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sabinefm · 4 years

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( bruna marquezine , cis female , peach ) welcome to aida&stefano , SABINA REUBE ! thank you for choosing to stay here. in this form it says that you go by the SHE / HER , you’re TWENTY THREE years old , you’re originally from SAN FRANCISCO , and you’ve been staying here for ONE YEAR . it also says you’re known to be + RESOURCEFUL , but also - SELFISH. that really shouldn’t be a problem though. check in at the front , hope you enjoy your stay ! (the click of heels, hot sand under your bare feet, chocolate covered strawberries, the imprints a bra leaves on your skin, red lipstick staining your fingertips )

ABOUT THE MUN. i hope this email never finds you

hello all, my name is pepper and i have never been on time for anything, ever in my life sdjkdskj this is especially true today, rip. no but honestly, i never thought i would actually get accepted into this beautiful rp so i stalled checking acceptances cause i’m a Scaredy Cat and that made me really late, and then i ended up taking the rest of my coworker’s shift cause she had to go and thus ended up coming home even later than i thought which has made me really really late... BUT against all the odds i’m here! and ready to party! and tell y’all about my bby sabina! but first a little bit about me, i am twenty four (ew), i can’t cook (rip), and i currently spend most of my lonely quarantine days either watching anime or scrolling through tiktok. i am canadian but every canadian that meets me thinks i’m american and i don’t know why. when i was a child i had an irrational (or yk very rational) fear of sharkboy from sharkboy and lava girl, and tbh it has never left me. i was also afraid of gill from kim possible so you can imagine my horror when that fish f*cking movie won an oscar?? when i was younger i also thot god looked like king triton from the little mermaid cause he was white and he had a beard yk. it fit in my little brain. and finally i just recently discovered girl in red and therefore feel like i finally got my bi girl card,,, feeling validated in this chillis tonight. and if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about me idk what will. anyways, that’s officially enough about me onto who we’re all really here for, ms sabine!

BIO. the lengths i would go to to both get attention and avoid it... astounding tldr ; daughter of a guy who created a dating site + app, came to a&s after leaving her husband to be at the alter after catching him cheating with her mother, wants to be a bad bitch, sometimes succeeds.

THEN.

sabina came into the world the child of a mediocre stay at home mom and a penniless entrepreneur so it goes without saying that she had very little. her dad had a lot of passion and a lot of drive but no one would really give him a chance, and her mother kind of only married the man because she was expecting him to make it big enough for her to never have to work another day in her life so? yeah she was hella disappointed tbh

but not sabina! she looked up to her father so much as a child. while her mom was kind of ~emotionally unavailable~ her father was too, but like at least he had a dream he believed in, yk? he wanted to help people fall in love and sabine being the big romantic she was as a child had never heard of anything so noble. her daddy was her hero. sabina honestly had big daddy’s little girl vibes until she was like 22 tkjsdkjd

one day when their family credit card got rejected one too many times sabina’s mother called it quits on yk the whole mother gig. she left sabina on a bench outside of the grocery store while she went to go home and ‘get some cash’ which even at seven sabine knew was a damn lie cause they were too broke to have any damn cash. and yeah that was the last sabina heard of her for a long ass time. it was a reverse ‘dad went to get some cigarettes’ situation but just as traumatic honestly.

although not as much for sabine’s dad. that man literally saw his wife leaving him as a minor setback and moved on. he threw himself harder into his work, to the point where sabine barely saw him. this was the start of sabine desperately trying to compete with her father’s business for even a sliver of his attention. this was a battle she usually lost.

sabine raised herself for a while there, since her father yk remarried his job and her mother was following the jonas brother’s cross country. she became both very independent and very lonely for a child, which was an odd combination that both haunted sabine for pretty much the rest of her life after that point and lead her to make most of her worst decisions. but that’s a story for another time, because right when all hope was lost sabine’s father won the lottery. literally.

all at once they were five million dollars richer. they went from nothing to everything real quick. and this marked a change in the reube’s lives in a way sabine couldn’t have even imagine at the time.

sabine’s father hector used the money to fund his business and that shit blew up! he created a site by the name of loveisblind that was in the ring with the likes of match.com and christianmingle yk, one of those dating sites. everyone on loveisblind is set up on blind dates based on the information they fill out on their profile and are only allowed to see each other when they reach a certain point of emotional intimacy. the site had wild success rates, and got very popular, blah, blah, the point was the reubes? suddenly rich af!

and you think that would give hector more time to spend with his daughter right? no. it gave hector the money to hire nannies for his daughter.

yes, somehow despite hector no longer having to work himself to the bone, sabine saw him even less. tragic really. she really became that lonely rich girl trope real quick, and this is what unfortunately got sabine into the habit of seeking the attention she wasn’t getting from her father in other men and women, which she is not proud of.

that unfortunately didn’t fill the void that sabine had but you know what did? making the loveisblind app so her daddy would love her. basically around the time that tinder started gaining traction and getting popular, people stopped going on the loveisblind site and started instead turning to apps. her father was trying and failing to get into that market, and sabina, being yk, actually a lot more intelligent than her father ever gave her credit for, created the app for his site and pitched it to him over his lunch one day. it was honestly one of the first times sabina can remember her father really paying attention to her in the longest time. it was also the proudest she’s ever seen him.

the app was a big success! a whole new generation was using it and finding love, including one ms sabine reube. in the early days of the app launch sabine met her prince charming, christopher ‘kit’ johannson. he swept her right off her feet, and she fell HARD, and when they debuted their relationship it wasn’t long until they kind of became the face of the app?? like sabine’s father was the creator after all, the fact that his daughter found love on the app too was big news for a while. people followed their relationship and strived for something like that for themselves. sabine didn’t know it at the time but they were basically a walking advertisement, and her father was LIVING for that.

fast forward a bit and your girl went to yale for computer engineering and business (did her daddy’s status and money ease the way? maybe man, nepotism am i right) whilst kit went to harvard, they were long distance for a bit before they graduated and kit very publicly proposed (the whole thing was well recorded too, gotta get that gram), and then both sab and kit moved in together and both started working for their families respective companies. it was around then that sabine started to understand just how much and how often kit was cheating on her. it was a real wakeup call.

sabine ended up breaking down to her father about her suspicions, and he basically ended up telling her to suck it up and think of the business. the fact was sabine and kit, the face of their new generation and one of the first successful couples from the app getting married and living happily ever after was amazing for the company. and the two of them calling the whole thing off just because of a little infidelity just wasn’t going to cut it.

now once again, this is where sabine’s deep desire to be loved and accepted really bites her in the ass. this was one of the first times sabine’s father had ever really asked her for anything so... she did it. or at least she did her best to do it. she lasted until the wedding day around the time where she caught kit and her own mother (who she only invited out of a deep rooted need to actually know the woman who gave birth to her again) going at it in the coat closet of their wedding venue. yeah, at that point sabine pretty much snapped, blacked out, smashed a whole wedding cake over kit’s head, and took their honeymoon to venice on her own. she arrived at Aida&Stefano with running mascara in a ruined wedding dress trying to ask about a honeymoon suite. it was a whole mess, but you know what so is sab so at least she was on brand.

NOW.

after sabina arrived she spent about a week mourning her failed almost-marriage and yk, destroyed family before she decided to fuck it all and reinvent herself. she desperately wanted to become someone new, someone unrecognizable from who she was before, even if it was only on the inside. so she cut her hair (the first step to every transformation) hardened everything soft about herself and made the irrevocable decision to become a bad bitch. she (mostly) succeeded. kind of.

sabine basically curb stomped out the soft, hopeless romantic people pleaser in her and decided to become someone more unsympathetic. someone who puts her own needs first instead of burning herself up to keep others warm (cause what good has that ever done her before?). someone who people would be afraid to hurt but who wouldn’t even feel pain anyways. and to sum it up that person is a heartless bitch. or at least she tries to be.

i’m gonna stop here because this is already a lot longer than i wanted it to be and i haven’t even got to the other sections yet rip but you get the point i feel

PERSONALITY. *feels nothing* mmm, don’t like that *feels something but like too much* mmm not a fan of that either

most of this is tbd because i’m still developing her but

VAIN. the kind of girl who will file her nails or check herself out in the mirror while you’re talking to her. will reapply her lipstick in the rearview mirror of her car while she’s driving. checks herself out in any reflective surface, i mean i would too if i looked like bruna but Still

KIND. even though sab tries to be a hard ass she’s probably the most loyal, generous, kind person you would ever meet deep down. like she puts on this persona of being heartless, but if anyone needs her she will be there for them. kind of hates that she’s such a softie sometimes but she can’t help it.

EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE. doesn’t want to be hurt again and will do pretty much anything to avoid that. tries to keep people at arms length especially romantically. loves making friends though, and will indeed spoil them.

HEADCANNONS. who wants to hire me as their maid i’m not gonna clean im just gonna wear a cute maid outfit dust like 6 things and bend down a lot

has the vibes of that drunk rich aunt that’s always smoking like sexily as she looks far into the distance and wears like a super luxurious coat. will gossip with you. will buy you things your mom won’t. will cuss out your toxic father at the dinner table. that’s her energy.

unfortunately actually does smoke. i hate

okay fun fact, the only reason sabine went to university for computer programming and business was because she felt her father wanted her to. she honestly has no real passion for the subject and just wanted to use her talent to make her father as proud of her as he was on the day she debuted that app to him. but now that making daddy proud isn’t like the only thing occupying her entire brain sabine like is like ??? wait what do i actually want to do with my life ??? and it took her a while to figure it out but after a while she fell back on one of her passions, art. she’s actually making a graphic novel aimed towards young adults about a modern day hades and persephone vibe, kind of about a girl who falls in love with the grim reaper and the lengths she goes to to chase after her (yes it is a Lady Reaper) into the depths of hell,,, it’s wild. she’s very proud of it but also kind of shy about it tbh. her go to critic is georgio, because she knows that little shit will be honest and yk what she respects that.

but when it comes to making actual money your girl turns to cam work most of the time, because well. at the very least it’s quick, easy, and semi discreet. and sometimes she gets something out of it too. she figures it’s a win win, and she’s been doing it for about a year now, mostly because she absolutely refuses to use any of her father’s money.

is allergic to cucumber.

has a different 'relationship’ like every week or so, along with a few one night stands peppered in. unfortunately still attracted to people who are bad for her (kit for example was an asshole and a cheater and DEFINITELY conservative like she messed up on that one), but is also very afraid of falling in love again and letting herself get hurt, so she normally doesn’t let things last too long before she starts self sabotaging.

if you ever catch sabine with like... her nails growing out or her nail polish chipped, something is wrong. like something is deeply wrong. sabine will have her nails done in the middle of the apocalypse, the only reason they would be less than perfect is if she is having a breakdown. always has colour on her nails, and usually it’s a shade of red, purple, or black.

always has wild ass stories to tell about her tinder dates or one night stands and will tell them without shame for your entertainment. is a great storyteller honestly, a talent she got from her mother but she doesn’t want to admit that.

fun fact, her mother mariah was PISSED when hector got rich AFTER she left him and tried for years to sue him or something but no dice. she was so angry and vengeful over the whole thing that she took the opportunity of being invited to her daughters wedding to get back at her husband where it hurt, his business. thus sleeping with kit. didn’t really think about how her daughter might feel about the whole thing because she was yk blinded by rage, but that’s just how mariah is so i mean,,, rip sabina.

shops when she’s sad, or happy, or angry, or confused sdkjdsj will use any excuse to shop, and at this point she has more clothes than she knows what to do with. her style can be kind of out there at times, but she will let you borrow things though.

she has a cat named momo. yes that is inspired by her being the peach skeleton. also has a parrot named poe i think. i also have the urge to give her a snake but... i will resist. so sabine wants a snake for sure

her favourite colours are black and red

she is a horrible terrible driver. don’t drive with sabine unless you’re an adrenaline junkie or like want to die tbh

her dad 100% set up the relationship between kit and sabine as a pr stunt, but sabine doesn’t know that yet and when she finds out her father used her like that ooh boy things are gonna get wildt. as it is now sabine just thinks she disappointed him and it’s kind of eating her alive. half the reason she’s staying here is because she doesn’t want to face him or yk her old life anymore. her father is so caught up in the shame she caused him that he hasn’t even tried to call her after the whole thing and the one time sabine got hella drunk and called him all he did was tell her what a disappointment she was and ask when she was coming back to work so we love ~parenting~

WANTED CONNECTIONS. girls will “🥺🥺🥺🥺” their way out of everything

close friends please and thanks, best friends also please, uh, can i get some awkward one night stands that avoid each other at all cost, can i get a neighbour who’s ear sabine is always talking off in the hallway between their rooms even tho they just want to go home but can’t because sabine is Oversharing, maybe a flirtationship, but also i would love an enemy (it could be for a ridiculous reason or a completely valid reason but either way please give it to me), someone she goes out dancing/partying with at piccolo, a sibling like relationship, a confidante, someone who she trusts to read her comic and maybe even do some linework, and absolutely anything else okay my brain is fried rn but i want it all! please like this and i will slip and slide into your dms <3

#ostellointro #me: *sees a nice neat intro at an appropriate length* I Want To Do That #this monstrosity: bitch you thot

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palmviolet · 5 years

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hii! may i just ask you why/how the mom steve meme is sexist?

thank you for asking so politely!! i’m happy to talk about it (and i think it ought to be discussed).

okay, so let’s talk about mom steve.

steve is a teenage boy. the foundations of his character were set as the stereotypical 80s high school douche, a kind of foil to jonathan, whom nancy was always ultimately going to choose over steve - regardless of how steve’s character developed later on. then the duffers met joe keery, and decided to take his character in a different direction. he starts the series as your high school bully, though the take on the trope is more nuanced than it was originally, but by the end of season 1 he’s starting to redeem himself.

this is all good. it’s more interesting, actually, than the more typical archetype fulfilled by billy in season 2. the duffers are all about nuance.

so let’s go to joyce in season 1. joyce embodies another archetype - the stricken, frantic, hysterical mother. the narrative could easily dismiss her, but instead a large proportion of the series is from her perspective: we see her use of the christmas lights not as a delusion but as a rational, logical experiment. we as the audience are desperate for the others to believe her. so here, too, there is another subversion of a trope - and when her beliefs are validated by hopper, literally part of the institutions that dismiss her (he is ex-army, the police chief, a man), she is still a fundamental part of uncovering the mystery and finding her son. he doesn’t take over. without her, they never would have succeeded.

all this she does in aid of her child. she gets called crazy, delusional, a mess even by her own son, jonathan - but she doesn’t give up.

to summarise so far - in season 1, both steve and joyce subvert tropes. joyce overcomes institutional sexism by her strength and belief as a mother.

onto season 2. the crisis - the monster du jour - isn’t so glaring this time, but creeps up on the narrative. will is present and for a while joyce can be more relaxed. she has a boyfriend now - bob - and they seem happy together. we learn than she and hopper went to high school together. we discover she - and the other characters - are still heavily traumatised by the events of season 1. nancy is too, and she’s struggling in her relationship with steve. but instead of framing their breakup around her trauma, around how they simply don’t work together anymore because they’ve both grown to be different people, the show seems to favour steve and make it less than amicable. we are made to feel sorry for steve, poor, dumped steve, instead of placing the two on equal ground.

@jancys-blue-bayou made a good post about this a while back, when the teaser for s3 came out. in it they discuss steve in season 2; ‘they began […] by making him “a loser” through his relationship with nancy ending in a way that humiliated his frail male ego and then king steve losing his crown to billy, so he’s not popular in high school now. just like jonathan’s never been.’ essentially they begin to shape steve into what jonathan used to be - a loner, an outcast, someone the audience should sympathise with. the kind of character stranger things has always been about.

meanwhile the whole mess with will begins, and joyce has no other focus once again - her relationship with bob falls by the wayside, unless he becomes relevant to will again (calling him up about the tape, inviting him in to help them solve the map). within the narrative this is perfectly understandable - her son is going through something horrible, again, of course he’s all she cares about - but we lose any sense of joyce the person, again. she’s just joyce the mom. contrast this with hopper, who is treated very differently by the narrative. he has multiple plotlines, emotional beats. as @nancykali puts it, ‘the duffers didn’t want to deal with their only main adult female character having a storyline outside of will and hopper. oh but wait - hopper could get his storylines as joyce’s love interest, a support for will, and an adoptive parent to el though, couldn’t he? that’s unbalanced and sexist storytelling.’

so, to recap - while joyce is reduced down to just the Mom (which was fine in s1, because of the urgency of the situation and the fact that this was a new show, none of the characters had been developed much yet, but starts to become alarming in s2) which by default makes her less relatable, less of a figure for the audience to connect with, steve is deliberately cast as a multi-faceted, sympathetic character. joyce’s ‘story is no less than hopper’s but it’s treated as lesser by the canon because she’s a woman and her role is Mother First, Human Second. but if a man decides to be a father he deserves to be lauded, where for a mother to adopt a little girl, that’s too predictable to some people.’ this last bit is in reference to hopper, but it works for steve too. steve giving attention to the kids and acting protective over them for what amounts to one afternoon is celebrated far beyond anything joyce has done, because it’s breaking type. and sure, that can be a good thing. when the series first came out i really enjoyed babysitter steve.

but that’s all he is. a babysitter. joyce is a real mom, and yet because she’s a woman, that’s her job description. but because steve is a teenage boy, who used to be something of a bully, he gets praise far beyond what he might deserve.

being a mother is what drives joyce’s narrative arc - and that’s wrong, and misogynistic, because she deserves to be fleshed out and given other plotlines too - and her character would literally have nothing without it. it feels like a slap in the face, then, for it to be steve who is labelled ‘best mom’ - steve, who has multiple facets to his character, steve who is a teenage boy, steve who is affluent and male and up until recently embodied the trope of 80s highschool bully. joyce is quite literally a single mom and we are shown that she often struggles to make ends meet. she’s had nervous breakdowns in the past, she works weekends and nights and holidays, she relies on jonathan almost as a co-parent to will. she’s a flawed mother, but she does her goddamn best because her life is hard - and despite all this she finds time to actively know and engage with her sons’ interests, to play with them, to have jokes with them. this is being a good mom.

‘mom steve’ is perpetuated by fandom, but it is rooted in the show. take the first s3 teaser: ‘they have him work a menial job that has fans of the mom meme write stuff like “steve got a minimum wage job to take care of his five kids”’. both joyce and jonathan work/have worked menial jobs to support their family, possibly both at minimum wage - while steve is very notably and explicitly affluent. in fact if any character in the show who is not a mom deserves to be called one, it’s jonathan, who is in all but name a co-parent to will. i think @jancys-blue-bayou and @nervousalligator have written on this in the past.

however, applying the term ‘mom’ to these male characters at all is sexist by itself. it promotes the idea that only women can be caregivers - that parenting is only the duty of the mother, and is nothing to do with men. this is highly misogynistic, links back to age-old gender roles that it’s high time were erased, and yet the meme perpetuates them. steve is male. if anything, he should be called ‘dad steve’ - but people won’t run with that, because it’s all a joke. because motherhood is a joke. joyce is defined by being a mother and yet she gets no recognition for it, while steve is not a mother, has multiple plotlines and facets beyond that meme, and yet is lauded as the best mom of all.

it’s actually a manner of woobifying him. he’s not a perfect character, not of them are, yet this ‘mom’ caricature somehow strives to paint him as such. it’s the same with hopper, in his parenting of el - his obvious flaws are dismissed across the fandom because of sweet father-daughter moments. i love hopper as a character, and i can appreciate steve, but often people simply don’t understand them. as @paris-geller-was-straightwashed puts it, ‘y’all will soften the males of this show all the way down until they literally don’t have any sharp edges anymore.’ the male characters become perfect, can do no wrong, while the women are criticised for their every mistake (see the treatment of nancy post s2).

it’s a cycle. the show began it, when they tried to promote steve the best way they knew how - by shaping him into a prototype of jonathan, except without any flaws and much, much richer - and the fandom picked it up and ran with it. this led to fanservice, with the scoops ahoy teaser and the stranger things twitter (don’t think i’ve forgiven the mothers’ day tweet). with any luck the fandom will wise up a little or the creators will stop pandering to them, but we’ll have to see the outcome of s3. regardless, it’s time to stop calling steve a mom. if anything, he’s a big brother to dustin - yet another role that was somewhat snatched from jonathan (see the scene at the end of s1 when jonathan comes down to mike’s basement at the end of the d&d game - he’s a big brother figure to all the boys). people call steve a mom because he gave dustin advice - horrible, sexist advice (‘treat ‘em like you don’t care’) - and put a tea towel on his shoulder. that’s it.

so maybe appreciate steve as his own character, a babysitter at most, because you’re doing him a disservice by woobifying him and calling him a ‘mom’. appreciate joyce, who is an actual mom, and maybe start lobbying the duffers for more development for their female characters rather than for more sexist memes.

TLDR; joyce is defined by being a mother and yet she gets no recognition for it, while steve is not a mother, has multiple plotlines and facets beyond that meme, and yet is lauded as the best mom of all.

#steve harrington #joyce byers #jonathan byers #st meta #stranger things meta #st3 #asks #sorry this is so long lmao #it's been swirling in my mind for a while and i needed to do this issue justice

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wingedkiare · 5 years

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This has been on my mind for some time and I’ve been trying to work out how to say this. Someone I knew was stalked. It was a guy she’d thought was a friend, he wanted to be FWB, she rejected him - and things got ugly (though not violent). And it isn’t the first time something like this has happened to her.

I was reminded of a discussion I had with my therapist, when I was dealing with the emotional fallout from the Sex Tape Theft. (The tldr version: close friend of ours took, copied and then put back a sex tape while we were moving. We only found out when they’d ticked someone off who knew about the copy. It was almost a decade after the theft. I spent a week not wanting to leave my bed) . I told him that I felt like I couldn’t do anything. Like I didn’t have control.

And he told me that I can’t control the actions of men. The only thing I can control is who I let close to me. Men will disappoint me, but it won’t hurt as much if I recognize the bad behaviors before letting them be close friends. That I should trust people, but I should also seek validation from trustworthy sources. That the attention of those people are what matter, not any attention. (PS - society grooms women to think that any attention is good. When I was stalked in HS, the assistant principal told me that I shouldn’t be so upset because “it should be flattering that he was attracted” - which, no. A kid had a crush, asked me out. I said I wasn’t interested and he kept following me everywhere)

There were red flags along the way. I didn’t know enough to see them for what they were. But now I knew enough to spot them in the future.

Note: this is not victim blaming, this is sharing what I learned about spotting predatory behavior so that you can cut those men out of your life. Because they will hurt you, and it won’t matter if you’re a friend or not.

What my therapist identified as Red Flags:

1. They believe in the Friend Zone. Any guy who believes that the friend zone is real thinks they can cheat code their way into someone’s pants. If not your pants, then some other woman. And well, that leads right into the next one.

2. You’re different from other girls/women. They might call some random woman a bitch, a slut or a cunt - but you’re different. You’re their friend, you aren’t like the rest of them. Whatever their logic is, they still only treat women like people if it’s someone they apparently care about. But if you make them mad and cut them out, they will turn their anger on you.

3. They have no issues at all looking at stolen pictures of women they don’t know, whether they’re celebs or not. It’s not like those women will ever know. (I can speak to this one - when you do find out? Just the theoretical idea of someone else seeing it will make you so ill you’ll want to change everything about your life - therapy is the only reason I feel comfortable posting pictures of me at the gym, out in shorts, etc) Also, they share pictures with other guys. Right there it says that they do not understand moral lines about what’s appropriate or not. It’s the internet, there are a million pictures of naked women who consented to this.

4. They warn you against OTHER guys. As in “why are you having out with [random dude you’ve mentioned but they don’t know], you know they’re just trying to get in your pants?” Look at the way they comment if you just mention a random guy. Their reactions are usually because they’re projecting their own desires onto this random guy. (Case in point, the woman w/ the stalker? She had mentioned going to the gym with a male friend - and he immediately said she shouldn’t be alone with this guy because he couldn’t be trusted, he just wanted to get into their pants. They were gonna meet AT the gym. In public. Weren’t doing anything else)

5. They think a no is a maybe. It’s that age old societal thing where guys think they should be able to wear down a woman until she decides to date them.

6. They joke about being the next guy in your life. So here’s the thing. Yes, I have been with TheBoy since we were 18. But for the first 5 years of our relationship, I had dude after dude give me their number and say “if you guys break up, I’m next.” It was creepy, it was weird and I never trusted a single guy who said that. Because I knew to them I wasn’t a person. (I might have jokingly called dibs on TheBoy when I first saw him, but had I found out he was dating someone else? I would have totally respected that. Because he’s a person with a life and his own thoughts and feelings)

Anyways, I just wanted to put out there what my therapist taught me. That I don’t have to accept all attention. That it’s up to me who I trust and let in. I am not responsible for their reactions, I am only responsible for treating myself the best way that I can - and that’s by surrounding myself with people who love me and have good intentions.

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igetfoxdevilswild · 7 years

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My Wonder Woman Review

It’s super duper long and rambling because I don’t have a platform with amazing editors anymore so that’s just how it’s gonna be. TLDR version: awesome, loved it, go see it, 8/10. Spoilers below the cut.

I admit, I somehow never got into Wonder Woman before. I got into comics by way of Batman (well, Archie actually but if we’re talking the big 2), and while WW is with him in DC’s golden trio, I just never went further into DC than Batman and by the time my fledgeling feminist heart had thrown off its “trying to be one of the guys” shackles, I had moved on to Marvel. Lynda Carter’s portrayal was hovering somewhere in my mind (even though I have never seen a single episode, thanks to the collective pop culture psyche that also means I know most of the original Pokemon names without ever having seen a single episode of that either), and I knew vaguely of the character’s background, but other than that I was going into this movie “fresh”.

I am grateful that this means that I can, in a way, share part of the experience with young girls whose perhaps first foray into superheroes will be this movie, because girl oh girl is this a GREAT movie for little girls to see and is Diana a great hero for little girls to love.

Rather than the dark and gritty ventures that were so desperate to show comics are for grown-ups too they were willing to take them away from children to prove it, Patty Jenkins has directed a fantastic movie for DC that dips into the same pool that has been making Marvel (especially Guardians of the Galaxy) so successful with all ages: love can save us.

While I personally could have done without the actual romantic plot line itself, what it gave the movie was relevant (and for once a male character is “fridged” for a woman’s character development in a frankly welcome role reversal). Diana’s ultimate victory is not with the phallic weapon which in fact is destroyed before she has a chance to kill the enemy, but with the Bracelets of Submission. The Bracelets have a complicated mythos that I will be learning about in my newfound interest in WW but from my limited understanding they symbolise the Amazons submission to Aphrodite i.e. love, humanity, and altruism. The movie shows this by having Diana discover that humans are capable of evil and “do not deserve her”, but then realises it doesn’t matter. She believes in love, humanity, and altruism, and witnesses that humans are also capable of good, and will fight for them anyway.

The male character is the damsel in distress. The male character appears shirtless for no plot reason. The male character uses charm where Diana barges in ready to fight. The Amazons are strong as hell. The Amazons are of many ages and body types (though admittedly still not enough). The fight choreography is amazing.

While I wouldn’t have objected to more muscles and a longer skirt, Gal Gadot is never shot gratuitously, no upskirt or down cleavage views, but instead the camera celebrates her fighting ability and she is shown as strong, capable, passionate, and determined.

While in a way naive and idealistic, Diana is not talked down or condescended to by the men who befriend her. Much of the film can be summed up as Steve: “Diana no!”, Diana: “Diana yes!”, but in more of a “Trust me, I’ve got this” kind of way. Her decisions are validated and it isn’t a failing when she doesn’t get it 100% right, it’s a chance to learn and grow.

The scenes of her going over the top, across no mans land, and into the village put happy tears in my eyes.

The movie gave me a very Captain America vibe, in terms of quality and character-wise, potentially focusing on characters at the cost of plot, but this is not a negative. Though The First Avenger is one of the weaker Marvel films in my opinion, it’s still enjoyable, re-watchable, and sets up a great and beloved character really well. As long as Justice League doesn’t do to Diana what Age of Ultron did to Black Widow, I’m hoping DC can now build from WW just as Marvel built from Cap.

However, despite in a superhero movie context ticking all the boxes while turning a bunch of tropes on their heads, I did have issues with the movie. While I absolutely loved it, I can’t give it a free pass on everything.

Firstly, I got excited that the villain was also a woman, but unfortunately Dr Poison kind of fell flat in the shadow of Ludendorff and Ares.

But, on that note, why do two out of three of the villains have a disability? Why is one described as a psychopath? Why is there a joke about Diana being blind? We did get a man with PTSD, so why do none of the Amazons (while showing scars), have visible disabilities?

Why are there so few non-white Amazons, and why are there even less with speaking lines? We got a Native American man talking about colonialism. We got an Arabic man talking about the colour of his skin. So why didn’t we get more women of colour?

I loved this movie. I cried during Diana’s fight scenes because they were so powerful and I thought, is this what men feel like in every other superhero movie? But that’s because this movie was made for me.

Just like Rogue One, just like The Force Awakens, just like Fury Road. I am an able bodied white woman. These movies are amazing and have been described as groundbreaking, but they’re not groundbreaking for everyone. A white woman in a leading role is not groundbreaking. We need to do better.

One more issue might just be because I recently listened to all 23 hours of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast on WWI (Blueprint for Armageddon) which focuses on the human factors and costs of WWI, but it did leave me feeling a little bit uncomfortable.

In a way, it is still considered “too soon” to joke about the world wars, with good reason. But, over at Marvel, Captain America is an actual Nazi right now without much of a peep in the mainstream so apparently nothing is off limits. But if EA’s Battlefield 1 #justWWIthings hashtag debacle is anything to go by, WWI is still a touchy subject.

Probably because pretty much an entire generation was killed, injured, or traumatised from horrible warfare on a cosmic scale compared to anything that had come before, many of the mass casualties the result of inept leaders making bad decisions from their board rooms.

So actually it makes perfect sense that Diana’s first foray into the world of men would be during this time. Because obviously the Amazons are not averse to fighting honourably with arrows and swords, but with the scale of destruction and devastation never seen before that point, it would be easier to believe that a god of war was behind the great war instead of average people.

It was refreshing to see a movie about WWI for a change because it did explore some of the horrors (trench warfare, new technology including gas attacks, civilian casualties), and it was amazing to see a woman kicking ass and taking names in a war movie in general, BUT… when the opportunity arose to explore the theme of humans being capable of evil without an external otherworldly force, the movie contradicted itself by having Ares be alive and having his death at the hands of Wonder Woman stop the war.

I was hoping, and I think it would have been much more poignant and meaningful, for Ares to have already been dead the whole time. (Then we could have also avoided the tired fist fight at the end.)

While the movie did not let us think in black and white, of the german soldiers as the inherently evil bad guys, and did not let the allies get off scot free, the fact that WWI was portrayed as being ended by one superhero killing one supervillain to me felt like a cheapening of the horrible things that real humans enacted on each other and the suffering and struggles that real men and women went through to bring an end to the war.

#wonder woman #ww #movie review #spoilers

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