a whole: knowing where you’re going, how you’ll get there, the themes you’ll touch along the way. I did a lot of improv in high school, so I felt fine sitting down and just starting! I'd make stuff up as I went. But that doesn’t make for as good of stories. So over time I’ve learned to sit down and really figure out the world, the arcs, the timing for big moments. I fill books with outlines!

Do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on?

Spell on Wheels, which just came out from Dark Horse last year, is something I’m really proud of. It’s about witches on a road trip. Megan Levens and Marissa Louise, the artist and colorist I’m working with are so awesome; I’m really happy that we’re gonna do more of it. And it’s nice to have an original series out there, because I’ve worked on so many other people’s properties.

What are the biggest differences there?

It’s very freeing to write an original. You’re not beholden to any corporate standards or licensers, so it’s easier to tell the kind of stories that you want to tell. Especially in terms of things like diversity and queerness, there’s nobody saying, “Oh, we can’t do that because it’s not in the TV show”. It’s nice to not have to worry about things like that. Dark Horse has been very supportive of it, which is cool.

Is Spell on Wheels your main project right now, or what else is goin’ on?

I work in animation primarily now, so I’m working for Hasbro and some other places that I can’t talk about yet, as is always the way. But I’ve been with Hasbro for about a year and a half, as a sort of jack of all trades writer. I’ve worked on My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, Littlest Pet Shop, and a bunch of other things that haven’t been announced yet. As for comics, I’m currently working on the Mysticons graphic novels - the first one comes out in August.

What do you like best about being a writer?

I love it. I think it’s amazing to create worlds and characters and stories and see them brought to life by so many different kinds of people, with so many different artistic styles and talents and specialties. It’s just like magic. Animation is so exciting. You write a script and then you wait... like a year... and then it’s animated! And there are voices saying your jokes! I feel like the thrill of that might wear off at some point, but it definitely hasn’t yet.

What are your favorite cartoons?

Sailor Moon is top of the list. And Cardcaptor Sakura - any magical girl anime I would just eat up as a kid. I watched Disney’s One Saturday Morning religiously, Doug and all of those shows. And now Steven Universe is a big favorite. I got to write an episode for Craig of the Creek, which is great, and I’m really excited about that. And I’m a huge fan of Bob’s Burgers!

What is your episode of Craig of the Creek about?

Witches. I’m very into witches! I grew up on Buffy, Charmed - every YA book I could get my hands on. Practical Magic is my favorite movie. I feel like there were so many movies and TV shows about witches in the 90s. I’m ready for that genre to loop back, in a BIG way. And for the episode of Craig of the Creek, I created characters that ended up becoming part of the recurring cast! So it was neat to contribute to that world a little bit.

What is your favorite thing about Bravest Warriors?

Plum. Just Plum, in general. She’s my favorite character to write - she’s just so fun. She’s silly and weird, and once you get her voice right, she’s such a laugh. She's so blunt and harsh, but in this innocent, unintentional way.

Your episode “Chained to Your Side” has the Scaley Williams Dance - what inspired your play on Sadie Hawkins?

We don’t actually have Sadie Hawkins dances in Canada, which is funny. But I’ve always been kind of fascinated by the concept: “Oooh it’s so rebellious cause the girls ask the boys.” Which is so outdated! So I thought, what’s the futuristic version of that… and got: ‘the girls ‘dart’ the boys’. And we had this conversation, like, “Okay, they dart the boys - but it has to be consensual! They have to say yes!” That was very important (laughing) I could only take that joke to a certain point. But I knew the dance idea would let me do a lot with Beth and Plum. And I love beating up Danny. Like that’s my favorite thing to do in the comics. Just let terrible things happen to Danny. He’s such a goofball.

What are the themes that recur in your characters and stories the most?

Surface level, the obvious: witches and gay stuff. In a deeper sense, things I come back to a lot… there are a lot of characters I’ve written that work retail or minimum wage jobs. Because that’s what I grew up with—I moved out when I was 17 and started working, and did that up until 4 or 5 years ago. So that’s a huge part of my experience. Definitely characters who aren’t borne of privilege and are struggling to prove themselves. Like Hellcat especially, is very much about someone in their 20s just trying to get by. And I talk about self-acceptance a lot. I like genuine moments between people. Amid the comedy, I like there to be something real - especially if it’s something difficult to talk about. Hellcat is this really upbeat superhero, Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe—but I did an entire arc about how people misinterpret and mistreat men who are bisexual, and how that’s different from how bisexual women are treated. So it’s this funny comic, but still touching on real topics. I like to try to say something. But not, you know, hit people over the head with it.

Do you have a cartoon project that’s your favorite?

Yeah, but I’m not allowed to talk about it yet! I have had a lot of fun working on Equestria Girls. It’s so exciting to write stuff for kids. Since I started in animation I’ve actually tried to shoehorn myself: I want to write action-adventure for girls. That’s what I want to do. I’ve managed to get to a place where that’s everything I’m working on now, and that’s really exciting. A lot of people don’t want to be pegged like that, but I’m like, “Oh, you want me to write girls punching and having feelings? Good, I’m here for it!”

It’s funny to pigeon-hole yourself! Most writers seem to want the opposite.

I doubt I’ll want to do the same thing forever! But I definitely don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to tell stories for girls. For a long time I think there was an onus to make sure your show could appeal to boys, and that led to a lot of female characters getting side-lined, because executives would say, “Boys need someone to relate to!” And I agree with that—but I really don’t believe there’s any reason boys can’t relate to or look up to girls. And I think perpetuating the idea that they can’t is pretty harmful.

In your time in the industry, have you noticed animation becoming more inclusive and diverse?

I’m lucky in what I’ve worked on. Hasbro has a huge female staff and a lot of the executives are women, so they’re very supportive of that. There’s always room for more diversity, but it’s been good. I know there are parts of the industry that are still very much a boys club, but I’ve stayed pretty far away from those, and would prefer to keep it that way. There are so many women coming into animation now. I know so many women and non-binary folks working in the field that are just going to keep rising. It’s definitely a rising tide.

That’s awesome.

Well, I have to believe that, or else I get depressed! (laughing). My boyfriend and I play a game where at the end of movies, we count how many title cards we get through before seeing a woman’s name. (I groan) Yeah, it’s wild. Usually it ends up being a producer, or the casting director, or a costume designer. It’s rarely someone on the creative end. And when you start looking for it, you really start noticing it. But it’s heartening when you see a movie that defies that. Like at the end of Black Panther, there were a ton of women’s names early on in those credits! That’s my goal, is to like (laughing), be the early in the credits female name. And then fill the rest of those credits with people I know.

Oh cool, so you would want to make a feature film?

Yeah. I have lofty goals. We’ll see what happens, but I don’t want to close myself off to any opportunities.

Do you know what that movie would be about?

Probably witches. But I guess we’ll see! ❀

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Follow Kate on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr: @kateordie

Thank you so much for the interview Kate! I’m excited for your upcoming projects, especially the ones about Girl Magic. Soo... all of them :D

- Cooper

this is a dumb question, but what exactly is the "point" of the characters (particularly the Heathers, i'm assuming) that the new TV show is fucking up with their redesigns. i just wanna make sure i understand the issues here.

Ok the Heather’s are suppose to be the “popular girls”. They are the people who have the characteristics of what society considers to be beauty and they mock anyone who doesn’t met those standards.

Being skinny and making fun of people who aren’t. Caring more about their status standing than their grades, making fun of people for being geeks or nerd. Mocking people for not meeting what is considered the norm in society, aka being along the LGBT spectrum. (I mean damn JD and Veronica staged Ram and Kurt’s deaths as them dying because they where gay. And expecting them to be the mockery of the school. So making fun of people for being gay and the like.) Wearing clothes that are considered in at the time and that highlight their gender. Aka anything the Heathers wear which was all considered in at the time and stylish.

Heck the colors where a power symbol recognized by them. The queen of the school wore red. Both Chandler and Duke established this in the movie.

And then the first promo pics lacks the signature colors and shows them in weird clothes that would have gotten them weird looks and mocked at my school. The first promo pic is suppose to be thought over carefully. This is the first real image people are getting of your product. This is the hook that should help spark a person’s interest in your product. Get them thinking and hopefully interested in what you are making. And if the first image alone is already putting off a good portion of the fandom. Then you know you have an issue.

They only care (especially Chandler) about holding their social status. Veronica herself has said that she’s using her High IQ to pick out lip gloss and trying to figure out how many kegers she can hit before curfew.

Chandler gets pissed at Veronica for not holding up to the standard she expected for her at the party. (Sleeping with a guy she just met). Chandler certainty would never let herself be fat because it would go against her standards.

They are suppose to be a symbol of what society considers beautiful. And yes they are doing a modern version. But what sparks JD’s hatred for them. Is that he observes them (the Heathers, Kurt and Ram) mocking people for being different. He has seen this all before. Every school he goes to he sees it again and again. A never ending chain of bullying. He watched the Heathers make a mockery of Martha in the cafeteria. Making fun of the fat kid. (Now the show has a SKINNY Martha.) He watches Ram and Kurt chase down those nerdy boys and says stuff like “you piece of shit fag” and trying to get the kid to say “I like to suck big dicks”. Being gay wasn’t a good or popular thing. It lead to you getting bullied.

And yeah times now are a bit more accepting. But I went to a big school. I knew a lot of the LGBT kids because I was friends with a lot of them. I ran in circles that had a lot of them. (Anime Club, Art and Theater related things, Even Band.) I knew the spots where you could go after school and find a group of kids and a majority of them would fall into the LGBT spectrum. None of them where along the popular side at my school. Knowing my school they never would be.

By having the Heathers fall into the very groups they are suppose to mock. It goes against their characters. You can’t have an openly gender-fluid person or Lesbian mock other LGBT people. Yes not all LGBT people are nice. I’ve met plenty of assholes who are LGBT. But being LGBT and being the top dog at school and mocking other LGBT people at school. That doesn’t fit. A LGBT person couldn’t come up to me and make fun of me for being a girl who gets crushes on others girls. Because I’d just be like “so what you’re a guy that’s into guys. Or so what so are you. Etc.” It doesn’t have the same sting it does when coming from a non LGBT person.

A well known girl at my school was obese. But if she came up to me and made fun of my weight it wouldn’t work because she was heavier than me. Her insults could be fired right back at her. Now if a person in extremely good shape where to mock my size then that would hurt.

On top of that having all three of the Heathers fall into a minority but none of the other main characters. That also just seems wrong and like they are baiting people for brownie points.

Here are some changes to make the characters more diverse that would have worked.

•Making JD or Martha a race other than Caucasian. My favorite version of JD is Dan’s. Dan isn’t Caucasian. Yes I love Slater and Ryan. But image wise and art wise I love it when people base their JD around Dan. Also making them another race wouldn’t hurt their characters at all.

•Making Martha Bi or Pan. Martha’s crush is apart of the story and how she gets mocked so she still has to be into guys. But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t be Bi or Pan.

•Making JD along the Ace/Aro spectrum. I personally headcanon JD as Demisexual Hetroromantic. JD doesn’t seem like the type of character to honestly be that all into sex. Yes he had sex with Veronica. But I wouldn’t see it as interfering with the point of his character if he only had an interest in people after having a connection. I don’t think JD would just sleep with any girl. That he would have to have a general interest and connection with them. And yes typically Demisexual people (in my experience) need a longer time frame. But part of Heathers… well insane story is that it happens so fast.

•Making Veronica Bi. it wouldn’t mess with her character purpose and could give them that diverse cast they are looking for.

•Not making Martha skinny.

Now I wouldn’t want them to make all three of them minorities. As I feel likeIt might give the baiting feel it has with the Heathers. But if they did like 1 Heather & 2 of the others. Or 2 Heathers and 1 of the others. And making it seem like only minorities are mocked and non-minorities can’t be mocked doesn’t sit right with me. And I feel that’s how it would come off is all the bully’s werent minorities while the bullied kids were. As I know it isn’t true and I’ve watched people who fall into minorities categories make fun of people who don’t.

Idk three just feels like a good number.

And by 1 or two of the Heathers I mean their race. As I don’t think them not being Caucasian in a modern heathers would be much of a problem. In all productions of the musical I have seen at least one of the Heathers. (Usually Duke) isn’t caucasian. So having one of the Heathers a different race wouldn’t be an issue.

Oh and here is an idea. They go to a freaking school. You have cast characters you could use to get that diverse character cast you are looking for without messing with a character’s role. You want an LGBT character, I’ve said this before, but try having a girl have a thing for one of the Heathers. Like they did in the musical. Show her confessing to one of the Heathers. Then show how they treat her. Show them making fun of her or treating her poorly. Show me these asshole Heathers that are suppose to be an example of what is wrong with society. Show me Bi Veronica and them learning she is and Chandler pushing her to hide that side of her. That would be in character.

Show them making fun of a trans kid and that being part of that fuels JD to kill them. Because that would fit.

Show the negative consequences of what the Heathers do. Show how it effects people. When the show ends show Veronica trying to make things better. Show her approaching some of those kids and working with them.

Also for a racially diverse cast try having kids who aren’t just Chinese, Japanese or black. Try having Cuban characters or Native American or Polynesian or Puerto Rican, Indian, etc. Branch out to other races. Because while black and Asian may be two of the other top races after white in America, they aren’t the only ones.

I’m doing this on mobile. So sorry if it is long or runs together weird. I’m not always the best at wording this. @power-of-innocence tends to do a better job than me.

Edit: I would like to add that the reason the LGBT kids of my HS would never be popular wasn’t like due to my high school being really homophobic. (One of the most beloved seniors when I was a sophomore was an open lesbian.) But mostly due to the sheer size of my school. We had between 3,000 and 4,000 students each year. And 6 different lunch periods. (Technical 3 but for the 9th and 10th graders it was 6) It was impossible to fit the whole school in the cafeteria or gym. We didn’t really have popular kids. The closest you would get to it is kids whose names were well known. Like people really active with school related stuff. Like being apart of the student council or on the Cheerleading squad. (I actually knew many of those girls and they were all really nice.) Also having known those kids they weren’t the type of kids to ever be popular due to their personalities. They a lot where into unpopular subjects and/or also feel into the emo/goth categories. So a lot of them wouldn’t have been popular due to that. But even then the popular kids at my school weren’t mean. Most of them where popular because they where really nice and a lot of people just naturally liked them. Sorry just wanted to add that.Edit: At the time I made this every time I heard Martha mentioned people were saying that they were making her skinny, this maybe incorrect but I’m still not 100% sure. It’s still a horrible show regardless though. Just wanted to correct that.