#we as the audience like. ONLY see chris at his worst. from the beginning he's grumpy. he's vaguely suspicious. he's screaming into a car. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

waynedunlaptheorgandonor · 1 year

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i resent very much that i am writing twd meta this late in the year of our lord two-thousand-twenty-two after my long journey to distance myself from it, but the words are rattling around in my mind grapes, and because i am incapable of keeping things to myself, how about one more go for old time’s sake?

i think the main thing that i want to say to y’all is that we didn’t imagine it

obviously caryl has had chemistry from the very first scene they had together, but even these past few years, where we’ve dissected and meta’d every second of their screentime together under kang’s watch to death, and been like “here’s how bernie can still win!” we weren’t being delusional. the romantic beats were all there. the narrative was set up that way. she was wearing a ring in that dream sequence. he brought her a cherokee rose on a tray. they longed for each other, and planned to run away together, and it was never once foolish of us to believe otherwise, bc the only reason it didn’t happen is bc the narrative got eaten by amc’s desire to beat the shit out of twd for every drop of money it could possibly give them, and in the process they contracted Chris Charter Syndrome, which is unfortunately fatal

for those unfamiliar (tho with this group there’s probably enough crossover that i don’t rly need to explain), chris carter, the creator of the x-files, is notoriously dense af about how much of his show’s popularity is driven by his ~amazing lore~ vs the audience’s desire to have mulder and scully fuck

every conversation with him, to this day, goes p much like this:

[chris carter: people love the x-files for the mystery and intrigue and they don’t want resolved sexual tension, they want to watch our mains constantly will-they/won’t-they while battling government conspiracies until the end of time

the audience: we would watch one hundred billion hours of mulder and scully searching for bigfoot but comically missing him every time bc they get distracted by fucking each other, we could not care less about your plot. your plot doesn’t even make sense

chris carter: they just can’t wait to see what twists happen next

the audience: we are tired of the twists, and we want them to bone. in fact, here are graphs and studies and stats that all say that we would be much happier if you would just give us mulder and scully fighting silly monsters and stop trying to be gritty and dark with your plots that even you admit you don’t understand

chris carter: i am very good at my job

the audience: you are not good at your job]

rinse and repeat

if this sounds like gimple, that’s bc he has the worst case of CCS i’ve seen in a long time, and it’s unfortunate bc it’s contagious, and those who are especially susceptible are misogynistic money-hungry dudebro companies who think that what people want are GRIT and BLOOD and MAN PAIN, even when their statistics consistently tell them that they are wrong. a key component of CCS is an undeserved inflation of one’s ego and the inability to recognize the fact that one is making an ass out of oneself, which is why the past 84 years have looked like this:

[gimple: man, people love my negan and rick man-pain arc

the audience: no we don’t

gimple: i know what the ladies want, they want jerk-off contests between mediocre men while i kill off all their faves

the audience: no we don’t

amc: hmmm, while i’m picking up what you’re laying down, gimple, let’s see what this other showrunner can do for a minute

kang: people want stories about people. they want to see the seeds of character development that were planted at the very beginning bloom. they want to see the characters with chemistry go down on one another

the audience: yes, this, this is what we want

amc: interesting concept

amc: however

amc: that sounds suspiciously like conflict/resolution, and if things are neatly resolved then we can’t make money out of it anymore. i know that all the statistics say that caryl is our top ship, and that we should get them together, and let them have a concluded, peaceful ending

amc: BUT

amc: let’s instead launch a spin-off with one (1) of the duo (the male, obviously), and then let’s leave their storyline ambiguous bc that way they’ll follow us to the shitty spin-off, but also anyone who just has the hots for daryl/norman reedus will also watch bc he’s still an Eligible Bachelor ;)

amc: this is a good idea that will make us lots of money

the audience: no it will not

amc: gimple, we need your wisdom again, btw, the people miss you

the audience: no we do not

gimple: who’s ready for some GRIT AND BLOOD AND MORE MAN PAIN?!?!?!

the audience: for the love of god]

it’s stupid and exhausting, and i have Mad Respect for those of you who have been putting so much effort into making sure our voices have been heard. ( @my-mt-heart , @gunmetal-ring , @lighteneverything to name just a few) plz know that your voice WAS heard, and i fully believe that you DID make an impact. it’s just that, when push comes to shove (i.e. when you’re dealing with misogynistic rich white men), CCS is one helluva disease

and it’s sad! it’s very very sad! i’ve been spending my time away over in the “our flag means death” universe, and y’all, it has been WILD. all of the interactions with the show’s creator and the cast have been “oh you enjoyed that? we’ll be sure to keep that in mind so that we can cultivate a show that you will love, bc it makes more sense to listen to our viewers than to ourselves sometimes, bc they’re the ones who keep us from driving ourselves directly into a ditch! thank you for your feedback, we appreciate and love you!”

like??????

but see, that’s the difference between creators who are in it for the story vs. creators who are in it for the money. if you are solely money-driven you’re never going to be able to dedicate yourself to the narrative, bc narratives have concrete endings. they require you to not always be looking for that next spin-off, or to not sacrifice a character’s integrity to fit it inside of a bad plotline. they are shows like the good place, that had an ending in mind from the start. they are shows like ofmd or what we do in the shadows, where the audience’s opinion gets listened to. even supernatural (mother fucking supernatural, you guys!!!) catered to its biggest fanbase better than twd did. it might have been clown shoes, but destiel’s last-minute confession was at least explicitly romantic. amc was too cowardly to give us even that, bc it might “jeopardize” their spin-off

what we can take solace in, tho, is the fact that they are in the end stages of CCS. they think they’ve given enough to string caryl fans along over to the spin-off era of twd, but they haven’t. they’re going to crash and burn, and go out the way of GoT, in that everyone is going to be like “wow that was... let’s just not talk about that one, huh?” and it will be satisfying to watch them fizzle out into nothing when they get hit with the grim reality that they should have gotten their heads out of their asses and listened to their fans who told them that, yes, your “hot male lead” needs that middle-age grey-haired woman you cast to the side so carelessly, and that fact doesn’t change just bc you can’t fathom people caring about a woman over the age of 25

whatever. it is what it is. what matters most here is what i said up top, which is that we didn’t imagine it. we did not waste our time. we were not stupid. we had these beautiful characters laid out before us, and a storyline that supported them, and we took it and ran with it in the right direction. it’s not our fault that the narrative didn’t follow

our retribution will be the fact that now it’s our turn not to follow. instead, we can finally rest, not having to worry about the future, bc who fucking gives a shit about their dumb taunts, trying to get us to watch the spin-off for the “possibility” of caryl way down the line? we’re over it. we’re not chasing anymore carrots. we’re happy here in our caryl sandbox, with our li’l aus and headcanons and fix-its, and we don’t have to fucking discourse at each other every week anymore. we can come and go with a lightness we haven’t felt maybe fucking ever, bc it’s over now. it’s not in their hands anymore, it’s in ours

it was real. the feelings we felt, the relationships that were made between us, they were real. and it will all continue to be real in whatever way we decide to keep it. we can and should grieve what could have/should have been, and we can and should be mad, because there’s no question, we were wronged, but let’s not stay in that negativity place forever. let’s not forget why we all were drawn here to begin with, and let’s not forget what we’ve gained from each other

it wasn’t “just a tv show.” it was, and is, a community that has influenced lives to the point of changing their entire trajectory. i have written over one million (1,000,000+) words of caryl fic, and bc of that i have been able to self-publish my own book, and get into freelance writing. bc of caryl, i have been able to ghostwrite and collaborate with published authors, and am on my way to making my actual day job being writing, which is something i’ve wanted since i was itty bitty. bc of caryl, i have traveled the world. bc of caryl, i have made relationships and connections that have, quite literally, changed my entire life. amc can’t take any of that away from me. it can’t take any of that away from YOU

so yeah, shit sucks, but hey, i got something for you:

we are fine, fam, or we will be, once we’ve had a chance to lick our wounds, because we are the holders of the narrative now. caryl is OURS, finally

so, when you’re feeling up to it, come join me in the sandbox, and let’s have some fun

stay hype, stan each other, bc twd is in its grave, but caryl is forever,

-diz

p.s. felt weird not having a 30 rock reference in here anywhere so:

k bye 4 real

#god bless and amen #luhh u all #caryl #caryl spoilers #twd #twd s11 spoilers #dunlap tp

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rachelbethhines · 3 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - “Rapunzel Knows Best!” ( A first half of S3 Recap)

So I decided to place the recap after Be Very Afraid for several reasons. For starters it’s where the season three hiatus took place. It’s also framed like a cliffhanger episode the same as The Great Tree and Queen for a Day; so while Cassandra’s Revenge is technically the midseason finale, Be Very Afraid functionally servers this narrative purpose better. Finally I want to keep the Cassandra heavy stuff contained in it’s own recap later same as I did for Varian’s arc in season one.

Also keep in mind, everything I discussed in previous recaps still apply here. Nothings changed and you could argue that the issues I bring up now could have also apply to past seasons; they just happen to be at their worst here.

Here are the past recaps

To Filler or Not to Filler

Hey, What Ever Happened to That Varitas, Guy?

What Is the Point?

‘Whatta Twist’

And here are the episodes that’s covered in this recap

Rapunzel’s Return Part 1

Rapunzel’s Return Part 2

Return of the King

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

The Lost Treasure of Herz Der Sonne

No Time Like the Past

Beginnings

The King and Queen of Hearts

Day of the Animals

Be Very Afraid

Poorly Defined Conflicts

I’m not just talking about Cassandra’s lack of goals here either, though that is a part of it. I mean in several episodes the central conflict isn’t laid out clearly enough before being resolved. We flip from one set up to the next without ever resolving the first; like in Rapunzel’s Return when Cass and Varian fight for screen time or whenever Rapunzel is suppose to learn one lesson only for someone else to learn a completely different lesson in every other episode. And to this day I don’t know what Rapunzel and Feldspar’s subplot in Lost Treasure was suppose to be about.

There’s also of course the ill-defined overall conflict; which at this point has become convoluted and nonsensical to the extreme, and will only grow more aggravatingly stupid as the season progresses. The main villains lack clear goals, their motivations don’t align with previously stated facts, and the actual interesting conflict involving the threat of the rocks and their destruction of people’s lives and homes is just shoved under the rug and forgotten about.

There is no story without conflict. Having the conflict be all over the place is not only confusing but makes it harder for the audience to invest in what’s going on.

Failed Narrative Promises

Tying in with the above statement regarding conflicts, we have failed narrative promises. Rapunzel is repeatedly told to that she needs to learn something in several episodes only for her not to learn it at all. She either learns some unrelated ‘lesson’ that wasn’t established, (like in Rapunzel’s Return with her pervious goal about ‘opening up to others’ being switched out for a generic ‘responsibility’ lesson that at the last minute, where she doesn’t even do anything responsible,) or she winds up ‘teaching’ the opposite lesson to a different character thereby rewarding her for her bad behavior.

And that’s just within the induvial episodes themselves; there’s also broken narrative promises through out the overall story arc; like...

no justice/redemption for Lady Caine,

no acknowledgment that the Saporians are the victims of colonization

no conclusion regarding Corona’s murky past

no satisfying ending to Varian’s plot that sees everyone in involve grow

a poor copout of an explanation for Cassandra’s face/heel turn

The Dark Prince reveal going nowhere

The Brotherhood being put on a bus

King Frederic, or any royal, not being held accountable for their past actions

Lance’s new found responsibilities just being thrown away for the tenth time

The Disciples plot being being dropped

next to nothing in season two winds up being relevant

And Rapunzel, the protagonist of a coming of age story, fails to learn anything at all

I could probably go on but you get the gist. Tangled is incredibly frustrating show to watch because doesn’t deliver what it promises. You’re not being clever by ‘subverting audiences expectations’ unless you can justify your narrative decisions with previous set up. Tangled is too lazy to build proper set ups so it’s ‘twists’ leave you wanting to punch things rather then impressing you.

Character Assassinations

Every single character in Tangled the Series gets thrown under a bus, driven off a cliff, and then allowed to drown in the ocean of their completely unaware self-congratulatory smugness.

Rapunzel is turned into a bully

Cassandra is given the idiot ball to hold permanently

The King and Queen are lobotomized

Quinin gets replaced by a robot

The rest of the Brotherhood are pale shadows of what they could have been

Edmund is transformed from tragic complex figure into a dumb jerkoff who abuses his kid for a laugh

Zhan Tiri, once an ancient demon warlock, is reduced to a floating impotent ghost girl

The Saporians become poor hipster parodies

Cap is put on a bus

Any villain who isn’t Cass is gets ignored

Lance is infantilized to the point of absurdity

Eugene becomes a doormat

and poor Varian is forced to become a complacent victim to his abusers as oppose to being allowed to keeping his dignity

I think the only person who escapes this mass murder of characterization is freaking Calliope, and she’s hasn’t even appeared yet! (Well okay her and Trevor, maybe)

This all ties back into the poorly defined conflict and failed narrative promises. Rather than let the characters drive the story, they’ve become puppets to the plot, and plot is really stupid and forced, and circles back in on itself and is full of contradictions.

Manipulating the Audience’s Empathy to Do the Work for the Writers

The reason why the creators believe they can get away with such poor characterization and lazy writing is because they expect the audience to do all the heavy lifting for them.

Cass isn’t given an on screen reason for what she does because they’re hoping her fans will just automatically excuse her because they like her/relate to her and not, you know, get mad at the writers for dumbing her down. And after all who doesn’t love the creator’s pet? Meanies! That’s who!

No one calls out Rapunzel’s bullshit on screen, because if everyone likes her, then you, viewing audience, should too. Because if you have any sort of independent critical thinking abilities and a sense of right and wrong then clearly you’re ‘just a hater’.

Everyone should just shut up and be satisfied that Varian is even on screen now and be grateful for the scraps that they get cause he’s not the real point of the show and according to Chris ‘Varian fans aren’t real fans’. Even though they make up most of his viewing audience.

I could go on, but it’s just variations of the above. The writing in this series is very fond of gaslighting the audience and trying to trick them into justifying the absolute worst behaviors while desperately hoping they doesn’t noticed the continued downgrading and dismissal of characters they do like or once liked.

And the sad thing is, it’s worked. There are people to this day that still try to justify this show’s shitty morals and bend over backwards to excuse the likes of Rapunzel, Frederic, Cassandra, and Edmund. Worst, there are loud sections of the fandom, (usually on twitter) who think bullying is okay and follow in Chris and his characters footsteps. Most of them young impressionable girls who are now ripe for TREFS to indoctrinate because they use the same bullying tactics and excuses for authoritarianism.

Media does effect reality, but not in the way purists and antis would have you believe. No one is going to become a violent manic from playing a video game nor a sex offender because they read a smut fic. But they very much will conform to toxic beliefs if it’s repeated enough at them by authorities they ‘trust’; like say the world wide leading company known for family entertainment and children’s media, and the ‘friends’ they find within the fandom for said company...

I’m not saying you can’t enjoy Tangled the series or that you’re some how wrong for liking it’s characters, nor do you have to engage with every or any criticism thrown it’s way. But yes you need to think about the media you consume on some level and valid criticism is very much important to the fandom experience for precisely the above reasons.

Conclusion

This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg of what’s wrong with this show, but it is most of its biggest problems laid bare. Anything that haven’t covered here or in the past recaps will be explored in the final recap. Cause this is it folks; the last leg of the journey for this retrospective. When come back, hopefully next week, we’ll tackle Pascal’s Dragon.

#tangled #anti-tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #tts #rta

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thealexchen · 3 years

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One Year On: Life is Strange 2 Critique

December 3rd, 2020 marks a year since Life is Strange 2 ended. I was inspired by @smitethepatriarchy‘s text posts (here, but there are several other answered asks worth reading) and @suhaplays’s text post (here) criticizing Life is Strange 2 to write a critique about how Life is Strange 2 handled certain themes and social issues.

(tw: gun violence, police brutality, animal death, incarceration, racism. In this essay, I use the word “queer” in a reclaimed sense, as a queer person myself. Of course, spoiler warning for all five episodes of Life is Strange 1 and 2).

A year on, my feelings about this game have soured... a lot. When the game was first announced, I was overjoyed that our new protagonists would be two Latino boys. Finally, we would have a culturally meaningful, groundbreaking video game with people of color and their experiences at the forefront!

Then the game was met with immediate backlash and I utterly exhausted myself defending it for weeks on Reddit and Tumblr. Throughout 2019, as the episodes came out I became increasingly disillusioned, frustrated, and disappointed with where the story was going. I couldn’t figure out why I felt so damn miserable while playing this game.

Then in the summer of 2020, when Tell Me Why began rolling out pre-release material, I noticed that they posted a Q&A about transphobia, gave content warnings, and discussed at length about their collaboration with GLAAD, Checkpoint, and the Huna Heritage Foundation to make the game with sensitivity and proper research. I cannot speak for trans and gender non-conforming people on whether Dontnod succeeded at doing so with Tell Me Why. But Life is Strange 2 did… none of that.

Essentially, I realized that the reason why I was so frustrated with LiS2 is because it focuses way too heavily on a trauma narrative. This comes off as insensitive to players of color without any content warnings or extensive research.

Sean didn’t have to get kidnapped, kicked in the face, and called a racial slur by a gas station owner. Daniel did not need to watch his puppy get mauled by a mountain lion for the sake of a “difficult choice.” Sean didn’t have to lose his eye for the sake of heightened drama. Sean didn’t need to get called a racial slur and humiliated by his native language/beaten in the desert for refusing to sing. Daniel didn’t need to get shot— twice. Hell, all of “Faith” probably could’ve been cut— how is a church cult that brainwashes Daniel and beats Sean half to death relevant at all to the story?

Even if not all of the game’s violence was racially motivated, the consistent trauma that Sean and Daniel endure does not make for positive representation— or even good characterization. There is a difference between sympathetic characters and well-written characters, and trauma does not make Sean and Daniel any more complex or likable-- just more fucking traumatized.

LiS2 is more grounded in reality, but that also makes plot holes that much harder to excuse (Daniel’s powers being spotted, most of the Parting Ways ending, Sean’s prison sentence). But most of all, it grounds all of Sean and Daniel’s pain and trauma in reality.

There is no magicking away a town-destroying storm with time travel. Sean can’t keep his dad alive by ripping up a Polaroid. After Max unlocked her powers, she was still a Blackwell student, reconnecting with Chloe, taking photos, saving lives, and uncovering a murder mystery. After Daniel unlocked his powers, the Diaz brothers lost everything.

The game never lets you forget that Sean and Daniel are homeless, wanted, constantly in danger, and that they are never getting their old lives back. It permeates the entire game, and for players of color, just reinforces a sad, miserable, grim reality about living in the United States. It is, as @smitethepatriarchy said, potentially triggering for players of color, and it is certainly not something I needed to be reminded of.

And the representation of POC? It feels shallow and ill-researched. It would only take a Google search to find out that Dia de Muertos (a holiday to honor the dead, no less) was from October 31 to November 2 in 2016, the year the game takes place, but Daniel only talks about Halloween in episode 1. Sean and Daniel never discuss any Mexican customs, foods, or holidays. Sean doesn’t speak Spanish with his immigrant father, only during a scene when he’s traumatized (again!) by two racists, and again when talking to Mexican immigrants— in jail. Daniel doesn’t speak Spanish at all. Most of their allies throughout the game are white, including Finn and Cassidy, who appropriate Black culture with their dreadlocks.

So what’s left? Sean and Daniel’s existence as people of color is, at worst, just a narrative prop to justify everything that happens to them. They are people of color on the surface only. In a meta-sense, the game only considers the color of their skin and their last names as what is narratively important… yikes.

I don’t have anything against people who genuinely loved the game and were moved by its messages and story. But I can’t help but feel bitter that white players have the luxury of only thinking of this game as a work of fiction and not feeling any personal reliability to Sean and Daniel’s racialized trauma.

I don’t regret playing LiS2, but I do regret all the time and energy I spent defending it in the beginning. I understand now that I shouldn’t let people’s opinions get to me, nor should I feel obligated to like or defend a game for its attempts at representation. But now, I think I understand how queer fans must have felt in late 2015 when Polarized released. After following the game for 10 months, to see that Chloe’s ultimate destiny was to die and Pricefield is another ship plagued by the Bury Your Gays trope (in the ending that the devs clearly put more work into) must have been just as disillusioning and infuriating. I understand why some fans were so quick to unfollow LiS or develop mixed feelings about the series, because that’s how I feel too after following LiS2’s development from September 2018 to December 2019.

Before I end, I will admit that Life is Strange 2 arrived at a time when I needed it. I still stand by my belief that DN did a great job characterizing Sean, Daniel, and Chris without toxic masculinity, which is the best thing they could’ve done for a male-focused follow-up to a game about queer women. I love that Sean is still a canonically bisexual man of color in a major video game and that DN didn’t forget their queer audience. I love the world and characters that DN built, but I still prefer AU fanfictions of their normal lives, without all that trauma.

So, I will continue to treasure Lyla and her 10 minutes of screentime (aka the only shred of Asian American representation I can get from this series). I still reblog LiS2 fanart to support the artists. I still support Dontnod, because as Tell Me Why has shown, they are capable of researching and writing stories with more sensitivity. And let’s be honest-- I’m still gonna be hella excited if Life is Strange 3 is announced.

But so many aspects of Life is Strange 2 were bungled that it came off as a remarkably average and forgettable experience. A year on, I don’t hate Life is Strange 2, but I am writing this to move on from it.

Thank you for reading.

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kenjis-katsaros · 4 years

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List of characters of color pb has screwed over to make more screentime for the forced male white li

1. Blood bound:

Lily and Kamilah: they were constantly sidelined and we didn't even get to see them for majority of book 2

Lily and Jax: were the only two lis to be killed off when it could have been anybody except your li out of the four

2. A courtesan of Rome:

Xanthe: her storyline was so messed up and she was constantly portrayed as the mean girl who's always jealous of mc and was sold off as sex slave at the end of the book. This post explains it better.

Sabina: there was no real chance to interact with her other than the occassional greetings and every single interaction with her was paywalled. Pb basically said fuck wlw in this book

3. The elementalists:

Shreya, Griffin and Aster: They rarely got any screentime. Aster was barely present in the first book. All of them were sidelined in book 2 to give beckett more scenes. If I didn't know any better I'd have believed Beckett was the only li.

4. The freshman series:

James and Kaitlyn: especially in the first two books. I literally thought chris was the only li because every interaction with him and written in a romantic sense.

5. Love hacks:

Leah: she was barely present in the first book and was given a storyline but paywalled in the second book while mc's relationships with the male lis was explored a lot

6. Ethan central Open heart: where do I even begin

Aurora: her only crime is to have an aunt in a powerful position and is constantly discriminated against and treated as an outcast as the result. This post explains the issue a lot better.

Jackie and bryce: basically non existent, appear only when its time to play baseball or party. What is even their storyline in book 2??? Jackie, especially, is treated the worst

Rafael: he was written out. Can you believe. He was removed as an li. The nerve.

7. Passport to romance:

Ahmed, sumire and the li with a boyfriend for majority of the book sweeties I'm so sorry that pb ignored you all in favour of E*liott

8. Red carpet diaries:

Victoria: was written to be yet another jealous woman, but pb went too far by making her attack mc and you literally had to pay for her to be in the second book because there was barely any plot to support her

9. Veil of secrets:

Scarlett: YET ANOTHER MEAN GIRL. What's this pattern I'm sensing here pb? Was suspected a lot when there was barely any proof other than she was dating sterling and mc was constantly rude to her

10. Wishful thinking:

Ellen: was continuously vilified for more than half of the book before finally joining forces with the mc and taking down Charlie

Every one of these characters is a poc. Out of these, seven are black women and out of the seven, FIVE of them are written in an antagonistic way.

Now for the redemption arcs:

1. Vanessa: literally called Zoey a guttersnipe and went out of her way to ruin mc's life for fun. She is also racist if your mc is a poc. She also outed aiko and is very very homophobic. She was offered a redemption arc via a diamond choice at the end of the book.

2. Landry: put so many patients lives and mc's career at risk because he couldn't stand the thought of them winning. Mc was forced to interact with him in order to cure Dr. Banerji. If you have win against mass Kenmore in book 2, you either have to spend diamonds or be nice to him.

3. Penelope: this post offers great insight into the issue. The situation is way more harmful than I what originally wrote because Penelope intentionally set up a man of color, knowing fully fell how terrible the situation could have ended up for him. He's as innocent as the mc is, but I believe it was never explored, leaving behind the narrative that he is equally guilty as the people who orchestrated the offense

4. Sebastian: stole money from the university which could have gone into scholarships, broke the boiler and in turn putting people in danger and was a little bitch in every way he could be, but he was constantly written into the story and mc is forced to interact him so many times

5. Tyler: easily the worst character pb has ever written. He ghosted his friends in favour of a person he met like five seconds ago and was a total piece of shit but they let him get away with it

All of them are white with the exception of tyler and the most obnoxious and loathsome characters pb has ever written but they were let go after a little slap on the wrist.

Keep in mind this post highlights only a part of your shortcomings. Pb, if you actually care, listen to your audience and mend your ways instead of throwing around empty words otherwise your 'support' just feels performative without the actions to follow them through.

#playchoices #I'm sure i missed a lot of characters so please do add to this post #long post

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revchainsaw · 3 years

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Bumblebee (2018)

Good Evening worshippers, and welcome! Today the Cult of Cult goes a little more mainstream than usual. It's been a while since i've tackled a big Hollywood superhero film. But I do believe that these sorts of films will be remembered fondly my small groups of people in the future, especially the smaller films that are being overshadowed by the big bad MCU, films like 2018s Bumblebee.

The Messsage

Bumblebee was originally released as a prequel to the Transformers franchise that had started all the way back in 2007. However, reboots had really hit the market as a way to breath new life into struggling franchises, and the Transformers series had already gone to just about every absurd extreme you could imagine. No changes were made to the movie as it was released, but with it's more childish and heartfelt tone, and a new aesthetic that was softer, smoother, and all around just generally more pleasing to the eye, I think it was a wise choice to rebrand Bumblebee as a new beginning.

Our story is of two friends from two very different worlds and how they came together. Our first character is Bumblebee, then known as B- number sign/it doesn't really matter. Not yet Bumblebee is a soldier set with securing a safe location for the Autobots to regroup and make their home as they suffer a pretty serious defeat on cybertron at the hands of the tyrannical Decepticons. Optimus Prime, here again voiced by Peter Cullen and looking so much more like himself, assigns this task to Bumblebee promising him that they will meet him there when the time comes. Then Optimus fucks off for the rest of the run time making way for our little hero.

Bumblebee lands on Earth and is immediately set upon by John Cena and his military goon squad. It probably would have been wise for Bumblebee to avoid John Cena but in his defense, he couldn't see him. Hardy har har. In his attempt to flee his voice box is damaged, he seeks sanctuary by taking the form of a run down little VW bug, and suffers from amnesia.

Then we have Charlie. Charlie is not like other girls. She likes cars, all the retro music, which wasn't retro when the movie takes place, so I'm supposed to just think she's a rocker but it kinda seems like she'll listen to just about anything. I think in 2018 liking Motorhead and The Smiths (who are used ad nauseum in this movie) is perfectly common, but I feel like in the 80s that was a much different and much older attitude to take.

Anyway Charlie's poor family lives in a super fucking nice house and are poor because the dialogue keeps insisting they are so it must be true despite all the shit they have that actually poor people would sell blood and teeth to attain, but hell, this is Hollywood and Hollywood poor is like regular people upper middle class. Charlies family is so poor that instead of giving her a one time graduation/birthday present to buy a part for a car she already has, they just give her a moped, She also spends all her time at a pull apart where the manager (who might be her uncle that wasn't super clear) is willing to just give her a Volkswagen so I don't understand why she didn't already have the project car up and running. Whatever, it's a plot contrivance. All you need to know is that Charlie is tenacious and hard around the edges cuz her dad is dead and she's not yet mature enough to process that in a healthy way. Maybe her character arch will teach her to let others in, we'll have to find out.

There's also a wacky nerd named Memo, and some bad guys, and John Cena. They are all also pretty archetypal and contrived and don't really do anything of note that isn't just filling a beat that this kind of movie needs to walk. Charlie starts Bumblebee up, discovers he's a robot and the two begin to bond. Charlie learns to make a friend, and bumblebee is learning about himself. They get into hijinks and get revenge on a bully girl who makes Regina George look like a saint, she pretty much only picks on Charlie exclusively for having a dead dad.

The moment Bumblebee is woken back up, some technology goof em up that both he and Charlie are unaware of brings two Decepticon baddies into the picture. I don't remember their names, but since I love The Venture Brothers let's say they can be "Jet Boy and Jet Girl". Jet Boy and Jet Girl are sometimes cars, sometimes various flying military vehicles, and they make friends with the deep state and plan to get all the adrenochrome from all the orphans, or just to go find Bumblebee and beat his ass good cuz their bad guys. Let me tell y'all though, Jet Boy and Jet Girl are so bad that they don't even care that the government is listening when they reveal that they are planning on bringing a Decepticon Invasion and after they rough up Bumblebee real good they are going to destroy all life on this planet. So they start by killing a military scientist.

John Cena is after Bumblebee and he's homies with Jet Boy and Jet Girl until the military scientist butt dials him and he hears the evil plan. John Cena goes from heel to face and helps Bumblebee and Charlie save the day. It's a giant CG clusterfuck climax a la any superhero film in the last 10 years and I basically stopped watching. BumbleBee pulls a Hellraiser on Jet Boy, and then he hits Jet Girl with a freaking boat. Charlie uses her diving skills do dive down and save him, but he's a Giant Robot and he was okay and it was literally pointless for her to to except as a way to show that her character has completed her arch by doing the thing that was representative of her connection with her lost father.

Bumblebee turns into the Camaro from the first movie, meets up with Optimus prime, and the stage is set for this prequel to squeeze more prequels out. So it wasn't very creative, but was it bad? Let's find out.

Please Stand to receive the Benediction.

Best Aspect: Transform the Franchise

Bumblebee was directed by Travis Knight of Laika fame and it shows. This movie marks a stylistic change in the transformers franchise, as in it doesn't look like utter dog shit, but it also represents in many ways a tonal shift. It does hold on to a lot of gross sleaze that has unfortunately been forcibly jammed into the DNA of the franchise but it also attempts to be a more heartfelt entry. The characters of Bumblebee might all be sort of a waste of time, but at least they are doing something with emotions, even if the emotions of the characters are only explored as deeply as a children's cartoon I'm glad they are there. In the previous installments the only thing the characters did between running from action piece to seizure inducing action piece was drool over underage girls like a bunch of chimpanzees at the facility where they test experimental E.D. meds. It was nice to see that at least somewhat tampered. This transformers movie feels more like it's for kids and young teenagers, and strangely that more friendly tone makes for a much less juvenile product.

Worst Aspect: Remember I Love the 80s from the 2000s

I hope you really like Stranger Things. I do, but because Stranger Things was so successful it' s going to be everywhere. Not true Stranger Things just 80s nostalgia porn. This 80s nostalgia is going to be forced on you whether you like it or not, and it's not going to be fun. It's gonna be in your shows, in your music, in your Sunday like Bacon in 2010. It's that or Marvel Franchise Brand Whedonisms. Bumblebee is that brave movie that says, "Why not both?" It would seem fitting that a property as quintessentially 80s as Transformers should feel completely comfortable doing a period piece set in the 80's but it's so fucking half hearted it's depressing. It wasn't done to appreciate the roots of the IP, it was done to cash in on a trend and it feels it. All they did was throw up a date and insufferably force an 80s soundtrack down your throat as if that was enough to convince you that this movie needed to be set during this time. Other than that you could have told me this film was set in 2007 and I couldn't tell you any different.

Best Character: Charlie's an Angel

I liked Charlie. Sure her Arc is predictable, her taste is dumb, and she isn't exactly a master of her own destiny to any degree. But at least she is a woman in a transformers movie who's got something going on. Sure she's defined entirely by grief, but that sure is better than pretending that being able to work on cars is a feminist character trait instead of a weird fetish thing. They certainly do that thing with Charlie, but at least it's not the only thing they throw at the wall. Bumblebee is by no means out of the woods in this department, but it garners a lot of goodwill for trying. Like a racist uncle who just started his journey out of ignorance, but hasn't yet realized he has to stop asking mortifying questions to the barista at Starbucks. Okay, maybe that's an extreme metaphor. I'm saying that perhaps Charlie is not a great character but she's a great character for a Transfomers movie.

Worst Character: It's JOOOOHHHNNNN CEEEENA!!!!

Why is John Cena in this movie? I don't hate the guy, but his character seems pointless. You could remove him from the movie completely and replace him with any one of the random military goons at any point and it changes nothing. What was with that dumb salute at the end? It seems like they put him in this movie in post and it was just to pump up cast list. I wish he was given anything to work with. I can't remember his characters name, and it's not like John Cena did a bad job, I was just annoyed every time they kept giving him hero shots. I felt like I was watching a trailer for a different movie.

Best Actor: Optimal Primo!

Every time Peter Cullen speaks I want to listen. There's a reason they haven't had Chris Pratt or somebody with a bigger name come in and take over the role at this point. He's why the audience keep coming back. Peter Cullen IS Optimus Prime, and there's no changing that. He also wins twice. He's the best actor in the movie AND he's barely in the movie. Good call Peter.

Worst Actor: Mean Girls 2, Meaner and Girlier

I don't want to be cruel so I'm not going to go into to much detail, but there's an actress in this film who's performance is so mustache twirlingly evil and stupid that it ruined my suspension of disbelief when i knew going in that i was about to endure a 2 hour toy commercial about robots that turn into cars. Beldar Conehead was a more convincing human being than Tina.

Best Effect: Goo Be Gone

I really appreciated when the bad guys shot the government nerd into a blast of snot. That was pretty fun for me. Best part of the movie hands down.

Worst Effect: Live Action?

Bumblebee is a cartoon. It's a great looking cartoon but it doesn't sell itself that way. If we were doing a Roger Rabbit thing I'd have no gripes. However, I think CG is just getting worse. I'm criticizing this and it's still lightyears better than the previous entry's on the franchise. No transformation or fight sequence in Bumble Bee had me straining to make sense of what I was looking at. I think it was a great idea to start using some basic shapes and outlines to these characters, and return somewhat to their 80s designs. But at certain points, especially when there were no humans in the shot, i was pretty convinced I was watching Clone Wars. There may not be anyway around this, as the Transformers concept might not be able to be pulled off in any more effective manner. It's a minor gripe, but I just didn't think it looked like anything other than a very expensive cartoon, and in this franchise that's a compliment, because it least it looked like SOMETHING!

Best Scene: Space Opera

I am not a Transformers fan. I missed the boat on the cartoon as a kid. I would sometimes catch it at friends houses but I was more into Batman, Star Wars, and Ninja Turtles. By the time I came onto the scene the world had moved on to Beast Wars. I did one day arbitrarily decide that my favorite Transformer was Sound Wave. He looked great in this. I am a big fan of the return to form with a lot of the character designs in this. They really did keep the things that worked from the other adaptations, and they are steadily removing the things that didn't. For this reason, the scenes on Cybertron, particularly the battle with Soundwave (i prefer for personal reasons) looked great and were exciting to watch. I remember thinking Cybertron used to look like a Marilyn Manson shot a music video from inside to dumpster. This is so much better.

Worst Scene: Blocking the Box

There's a scene in Bumblebee where Charlie's family decides the best way to save their daughter was to cause a pile up of vehicles in an intersection, and it's pure contrived writing that saved any character in that sequence from being killed in a horrific traffic accident. It was stupid, played for laughs, and it wasn't exciting as much as it was anxiety inducing. I also thought that there was no reason the covert military group covering up extraterrestrial life wouldn't just disappear this family of fucking morons in their little piece of shit car. The logic of the scene was just so childish like, "No they won't hit me, I'm a good person."

Summary

Bumblebee may be remembered fondly in a decade. I think especially if the Transformers franchise were to end here. It didn't get the publicity of the other films, and that really is a shame. For my money, this was the best Transformers movie so far. I was very tempted to give Bumblebee a C, it does just enough to right what was wrong from the other movies to make me appreciate all that work. This movie has heart, and if you are at all into Transformers then l think you should see it. It's still pretty stupid, and pretty basic. It's not offering anything new to the genre, and it feels like a commercial for more movies. I really wish we could just get movies that want to tell a story. I thought it over and decided that it wasn't fair not to grade Bumblebee on it's own merits. Bumblebee is substantially better than the films that preceded it, but that's not saying a lot, when the films that preceded it are joyless exercises in self abuse.

Overall Grade: D

#Transformers #Bumblebee #Optimus Prime #Action #Adventure #Car #Super Hero #Robot #Scifi #Grade D #D #Grade: D #2018 #2010s #(D)

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genuflectx · 4 years

Text

4th Dimensional Being/OC - CH1

Full Length: 19,543

Chapter Length: 4,248

Main Themes: Other dimensions, tentacles, confinement, nsfw

Other Warnings: politics, "godly" behaviors, vomit, feeling of loss of autonomy, comparison to a toy

(all images in aesthetic board are labeled for reuse with modification or are mine)

I ended writing a novella... this is my longest short, non-fanfic work yet. It's not perfect but was a fun exploration of these characters and themes. Yes, there will be explicit sex in a later chapter :) Later on I will format the novella correctly for a nice little Gumroad/Patron release! Enjoy! (WILL BE NSFW IN LATER CHAPTERS)

The 4DB Chapter 1: Heartburn

“Do you need any stamps?”

The middle-aged woman re-set her teeth subconsciously and rose a brow. “No, I just came to drop off the package.” Her eyes crinkled in a way that passive aggressively said 'get on with it.'

Chris pursed her lips, features big and round with false politeness. “Okay then! If you could just insert your card-”

“Is it one that takes chips?” She interrupted.

“Yes, it's ready for you.”

The mail room was a quiet murmur as the card clacked against the plastic scanner. Eventually it happened to slipped in. “It's not doing anything.”

“You might have it in the wrong way ma'am,” Chris suggested, tense.

The woman squinted, a corner of her mouth raising in distaste. She ripped the card from its slot and turned it around. The machine asked her pin. She got it right on the third try. Finally, the package could be put in its place as the lady left with a stick up her ass.

“Some customers are just the worst,” Chris concluded as she and two of her co-workers were closing shop.

Vincent shrugged. “They just like to take out their anger on strangers to make'em feel better,” he smiled and locked the door.

Mildred chuckled and rolled her eyes, patting Chris on the shoulder. “Make sure none of them hear you talking like that!” She started to walk to her car. “I been here for a decade. You'll get used to them.”

“Well I been here a year, I ought to be too!” Chris groaned, slumping dramatically where she stood.

“Just get some rest, tomorrow's the big event!” Vincent grinned and pranced off to his own car.

Chris found her feet dragging on, her hand fumbling for keys. “Yeah yeah, see you there,” she mumbled, climbing on in with exhaustion.

She was never much of a people-pleaser, but she did her job alright. After a long exasperating work week the weekend was blessedly encroaching upon her, right along side the annual downtown gathering of Gabriel's Children. Chris was not one of those children. However, Vincent had been since the horn had first begun to blow. Chris did have to admit it was an astounding scientific phenomenon, but that's all it was. Just something science had yet to explain. The little festival the locals vended had delicious food, though. Hearing the horn was a fun little bonus.

The festivities started early in the morning and she arrived with Vincent in the afternoon. There was a talk being held at its center, which Vincent felt the need to drag her to hear after gathering snacks. They nibbled on freshly baked pastries and sipped hot coffee as a man high on the stage explained recent discoveries of the hum- another word for the horn. Chris thought maybe they'd come in a little late, as the man was already beginning to finish off his speech. Plus, it was hard to hear with the bustling of the surrounding crowd; all the people laughing and chatting and cooking at their stands, necklaces jingling and children begging parents for magnets of trumpets and angels. She strained her ears to listen.

“So if it wasn't the factory, if we are inland unlike the Children of Europe, we have no buzzing wind farms nor major fault lines, then what is it? What is the 'horn?'” He stalked across the stage, pacing and looking so, so serious. “Twenty years and we have no answers. But we know it's sped up. We know it's moved and honed in to few locations; from our little mid-American town, to Washington D.C., all the way down to the hot, dry climates of Texas.”

Chris sighed and slid further in her chair, looking bored. “We've heard all this before. They haven't learned anything new in years,” she whispered across to her excited co-worker. Vincent shushed her and she resisted a bored moan.

The speaker was unaffected, totally unaware of a particular audience member's dry indifference. “Every year now it comes, and every year we gather again to try and learn something. Anything,” he frowned.

Chris crammed cinnamon role into her gob and huffed quietly. “Good luck.” She washed it down with a big swig of coffee.

Vincent gave her a look that could melt the bones right out of her body. She smirked at him.

“Maybe this year... things will be different,” the speaker trailed off quietly and quit pacing. He became eerily still, looking out over the heads of the crowd and into the mottled stone walls of downtown. Vincent felt that he was pausing for dramatic effect, but Chris rose a brow. He'd stopped speaking, almost wall eyed.

“Shit,” Chris suddenly whispered, bringing fingers to her temples and shutting her eyes.

“You okay?” Vincent worried, glancing from her to the stage with a sense of terrible unease.

She grit her teeth and shut her eyes. Her ears were ringing, one even popped. A few seconds passed. It slowly subsided into a dull pain. “Just a weird headache? Guess it's all the noise,” she dropped her hands, exhaling.

“Guess he got one too?” Vincent gestured uncomfortably.

She followed his hand up to the stage, where the speaker was continuing to pause. By now it had just become awkward; his palm on his forehead and a pained expression encased his wrinkled visage. The crowd had begun to murmur in confusion. Slowly he swallowed, like forcing down vomit, then became relieved enough to continue.

“That's... that's all. Thank you for coming to listen to me speak,” he shuffled away to the shallow stairs and disappeared, making way for the next speaker.

“Weird,” Chris mumbled. “Maybe air pressure then? Well come on, I want to look at some shops before the countdown reaches zero.”

He jumped up enthusiastically, all starry eyed. “Yeah! I want a new key chain!”

As they carefully navigated the crowd back to the local art shops, Chris shook her head and laughed. “Don't you already have like, six trumpets?” She scolded.

He scoffed and waved a hand. “Pch, sure, but they're all different!”

An hour to go. They browsed, they made small talk, they sat stiff on freezing metal benches outside of local junk shops. Vincent not only snatched up a key chain but a copy of a screen print as well. He turned it upside down and squinted, humming. It was some abstract piece. Flat shapes seemed to wiggle around at him in a colorful confusion.

“Why don't you buy anything?” He asked, tuning the print right side up again.

She shrugged, chilled hands in warming pockets. “I'm not a tourist like you.”

“Heeey, I resent that!” He joked, trying to hide a smile.

Suddenly Chris winched, putting a hand at the nape of her neck. There it was again, that creeping feeling of a splitting headache coming back. She sighed and slowed her pace, feeling nauseous.

“Listen, I think I'm gonna head home.”

Her friend expressed disappointment. “What! It's only fifteen minutes now! Really want to miss Gabriel?”

She nodded, rubbing her neck and looking down. “Yeah, I really feel icky. Besides, I'll probably still hear it in my car if I roll the windows down. I think the crowd and air pressure are just overwhelming me.” Chris did hate to leave her friend to himself, but he was a big boy, even if he was two years younger. She just didn't feel up to staying any longer.

He pretended to pout and waved her goodbye. “See ya at work Monday,” he called across the loud, mingling voices of the festival.

Chris waved back and found her way through downtown, back out into the more empty streets. She pressed a red button. The streetlight sounded and the image turned white so she crossed swiftly on numbed feet. She made it up the car park elevator, found her car among the dimly lit concrete slopes, and finally was on her way home. The headache had yet to return during the trip so she counted herself lucky.

The roads were relatively empty due to the majority of traffic having already settled in to wait for Gabriel's horn, though a few roads were annoyingly blocked off for the event. She was deathly glad for the vacant roads that allowed her to slip out of downtown with an ease she'd not get to enjoy any other day.

“Oh right,” Chris rolled down her side window. Fresh cold air flowed in, which soothed her head a little. “Not long now.”

She was just about out of downtown when it happened. But... there was no horn. No rusty screech, no hum that she'd grown to know so well. However, there was an awful, unaccounted for noise that came from the rolling Heavens. A sharp, quick sound; a hard whispered word blasted her brain and set it on fire. It hurt like Hell. Like the loud screech of white noise when one had forgotten to turn the volume down before pressing 'on.' Chris slammed her breaks and cried, her wheels screaming. Was that what Vincent heard, waiting patiently back in the crowd? Or was it just in her head?

Chris pressed the gas gently, teeth grit and eyes barely open. She veered into an empty parking lot and stopped askew over two spaces. She yanked her hair and pressed her forehead against the wheel then suddenly felt extremely sick. She fumbled for the door then stumbled out. Chris felt pressure and collapsed clumsily to her knees against the broken asphalt. After a few moments some of the pressure let up, but then she heard that word again.

“What's wrong with me?” She slurred, feeling dizzy.

A look around found that she was very much alone. There was nothing but empty parked cars. The pain was suddenly gone. She froze and took a deep breath, her eyes re-focusing and hands shaking. She needed to go to the hospital but did not want to pay for the ambulance. Vincent could drive her. Her hand slowly retrieved the phone from her pocket, but as she pressed the button to find Vincent's contact she heard the word one last time. Sharp, quick, just like the first, but it was more clear.

“Wh-what? I'm hallucinating,” She mumbled, knowing full well that that was not the sound of Gabriel's horn.

“Chrysanthemum,” a loud-quiet voice called out in her head.

“Shit!” She dropped her phone and watched it smack against the faded asphalt.

“Chrysanthemum, don't be afraid. You are not hallucinating. The pain you felt was an... accident,” it explained, lowering its voice.

“God?” Chris called, slipping onto her butt and staring with fear into the sky. She was shaking from head to toe now.

It made a weird sound. “No, we are not a god, though we may seem it to you. We are the noise you call 'Gabriel's Horn,' but we are neither Gabriel nor Horn. The 'Horn' you've heard was merely our days affecting your years as we... tuned equipment,” Not-Gabriel explained plainly.

She glanced from cloud to cloud, brows furrowed so hard her forehead hurt. For a moment she thought if she just searched long enough she'd be able to find the face that was talking down on her.

“It will be difficult for you to understand and will take many of your days to acclimate. Do you at least understand this Chrysanthemum?” It sounded condescending at the end.

Chris scowled. “Well you can't be God if you keep using a name I don't go by,” she complained.

“We are of the 4th dimension. We are not a god. Here. I will touch your insides, it may feel strange,” it warned. “See?”

She screamed and grabbed her stomach. It felt like her acid churned, and suddenly she had heart burn. Chris burped and felt woozy. “That's... ohhh I think mm gonna pahhh-” Chris collapsed heavily to her back, unconscious.

There was nothing, nothing, nothing, then there was something. She saw herself amid a void. It was like a thick goo, as if the gas or lack of gas in the air had solidified. There was no cold nor heat, no apparent up nor down. But then, as she turned her head towards her feet, there was an illumination that lit the ground beneath her. A flat plain decorated with complex, ornate geometry rested below. She squatted against her calves, though it felt years before she came to a halt, and with every tiny change in posture she saw a ghost of her former self.

“Hello?” She called, echoing into the void. Her word simultaneously stuck in the goo and penetrated its atoms all at once. This world was a contradiction.

Something small screamed, a high-pitched trill of terror and shock. Chris glanced down at the geometry and squinted. The geometry was moving; it shivered and vibrated like cells in a body. It was all scrambling so fast compared to her.

“Hello?” She asked again, balancing with a hand so she may come closer.

It screamed again. A tiny little organism wriggled backwards, and across the plain something tickled Chris's hand. She lifted it and gawked with disgust and horror. She'd squished something, and it lay in bits in pieces.

“Whoops, I think I broke something,” she admitted sheepishly.

“Don't smite me!” Squeaked the thing by her feet.

Chris frowned. “What are you? You're so small and... flat.”

It rotated and looked around, but it never once looked up into the sky. The creature could not see anything but the outline of her shoes where she'd stepped atop its planet.

“You don't know?” It asked, sounding only slightly less panicked. “Then you're not God? Are you from Somewhere Else?”

She shook her head, confused. “No, I'm not a god. I'm Chris. And you're a cell?”

“A cell?”

“Yeah, a small organism that can group up to become a bigger organism. I'm full of them. You look like all the diagrams we used in school. But you can talk and I can see your insides. Which is the mitochondria?” She scrutinized the inside of the creature's body. It was sorta gross.

The flat creature's brain was working hard as it stared at the funny outline of Chris's shoes. She could even see it working. It nervously moved around her shape, making a full circle to get a whole picture.

“You're gigantic, please don't hurt me Chris. What do you want?”

“I don't- woah!” She began to sink. The illuminated plain was caving to her weight, but only she passed through. The plain itself remained as flat as ever. “I'm gonna fall!”

The creature's panic sky rocketed as it watched the line gyrate and change, growing larger and longer. “Ahhh!” It yelled, backing into a corner. If Chris continued to grow it would have no way of escape and be crushed against the side of a wall. “What's happening? What's wrong?”

She slipped further. Now it was Chris who was in a panic, scared of the endless black void below the flat planet. She sunk through to her elbows, leaving her to sprawl her arms and claw at the ground for purchase. Across the world her fingers scraped through a once wondrous shape, which crumpled and splintered as she accidentally destroyed its existence.

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” She freaked out, heart beating like on a roller coaster. Chris fell.

She gasped, her skin clammy and damp. Everything was too bright and she shielded her eyes.

“You're awake, good. Here,” a man said.

Chris sat up and exhaled, her eyes adjusting. She was in a stranger's house and was being handed a glass of cold water, though the ice inside had since melted. The flat planet was a dream. She had not really scraped a building from the face of a world. As she took the water, her hands shaking, she realized something.

“...You look familiar. Where am I?” She fretted, sipping a little.

He sat across from her in a chair. “What's the last thing you remember?” He asked rather than answer.

She crossed her legs atop the couch and dabbed sweat off with her sleeve. It took some brain power to get any semblance of memory going. “I had some sort of weird... episode. Then I passed out in a parking lot. I think I need a hospital,” Chris groaned.

He grinned. “So you did hear it?”

“What?”

“You heard it? The thing that says its from another dimension?” He was star-struck.

Chris stared down into her cup, thinking. Flashes came back to her until finally she remembered everything, right down to the nausea. A chill came over her body so she sat the cold water down. “It wasn't a hallucination.”

“No it wasn't!” He exclaimed, shivering with excitement. “It spoke to me too! It told me where to find you since you fell unconscious! But we aren't the only ones. It spoke to even more.”

She quirked the corner of her lips and let that information sink in. Suddenly something came to her and she tilted her head curiously. “You're that man from the stage.”

“Call me Cole,” he scooted closer and stuck out a hand.

Chris hesitated, unsure. “Chris.” She shook his hand daintily.

He explained everything. The headache, the ringing in his ears, how he'd been packing up his laptop to leave backstage when the countdown hit zero. To everyone else it had been a disappointment, for this year the horn did not hum to the eager ears awaiting it. Instead, it narrowed down its focus and spoke to them. Chris and Cole, but others, too.

“It told me there were six others. That includes you. So outside of us there are five other people it spoke to directly,” he explained.

“But... why? Just seven people?”

He leaned back in his chair and shrugged, nonchalant. “I asked, after the initial shock and having dropped my laptop (may she rest in peace). It just said: you work for your government.”

Chris looked off, expression soured. It was true. The Postal Service was a branch of the government, but she hardly equated government with the mail.

“What do you do?” She asked him nervously.

“Department of Energy.”

Chris got the creeping notion that his house was vaguely radioactive. Or, at the very least, he was. “Great.” She stretched her legs over the couch's edge and stared at her shoes awkwardly. “So now what?”

“We wait to be called upon,” he answered simply. “I'll go start some tea,” and like that Cole was out the room.

So they waited and waited. Chris thumbed through books as she did, glancing at Cole's collection and idly sipping tea. Sometimes she'd get the fear that he was making it all up, that this was all a scheme to kidnap her without freaking her out. Or that maybe he was just some guy screwing with her head. But then her stomach would churn and she'd remember how it felt to be touched. Chris felt queasy. At the same time she couldn't help but feel... honored? It was strange. This was all so new to her.

Finally it came to them. This time there was no pain, no headaches or heartburn. Cole fell to his knees as soon as the creature spoke, but Chris just sank shakily back into couch, empty teacup in hand.

“You will be transported to a location for study,” it said.

Cole nodded his head and agreed instantly, but Chris found herself asking it: “Why? And where?”

“Why: a 'mutual' exchange of information in a controlled environment. Where: the center of your 'country' in a long-term observation facility.”

She balked. “For how long?” But Cole spoke over her.

“That's brilliant! Brilliant! Have you spoke to the president? Surely you have,” he clasped his hands together and smiled.

“...Yes. Unfortunately. Some deep convincing was needed to induce submission,” it replied with obvious irritation.

Chris was uncomfortable and suspicious of the wording, though she was not surprised the president was a nuisance to converse with. The creature assured them there would be at least a day or two before anyone came for collection, so they had some time to prepare. Cole questioned why this creature could not simply pick them up and plop them back down, but it was uncertain that such action would be healthy. So again they played a waiting game.

Chris went back to her house. Cole stayed in his. Sunday dawned upon the world and there was no one yet at their doors. Chris paced uneasily in her little home, her suitcases already packed in the living room. She didn't know what to do with herself. Couldn't even stomach trying to explain anything to Vincent or Mildred. Hell, did she even want to leave? She was sure she had no choice.

Finally, come Monday morning, there was a knock at her door. She jumped from bed and scrambled to answer, a measly robe tossed across her shoulders. A stoic man dressed in all black was there to greet her, his eyes unreadable though they crinkled. She could sense some strange dread in him from his hard posture alone. Only the automatic light of her porch lit their way as this stranger led her to the car.

Cole was there, his white teeth gleaming at her as she boarded. Despite his cheer, Chris felt like she was in a daze the entire time. Her hands settled frozen in her lap and eyes glued to the window. She watched her little town pass her by just as the night drifted to day. The ugly office building next to the apartments, the fenced off government buildings. There went the post office. She sighed.

Where are you? Vincent texted Chris when they were already hours from town.

Her thumbs hovered sleepily over the keys. She didn't know what to say. Eventually she just settled for:

It's been a long weekend. I don't know when I'll be able to come in again. Something's happened

…

Are you sick?

Don't know what I'm allowed to say. I'll text later. Xoxo

Well that's not totally vague but ok

…

Tell me if u need soup fam

Chris smiled at her phone. She really hoped this didn't cause her to lose her job, even if it was something way more pressing than delivering mail. She'd miss her co-workers the most. Even Mildred. With any luck the 'long-term' in 'long-term research facility' wouldn't be any more long-term than a vacation.

The driver drove non-stop, through the night and the day, across interstates and through small cities. It was unnerving. Cole whispered that he was sure the creature was to blame, even though it hadn't spoken the whole trip.

“It's fascinating,” he whispered.

Chris hummed and faked a smile in acknowledgment before staring back out the window. All she could think was what a weird vacation before she found herself nodding off.

“We've arrived,” the driver announced as sudden as summer rain.

Chris jerked, her stinging eyes glued in confusion to the dim window. They were inside of a painfully lit parking garage and there were droves of black-suits and white-coats to greet them. She must have fallen asleep for some time.

“Thank you,” she heard Cole dully as his door was opened for him. Her door was next.

“Have you been in contact?” Asked a man sternly, no trace of emotion in his voice.

She furrowed her brows. “What?”

He didn't miss a beat. “With the 4DB?”

Both she and her jittery acquaintance were being led away through the garage. Someone gently guided her through a door with a palm against her back.

“The... the Four Dee Bee?”

The man re-adjusted the wireless device in his ear, lips crinkling. “The Fourth Dimensional Being.”

Chris began to sweat and tried to explain. “Not since before we were told we'd be sent here, but-”

A woman patted her shoulder nonchalantly and shook her head. “Can't even wait till she's in the room huh?” She teased her co-worker, her heels clicking against the hall tile. “We're just eager, don't be afraid! You and Mr. Artrip will speak with a scientist and be briefed before joining the others. This was all very sudden so don't mind the dust bunnies.”

Chris nodded quietly, glancing ahead to get a glimpse of Cole- Mr. Artrip. This was all so weird and she felt she had some sort of jet lag. She wondered when she'd be allowed to talk with the creature again. It had been a few days now.

“And then after everyone's settled it's about meal time! But first,” she carefully pushed Chris into a dimly lit room, had a quick word with her co-worker, then silently shut the door. “Have a seat.”

She did as she was told. Chris sat before a small wooden table, as if this was meant to make the room more inviting than it really was. It just made her feel interrogated. Or like she'd been called to the principal’s office.

The woman took a seat across from her and peeked into a thin file. After a short pause she looked up, smiled, and said. “Chrysanthemum Sain... tell me everything.”

Read CH2 early on Patreon or wait for it to go public!

#terato #monster lover #monster romance #tentacles #exophilia #writing #short story

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Battle of the Episodes: Celebrity Deathmatch: Rockstarmageddon Vs When Animals Attack

Hello all you happy people! And welcome to a minty fresh new segment on the blog cooked up by longtime fan and friend of the blog weirdkev27, named by me: BATTLE OF THE EPISODES! In this new segment I take two similar episodes from a show or franchise and put them up against one another and see which ones better. He pitched the idea to me for something he could do, he had two patreon reviews free so I suggested why not do it in April and here we are!

Before I begin I will admit I’d forgotten PieGuyRulez had done a similar idea with his podcast ReCast, which I’d never seen and only vaugely heard of. However I feel what i’m doing here is still diffrent enough to keep doing, I have nothing but respect for the guy, and I promise to not do any topics he’s done. If you have any suggestions for this new segment, i’d love to hear them. I already have another one in mind for when I have a free moment on the schedule that I simply didn’t get around to next month.

But for our innugural contest, Kev being the one who pitched it picked the show and it’s a show i’m only passingly familiar with as I did see bits of it growing up: Celebrity Deathmatch. Celebrity Death Match was a late 90′s and early 2000′s tv show on MTV with a revivial on MTV2. It was born both out of a short done for MTV’s Cartoon Sushi, their equilvent of Oh Yeah Cartoons! and What a Cartoon, pitting Charles Manson against Marilon Manson, and that short was popular enough to lead to a special after the superbowl. Said special ended up being the highest rated progam MTV had broadcast at the time, so naturally it got a four season series.

The premise is exactly what it says: two celebrties battle it to the death in goofy claymation fights, one shall stand, one shall fall. Meanwhile our hosts Johnny and Nick banter and set up the fights, talk to interviewers etc. It’s essentially a combination of wrestling and celebrity mockery, and unsuprisingly given MTV’s teen audience who loved pop culture and a bit of the ultra violence it was a massive hit.

The show later got a revivial a few years after it ended on MTV2, which fans often derided and which I saw more of as I was watching MTV2 at the time... look i’m not proud of the fact i watched “Where My Dogs at?” and i’m even less proud I watched “The Adventures of Chico and Guapo”. But with shows like that you can imagine how high quality the reboot was and how much fans flocked to it. Me I never took to either incarnation. I don’t HATE the show and do appricate it’s gorgeous claymation and copious use of Stone Cold Steve Austin. I love that beer drinking, hell raising, boss humliationg hellion, it’s just the combination of modern celebrity mockery, something that rarely ages well unless the joke is just funny on it’s own, and ultra violence never appealed to me as I was a pretty squeamish kid and teen.. i’ve grown out of that, but I just had no real desire to go back. It’s not a bad show but it’s not really one for me, but I get why i’ts well loved and popular.

But being a death match fan, and given the similar premisses, Kev picked this to be our inagural contest. Pitting the original against the reivvial. For this he went with two death match time machine episodes: the original’s finale rockstarmageddon and the revivial’s when animals attack. Each episode has it’s own unique theme within the general theme of a dead person versus their successor... and a very much alive person one or both of the hosts thought was dead versus their succesor as a joke: the first is about rockstars and their supposed imitators, the second is about putting two animal themed people against one another.

Each Battle of the Episodes will have diffrent comparisons as every show or franchise is different, comics are also open for this by the by. So for this one i’ll be comparing time machine use, the person explaning the machine, individual episode theme, the joke about one of the “dead” combatants turning out ot be alive, and each of the three matches. How many will also very, either 5 or 7 depending on how many talking points i have. So with that in mind LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE under the cut and see which episode walks away a champion and which episode walks away a bloody pile of clay on the floor.

Doing the matches first as a lot of this stuff overlaps with the later bits.

Round 1: Lenny Kravitz Vs Jimmy Hendrix VS Horatio Sanz Vs Chris Farley Whelp this was a bad start to BOTH episodes as these matches are the worst of each episode and all 6 matches period. So it’s less which is better as both are a black hole of comedy.. and more which one sucks slightly less.

The Jimmy Hendrix vs Lenny Kravitz bout is just.. a black hole of comedy, It’s VERY clear the writers hated Kravitz but to me in 2020.. it just hasn’t aged well. I just don’t CARE about Lenny Kravitz. He had maybe one good song, are you gonna go my way, and that’s it. He was not good.. but he was an easy target for the time and an easily forgotten one now. It’s not smart, clever or even cathartic to watch him die. He’s also nowhere similar enough to Hendrix for the comparison to work: for one he had a vastly diffrent look most of the times and for another at most both played guitars and were not white. That’s it. It just dosen’t work.

The finisher here is just also... one of the objectively worst grossout bits i’ve seen in animation and i’m almost 30. That’s a LOTTTT of stupid gross gags that aren’t funny. The two vomit into each others mouths. Yes really. Not only is this really disprectful to hendrix death, as ODing on drugs is not something I really find funny nor the show makes funny, but it’s just.. horrifying to think about and gross and makes me want to , ironically enough, vomit thinking about. it’s just deeply unpleasant easily the worst thing i’ve encountered in my time reviewing so far, and it’s going to be a hard bar to clear. This match sucked and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Now as for the Horatio Sanz vs Chris Farley Match...

I honestly have never seen Horatio Sanz that i’m aware of and unlike Kravitz who at least is mildly memorable if not a very good musician, Sanz has just been.. forgotten. I don’t know anything about him and once again it feels like the show punching down, picking an easy target versus a legend.

And speaking of easy targets the entire segment is just fat jokes. Just a ton of fat jokes. No really, it’s a battle of “Hog vs hog”, chris eats a lot and hte main joke is Chris Farley can’t stay alive long enough to fight. That being said while I find the joke in VERY poor taste, as Farley died of a heart attack and was a really good person and having his death be a punch line just bothers me.... I’ll admit it’s at least clever to have one of the death match time machine contestants come back again, and again, and again. It’s not Funny, it’s horrific.. but I can at least say they put in some effort ofr that one gag and given the horrifying lack of effort for the other match this one BARELY gets the W Winner: When Animals Attack:

Round 2: Shaggy vs Bob Marley VS Christan Bale vs Adam West

This one’s a no contest... seriously the gulf between jokes is wide and deep.

The Shaggy Vs Marley bout is the best of Rockstarmageddon. It’s funny, the target actually deserves being made fun of as Shaggy was a talent vacum and is memorably bad in comparison to Kravitz, so I still like seeing him get roasted, and they find a lot of funny jokes to do with Bob Marley. I only have a passing familiarity with the guy and while they do the obvious weed joke, they also have him ask for a tiny hammer or a small axe, beat shaggy with his dreads and after using a ring post to kill him, MAKING HIS REMAINS INTO A BONG (hilariously called a “legal novelty smoking device by the commentators). This match shows me why the show was popular: not every match was GOOD.. but the ones that were were creative and a joy to watch. While I sitll feel it’s mildly punching down, it’s funny enough I don’t care.

Bale Vs West just sucks both by comparison and just in general; The IDEA of having the current Batman at the time and the 60′s one duke it out is great.. but it’s very clear they didn’t like Batman begins nor have any actual christian bale jokes. While this was pre terminator rant and the much more iconic dark knight, if they didn’t have any good jokes , why do this. They just have nothing and are insulting a legitimately good movie instead of making anything funny and making cracks about everyone thinking Adam West is dead. More on that in a bit, but it’s just really not funny and really wasted my time... though West turning him into a batsignal of the cross was clever i’ll admit.

Winner: Rockstarmageddon

Round 3: Dave Matthews vs Keith Richards VS Jamie Fox vs Ray Charles

Another mistmatch.. but this time in the opposite direction.

Dave Matthews Vs Keith Richards sucks. While there are some good gags up top, we’ll get to that in it’s own section, the match itself just isn’t funny and I really don’t get comparing the stones to dave matthews band. the two bands aren’t remotely similar. The most clever it gets is Dave injecting Richards with his blood, which mellows him out but also revitalizes Richards. There’s a few good jabs at richards but otherwise just nothing of susbtance and like Kravitz Dave Matthews Band has been largely forgotten and unlike Kravitz or Shaggy, just doesn’t seem like as valid a target.

Fox vs Charles on the other hand was a great misdirect, changing his opponent and “punking” fox, forcing him to go from someone he was ready to throw down with to someone he rejects. There are way too many mr mcgoo style I’M BLINDDDDD gags, but Fox is a much more deserving target, and they had far more clever gags, with charles pulling out a cat o n grammys, and using a piano to finish Jamie. It’s nothing GREAT... but at least it’s actually funny and actually picked a good target for the time, if not one that has aged well.

Winner: When Animals Attack. 1 to 2

Round 4: Who Used the Time Machine Better?

Narrowly .. rockstarmageddon. While it had the same justification for it, the original taking on an upstart attempted replacement, the keith richards gag we’ll get to in a second is better than the farley gag for not being grossly insensitive and unfunny. But neither really use it well; Rockstarmageddon just uses it to mock artists they like and Animals uses it because the first one did. Neither really had a clever idea for it other than “get it this person sucks compared to that one.

Winner: Rockstarmageddon. 2 to 2

Episode Theme:

Similar to the time machine, this one comes down to which one had the better indvidual theme... and i’d have to say it’s Rockstarmageddon. It used the theme POORLY, but at least it both had an interesting idea, dead rock stars vs their successors in modern day, versus an easy one (animal matchups) it abandoned for the final match and used REALLY fucking insultingly in the first match. Seriously I don’t mind a WELL done fat joke, as an overweight guy myself, but this was just...

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In it’s purest form.

Winner: Rockstarmageddon 3 to 2

Special Guest:

Each episode had a guest for the time machine... and this one is again no real contest, Rockstarmageddon wins.

For Rockstarmageddon the show brought back frequent guest star , wrestling legend Stone Cold Steve Austin, who I enjoy and was indeed part of my childhood and star of many video games and one of my brother’s all time favorite wrasslers. The show contrasts his blue collar hellion image with him having made the machine, getting quantum mechanics and unlike nick getting that Keith Richards is dead. Austin clearly gets the show, is fully on board playing along and has fun escorting Hendrix back to the machine and getting his revenge on Nick for doubting him that Keith Richards was alive. He just fits perfectly into the show.

The revival.. could not get him, likely because he didn’t want to or saw the script and rightfully stone cold stunnered them, i.e. what he shoudl’ve done when Adam Sandler offered him Grown Ups 2. Seriously Adam why bring him in if he’s not going to do something wrestling related to you? This is why people don’t like your films. That and you keep giving your old buddy rob increasingly racist work. And david spade work. And nick swarsdon work. Please do keep giving Shaq work though he’s actually not half bad.

So instead they bring in Einstein and the joke.. is that he swears a lot and drinks a lot and pulls his pants down at the end.> That.. that’s it. I mean the original , at least the episode given to me, didn’t make a GREAT impression, but at least it was creative. The Reboot came off as shockingly lazy and half assed, with lesser voice actors for our hosts and far less effort put in and this is the biggest emblem of that. Soooo

Winner; Rockstarmageddon 4 to 2

Final Round: Their Not Dead

The final round is a short one and while the winner is already decided, might as well. Both episodes do a joke about one of the guests NOT being dead.. but once again Rockstar is more clever about it. Nick is CERTAIN Keith Richards is dead, and forces Stone Cold to bring him to the present... only for Keith to show up, and there be two keiths. One fades away due to time travel stuffs, a REALLy damn good gag, and Nick’s dogged instance he’s not dead despite everyone knowing he isn’t is just damn funny.

IN contrast all they have for the late great Adam West.. is insisting he’s dead. That’s it. that’s all they got. It’s not funny, it’s disprectful to Adam who while not an a list actor did a ton of stuff after batman. I mean the simpsons alone should shut them the fuck up...

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This one short gag is a MUCH better one than that entire 7 minutes. It was also DEEPLY uncomfortable now Adam’s passed. So naturally

The Winner of this Segment and Overall; Rockstarmageddon.

I wouldn’t say I LIKED either episode this go round, both had some pretty bad spots..but it’s very clear that while the original had it’s flaws, it was creative, had tons of energy, and a great voice cast. The revivial... has a good chris farley impersonator and that’s it. It’s very clear the people behind the reboot just don’t get the show and are doing the lazy bare minimum. While I didn’t LIKE most of the matches in Rockstarmageddon, I can at least respect the craftmanship: the animation, host jokes and energy is just BETTER. There’s a care and craft the revivial dosen’t have and the drop in quality is noticeable.

So yeah overall the original wins.. but the episode chosen clearly wasn’t it’s best. That being said both had some good moments, and I would be open to watching more if any one wants to comission it. This experiment has been intresting so let me know in the comments if you want to see more of these and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. And please join my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet.

#celebrity deathmatch #lenny kravitz #jimmy hendrix #keith richards #dave matthews #shaggy #bob marley #adam west #christian bale #horatio sanz #chris farley #jamie fox #ray charles

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lifeonashelf · 3 years

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COLDPLAY

Let’s get this straight right off the bat: Coldplay is fucking terrible.

We all know this. Designating Coldplay as terrible isn’t a statement of personal opinion, it is an easily demonstrable fact. Just listen to them; Coldplay’s music proves the existence of Coldplay’s terribleness the same way that breathing proves the existence of oxygen. Surely, even the band’s staunchest supporters understand that their songs are pretentious, monotonous, and unimaginative—they’d kind of have to; I assume these people have listened to Coldplay, too. If you like music as superfluous as Coldplay’s, that’s totally fine. I’m not here to tell you that you shouldn’t, nor to convince you to stop listening to Coldplay (you can’t stop listening to them, anyway; no matter how hard you try to escape, wherever you go, Coldplay will find you). But they are unequivocally fucking awful, and I need to make that clear before we continue in case I end up saying anything courteous about them later. And, who knows? I may indeed find something positive to say about Coldplay—I mean, nothing comes to mind right now, but it’s going to take me a few hours to write this piece so it’s possible something will at some point.

Okay, so we’re all clear on Coldplay being fucking terrible, right? Great. But that isn’t the main reason I hate them. I appreciate plenty of terrible bands just as I appreciate plenty of terrible movies. Listening to a really shitty group is sort of like watching a cast of really shitty actors—though they clearly suck at what they do, there’s something oddly appealing about the charming naiveté they demonstrate by giving it the best go they can anyway.

For instance, since I was still filing most of my Warped Tour emo discs in my punk section when I began this venture, I never got around to writing about a band called Adair. If you’re not familiar with them, don’t worry about it; they only existed for a few years in the mid-aughts and their diminutive discography merely consists of a self-released EP and one full-length album, The Destruction Of Everything Is The Beginning Of Something New. Sonically, Adair were so amusingly prototypical of every baby t-shirt screamo band that was thriving at the time, they essentially sounded like they were parodying the style of music they played (although, to be fair, a lot of those squads did). But, Adair were absolutely serious, regardless of what stridently nasal heights the vocals reached, regardless of how faithfully their compositions adhered to their genre’s textbook page by page, and regardless of the sublimely ridiculous realms some of their allegorical angst lamentations ventured into (the line “lock me up in Guantanamo Bay and throw away the key” from the song “I Buried My Heart In Cosmo Park” may very well be the lyrical apex of their entire genus).

Adair’s music is so inane that it makes me laugh out loud when I sing along to it—but here’s the thing: I do sing along to it. I have probably played The Destruction Of Everything Is The Beginning Of Something New a hundred times from start to finish since my copy was sent to me to review for some website back in 2006, and I have cued up individual high(low?)points like “The Diamond Ring” and “Folding and Unfolding” even more times than that. As silly as they sound—and trust me, they sound very fucking silly—I still sincerely enjoy their tunes and have spent enough hours listening to TDOEITBOSN for it to possibly qualify as one of my favorite records ever. Shit, even writing about it right now makes me feel like hearing the disc, so I’ll probably end up blasting it in my truck tomorrow (ed. note: I actually did). If they ever decided to do a reunion tour, I would absolutely go see them, and if vocalist Rob Tweedie did that whole “hold the microphone out toward the crowd so they can finish the lyric” thing which every frontman in every band that sounds like Adair does at least a dozen times per show, I would totally be able to fill in each of those blanks and enthusiastically do so.

Sorry, we were talking about Coldplay. To recap, they’re fucking terrible.

Unlike a frivolous whimper-core ensemble like Adair, the most off-putting thing about Coldplay isn’t their music. They’ve actually managed to excrete a few tracks that I grudgingly enjoy over the years. However, sporadically releasing songs which don’t sound like they were specifically written for Gap commercials actually works against Coldplay in this instance. Sure, most of their output is noxious twaddle, but since they occasionally come across as a marginally decent band, their work isn’t awful enough to at least ironically appreciate it for being awful.

In fact, there’s absolutely nothing ironic about Coldplay—other than U2 and Radiohead (more on them in a minute), I can’t think of another band that seems to take itself as dreadfully seriously as Coldplay does. There isn’t a single lighthearted number in their entire catalog, and the demeanor of their music is so staid and cheerless that it’s hard to imagine the dudes ever cracking a smile while they’re making it. Their approach to songwriting is rigidly Pavlovian—when the music gets louder, ring ring ring, that signals the listener the *really* poignant part of the tune has arrived and cues them to emotionally salivate in kind—yet despite their calculated use of sonic dynamics to manufacture sentiment, the vapid and unspontaneous nature of the delivery saps their tunes of anything resembling genuine soul or passion. Even when thrusting through the more energetic tracks in their litany, the musicians in Coldplay always sound like they’re actively striving to not play their instruments too hard. The result is that they consistently deliver some of the safest and least edgy rock ever created, shaping their ethos around a formula so willfully tepid and cuddly that they barely qualify as a rock band at all. Coldplay aren’t quite the musical equivalent of plain yogurt (that would be Jack Johnson, an artist so comprehensively flavorless that even his name is fucking boring) but the granola in their mixture is always judiciously distributed so as not to agitate anyone’s tastebuds.

And at the center of this slow-motion kaleidoscope, you have Chris fucking Martin (I find it difficult to cite his name without including the “fucking” in there; he’s just one of those guys—like Jason fucking Mraz, Blake fucking Shelton, or fucking Bono). Coldplay’s music may be stagnant, but you’d never know it from beholding the practiced arsenal of slinky paroxysms their vocalist bursts into while that music is playing. In performance and in their videos, Martin’s appendages are incessantly in motion, his hands ever-swaying gently through the air like he’s waving a pair of invisible cigarette lighters or finger painting on the goddamn sky, ostensibly so deeply lost in his band’s reverie of sound that he simply can’t help himself from moving his body in a cadenced pantomime of the way their music is meant to superficially move your spirit.

For the three non-ballads the group has written in their career, Chris usually switches things up by crouching in an incongruous bobbing panther-stance like a battle rapper delivering a diss track about fucking his opponent’s mama in the mouth, until it’s time to freeze in the tried and true messiah-statue pose as the number’s final notes chime into the ether. But it is in the quiet moments when Martin truly shines—which makes perfect sense given that he’s the leader of a group so systematically anodyne they probably should have actually named themselves Quiet Moments. These are the obligatory interims where the frontman takes the stage on his own to sit down at the piano, resplendent in the spotlight, and perform an intimate solo rendition of one of his most tender hits to show everyone in the audience that Chris fucking Martin is a bonafide fucking musician who, if he really felt like it, could totally do the whole Coldplay thing without the other three dudes whose names no one knows. His soaring falsetto croon is custom-feigned for the arenas the band was destined to coldplay from the moment they dropped their breakthrough single “Yellow” and caused a nation of book-sensitive sociology majors eagerly anticipating the arrival of their generation’s U2 to cream their Dockers in unison. When Martin opens his pipes to summon those indelibly contrived choruses about birds and stars and other monosyllabic nouns, it hardly even matters what words he’s singing—the leitmotifs in most of the tunes are basically interchangeable anyway. What matters is that Chris sounds like he really, really, really means it when he says he will try to fix you.

That analysis probably makes it seem like I hate Chris fucking Martin as much as I hate his band. I actually don’t—he’s too benign a character to elicit such a fervid response; hating Chris Martin is like hating turtleneck sweaters, or actual turtles. In fact, I suspect he’s probably a really nice dude. At least, I’ve never heard any creepy stories about him showing his penis to under-aged fans on Skype or anything like that.

Regardless, while I don’t specifically despise either Martin, Dude Who Plays Guitar, or the other two anonymous members of Coldplay, I do gauge their collective as the fourth or fifth worst band of all time. And the reason I loathe them more than any of their neighbors on that list is because they aren’t the kind of prodigiously abysmal group you can just ignore until their moment in the spotlight inevitably passes—which is how I dealt with Five For Fighting from September 2001 through February 2002 and how I’ve been dealing with Twenty-One Pilots for the last four years (seriously, are you fuckers done yet?). Coldplay is a far cagier nuisance because they are massively popular and have been for a ludicrously long time. I’ve been patiently waiting for them to go away for two decades now, yet they continue to pop up every third summer or so to drop a new album and remind us that, yes, they’re still here assiduously mining the middle of the road for new ways to write more tunes about clouds being pretty.

Even worse, I can’t disregard their music because it’s everywhere. I hear “The Scientist” while I’m shopping for cereal at the grocery store, I hear “Talk” when I sit down to eat at any chain restaurant, and I imagine I’ll be viewing that idiotic video for “Adventure of a Lifetime” with the posse of animated dancing monkeys on an infinite Clockwork-Orange-eyes-gaping loop for the rest of eternity when my mortal essence exits this world and I am cast into the fiery pits of Hell. I can’t even watch football without encountering Coldplay, as I discovered with horror in 2016 when they took part in the most fatuous jumbled fucking mess of a Super Bowl halftime show the NFL had ever presented (a zenith of suckery which seemed impossible to eclipse until this past February, when Adam Levine showed up covered with prison tattoos and said, “hold my beer”).

The pervasive level of esteem Coldplay has reached dumbfounds me. This is a group that has sold millions and millions of albums worldwide, even though I have never once heard a single person utter the phrase, “man, that new Coldplay song kicks ass.” I’m sure their most dedicated fans have favorite hits, tracks that are significant to them in some way, etc. But their remarkable success is patently disproportionate to how patently unremarkable the work which garnered that success really is. Nobody ever describes the band’s music as “awesome”, just as nobody ever describes a glass of pinot gris as awesome—the term simply does not apply to their province; actually, in this case, describing the mouthfeel of Coldplay tunes and recommending cheeses they best pair with is probably more relevant than discussing how they sound. Coldplay is as universally popular as they are precisely because they aren’t awesome. They’re not beloved because they’re extraordinary; most people love them because they’re innocuous, functional, and suitable for almost any occasion—Coldplay is akin to a pair of cargo shorts, and no one thinks cargo shorts kick ass. Coldplay isn’t an alternative band (on the contrary, almost every good band is an alternative to Coldplay); they are a lowest common denominator band, undemanding and ubiquitous and safe to like because everyone else likes them. Their work is specifically geared toward people who think appreciating music demonstrates sophistication, but don’t ultimately give enough of a shit about the artform to put any effort into finding music that is actually sophisticated or appreciable. You may assume Coldplay is erudite because they’re British and they cite books you’ve never read when discussing the lyrical themes in their work, but they’re merely recycling the same emotional territory as every other pop act that writes tunes about finding love, losing love, missing love, and the 18th Century French peasantry.

The best thing about being a Coldplay fan is that it’s easy. You don’t have to buy their records, go see them live, or make any concerted effort at all to receive their music. If you listen to the radio for any extended period of time (or eat at an Applebee’s), you will eventually hear one of their songs; all you have to do is not hate it and, voila, you’re officially a Coldplay fan. There, don’t you just love the security of venerating a critically and commercially acclaimed band that will never challenge you or be unpopular?

Okay, I do strive to be fair—even in this arena where I can say whatever I want and no one can argue with me. I gave this a lot of thought, so here are four things about Coldplay that are not terrible:

1) “Clocks”: I resisted it for many years, but I finally had to concede that it’s kind of a pretty song. Notes of red currant and blackberries, and it goes superbly with a nice aged brie.

2) “God Put A Smile On Your Face”: It doesn’t put a smile on mine, but that’s why I enjoy it. Most Coldplay songs sound like they’re aiming to evoke what being hugged by a koala bear feels like, so I appreciate Chris fucking Martin delivering a darker number that seems intent on making me feel depressed instead. Well played, sir.

3) Viva La Vida, Or Death And All His Friends: I sincerely respect their effort to broaden their palate a bit by working with Brian Eno and making Dude Who Plays Guitar buy a distortion pedal to use on one song. This is still an archetypal shitty Coldplay record, but at least it sounds a little different than all of the other archetypal shitty Coldplay records.

4) Nah. They’re still fucking terrible; they were lucky to get three things.

There is one additional facet of the group’s career which has fascinated me over these past several years, even though it relates more to bands that are not Coldplay rather than the band that is Coldplay. Earlier I dubbed them the U2 of their generation, and recent events in particular have coalesced to underscore that comparison. See, when Coldplay came out, the tributes to their Irish brethren in choreographed affectation were far from subtle. Chris fucking Martin’s warbling was plainly modeled after fucking Bono’s, Dude Who Plays Guitar served up an endless cycle of repetitive but hooky high-register licks that were striking similar to the distinctive methodology of The Edge, and both bands’ workmanlike rhythm sections held things down with competent yet discreet backing tracks which militantly fulfilled each song’s basic requirements rather than showcasing the musicians’ dexterity. I don’t think anyone ever disputed the collective homage in Coldplay’s dogma, and no one was terribly bothered by it either; at the time there were a lot of people craving a band that sounded just like U2, because U2 didn’t sound like U2 anymore.

When Coldplay’s debut album Parachutes was released in July 2000, fucking Bono and company’s career was on a downward arc after they largely vacated their signature approach to instead craft a couple poorly-received discs dominated by insipid rave-lite tunes that not even the members of U2 listen to anymore. Though they would temporarily rebound later that year with “Beautiful Day”, the last honestly excellent song they would ever record, U2 had left a gap that needed filling. And the most obvious inheritors of their kingdom, Radiohead, had grown tired of anthemic guitar rock; they were hunkered down creating their demanding but exceptional opus Kid A, which sounded nothing like U2, nothing like Radiohead, and indeed nothing like any other music being made on planet Earth. Kid A still had some anthems, still had some guitar, and still had a little rock, but its oblique delivery clearly demonstrated that Radiohead was chasing a far different muse and had little interest in claiming the crown (of course, this would be abundantly clarified in hindsight when they subsequently slid further down their rabbit-hole, gradually abandoning the anthems and guitars and rock altogether, until finally settling upon their current songwriting formula, which seems to mostly involve Thom Yorke masturbating on his laptop, naming ten of his climaxes, and calling it an album).

So while U2 were busy trying to figure out why they weren’t relevant anymore and Radiohead were busy doing whatever the fuck they were doing, the lads in Coldplay stepped up and said, hey, why not us? They seized the ersatz-earnest arena rock mantle with A Rush Of Blood To The Head and never looked back. Now, 17 years and seven multi-platinum albums later, they can ruin the Super Bowl, collaborate with the Chainsmokers, and even make the same kind of lameass dance music that essentially buried U2’s career with impunity. Even more significant, they have come full circle. A group that started out playing second-rate U2 facsimiles under the moniker Pectoralz (this is absolutely true, by the way) is now one of the hugest pop institutions in the universe, beloved by millions of music and wine connoisseurs across the globe. And the student has eclipsed the teacher; U2’s desperate efforts to play catchup have made their modern work sound unmistakably like second-rate Coldplay facsimiles. Chris fucking Martin and those other three guys are no longer pretenders to the throne—they are Coldplay, and this is their empire now, bitches.

These days, U2 has to reprise their old records in their entirety on nostalgia tours to get anyone to come to their concerts, and Radiohead continues to release unlistenable albums which their fans claim to love while sheepishly casting them aside to listen to OK Computer for the thousandth time instead. But Coldplay has strategically situated themselves for an eternity as the undisputed emperors of rock mediocrity. I think they’ve got another two decades in them, too; I have no doubt that long after Twenty-One Pilots is (finally) relegated to the county fair circuit where they belong, Chris fucking Martin will still be promising sold-out crowds that lights will lead them home and having a series of polite, gently-articulated seizures while he sings “Speed Of Sound”.

It seems I respect Coldplay a little more than I suspected. You know what? I’m going to amend my original valuation right here and now. As of this moment, I am formally designating Coldplay the sixth worst band of all time.

Your move, Godsmack.

May 15, 2019

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freddiesaysalright · 4 years

Text

The Most Dramatic Season Ever - Week 1

Summary: It’s your time now! You are ABC’s new Bachelorette and this is your journey! All these men (including our fav BoRhap boys and then some) are competing for your heart! Will you find love? Will you get engaged at the end? Or will you end up heartbroken? Find out, on the most dramatic season ever!

Word Count: 6k

Tag List: @psychosupernatural, @someone-get-a-medic, @bensrhapsody, @deakyclicks, @crazylittlethingcalledobsession, @minigranger, @crazyweirdocalledfriday, @anincurablefangirl, @assembledherethevolunteers, @rose-writes-prose, @queenlover05, @moon-stars-soul, @danadeacon, @deacyblues, @thesundrop, @cupidben, @lostlittlenerd, @delilahmay39, @mazzellodeaky, @queenmylovely, @loveandbeloved29, @free-pool-trash If you’d like to be added, let me know!

A/N: It’s the first week of dates! This chapter, I’ve inserted pictures and captions for the “talking head” portions of the show.

Warning(s): Mentions of drug use. Mentions of cheating.

Night 1

Week 1 here we go!!!

The guys were all settled around the living room, sipping coffee and chatting casually. There was a bit of an anxious murmur about them as a date card was coming, they just weren’t sure when. A date card meant more time with you, especially if they got a one on one date. Group dates were fun, but they meant competing for your attention. They already had to do that at cocktail parties before rose ceremonies. It wasn’t ideal for quality time with you.

Taron: I really want to see Y/N, but if it’s a group date, I’m hoping my name’s not on the card. I’m holding out that I’ll be the one on one this week. It’s just - I’ve already got a massive crush on this girl. I want to know her more and show her my heart as well. We just won’t have the time on a group date.

Finally, that knock on the door came. Wells jumped up and got the card. He returned to the living room and eagerly opened the envelope. He smiled and a nervous twinge stirred in the men. Which was it?

“Rami,” he began.

Rami held his breath. He didn’t want to celebrate too soon in case it was a group date.

Wells continued. “Joe, Ben, Gwilym, Allen, Richard, Eric, Luke, Kenny, Mike, Wells, and Jordan. Don’t be shy, spill your secrets. Love, Y/N.”

That left Jared, John, John Paul Jones, Taron, and a few other men (Colton, Lincoln, Chad, and Chris) for the potential one on one. Taron crossed his fingers and hoped that this meant it was him.

“Well, we can’t be too disappointed, guys,” said Joe. “I know it’s a group date but that just means you have to make the time you have with her count.”

They all got up to start getting ready for the date. Joe looked over at Ben, who was combing his hair carefully into place. Joe clapped him on the back.

“You don’t even have to do much, dude, you’re ridiculous,” Joe said.

Ben chuckled. “I need to stand out to her.”

“Yeah, but you’re making the rest of us look like jackasses,” Joe replied.

The group all laughed and then headed out to the limo that would take them to meet you wherever you were waiting for them. As they all clamored in, they began speculating what the date card could mean.

“Maybe she wants us to share something we haven’t shared before,” Richard suggested.

“Yeah, but that could be anything,” Gwilym pointed out. “We’re all still getting to know her.”

“It’s honestly so vague,” Rami said. “How can we even hope to guess?”

They pulled up to a small theater in downtown Los Angeles. You stood outside the door, and the men all cheered once they saw you. Joe rolled down the window and you waved to them as they stopped, laughter on your lips and in your eyes. You were really excited for this date, and for the opportunity for these guys to show more of themselves to you.

“Hey, guys!” you greeted as they exited the car.

Allen was the first one out and he rushed over to pull you into a hug. He spun you around in his arms and you laughed with joy. The others trailed behind and greeted you more subtly with gentle embraces and cheek kisses.

“I’m so glad you guys made it,” you said. “So, something that’s important to me in finding a partner is laughing together.”

They murmured their agreement back to you.

“Sharing laughter is a really underappreciated form of intimacy,” you said. “As well as - y’know - actual intimacy. They go hand in hand. So what I want you guys to do for me today is think of the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you during sex, write it down in an amusing little anecdote, and then, we’re all going to share them on stage when we’re done.”

“Wait, is there gonna be an audience?” Ben asked.

You nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Ben: This date makes me extremely nervous. I’m quite a private person when it comes to my sex life, and sharing stuff like that - especially with a girl I want to potentially marry - it’s a bit odd.

Joe: Honestly, most of my sexual experiences are funny, so I think I’ve got this one in the bag.

“Are y’all ready to get started?” you asked them.

They all cheered their affirmation and then followed you inside. Once in the theater, they were all given a legal pad and a pen. They scattered throughout the space to begin writing, and you made the rounds, stopping to chat a little with everyone and see how they were doing.

You took a seat beside Gwilym.

“Hey,” you chirped. “How’s it going over here?”

“Hello, beautiful,” he replied. “It’s going alright. I’m quite a romantic so it’s difficult to come up with an example of something funny.”

You smiled at him. “I like that you’re a romantic. But the story doesn’t have to be something super raunchy or anything. Just, anytime you laughed with your partner.”

“Are you sure you want to hear stories of us with other women?” he asked.

“Of course,” you said. “Your past makes you who you are. And that’s just the information I want to know about you.”

“Well, for future reference, you may ask me anything you like,” he said.

“I think I can drum up a question or two,” you returned. “I’ll leave you to it.”

You continued on to the next man, just checking in. They only had about ten minutes to write their story before the audience would be allowed in. You were really looking forward to this to see what their sense of humor was like, and how well they dealt with discussing things that were awkward. When the time finally came, you sat between Allen and Richard while the audience filled in around you and the men. The first person up was Eric.

Eric told a story about his first time, which was a disaster. It was really good and made you laugh. You snorted when Kenny got up and admitted that his daughter had walked in on him and her mother once. Allen said he once slept with a girl who admitted afterward that she only went home with him because she had a thing for Irish guys after seeing Gerard Butler in P.S. I Love You. Everyone had great stories, and your cheeks were already hurting from smiling. Then, Joe got up there.

“I once hooked up with a girl I picked up at a bar,” he began. “Sounds pretty typical. Anyway, we go back to her place, things are getting hot and heavy, and I realize I don’t have a condom. So, she tells me she has some in her bathroom. I find them, rip one open and realize - this girl has glow in the dark condoms.”

You chuckled and waited for him to continue.

“I put one on, and honest to God said to myself ‘It’s like a lightsaber,’” he said. “But the story doesn’t end there. I walked back into her bedroom, swinging my dick back and forth and making the sound effects while I walked toward her.”

You howled at this point, tossing your head back as you laughed.

“The worst part was that she didn’t understand the reference,” he finished. “Needless to say, we only spent the one night together.”

He came off the stage and you dabbed at your eyes. You were grateful for your waterproof mascara.

The rest of the men went, one by one. Gwilym seemed to hesitate in his story and you made a mental note to ask him about it later. All of them had you in stitches by the end. Then came a guy named Luke’s turn. Luke really intrigued you, so you watched him curiously as he stood behind the microphone.

“Hi, everyone,” he began. “I don’t have a story like this, I’m afraid. Because I’m actually a born-again virgin.”

The theater was suddenly thick with discomfort.

“I’ve been saved by my relationship with Jesus, and therefore abstain from sex before marriage.”

Rami: Yeah… Luke made things really weird.

“I am saving my body for one woman,” Luke went on. “That woman who is meant to be my wife. I hope that woman is Y/N.”

You shifted awkwardly in your seat. This was not the direction you were expecting this date to go. No one was laughing anymore and the mood had switched entirely.

“All of you - if you open your hearts to Christ - you can be saved as well,” he continued. “With that grace, you can be truly fulfilled, instead of losing yourselves to temptations. Thank you.”

A painfully unpleasant silence followed. The only sounds were his footsteps as he returned to his seat.

Richard: I sort of wanted to laugh at first. I thought, he’s got to be f***ing joking. But, no, he was serious. Which almost makes it funnier, in a way.

You sprang up from your seat and rushed to the stage, trying to recover the situation. You thanked the audience for listening and the men for sharing. Then you left the theater to prepare for the evening portion of the date.

Back at the house, the remaining men were waiting for the date card. Everyone wanted it to be their own name, but Taron wanted it the most. When Chris Harrison showed up, everyone was on edge as he placed the date card on the coffee table.

“To whoever gets the date,” he said. “I hope you have a wonderful time.”

Jared jumped up and snatched the envelope as Chris left. All eyes were on the former as he broke the seal and removed the card. He looked disappointed, and Taron’s heart leapt. So Jared’s name wasn’t on the card.

“Taron,” Jared read. “Do you believe in magic? Love, Y/N.”

Taron pumped his fist in the air while the other guys congratulated him. He took the card and read over the words, heart racing as he tried to decipher the meaning. What kind of date involved magic? He didn’t think it was a magic show or anything like that. No matter what it was, he was excited.

Back on the date, the sun had gone down and you were joining the men on a rooftop bar that was reserved for all of you. There was a large, wrap around couch where you could all sit. In the center of it was a fire pit, with a warm fire already crackling. You all got your drinks and you took a seat between Luke and Ben.

“Thanks for a very entertaining day, you guys,” you said. “I feel like I already know each of you a little better, and I just want to learn more. Here’s to a great day, and even greater night.”

“Cheers!” they echoed.

You all clinked glasses and you right away felt Luke’s hand on your arm.

“Can I steal you first?” he asked.

“Sure,” you agreed.

He took your hand and you followed him to a more secluded part of the rooftop. There was a loveseat set up. You took the blanket off the back of it and draped it over your legs.

“So, you said some interesting stuff today,” you said. “I didn’t realize you were so religious.”

“Yeah, it’s the most important thing in my life,” he answered.

“Can you tell me a bit more about that?” you pressed. “Like, how did you become that way or is that just how you were raised?”

“I was raised in the faith,” he told you. “But honestly, I strayed. For a period of about six years, I was completely lost. And those were dark times for me. I was depressed and lonely. I just wanted validation from anywhere I could get it. I became wrapped up in alcohol and sex and anything that made me forget that darkness inside me.”

You were a bit moved by this story. “I’m sorry you went through that.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Because it was the journey I needed to go on to return to my faith. I came back to church and decided to start over. I was truly saved, in more ways than one.”

“I admire the strength of your conviction,” you said. “I think that’s a really unique story, and I feel like I understand you a little better.”

“I’m glad,” he said.

“But I also want you to understand that I’m not in that place,” you continued. “I’m not very religious, and I don’t believe you have to save yourself for marriage.”

His mouth turned down and he looked away from you for a moment. When he met your gaze again, you saw something like determination in them.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I think we can work through this together.”

“Well, yeah, ultimately, any couple overcomes differences together,” you replied. “I’m glad you’re open minded.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m not here to pass judgement on anyone or anything like that.”

“That’s good to hear,” you said. “Thank you for sharing.”

“Of course.”

He leaned in, opening his arms, and he embraced you. Just as you parted from the hug, Kenny approached and asked for time with you. You left with him, and Luke returned to the rest of the men.

“Well, if it isn’t Pastor Luke,” Joe joked as Luke resumed his seat on the couch. “Coming to grace us heathens with his holy body.”

A snicker went through the group but Luke just rolled his eyes.

“Make fun of it all you want, dude,” he said. “But I know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Don’t start preaching to us again,” Richard said.

“Look, this might be hard for you guys to understand, but I’m on a rescue mission for Y/N,” Luke said. “I’m supposed to save her.”

“From what, exactly?” Gwilym wondered.

“From herself,” Luke answered. “From things that might lead her astray.”

“You mean like us?” Ben pressed.

“It could be,” Luke said. “I just know that I’m right for her.”

“Look, we all think we’re right for her,” Joe chimed in. “It’s only the first week of dates, dude.”

“Don’t be so confident just because you got the First Impression Rose,” Luke argued.

“I’m not!” Joe insisted. “That’s why I’m saying this. I’m not sure. Nobody’s sure until you get your next rose.”

“Yeah, just cool it, there,” Allen added. “Keep up that talk and you won’t have many friends.”

“Well, I didn’t come here to make friends,” Luke stated. “I came here for my wife.”

“Alright, then,” Ben concluded shortly.

The group returned to uncomfortable silence. Then Gwilym got to his feet and went to find you. He had had quite enough of that conversation and of Luke in general.

You were sitting with Kenny still, and he was showing you pictures of his daughter. She was a precious little girl, with big brown eyes and the most gorgeous natural hair. She resembled Kenny, but had softer, feminine charms.

“She’s just adorable, Kenny,” you said.

“If this goes right, I’d love for you to meet her,” he returned.

Your heart melted. “That would mean the world to me.”

He held your gaze a moment before leaning over and kissing you softly. It was tentative and playful, but with a real genuine affection behind it. You liked Kenny very much. You parted, beaming at each other.

At that moment, Gwilym cleared his throat behind you. You turned and beamed at him.

“Hi,” you greeted.

“May I take some of your time, Y/N?” he asked politely.

“Absolutely,” you said.

You gave Kenny a quick hug before leading Gwilym over to a private table. You sat on a little booth on one side, and you instinctively snuggled up to him. He draped his arm over your shoulders as you rested your head on his chest.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Good,” you said. “I had so much fun today.”

“I’m happy for you,” he returned.

“I have a question for you,” you said, looking up to meet his gaze. “You sort of stopped yourself today during your story. What happened there?”

He cleared his throat and looked away from you, straight ahead. As if seeing something there that you couldn’t. You sat up and looked at his face. There was suddenly such a deep sorrow about him that you grew worried.

“Gwilym?” you asked. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “It’s just difficult to talk about.”

You took his hand and squeezed it. “Tell me.”

“Well, I was with one woman for about eight years,” he said. “We were actually engaged to be married.”

“You’ve been engaged before?” you asked.

It seemed like such a stupid question, but you were just surprised.

“Yes,” he said.

“Go on,” you urged.

“We were going to get married, but it turned out, she was keeping something from me,” he explained. “A heroin addiction. Apparently it had been going on for years without my knowledge.”

You clapped your hand over your mouth as you gasped.

“I’m so sorry, Gwilym…”

He grimaced. “It doesn’t end there.”

“It gets worse?!”

He nodded stiffly. You waited for him to speak, permitting him to take all the time he needed to say it, though your mind was spinning with questions.

“I didn’t know until…” he trailed off, taking a deep breath. “I came home from work one day and found her on the kitchen floor, completely unresponsive. I tried to wake her and called an ambulance, but by the time they arrived, it was too late...she was gone.”

Your eyes swam with tears as you gazed at him. You were truly in awe of his strength.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Gwilym,” you said, shaking your head. “That’s...that’s awful.”

“The hardest part is having no answers,” he told you. “I don’t know why or when she actually started using. I don’t know how she was getting it or how she managed to hide it for so long. I was angry at her, and yet, I missed her. But then I felt I didn’t know her at all. It was a lot to process.”

“I’m sure,” you said gently. “I really admire you for taking another chance on love after something so traumatic. I can’t thank you enough for being here.”

“I’m happy to be here,” he said. “I want to start fresh and find my true love. And I’d like to find out if that’s you.”

“I’d like to find that out too.”

He cupped your cheek in his warm hand and tenderly pressed his lips to yours. You kissed this way for several minutes, though years could have gone by and you would not have noticed. You felt so hopeful with Gwilym. Like he was your fresh start too. You couldn’t wait to see where this journey took you with him.

The remainder of the evening went well. The guys were all open and honest with you, and you felt yourself really beginning to build some serious connections. Also, you got at least a few minutes with each of them. There was a group date rose to hand out, and you were sure of who you were going to give it to. You took a seat among them and picked the rose up off the table.

“I had such a great time with all of you today, and this evening,” you said. “But I’m going to give this rose to someone who really showed me a piece of his heart.” You turned to Gwilym. “Gwilym, thank you for being so brave. Will you accept this rose?”

“With every piece of my heart,” he replied, with a dashingly handsome grin.

You both stood, you pinned the rose to his coat, and he kissed your cheek. You faced the group.

“Thank you again for a fabulous night,” you said. “Goodnight, guys.”

You waved as they all bid you goodnight in return. When you were gone, a few of the guys high-fived Gwilym and congratulated him. He looked over and saw Luke scowling into the fire pit. Gwilym walked over and gave Luke a sarcastic pat on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, mate,” Gwilym smirked. “Say a few more prayers next time and maybe you’ll get the rose.”

A resounding “OOHHHH!” went through the group before they headed out to catch their cars back to the mansion.

The next day was your date with Taron. There was a lot that excited you about him. He was fun and bubbly and always managed to make you smile. There was a kindness about him - a gentleness of spirit that made you completely drawn to him. You were picking him up at the mansion, and you had a bit of drive to get to your destination.

You rolled up in a deep red corvette and honked the horn.

The men were mostly inside. A group was outside by the pool, catching the people who didn’t go on the date up on what happened and what Luke had said. It seemed to disturb most of the other men there as well. Then they heard the car in the driveway.

You beamed at the guys as they started slowly coming out the front door, looks of shock and a bit of jealousy coming over their faces. Then you opened the door and stepped out onto the pavement. A few of them raced forward to say hello and hug you before you had to go. You shared some laughs and greetings with them.

“Where’s my date?” you wondered.

“TARON!” Joe shouted. “YOU BETTER GET OUT HERE, DUDE!”

You giggled as Taron came out of the house, hopping on one foot as he shoved the other into his shoe. His mouth dropped when he saw you and the car. He put both feet on the ground.

“Is this our date?!” he wondered.

“It gets even better,” you said. “But that’s still a surprise.”

You slid your sunglasses onto your face and strutted over to the passenger side door to open it for him. He chuckled and slid into the seat.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome!” you returned before walking back over to the driver’s side and sliding in next to him. You waved to the guys still standing outside watching you go. “Bye, boys!”

They all waved back as you pulled out of the driveway. You kept one hand on the wheel and the other, you offered to Taron. He took it and brought it to his lips, placing a soft kiss on the back of it.

“It’s lovely to see you,” he said.

“You too,” you replied with the widest smile you’d had all week. “I’m so excited for this date.”

“Are you really not going to tell me where we’re going?” he asked.

“There’s a hint in the glovebox,” you told him. “Something we’ll need while we’re there.”

He released your hand and opened the glovebox. He pulled out the hint.

“Oh, my God!” he gasped. “Mickey Mouse ears?! Are we going to DisneyLand?!”

You nodded. He let out a delighted shout and kissed you hard on the cheek. You giggled as he put his on before putting the Minnie Mouse pair on your head.

“This is the best date ever!” he cried.

“Right?!” you agreed. “Okay, what’s your favorite Disney song?”

“That’s a tough choice…” he said. “A Whole New World, maybe? Any of the love ballads. They’re just great.”

“Aw, you softie!” you teased. “Sing it for me.”

He sat up a little straighter and cleared his throat.

“I can show you the world,” he sang.

Your mouth dropped as he continued.

“Shining, shimmering, splendid. Tell me, princess - now when did you last let your heart decide?”

“Oh my God, Taron, you can really sing!” you cried, impressed. “Your voice is amazing!”

“Thank you,” he returned bashfully. “I love to sing, actually.”

“You’re very good at it,” you said. “What’s the song you sing the best?”

“Another tough choice,” he said. “Probably… I’m Still Standing by Elton John.”

“I love that song!” you said excitedly. “Sing that one for me!”

He launched into it and you were absolutely delighted. His voice was so sweet, you could have listened to him sing all day.

“Seriously, how have you not auditioned for American Idol or something?” you wondered.

“If I’m being honest, it’s because that lifestyle isn’t really for me,” he said. “I’ve always wanted a simple life. A modest home, a wife I adore, and children, of course. I want to be around for that, and being a singer would mean I spent most of the time away from home.”

Your heart melted at the sentiment. That was exactly the life that you wanted as well.

“I get that,” you said. “That’s always been what I want too. To have a partner for life and raise a family together.”

You glanced over and caught his eye. You smiled at each other.

It was about an hour and half drive from the mansion to the park, so you got to talk to Taron a lot. Getting to know him was actually pretty easy. He wasn’t shy about answering your questions, which made you feel more open as well.

Exploring DisneyLand with Taron was like returning to your childhood. He was energetic and eager, practically running from ride to ride. You had to stop him a few times. You paused in front of the castle for a few minutes to catch your breath.

“I feel like I’m seven years old again!” you laughed.

“Good!” he returned.

He picked you up by the waist and spun you around. You giggled, throwing your arms around his neck and holding him tight. When he slowed to a stop, you held each other’s gaze.

“Now I feel like a princess,” you said quietly.

“Good,” he repeated, lowering his face to yours.

He claimed your lips in a passionate kiss that was anything but child-like. It was deep and slow, but not demanding. You pulled him closer and kissed him harder. Though you had been still for several minutes, your heart raced as if you had run a marathon. He made you feel young and giddy, but also desired. It was exactly the balance you were looking for.

“I’m having so much fun here with you,” he said, breathless as you broke apart.

“Me too,” you told him. “I can’t imagine a more perfect date. Or a more perfect man to spend it with.”

He kissed the tip of your nose sweetly, making you wrinkle it as you laughed.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

“Thank you,” you breathed back.

He kissed you lightly.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got so much more to do.”

He took your head and led you on. You were beginning to feel the happiest place on Earth was anywhere you were with Taron.

The day at the park was amazing. You had so much fun with Taron. You laughed together, took a few pictures, and you ended up kissing him a lot more after that first one. But, you also wanted to get to know him on a deeper level. To get to the real stuff. The things that made him who he is.

For the evening portion of your date, you were at a little seaside restaurant on Newport Beach. You had the place entirely to yourselves. The dinner set-up was waiting for you as you walked in. Taron pulled your chair out for you and you sat down, thanking him. He took a seat beside you. You picked up your drink.

“To a wonderful day,” you said. “And hopefully many more wonderful days ahead.”

“Cheers, love,” he said.

You touched glasses with a soft clink and each took a sip.

“So,” you began. “I had so much fun with you today. But, I want to know more.”

“What d’you want to know?” he asked.

“Can I ask you why your last relationship ended?”

He paused. Then he swallowed. His mouth turned down at the corners and you wondered if you had crossed a line.

“Course you can,” he said stiffly. “But, it’s kind of a rough story.”

“I can handle it,” you assured him.

“My last girlfriend and I were together for about three years,” he said. “We lived together and everything. Our relationship ended because she got pregnant.”

Your brow furrowed. “Wait, what?”

“She got pregnant by somebody else,” he explained, a hint of bitterness to his tone.

Your mouth fell open. “Wh - oh my God…”

“Yeah…” he trailed off. “It was a guy I knew, actually. A sort of friend of mine. And when she found out she was pregnant, she confessed everything. She left me because she wanted them to be a family. But, it blew up in her face because he didn’t want anything to do with it.”

You shook your head. “That’s horrible.”

“It is, but then she came back to me, wanting to get back together,” he said.

“Are you serious?!” you gasped.

“Quite,” he said. “And I took her back. I just...I still loved her, and she seemed so sorry. And she had nowhere else to go. We tried to work on the relationship, but things weren’t the same. Then, she miscarried.”

He took a deep breath before going on.

“After that, it quickly became clear that she was using me as a financial crutch because - surprise, surprise - she cheated again,” he said. “I ended it for good and called her parents to come and get her. That was that.”

All the twists and turns of his story had you reeling. You wondered how anyone could be so cruel to someone who was so genuine and kind.

“I’m so sorry,” you said. “How long ago was that?”

“About two years ago,” he told you.

“And you haven’t dated anyone since?” you wondered.

“I’ve dated, but nothing serious ever formed,” he said. “I still want to find that right person for me, y’know?”

You smiled, taking his hand. “I do.”

“And I think I’m heading in the right direction,” he said, holding your gaze.

“I think you are too,” you said.

He leaned over and kissed you gently. When you parted, you reached across the table and picked up the rose that sat on a dish.

“You were so wonderful today,” you said. “We had so much fun at the park, and then tonight was...everything I wanted from you. Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story with me.”

“Thank you for listening,” he replied.

You beamed at him. “So, all that being said. Taron, will you accept this rose?”

“Gladly,” he assured you with a smile.

You grinned impossibly wider as you pinned it on.

“Come on,” you said. “There’s a surprise for us outside.”

“Another surprise?!”

You giggled and led him to the balcony. He stood behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist and rested his chin on your shoulder. You looked out over the water. Together, you watched as a firework rocketed into the air and exploded over the inky black sky.

“Woah!” Taron gasped.

The fireworks show began, lighting up the night with the blooms. Then, he turned you to face him and he kissed you again. The way he had in the park. The fireworks were a perfect reflection of your feelings. There was something beyond a spark between you and Taron. You could picture falling in love with him. Marrying him. Sharing a life with him.

When you went to bed that night, you dreamed of fireworks and the feeling of Taron’s arms around you.

You looked forward to the cocktail party the following night. There were so many guys you wanted more time with, though you went in with some idea of who would be getting a rose. There were some men you wanted a bit more from before you could make your decision. So, you were sure the evening would be great.

When you got to the mansion, you made a toast and then Ben pulled you aside. It wasn’t just his good looks that drew you to him. Ben had a whole vibe that pulled you in and made you want to know him better. Something in his eyes told you there was a depth to him to be found. And you were determined to explore every part of that.

Luke asked for you next. Luke was sort of an enigma to you. He was a person who - outside of this - you would have probably turned him down right away. The deeply religious side was a bit of a turn off for you. But he was really nice, and seemed so eager to get to know you, too. After your conversation, you felt more positively toward him.

After Luke, was Richard. He had a quiet way about him, but every time you talked to him, you realized it was a quiet confidence. He was focused, but not harsh. Not to mention, he had a killer smile.

You tried to speak to everyone, but time was limited. Before you knew it, Chris Harrison called everyone in for the rose ceremony. You were a bit disappointed. There were a couple guys who didn’t have a date this week, and you had not gotten time with them at the cocktail party. But it was up to them to get that time with you, and if they couldn’t make the effort, then you assumed they didn’t want it that bad.

You stood before the men as they lined up. Gwilym and Taron stood to one side, since they already had roses and were safe. You still felt great about those decisions. Now, you had a few more to make. You took a deep breath and picked up the first rose. You found the first person you wanted to call.

“Joe,” you said, and saw his shoulders sag with relief when you did. He walked up to you with his usual grin. “Joe, will you accept this rose?”

“I will,” he said quietly.

He returned to the group.

“Rami,” you called, and he approached. “Rami, will you accept this rose?”

“Of course,” he answered.

You picked up the next rose.

“Richard,” you said. He walked coolly over to you. “Richard, will you accept this rose?”

“Always,” he replied.

Then, you called the following men: Allen, Eric, Luke, Kenny, Mike, Wells, Jordan, Jared, John, Chad, and John Paul Jones. Four men remained without a rose - Ben, Colton, Lincoln, and Chris R.

Chris Harrison walked out and stood beside you.

“Y/N, gentlemen,” he said. “This is the final rose tonight.”

You picked it up, hands shaking. You hated this part. Hurting people. But there was no doubt in your mind as to who this rose should go to.

“Ben,” you said.

He let out a deep sigh. “Thank God.”

You smiled as he walked over.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” you said. “Ben, will you accept this rose?”

“It was worth the wait,” he assured you. “O’course I will.”

You pinned it on him. He hugged you briefly and kissed your cheek before returning to the group.

Chris looked at the men.

“Gentlemen, I’m sorry,” he said. “If you did not receive a rose, take a moment, say your goodbyes.”

Colton, Lincoln, and Chris R all said goodbye to the men around them before they approached you one by one to say it to you. All three of them wished you the best of luck. You hated to see them go, since they were very nice to you, but you knew your connections were stronger with the others.

You couldn’t wait to see what the next week would bring.

149 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 3 years

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The Pandemic in Pop Culture Trends

https://ift.tt/32wrfZT

The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic was both a universal and incredibly personal experience. While not everyone’s life in the first year of the pandemic looked the same, there have been some common joys, struggles, and tragedies. And there have been stories that have helped get us through the first year of pandemic. The global COVID-19 pandemic is not over, but it has hopefully reached a turning point. Multiple vaccines protecting against the worst of the virus have been developed and have begun to be (unevenly) distributed around the world, with Israel, the U.K., Chile, and the U.S. currently with the greatest percentages of their populations having received at least one dose. As we hopefully move into a less deadly phase of the pandemic, we’re taking a moment to look back at the TV series, games, movies, and other pop culture moments that brought comfort, distraction, critique, and catharsis for many in the pandemic’s first year, as well as some of the major trends and news stories that shaped the industry itself between March 2020 and February 2021.

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March 2020

NBA To Suspend Season Following Tonight's Games pic.twitter.com/2PTx2fkLlW

— NBA (@NBA) March 12, 2020

The NBA Suspends the Season (March 11th)

Many use the NBA’s March 11th announcement that the 2019-2020 season would be suspended until further notice as an unofficial start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The season would continue four months later in the “NBA Bubble,” but no one could know what the future would look like, only that things were indeed very serious for the billions-dollar professional basketball and media industry to shut down.

Everyone Watches Contagion

Though Steven Soderbergh’s pandemic thriller came out in 2011, Contagion jumped from Warner Bros.’ 270th most digitally rented movie in December 2019 to their second most rented one in February, and that trend would only continue into March. As the pandemic continued, we would see audiences turning towards more “escapist” fare, but, in the early days of this international crisis, people turned towards this matter-of-fact, fictional imagining of how a global pandemic might play out to help process their new and frightening reality.

Movie Theaters Essentially Go Dark

In addition to the immense loss of human life the COVID-19 pandemic has caused, there has also been an economic cost that will no doubt continue to impact human health and livelihood in the coming years. On March 17th, the movie theater chains Regal and AMC announced their temporary closures, an early sign of just how bad the pandemic would be for the movie theater business.

Movies in Theaters Begin Going to VOD

With movie theaters closed, studios needed to get creative about how best to distribute their movies still “in theaters.” Universal Pictures was the first to make the decision to move its new releases to a video on-demand model, bringing The Invisible Man, The Hunt, and Emma to VOD on March 20th.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is Released (March 20th)

On March 20th, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Nintendo Switch, allowing players (most of whom where stuck at home) to digitally move to an island and nurture their own community. The fifth game in the Animal Crossing series, New Horizons would go on to major commercial success. It broke the console game record for most digital units sold in a single month, became the 15th best-selling video game in history, and the second best-selling game of all time in Japan. It was also the most blogged-about subject on Tumblr in 2020!

Tiger King Drops on Netflix (March 20th)

Netflix remains the largest streaming service worldwide, with over 200 million global subscribers and roughly 74 million of those subscribers in the U.S. Because of this, when a Netflix Original becomes a hit, it usually becomes a major part of online discourse, especially in the United States. This was the case for Tiger King, the true crime (and truly wild) documentary series that dropped on Netflix on March 20th. With most watchers stuck at home, the online discourse around the show felt even more intense than usual. For a few weeks, you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a Tiger King meme.

April 2020

Quibi Launches (April 6)

While not necessarily pandemic-specific (did Quibi ever really stand a chance?), 2020 saw the launch (April 6th) and death (December 1st) of Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-form streaming platform that squandered $1.75 billion in investment capital and star power like Sophie Turner, Kiefer Sutherland, Idris Elba, Chrissy Teigen, Karlie Kloss, and Laura Dern before bowing out in December.

Trolls World Tour Becomes First Movie to Break Theatrical Window (April 10)

Remember when it was radical for a movie to break its theatrical window? Yeah, that was in April, when many media professionals were shocked with Universal’s decision to release Trolls World Tour, the computer animated musical comedy sequel to 2016’s Trolls, as both a limited theatrical release and via video on demand services. The move led AMC Theatres to temporarily announce that they would no longer be distributing Universal films, but the two companies quickly came to an agreement shortly after.

Extraction was a Thing (April 24)

Honestly, every week in 2020 felt like its own lifetime. Remember when Extraction, the Chris Hemsworth-helmed action-thriller, became the most watched original film in Netflix’s history? Directed by Sam Hargrave and written by MCU vet Joe Russo, the film follows a black ops mercenary who must rescue the kidnapped son of an Indian drug lord in Bangladesh. As self-reported by Netflix, the movie was watched by 99 million households in its first month of release.

May 2020

TikTok Pops

TikTok was already firmly a thing heading into 2020, but the pandemic was when more people found it—especially the olds… by which I mean millennials. In October 2019, TikTok had almost 40 million U.S. users (and 507 million global users in December 2019). By June 2020, that number was at almost 92 million in the U.S. (and 689 million globally by July 2020). This was part of a larger trend over the course of the pandemic that saw people spending more time on their mobile devics than ever before: According to a report from mobile app intelligence agency App Annie (via Social Media Today), by the end of 2020, Americans spent more time on TikTok than they did on Facebook, and the average American now spends more time per day on their mobile device (4 hours) than they do watching TV (3.7 hours).

Avatar: The Last Airbender is Released on Netflix (May 15th)

In many ways, the pandemic has been an accelerant of global processes, and this applies to pop culture as well. While we were already seeing the rise in more foreign-language TV, including anime, and the return to some major nostalgic properties due to broader and easier accessibility because of platforms like Netflix, the pandemic really ramped that process up. When all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender became available on Netflix in May, the American animated TV series that originally aired on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008, was discovered or re-discovered by millions of viewers, becoming one of the top Tumblr fandoms of 2020. It was indicative of a larger trend of old shows becoming new again through release on major global streaming platforms.

Avatar: The Last Airbender – What Can We Expect From the New Avatar Studios?

By Shamus Kelley

Avatar: The Last Airbender Co-Creators Exit Netflix Live-Action Series

By Shamus Kelley

June 2020

Buffy Lands on All4 (June 1st)

In a year where what’s old was necessarily new again, all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer came to UK streaming platform All4, and were broadcast on E4 every weeknight at 11pm. Elsewhere in the UK streaming market, the BBC iPlayer saw its best-ever quarter from April to June with 1.6 billion requests, an increase of 59% on the same quarter last year (according to a BBC press release).

Staged Premieres (June 10th)

As it became apparent that TV and film production would not be going back to normal anytime soon, many creators got, well, creative and began making things in lockdown. One of the best and most high-profile examples was BBC’s Staged, in which David Tennant and Michael Sheen play fictionalized versions of themselves, trying to rehearse a performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author via video chat, alongside director Simon Evans. The low-budget, high-charisma series is filmed in the actors’ real-life homes but, unlike some celebrity efforts during the pandemic (see March), strikes the right tonal note in relation to its subjects’ privilege.

July 2020

Ray Fisher Speaks Up About Alleged Abuse on the Justice League Set (July 1st)

Actor Ray Fisher raised his voice on July 1st in a tweet, calling out director Joss Whedon for alleged abuse on the Justice League set, and WB execs Geoff Johns and Jon Berg for “enabling” that alleged behavior.

Joss Wheadon’s on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable. He was enabled, in many ways, by Geoff Johns and Jon Berg. Accountability>Entertainment

— Ray Fisher (@ray8fisher) July 1, 2020

Later, in December, Fisher would add WB exec Walter Hamada’s name to that list, following a December 11th announcement by WarnerMedia that their investigation connected to Justice League “has concluded and remedial action has been taken.”

Hamilton Blows Us All Away (July 4th)

One of the deepest cultural cuts during lockdown was the necessary elimination of live, in-person theater, which is probably one of the reasons why Hamilton, the Pulitzer Prize-winning stage musical that originally came to Broadway in 2015, made such a splash when it became available in its filmed format via Disney+. Even without a pandemic, Hamilton (and all Broadway theater) is only accessible to a select group of people, making the addition of the pop culture phenomenon in a more accessible form so very important.

From Bridgerton to Hamilton: A History of Color-Conscious Casting in Period Drama

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

Movies

Hamilton: Thomas Jefferson Controversy Explained

By David Crow

Host Becomes the Most Zeitgesty Movie of 2020 (July 30th)

Another particularly impressive entry into the “filmed from lockdown” genre that sprouted up during the first year of the pandemic was British found footage horror film Host. Written and made over 12 weeks in a pandemic and based around a haunted Zoom call, few pandemic-made stories managed to nail the balance between both frighteningly topical and escapist quite so well.

The NBA Bubble Begins

Professional sports went into their bubbles, aka tightly controlled settings in which pro sports players live, practice, and play their respective seasons—to varying degrees of success. The NBA’s Disney World bubble went into effect on July 22nd for exhibition scrimmages, before launching into the final eight games of its regular 2019-2020 season and then the 2020 NBA playoffs. Twenty-two of the NBA’s 30 teams were invited to participate and ended the bubble in October with no recorded cases of COVID-19 amongst its participating players. The MLB bubble was… less successful.

SDCC @Home: WTF Was That? (July 22)

San Diego Comic-Con is one of the most important and lucrative pop culture events of the year, bringing hundreds of thousands of people into downtown San Diego to celebrate and discuss some of the largest franchises in the world. SDCC was one of the many in-person conventions that attempted to transfer its programming online in 2020 and… it didn’t really work. Part of the fun of Comic-Con is in the excitement of the crowd and the exclusivity of the events. (Though not on Thanksgiving, thank you very much.) There is nothing quite like getting to be part of a major Hall H announcement, and watching via video chat is just not the same.

August 2020

Tenet Comes Out in the UK (August 26th)

In what was largely a year without theatrical cinema in the U.S. and the U.K., a brief respite in COVID-19 cases and therefore lockdown meant a proper theatrical release for Christopher Nolan’s latest in August 2020. Sci-fi blockbuster Tenet hit U.K. theatres on August 26th, bringing in $5.3 million domestically in its first week of release and marking the first major studio release since the pandemic began.

American Sports Leagues Go on Strike to Protest Jacob Blake Shooting

Many professional sports in the U.S. came to a temporary halt when some players and teams refused to take the field or court following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black American who was shot in the back and paralyzed by a police officer in front of his sons on August 23rd in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The incident re-ignited ongoing protests over racism and police brutality, with which many players and teams stood in solidarity. The NBA, WNBA, MLB, and MLS all postponed games as players protested Jacob Blake’s shooting.

Chadwick Boseman Passes Away (August 28th)

In a devastating loss to American culture, Chadwick Boseman, the star of Black Panther and many other films, passed away due to complications from colon cancer, a condition with which he had been living and working since a 2016 diagnosis. Boseman was one of the most successful Black actors and creators working today.

“He … knew that his voice was now strong and people were listening and paying attention,” wrote Kelley L. Carter in The Undefeated. “And he knew that even as this moment was victorious, Hollywood still needed to be called to task on the things that make this industry problematic, even as it was in the infant phases of creating a groundbreaking blockbuster with a mostly Black cast.”

September 2020

Tenet Flops in the U.S., Hollywood Abandons Ship for Fall 2020 (September 3)

While Tenet may have been a hit in the U.K., the Nolan blockbuster flopped upon its release in the U.S., where many theaters remained closed or empty through the summer and fall. The film would make around $58 million in the U.S. and Canada, prompting Hollywood studios to further push back major releases slated for the fall.

Mulan Becomes First Disney “Premier Access” Release (Sept. 4)

After several pandemic-caused release delays, Disney’s much-anticipated, live-action adaptation of Mulan became the first “Premier Access” release for Disney+, causing a bit of a stir. In the U.S. and in some other markets, Disney forwent releasing Mulan in theaters, instead offering a “Premier Access” window on Disney+ that viewers could access for an additional fee of $29.99. While the film received middling reviews from western critics, it was not received well in China. Additionally, a #BoycottMulan movement, which started out as a response to social media comments star Liu Yifei made in support of the Hong Kong police in their (sometimes violent) suppression of pro-democracy protestors, gained some traction in the lead up to the release.

Movies

How Mulan Maintains The Animated Film’s Queerness

By Natalie Zutter

Movies

Mulan: Disney Plus Grosses Exceed $200 Million? (Report)

By David Crow

I’m Thinking of Ending Things Makes People Go “Whaaa?” (Sept. 4)

As our Rosie Fletcher wrote in the “Ending Explained” for I’m Thinking of Ending Things: “[this story is] a movie, and a book, which really requires you to watch/read twice to actually fully understand.” It’s a gloriously confusing movie, and many in September dove right into the mystery chiller adapted by Charlie Kaufman from a novel by Iain Reid. As Fletcher put in her review, the film is “a perfect storm of philosophy, ambiguity and wankery.” What’s not to love?

October 2020

Trial of the Chicago 7 Debuts on Netflix (Oct. 16)

However you may feel about Aaron Sorkin, the man knows how to make a taut political drama. Trial of the Chicago 7 is a dramatic retelling of (as it says on the tin) the 1969-70 trial of the Chicago Seven, a group of anti–Vietnam War protesters charged with conspiracy and crossing state lines with the intention of inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The movie has an all-star cast of dudes, and is both written and directed by Sorkin. It made many critics’ best-of-the-year lists and made a cultural splash when it dropped on Netflix in October, after a summer of American and global protests ignited by the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans.

Borat 2 Makes (a Bigger) Fool Out of Rudy Giulilani (October 23rd)

Rarely do the paths of pop culture and politics so explicitly intersect as they did in Borat 2. The mockumentary comedy sequel came out in October, in the long, plateau-ed height of the lead up to the presidential election, and featured a scene in which Republican politician Rudy Giuliani puts his hand into his trousers in front of actress Maria Bakalova, who is impersonating a conservative journalist. While Giuliani attempted to spin the event in both the lead up to and following the release of the film on Amazon Prime, Sacha Baron Cohen told Good Morning America in an interview after the film’s release: “It is what it is. He did what he did.”

Movies

Maria Bakalova is Ready to Do Borat 3 in ‘Five Minutes’

By David Crow

Movies

Borat 2: Sacha Baron Cohen Reveals Dangerous Deleted Scene

By David Crow

The Queen’s Gambit Turns Everyone into a Chess Player (Oct. 23)

Odds are that, in October 2020, you either knew someone or were someone who watched The Queen’s Gambit and then fell hard into the world of chess. The Netflix period miniseries tracks the highs and lows of fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon (the brilliant Anya Taylor-Joy), from her upbringing in a Kentucky orphanage in the 1950s to her time at the top of the competitive chess world in the 1960s. In its first month of release, The Queen’s Gambit became Netflix’s most-watched scripted miniseries, and sent chess set sales soaring—yet another sign of just how commercially and culturally powerful Netflix has become.

November 2020

PlayStation 5 Alleges Launches, But No One Can Get Them (Nov. 12)

Even if you aren’t a gamer, you probably heard about the release of the PlayStation 5. Though the PS5 technically became available in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North America, Singapore, and South Korea on November 12th (and worldwide a week later), the limited supply of the console made it almost impossible to find.

As Matthew Byrd wrote in his November article on the subject: “We know that the initial PS5 shortage can at least partially be attributed to a shortage of the console’s chips (as well as distribution and manufacturing problems caused by the complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic), but as we’re already seeing in Europe where some who pre-ordered a PS5 were warned they may not receive their console until 2021, Sony faces some notable additional issues moving forward.”

This is partially a story of supply and demand, and the growth of gaming in general. According to a report by market researcher SuperData (via Venture Beat), the game industry grew 12% (to $139.9 billion) in 2020, with console games revenues up 28% from 2019. While growth is expected to be slower in 2021, as fewer people will hopefully be stuck at home, more people than ever are gtting their story fix in the world of gaming.

Games

PlayStation Bets on Big Games as Game Pass Slowly Wins a Console War

By Matthew Byrd

Games

Why PlayStation Store Closing on PS3 Should Matter to You

By Matthew Byrd

December 2020

WB Announces HBO Max Release Hybrid Model (Dec. 3)

In a move that seems to be paying off, in December, Warner Bros. announced that it would be moving to a release hybrid model through 2021, putting its entire 2021 film slate on HBO Max. As David Crow explained in our film section: “The move will put all 17 of WB’s scheduled 2021 films on a ‘hybrid’ model where films will premiere on HBO Max the same day as their theatrical release in the U.S. Technically speaking, the films will still be playing in theaters, particularly in international markets without HBO Max as a streaming option, but for the first (and most lucrative) month of their release, they’ll also be available on WarnerMedia’s streamer.”

People Actually Get to Play Cyberpunk 2077, Immediately Realize It’s Broken (Dec. 10)

Hooboy, Cyberpunk 2077. In December, after literal years of anticipation, CD Projekt released action RPG video game Cyberpunk 2077 to disastrous results. While the narrative and design of the game is ambitious and has its rewards, the rollout was plagued by performance issues (particularly in the console versions) that led to player backlash and actual lawsuits.

Games

Cyberpunk 2077 Lawsuits Explained

By Matthew Byrd

Games

Cyberpunk 2077 Roadmap Proves the Game Should Have Been Delayed to 2021

By Matthew Byrd

The Mandalorian Finale Breaks the Internet (Dec. 18)

Um, spoilers.

The second season of The Mandalorian may not have technically been the most-watched series of 2020, but it certainly felt like the most-talked-about, proving that, even in the era of streaming, there’s still such a thing as appointment television. This all came to a culmination with The Mandalorian Season 2 finale, “The Rescue,” which featured an appearance from Luke Skywalker himself.

Could Durge’s Star Wars Return Lead to a Role in The Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett?

By Joseph Baxter

How The Mandalorian Challenges Star Wars’ History of Bad Dads

By Lacy Baugher

Wonder Woman 1984 Premieres (Dec. 25)

Wonder Woman 1984 dropped on Christmas Day in the United States, and quickly became the most-watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 (knocking Disney+’s Hamilton out of the top spot), despite its middling reviews. In the U.S., it would be the first of WB’s “hybrid model” releases, getting a simultaneous release in theaters as well as on HBO Max.

Movies

Wonder Woman 1984 Star Connie Nielsen Defends Patty Jenkins’ Vision

By Don Kaye

Movies

Does Zack Snyder’s Justice League Set Up Wonder Woman 3?

By David Crow

Bridgerton Gets Saucy (Dec. 25)

Bridgerton, Netflix’s deliciously addicting period romance based on the Julia Quinn novels, also dropped on Christmas Day, and went on to become the streamer’s most watched series ever, reaching #1 in 76 countries. The Shondaland produced drama made leading man Regé-Jean Page a global star, so much so that the announcement that he would not be returning for Season 2 (as each season focuses on a different romantic pairing featuring a member of the Bridgerton family) into a bit of a meltdown. Bridgerton has already secured another three seasons—a post-Season 1 announcement that is unprecedented for a Netflix original.

Why Bridgerton Had to Let Regé-Jean Page Go

By Amanda-Rae Prescott

Will Bridgerton Become the Next Game of Thrones?

By Kayti Burt

Soul Brings on the Feels (Dec. 25)

Called Pixar’s “most ambitious movie in years” by Den of Geek film editor David Crow, Soul was another Christmas release that brought solace to people stuck at home, many without their families, for the holidays. Directed by Pixar vet Pete Docter (Up, Monsters, Inc., Inside Out) and co-directed by Kemp Powers (One Night in Miami, Star Trek: Discovery), the film follows middle school music teacher and pianist Joe Gardner as he seeks to reunite his soul and his body after they are accidentally separated, just before his big break as a jazz musician.

January 2021

The Little Things Kicks Off WB’s 2021 Film Slate on Streaming (Jan. 29)

Fans of crime thriller and/or Denzel Washington and Rami Malek flock to HBO Max and theaters for the hybrid release of The Little Things, the first of WB’s planned 2021 slate.

Movies

The Little Things is Better Than a Seven Copycat

By Don Kaye

Movies

The Little Things and the Mystery of Denzel Washington’s Character Explained

By David Crow

February 2021

WandaVision Ensnares Us

Stop hogging the zeitgeist, Marvel!

In February, Disney+ released its first MCU show, WandaVision, and it broke the internet. The miniseries, created by Jac Schaeffer and starring Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, wowed audiences with its clever use of the sitcom format and superhero tropes to tell a story about grief that, for all of its fantastical elements, was oh so relatable.

How WandaVision’s Doctor Strange 2 Connection Evolved

By Joseph Baxter

WandaVision: The Unanswered Questions From the Marvel Series

By Gavin Jasper

Judas and the Black Messiah Debuts (Feb. 12)

Daniel Kaluuya and Lakith Stanfield lead an all-star cast in this 1960s period piece that follows the real life story of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, who was the victim of a targeted assassination by the FBI. In a year that saw an increased mainstream awareness of Black trauma, the Oscar-nominated Judas and the Black Messiah shone a cinematic light on yet another state-led historical injustice against Black Americans.

Charisma Carpenter Speaks Her Truth

In February, actress Charisma Carpenter came forward with allegations about Joss Whedon’s alleged abuses of power during her time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, inspired by Ray Fisher’s own efforts to seek justice and systemic reform for Whedon’s alleged behavior on Justice League.

My truth. #IStandWithRayFisher pic.twitter.com/eNjYcJ6zwP

— charisma carpenter (@AllCharisma) February 10, 2021

— Ray Fisher (@ray8fisher) July 1, 2020

Pokemania Returns

Many older millennials have spent their time during quarantine reconnecting with their childhood faves. This culminates with a massive renewed interest in Pokemon cards to the point where McDonald’s Happy Meals with Pokemon cards as toys sell out instantly.

Sponsored

Why Pokémon Has Endured For 25 Years

By Alec Bojalad

Did we miss anything? What have been the stories and pop culture trends that have helped get you through the pandemic so far? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The Pandemic in Pop Culture Trends appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3tFxFBF

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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puppypeter · 4 years

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You know when you trip over a small drabble and end up disappearing from your blog down a Evanstan rabbit hole? Yep, that’s what happened here, so enjoy some fics!! Some are more silly/lighthearted, some are a bit more angsty, so remember to read the tags before to check if it’s your thing!

There will definitely be a second part cause I’m still stuck down here, so keep an eye out if you like the pairing 🥰

🔒 = you need an ao3 account to be able to read it.

PS: do not link any of these fics to the actors or anyone associated with them. Fics are from the fans for the fans, and they should stay within the fandom!

Happy reading! 🐶

Rust and Stardust | Explicit | 8080 words

Sebastian knows one thing, and that is that he loves Chris Evans.

On Your Left | Explicit | 7894 words

Sebastian and Chris have hidden their relationship for years but an accident turns everything upside down.

In Motion | Teen & Up | 1944 words

One more take is one too many when you're dangling from wires; or, Sebastian Stan: a motion sickness story.

Ready to Go | Explicit | 8965 words

In hindsight, Chris can see the error in not pausing after knocking on Seb’s bedroom door and just barging in without waiting for permission to come in. Rookie mistake. As it is, he raps his knuckles on the wood three times, then pushes down the handle and swings open the door with a “Seb, are you ready to go?”

I’ve done some things that I shouldn’t have done (but I haven’t stopped loving you once) | Explicit | 59208 words 💗

After the release of Infinity War, Chris and Sebastian each take some time off to recharge. Chris is staying in Scarlett’s lake cabin on his own and invites Sebastian up to come and spend some time with him. Due to busy work schedules and a number of other, more personal reasons, Chris and Seb haven't been as close lately, something which neither of them are very happy about. This mini-vacation presents a chance for them to revive their friendship and maybe (definitely) explore if there might be something more. Over the course of a week, and with a little help from meddling friends and co-stars, the boys learn to build bridges, to be vulnerable and take chances, and to stop letting fear rule their lives.

We’ll figure it out | Mature | 2983 words

Of course Chris had thought about it. His brother’s gay, for fuck’s sake. So yeah, growing up, he’d wondered, and experimented a bit with a few guys in the industry. Mutually assured destruction helped confer a certain sense of security for both parties involved. All things considered, he’s been pretty fucking lucky, there are no rumors about him, and since he’s mostly attracted to women, it’s not something he really has to worry about.

Sebastian, though… There’s a reason comments about Seb’s jawline come so easily to Chris.

I Wanna Be Yours | Explicit | 7309 words

A few times, Sebastian catches him staring, and gives him an odd look.

“You okay, Chris?” he asks, the third time it happens.

Despite the fact that he’s an actor, Chris knows he tends to be a bad liar and wear his emotions on his sleeve, but he prays Sebastian will buy his white lie just this once.

“Fine, yeah fine,” Chris assures him. “Just a little tired, I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

Sebastian gives him a sympathetic smile, and Chris feels like the worst kind of scum.

Kiss The Boy | General Audiences | 1410 words

Sebastian once did an interview where he admitted he tried picking up girls with his rendition of ‘Under the Sea’ from the Little Mermaid. Here's what happened when he tries it on Chris.

No Longer a Place | General Audiences | 4645 words

The ups and downs of Hollywood relationships, with a side of Chris taking care of Sebastian.

This Is Awkward | Mature | 3185 words

While filming the final helicarrier scene of CA:TWS, Sebastian has to mount Chris for the perfect shot, and he gets... excited.

You Are My Sweetest Downfall | Teen & Up | 448 words

prompt: imagine sebastian crying a little after the first time he has sex with chris because he’s so happy

or: Where Chris is a cutie pie and Sebastian does what he does best: cry.

Stars Out Of The Blue | Teen & Up | 6355 words

Chris Evans accidentally kicks Sebastian Stan off a broken helicarrier set on Monday afternoon. It’s the worst moment of his life. Monday evening, however, contains the best moment. Indisputably. Ever.

My broken veins say that if my heart stops beating | Explicit | 4606 words

The one where sebastian and chris get high and chris gets curious and sebastian ends up three fingers deep in him.

All That You’re Making Of Me | Explicit | 37219 words

The unfolding of a relationship, over time. And a perfect happy ending.

All I wanna see you in is just skin | Explicit | 2852 words

Sebastian really wants Chris to be his Daddy. Especially after seeing him with that beard.

With You and the F**king Lines | Mature | 638 words 🔒

What not to do when in bed with your co-star: 1) Don't quote their role. 2) Don't quote your role. 3) If 1 & 2 don't apply for the circumstances, quote a good line.

What to do when your co-star quote your role in bed: 1) No sex for them in the foreseeable future. 2) If 1 is too hard. Quote them back. Payback's a bitch, man.

The Words We Put Together | Not Rated | 2702 words

Sebastian and Chris meet again after two years. Let the story drift you into happiness.

I’ve never seen anything quite like you | Mature | 5416 words 🔒

He texts his brother: do guys go on dates with guys Scott texts back: you are the dumbest shit alive

Only I Would Know | Mature | 2673 words

Chris brings up the idea of having kids.

Sebastian's intimidated by the idea. Just a little.

A Faity-Tale, A Fancy-Flight | Teen & Up | 2429 words

Sebastian shouldn’t have to be alone on his birthday. Chris comes over with Starbucks and first kisses.

The next 9 works all belong to the You Make Me Love You series:

Make Me | Explicit | 4403 words

After a fight Chris and Sebastian come back to each other.

My Heart, My Home, My Everything | Explicit | 26709 words

Chris and Sebastian come out to their families, and then the world.

So It Begins | Explicit | 12673 words

Chris and Sebastian take the first step in wedding planning, finding a venue for their big day.

Endless Love | Teen & Up | 17316 words

Chris and Sebastian's wedding day is here, but that's just the beginning.

Newlyweds | Explicit | 5374 words

Chris and Sebastian enjoying life as a newly married couple.

Luca (One Shots) | Teen & Up | 23444 words #WIP

Stories following Chris and Sebastian as first-time parents. It's Luca's world, his dad's are just living in it.

Baby Mine (Everything) | Explicit | 12966 words

Chris and Sebastian go to the Endgame premiere, they plan to make a night of it, this is their first night out since their son came home. Things don't exactly go as planned.

Luca 14 Months: TIFF 2019 | Mature | 20571 words #WIP

Luca comes with his dads to TIFF 2019 and steals the show.

Coming Home: Luca 20 Months (The Evanstan Quarantine Fic) | Explicit | 8821 words

Sebastian comes home after months away due to his job and complications involving travel restrictions. Finally the family can be together during quarantine.

Picture source: (x)

#puppy peter fic recs #pp fic rec list #fic rec list #pp: evanstan #pp: evanstan fic rec list #pp: rpf #this is real person fic #don't like don't read #evanstan #evanstan fic #evanstan fics #evanstan fic rec #evanstan fan fiction #chris evans/sebastian stan #evans/stan #chris evans rpf #sebastian stan rpf

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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S5 Review pt 2 : the Bad

So in my last meta I listed a lot of reasons to like this season...but then why did it not (at least to me) all add up together ? Looking back, I can think of so many clips that I thought were incredible. But looking back at the season in general, I just feel a big ‘meh’ and it’s sort of puzzling - why exactly ? Here is where I thought the season could have been a lot better :

I loathe love triangles : I hate the trope in itself. Is S5 the worst example of it ever ? No, it served somewhat of a thematic purpose and the resolution was interesting. But I can’t help it, when I feel a love triangle coming on, I generally disconnect emotionally because I have been annoyed to hell and back by it before - one big offender being Skam France s4, in which the love triangle/quadrangle marked the beginning of the season going down in flames, with it overshadowing everything else and making the characters behave in completely obnoxious and puzzling ways. S5 isn’t quite as bad, it feels more respectful of the characters, but I find it weird that the writers chose a love triangle again on the heels of the reception of s4.

The problem with this trope is not ‘oh we don’t want drama ever’ it’s just so bloody annoying, so trite and overused. It rests on centuries of sexist tropes : either a wishy washy girl in the middle who doesn’t know what’s good for her/her own heart ; or two girls competing for a man’s attentions. It often ends in the fandom villifying the women involved no matter the shape of the triangle, comparing them against each other, which definitely happened this time (Twitter was just so annoying this season), and this whole ‘team x’ thing gives me hives, as the assumption that this is what young women viewers care most about.

Also it generally involves the characters showing that they have very little self respect, letting themselves be walked over, bad communication, implications about what the ‘better woman/man’ should be like, cheating, etc...it’s very rarely fun or interesting to watch because we’ve seen it a thousand times before in teenage soap operas. Again, the s5 ending avoided the total trainwreck but this is a show you watch in real time, and for weeks I was afraid it was going to be absolutely terrible, and it ruined a big part of my experience of the season. When they introduced Noée I started being scared, and when it became clear Arthur was developing feelings for her, I basically noped out emotionally. I started following it in a much more detached manner, I wasn’t looking forward to the clips anymore, I stopped writing meta so much. And it sucks. I wanted to love the season. But this was just not a ride I really wanted to be on.

Alexia (and Noee) deserved better : I love Alexia and developing her character is one of the best things Skam France ever did. In OG, the character of Chris, if interesting, is just continually reduced to the ‘funny fat friend’ persona and it really sucks. So giving Alexia a real personality, making her bisexual, giving her more of a role in s3, making her a dancer and a singer was really cool. I’m bi myself and I spent most of my high school struggling with my weight and if I’d had a character like her, who radiates self-acceptance, it would have meant so much to me. I was really stoked for her to have more of a role in s5 - only to spend most of the season feeling really sad for her. It was just...not fun. I so wish she could have had her own season and her own story that didn’t revolve around a dude she was so supportive of and still ended up treating her like shit.

Also, real talk : when is a curvy girl actually a love interest without it being shown as funny or not good enough ? Especially of the main character ? Almost never. Coline might have lost some weight, but she’s still written as a curvy girl this season and it’s an important part of the character. So for her to have this particular role this season - the girl that isn’t romanticized, that doesn’t get to have the cute and thrilling moments, that is just sort of there and patient and understanding as if she couldn’t get anything better, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure the end of the season did her more justice but god it took so long and in the meantime, it just felt...very ill considered and careless.

In the same way, I wanted to love Noée, I thought she was amazing, but because of her role in the plot I just felt this instinctive defiance towards her character. It would have been so cool to have her in a friend role, or even a love interest outside of the triangle or I don’t know like...have someone else fall in love with her. Also, I just did not understand why she loved Arthur ? Like she just met the dude a few times, and he’s mostly been a total asshole to her, who makes very little efforts to communicate with her...I get she could get attracted to him but love ??? The moment where she tells him ‘I love you’ felt demeaning to her, like the moment in OG where Noora falls after running after William. It’s like, Arthur has just been an enormous asshole to her, and she pushes herself to do something she’s never been comfortable with in the first place ? Why ? This show romanticizes teenage boys being assholes and girls being desperate way too much.

The Skam dilemma, love vs politics and “Let’s all just be nice.” : There is a reoccuring problem accross all Skams, starting with the OG : they bring up very political topics, usually in the beginning of the season, and then they...don’t really do anything with them. In the OG, Noora’s feminism is really just window-dressing and we see her bend over backwards to accomodate this super toxic asshole into her life. And we see Sana’s struggles as a Muslim in Norwegian society, but then love drama takes over, and it’s waved away with an insulting ‘everyone should just communicate more’ ending. Skamfr s4 made it even worse, by making the girl squad a lot more overtly racist, never having them make a big gesture for Imane, putting her in a position to apologize, and never showing that the girl squad had an idea of where they messed up or real growth. It was insanely frustrating, especially since the beginning of the season was so good at showing all the little micro-agressions. In the end it felt like all the racism was just there to motivate Imane’s breakdown for plot reasons and not to actually say something. S5 never stoops quite that low, but there was a bit of a similar dynamic at hand here. Instead of the boys actually have a real conversation after their fight, most of the denouement of the show was consecrated to talking about the love drama. It was, again, as if the focus of the show was on the wrong things, and it robs you of the catharsis you’re expecting. As if they used the love drama for a metaphor for the actual issues, have it do all the emotional heavy lifting, and in so doing bypass having to adress the actual problem. There is this weird ideas that the audience of the show - teenagers and young women, mostly, in the end care the most about the love stuff and that everything else has to take a backseat and...this feels neither a good message to send, nor realistic to me. I like it when shows about teenagers decenter love and show the real complexity of their characters’ lives without making them paragons of virtue or wokeness - Derry Girls is a brilliant example of that. Skam, and Skam France in particular, feel a bit immature still compared to those, punching below their weight for shows that pride themselves on their social impact.

Hit with the idiot stick : Speaking of underwhelming resolutions - yes, the boy squad messing up with Arthur, I found relevant and realistic. But...did they really even adress it ? I was really hoping for the boys to have more of a conversation, for Arthur to open up to them about what he went through, about his father, to tell them that they should have asked him/listened to him more, etc...and I know ‘teenage boys’ or whatever but ...aren’t they trying to change those stereotypes too ? Like when Arthur went to see Basile, they must have had a conversation, why the fuck did we not see it ? That’s the emotional bond I cared most about ! And we just had a hug ...underwhelming tbh. Same Arthur talking with Lucas but then it was just about their love lives ? Or when they came to the hospital, again, it was just about the love drama ? God it really sucked out the oxygen out of the season. The resolutions of those things just being hugs or speeches or handholding at the end felt hollow, and a lot less powerful than they could have been. And again, there has to be a tolerance for messiness, but I found the boys so incredibly dumb at several points in the season. Especially them being like ‘oh cheating isn’t so bad’ after they found out that Arthur’s dad was cheating on his wife ? Like why the fuck did they take Patrick’s side ? What kind of lack of empathy ? It would feel a lot more coherent for teenage boys to be furious at the destruction of a friend’s family, not talk like cynical 50 yr olds who just divorced for the fifth time. It felt so unrealistic and stupid and just meant for Arthur to finally clue in to the idea that cheating and lying is bad maybe, himself first without external clues from characters that really should have known better by now. Especially Yann and Lucas advising Arthur to keep his mouth shut after what happened in s1 like...did whoever write this read the previous seasons of the show ? There were just too many times where the boy squad felt out of character and mandated to be idiots just for plot reasons, and it felt...very crudely drawn. Disappointing, because the beginning of the season was awesome. But again, Skam France failed in delivering real growth for their friend group. At times, it even felt like character regression. Them holding hands at the end of the season made me emo but damn it could have been so much more.

Also some plot twists - the car crash in particular, just felt dumb and unnecessary, seriously.

A too distant main : In the end, like I said before, my main issue is that I didn’t feel as connected to Arthur as I wanted to. I mean, the cheating bit was just very unrelatable to me, after how they showed how supportive Alexia was and how she supposedly made him happy like...why. But maybe that’s just me. Regardless - in the first few episodes he felt distant in an interesting way, because it made sense for his character to be so walled off. But...I felt like his self discovery was way too blurred with the ‘oh I like Noee’ part to the point where it ended up being obscured. I would have loved more clips on his own, maybe something more about him questioning his path in life, whether he truly wants to do medecine. And like apparently he liked fine arts ? Then, why didn’t we see anything about that ? Did he paint the x-men painting ??? That feels so relevant, why the fuck didn’t we see that ? Also why didn’t we see him take those LSF classes with Camille and actually make an effort this time ? Having almost all of his realization moments tied to Noee was just...the manic pixie dream girl trope. That’s what it’s called, when you use a quirky female character as a device for the emotional development of the male one. It’s...not flattering tbh. And then that farm episode - it was funny but for a week I felt like I completely lost touch with Arthur’s POV ? I’m really not sure that was the right choice. All in all, there were just not enough introspective, small, intimate clips for it to really feel like Skam, and that’s a shame tbh. I recognize a lot of myself in Arthur, and Robin acted his heart out to make him relatable, but because of the writing, there were way too many times where I was reluctant and puzzled instead of in it. I saw several people saying it was too much tell and not enough show and I think that’s very on point. I feel like a lot of Arthur’s actual character development happened behind the scenes in moments where we didn’t see it.

Yeah...I think as a conclusion most of my issues are tied back to the preponderance of the love triangle. The season wasn’t bad but god it could have been so excellent if they hadn’t gone that route, and this swerve from greatness is just sooooooo frustrating. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole season but...

Next up : some things I’m just very ??? about and a general conclusion.

Bonus bitching round, fandom edition : oh my god, I don’t get into this often but...the fandom was so bloody annoying this season. Starting with the people sending death threats over a tv show (like...what the fuck) or thinking them being nasty assholes is somehow for the greater good (???), from people that don’t want anyone to use even 1 analysis capacity (especially on Twitter) and go beyond praising everything on the show, or the people either villifying Alexia and Noee and indulging in that ‘team’ crap, to the people that shoot down every single detail of the show without discernment or accuse the creators of being ableist sexist garbage or maltreating their actors ... And then you have the other remake stans coming to pollute the tags talking about how we were all stupid for liking the show in the first place. Like...seriously, what is up with you people. I really loved the block button this season, damn.

#skam france #skamfr s5 #my meta #arthur broussard #skam france meta

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rachelbethhines · 4 years

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Queen for a Day Part 1

This is my personal favorite episode in the whole show and one of the strongest episodes in the series. However, even it is not without flaws, so let’s dig in.

Summary: Rapunzel takes over the kingdom while her parents go away for their anniversary. A blizzard strikes Corona, keeping everyone inside their houses, and an accident in the mountains traps Frederic and Arianna. Xavier reveals that the blizzard was a curse sent by Zhan Tiri, an evil monster who attempted to destroy Corona but was defeated and imprisoned in another realm by his enemy, alchemist Lord Demanitus, who used a device to redirect the blizzard. Meanwhile, the black rocks keep spreading in Old Corona and begin to approach the castle. Varian starts testing the mystical rocks, but his father forbids him, refusing to tell him anything. One of Varian's experiments result in the rocks trapping Quirin.

The Show Fails to Acknowledge How Quirin is in the Wrong

Look, I like Quirin, and he is of course miles better than either Frederic or Edmund. But that’s a low bar to cover and he’s not perfect. There’s a reason why his relationship with Varian is strained to begin with and that reason is completely his fault.

This scene where he rolls his eyes and is embarrassed by his son, who is just expressing how excited he is to spend time with him, highlights the problem adequately. Quirin is neglectful. He obviously doesn’t spend enough time with his child, nor gives enough positive feedback.

Now we’re given contexts clues as to why that is; as a leader he’s a busy man, he’s not good at communication, Varian’s made enough mistakes that he no longer trusts his son with important information, ect. This is all understandable and makes for a believable and engaging conflict. However, because the show never has Quirin verably own up to these mistakes it makes his and Varian’s resolution in season 3 feel hollow.

So This Plot Point No Longer Makes Sense

As I pointed out in previous episodes, having Pascal’s Story and The Wrath of Ruthless Ruth come before Queen of a Day contradicts this core set up of Rapunzel being trained to take over for her parents and then left on her own for a few days.

This a Wasted Character Arc

Overall, Eugene’s arc is about learning responsibility and that’s fine. But more specifically, it was supposed to be about him learning to be a king. He’s meant to be a mirror to Rapunzel in addition to her support. He should be learning to be a leader like she is and they both should be growing as a team; taking on the aspects of ruling that the other can’t or shouldn’t be doing.

That’s clearly what the writing team were shooting for in the first two seasons. Only to then promptly dump it all in season three. Giving us an asspull ‘consolation’ arc instead. More on that when we get to it.

The Exchange Between Quirin and Frederic Isn’t Expounded Upon

So this scene is suppose to hint that both Quirin and Frederic know more than they are letting on. The problem is we never get any follow up explaining just how much either of them knows nor whose idea it was to move the citizenry of Old Corona. Details like that are important to the plot and shouldn’t have been glossed over.

Even if you wanted to keep up the mystery for the moment, then you should have had a scene in a later episode explaining things like this.

This is a Lie

Granted this is intended to be a lie for plot purposes, but then it is never followed up upon after it serves its use. Meaning Rapunzel never acknowledges her fault here.

This is Awful Advice

I can’t stress enough just how bad this ‘lesson’ actually is. I had to screen cap the whole thing, it’s that awful.

Rapunzel’s only arc in the show is her learning to be more assertive. Now that’s fine if we’re talking about her living the life that she wants to live. That’s not the same thing as dismissing others whose lives you hold in your hands though.

A leader has to listen. That’s part of the job. You can't just do whatever you want just cause. Just because you believe you know what's best doesn’t mean you actually do.

Time and time again we see both Frederic and Rapunzel screw up and hurt others by following this stupid mantra. Yet despite the consequences, not once does either character acknowledge that they’re wrong. Worst, the only people to point out their selfishness are made into villains.

Hear Him? He Said Months

So there’s some matter of debate about just how long Varian was left on his own after this episode. All evidence points to several months, however in interviews the series’s creator claimed it was only for a few weeks. Ignoring the fact that Chris has lied to the fandom before, I have to call bullshit on that.

The season takes place over the course of six months, Queen for a Day is meant to the be the midseason finale. Given this line, and other context clues, it stands to reason that Queen for a Day and The Secret of the Sundrop should be three months apart.

However, the very fact that we have to rely on context clues and ask for clarification by the show’s writers after the fact, means that the crew has failed to showcase the passage of time correctly despite it being an important plot point.

The Song Contradicts The Show’s ‘Lesson’

I actually really like “I Got This”. It’s my third or fourth favorite song in the show and my personal favorite song to focus on Rapunzel. However, it presents to us a conflict that’s wholly different to the one the episode is trying to tell.

This episode wants to teach Rapunzel about confidence and being assertive, yet here it’s her overconfidence that causes her to screw up. She’s not actually listening to the people and jumping ahead with ideas because she personally thinks they’re good not because she has anything to back them up, and they wind up blowing up in her face.

That’s kind of the opposite of ‘listen to your heart’ and presents to the audience that Rapunzel needs to learn a lesson in humility instead. But the show never follows through on this.

See Writers? You Do Know How to ‘Show Don’t Tell’

Look, this scene with Quirin is the best written scene in the whole show and deserves to be pointed out. We learn so much here just from the action. Not a single line of dialogue is spoken. We needed more of this in the series and less of the one line info dumps.

The Audience Deserves to Know Too

We never find out what Quirin is hiding from Varian. Yes, we learn of the Dark Kingdom, the Brotherhood, and of the Moonstone, but none of those things are cause for keeping Varian in the dark.

Quirin says he’s ‘not ready’, but there’s nothing that we find out in the show itself that would be of any great emotional impact to Varian. It’s poor set up and lack of resolve, once again.

Oh, Hi Xavier. Where Did You Come From?

Yet again the series fails to actually introduce Xavier properly. He showed up in Under Raps, but with no real establishment. I legit forgot who he was and was confused by his sudden appearance here, when I first watched the show.

We’re never given an explanation of how Xavier knows what he knows nor what his stake or part in the story is. He’s just there. He’s the very definition of an exposition fairy if there ever was one.

My What a Let Down This Build Up Is

Technically we do see Xavier’s story revealed in a flashback, but it’s nothing that actually explains what is going on. By the end of the series we’ll know little more about the big bad of the show than what we do here in this bit of foreshadowing.

Once again, poor set up and resolve.

Conclusion

So that’s the end of part one. The episodes are broken up on Disney Plus and there’s far too much to cover, so I’ll be breaking them up as well. Tomorrow we’ll come back to second half.

#tangled #anti-tangled #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #rapunzel #varian #quirin #king frederic #tts #rta #eugene

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saleintothe90s · 3 years

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422. ”Carrie” (May 12 - May 15 1988)

I adore reading about flops. One of my favorite flops to read about is Carrie the musical. A doomed production from the start. Millions of dollars wasted. Bad costumes. Filler songs.

Similar to my Simpsons season 10 review, I wanna give something to the worst aspects of the show. With Simpsons, bad episodes were awarded Marge’s homemade Pepsi. For Carrie, I think I’m going to give the bad parts the “Vending Machine Maxi Pad” award.

As most anybody who follows Broadway flops knows, clips from Carrie are scarce and are in poor condition on YouTube. Most of the actual clips are from when the show was in test productions in Stratford Upon Avon, but the music has been replaced with the Broadway soundboard. So, keep that in mind. Most of the time you can’t even make out what’s going on. Here’s the closest copy of the entire show I could find on YouTube, from the Sratford Upon Avon production.

I know people bash the musical, and sometimes it’s rightfully so, but two things are consistent: Linzi Hateley who played Carrie, and that orchestra that is on.point. Check out the overture.

(source)

The show begins with girls cheering in gym class in the beginning of an aerobics lesson? The white gym shorts look like diapers. That’s the first of many costume mistakes.

The song is a banger, I love Darlene Love playing the gym teacher, she’s my favorite part of the song. The only part that is cringey to me is when the girls sing “I go CrAzZyyyyy” and they get on the ground and dance like a toddler having a temper tantrum in a Toys R Us. Since the audio quality is so bad in these clips, I thought at one point the girls were singing about not being caught picking their nose, no, the lyric is:

Bought the clothes, did my nose,

Near the end of the song, the girls are on these rising rafters? It took me for-ever to realize that they were simulating a cheerleader pyramid, and that Carrie had snuck in near the end of the number to be on the bottom of the pyramid. Oh, and she causes it to fall and someone tells her to eat shit.

“Dream On” is the song that the girls sing while in the showers. Why yes, it does look like they’re in the nude due to the poor quality of the video. The song is ok, it gives total night driving home from the mall in the late 80s early 90s vibes. Although one girl says the line, “Six foot three and he's in his forties!”. WHAT.

Carrie breaks those vibes at around 3:44 by screaming that she’s bleeding. When Miss Gardener slaps Carrie, a cymbal plays. I love it.

I like to imagine that when the girls threw the tampons and pads at Carrie, some flew into the audience.

“Carrie” is shrill at first, and then it turns into a bit of snoozefest. Linzi sings the name “Carrie” about 458 times.

Betty Buckley who previously had played the original Grizabella in Cats. and who played the gym teacher in the original movie plays Carrie’s mom. Her song, “Open Your Heart” is pretty good. It’s a nice little break before mom goes bottoms up on Carrie for getting her period (”And Eve Was Weak” [Stratford version with Barbara Cook]):

Carrie: I was in the shower and...

Mom: You’re forbidden from showering with the other girls...

Carrie: I started to bleed!

While Carrie spends the rest of the night in a cellar, the popular girls are at the drive-in. Now, this musical cost over $7 million dollars 1, but yet this was the best set they could think of for a drive-in movie theater:

It looks like something out of a high school play -- which I guess makes a little sense since they are high schoolers? I’m grabbing at straws here. It cost so much money to put Carrie on, what’s a few more dollars to have two real hollowed out cars on stage, one with Chris (in the red) & Billy (in black) in it, and the other with Sue (pink leggings) and Tommy (purple windbreaker)?

“Don’t Waste the Moon” is the song sung at the drive-in, with Sue having regrets about throwing tampons at Carrie in the beginning of the song. The song is very 1980s, and it kind of doesn’t fit in the musical. Gene Anthony Ray’s (Billy) talent is wasted here.

It’s time for some “Evening Prayers” for Carrie where she discusses with God her new telekinesis powers. Meanwhile Carrie’s mom is being a worrywort. During the Stratford production, Carrie’s mom is in a rocking chair over there looking like Whistler’s Mother.

“You’re going to tell Carrie that you’re sorry!” belts out Miss Gardner. In the musical, Chris seems more obsessed with torturing Carrie than in the movie or book if that’s even possible. Sue is like, “What did she even do to you?”. Even Billy asked earlier, “Who the hell is Carrie White?”.

Oooof. Seeing the gym teacher try to cheer Carrie up by singing a song about the prom (”Unsuspecting Hearts”) and how she could go too is patronizing. Even if its sung by Darlene Love.

“Do Me a Favor” might be the most infamous song from the musical. It’s the song I see referred to the most when I read bad reviews. For some reason Chris is wearing a metallic red bodysuit and Sue is wearing a light pink bodysuit. Are they supposed to be that cliche devil and the angel on the shoulder thing?

Chris looks like Evil Homer!

I’m going be the unpopular opinion here and say that I love the song! The erratic dancing also fits with the song.

Carrie tells her mom before “I Remember How Those Boys Would Dance” that Tommy is sweet and polite, but the audience doesn’t know that. Tommy is barely a character in this production. In the end, Carrie uses her powers to shut her mama up.

From what I gather in “Out for Blood” (audio) where Chris and Billy go looking for a pig to kill, the chorus dancers are the pigs? The video quality is so poor. Chris had another crazy ass red outfit on, some sort of shiny red skirt and a crop top. The costumes in this are just horrible. It was like the wardrobe budget was $50.

This song is so.so.bad. It reminds me of whenever Rocko from Rocko’s Modern Life would see a movie trailer or a parody of something on TV for some reason?! Or the “gotta get that Reptar song” from Rugrats when the kids saw Reptar on ice. Especially when the chorus tells Billy to kill the pig:

CHORUS Cha! Kill the pig, pig, pig! CHRIS Go! CHORUS Kill 'im, kill 'im, kill, kill! We'll make him bleed! CHRIS Go! CHORUS Get the blood, blood, blood Oooh, blood! CHRIS Oh, baby show... CHORUS Kill the pig, make 'im bleed Let's get the blood, that's all we need!

Sue’s song “It Hurts to be Strong” is a bit of a throw-away. It gets a vending machine maxi pad award. Moving on. It’s filler

In “I’m Not Alone”, Carrie sings while using her powers to move things around in her room. What things? I don’t know the video quality was so bad. That’s another thing! The sets are nonexistent! I wouldn’t know we were in Carrie’s room unless the Playbill told me. It’s another forgettable song. Three in a row!

Betty Buckley saves the day in, “When There’s No One”, a sad song about facing life without Carrie being her subordinate.

I don’t understand the prom dresses in “Wotta Night”, they’re all garish giant white numbers that make the actresses look about 20 pounds heaver. The guys look like that Rio doll from Jem. The costume designer couldn’t just go to Alexanders or A&S and buy prom dresses? You know, why am I even asking at this point. We all saw what Chris has been wearing this whole time. There is a disco ball thrown aside in the corner instead of hanging up. More on that later.

The song sounds way too much like that song “Rock on” by David Essex. Automatic Vending Machine Maxi Pad.

Here’s a cute rehearsal clip I found of “Heaven”, the song sung while the Prom Queen and King ballots are being counted. Unfortunately, the audio is bad. Chris is there to remind us that she’s still out for blood.

Finally, finally it’s time for Carrie the prom queen to get drenched with blood -- but the thing is, due to microphone technology back then, Carrie really couldn’t have blood dumped on her. Chris and Billy just run up to her and half ass pour the bucket at her. Could the set designer not suspend the bucket from above the stage? Is that also why the disco ball is thrown in the corner? I don’t even think she has stage blood on her during “The Destruction”, (which is the best song from the musical). I think a red spotlight over Carrie signifies the blood.

I think Linzi is really only truly covered in blood for press shots.

Anyway, the Destruction, I love it when she screeches “DOESN’T ANYBODY EVER GET IT RIGHT??! DOESN’T ANYBODY THINK THAT I HEAR?!” It’s the best. I could listen to it all day and I almost did the other day.

Due the poor video quality, I can’t really tell how the prom-goers are dying. They’re kinda just twitching there in the laser light or slamming themselves against the clear barrier that descended from the stage to signify Carrie closing the doors to the gym.

After Carie kills everybody, this giant white staircase descends and covers up the gym. I read somewhere, I forgot where, that its supposed to be the school stairs? We’re led to believe that Carrie’s crazy mom ran to the school. The first time I saw it, I thought that it was Carrie and her mom getting ready to go to heaven. I thought maybe someone over at the set department took the classic song too literally.

It appears that while the stairs are descending, Carrie smears stage blood on her.

The reprise of “Carrie’ is so much better than the original. Carrie stops her mom’s heart cold mid song. Then she slins down the stairs and Sue catches her. In an interview on playbill.com, Betty Buckley says that on opening night (I don’t know if she meant the first preview, or the official opening night), there were boos from the audience at the end, but cheers for Linzi and herself. I believe it. Betty and Linzi were amazing. Darlene Love was amazing. The rough scenes are the scenes with the school kids. They’re awful, in the words of my boy Jay Sherman, “they’re awful I tell you. aw.ful.”

(relevant prom .gif)

1. Rothstein, Mervyn. “After Seven Years And $7 Million, ‘Carrie’ Is a Kinetic Memory (Published 1988).” The New York Times, May 17, 1988, sec. Theater. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/17/theater/after-seven-years-and-7-million-carrie-is-a-kinetic-memory.html.

New York City Broadway reviews on the news in NYC for Carrie. That first reviewer, Stuart Klein, I love him. I’ve watched several of his reviews on flops on YouTube. Joel Sigel who was the Good Morning America film reviewer is here too.

Archive of Betty Buckley interview.

#carrie #carrie the musical #1988 #betty buckley #linzi hateley #charlotte d'amboise #broadway #musicals #broadway flops #flops #the 1980s

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sueboohscorner · 3 years

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#Bull - Season 5 Episode 6 "How to Save A Life" - Episode Review

Hello and Welcome Back, Bull Fans and long-time viewers of My Content; I hope that you are well and safe wherever you are located in the world. I was so sorry for no review last week. I believed my opinions of the episode were only small, as the episode based in case-based. There was little to no character development in the episode on the Side of Bull & TAC Team. And also unable to complete the review due to time constraints in my life. But again, I hope that you are safe and well wherever you are in the world. And I look forward to talking to all about the episode in the comment section below.

As I am writing this review, I am only a couple of minutes watching the episode, so It is fresh in my mind. Bull Season 5 Episode 6 was a great addition to the canon story of Bull in terms of character and relationship development of certain characters. From reading some of the opinions on social media, that some believe it becomes the chunk show. I can see that happening, but this character has little to no development in his character. So I think that Bull writers need to develop it. Always leave your opinions and thoughts on the episode at large in the comment section below or on Social Media (@tvfanatiau) on various platforms (#ad).

So without further ado, Let’s dive into Season 5, Episode 6, “How to Save a Life” from the Team at Bull.

"“To Save a Life” Plot: Bull and Chunk represent an emergency room doctor being sued for malpractice after she ignored direct orders to save one near-death patient in favour of helping another who was also critically injured. As voir dire begins, they look to select jurors who can consider the idea that their client made the best decision possible amidst an impossible situation. " -- (Showbiz Junkies, 2021).

Character Development in Episode 6 of Season 5

This week we saw some essential developments in characters that have been unused in the show. Also, we got to see new combinations of relationships that happened in the episode. In the first section, we are going to talk about the characters that had developed.

1. Chunk

a) Bull Season 5 Episode 6 was a leading part in Chunk’s character development, as, throughout Season 5, we have finally seen more of his evolution into a lawyer. With the changing developments, we can see what he can do in terms of being a lawyer, What he can do as an employee of TAC. And being a valued member of the team. I am also of the opinion that with this episode. It was to give the audience more chance to understand how Chunk operates in a Court Room. We wait to hear how Benny does, As we are going to go through the process in DA recruitment.

2. Benny

We are slowly moving through S5, and we are getting an evolution that is needed to help me understand and become more invested in this character. In previous reviews of the show for s5 of Bull, I have said that Benny has had limited or no development of his career or even his personal life. But on this week’s episode was also was a chance for the Bull writers to move forward in his character arc and give the audience a much-needed update on where Benny is doing in the role for the job that Bull writers have teased since episode One of S5

3. Bull

a) In This week’s episode, we got to see the professional development in terms of how Bull runs TAC and how he is coping with the TAC team's changes. We did not get to see much of his personal life. I believe that Bull writers decide to make an episode storyline for this character further down the line in the season. But back to the point of the episode, we finally got to see how Bull can run his company and make the decisions. The relation to the case ahead and the client.

Relationship Development of Season 5 Episode 6 of Bull

We have talked about the character development that happens in the episode in the above section. Season 5 Episode 6 looks at some of the relationships developed in the s5 of the show. So in this section, we were going to look at the relationships showcased in the episode below.

1. Benny and Chunk

a) This relationship, I believe that this relationship has been unused in the show in the past. So I liked that the Bull writers finally realized that there potential in this relationship as we move forward through the season. I think that writers are to use this relationship as more of a mentor and mentee relationship as Chunk is going to become more experienced in this role that has given.

2. Bull and Benny

a) Now, this relationship in this episode, I think, is strained due to the changes that Benny is going to become the DA of New York, which we have seen this type of strain in the past. With Bull sleeping with Issy and developing that storyline in the show. But never to this degree in the professional world. I think this relationship can survive the change, as we know that Benny is Baby Bull’s uncle. So I hope that bull writers do not create a strain that will create tension between the long-time friends on the show. I also like those Bull writers will not drag it out as Benny is one of the show's leading characters.

I hope in the future, and we get to see more of this relationship. Play out in terms of the professional side of the relationship.

3. Chunk and Bull

a) Now, I have mentioned in the past reviews of Bull Season 5 that Chunk will become more of the go-to guy for some of the cases. But with Bull at the helm with, for some time, Benny as the company's principal attorney. But this episode, we got to see the dynamics of their working relationship and what they can achieve together in court. I hope in future episodes of Season 5 of Bull, and we get to see more of this relationship in terms of them working cases.

4. Bull and Tac Team

a) I mentioned in the above section in the character development, We got to see more of Bull of running the company. We have not seen in a while in Season 5, but I think that we have seen some amounts throughout, but I don’t think it was a major part of a storyline. But we get to see all of the team working together on this case from start to finish. And I hope in the future that we get to see more developments in the team overall. But I hope that we get to see more scenes like that we saw in this week’s episode.

Defense Strategy Of Season 5 Episode 6

At the beginning of the episode, we get to see the strategy laid out for the episode's audience. We got to know that Bull and Chunk are going with the below. “ they look to select jurors who can consider the idea that their client made the best decision possible amidst an impossible situation.”

Throughout the episode, we see how Bull and Chunk are thrown curveballs. How they can work together to disprove the other’s side theory & testimony, I hope we see more of these types of cases in the future.

Best, Emotional, Weird and Wacky, Worst Moments of Season 5 Episode 6 of Bull

Best Moments

1. A shout out to the production crew and the writers of Bull for working during a difficult time.

2. Chris Jackson’s acting was on point for this episode.

3. The Conversation between Benny, Bull, and Chunk in the car

4. The moment when they find the smoking gun for their case.

5. The Pool Bar scene when Benny tells Chunk some advice. About how to look into the case and present it to the jury.

Emotional Moments

There was a limited amount of emotional scenes that made me cried about the episode. I hope that we get to see more in the future parts of season 5.

The weird and wacky moments of the episode

1. some of the storylines that presented the audience and, to me was off

2. The moment Benny went into the courtroom and advised Bull on how Chunk can do better.

3. Benny is finally getting an office. I believe that he should have it earlier in the show.

Overall Thoughts and Opinions of Season 5 Episode 6

Season 5 Episode 6 of Bull was a solid episode to the canon of the story arc. It gives story development and different evolutions of the characters and relationships on the show as a whole. I hope that Bull writers can pull the storylines they propose in the show’s fifth season.

Bull S5 Episode 6 also gives the audience a change in direction that I believe has worked towards since the end of season 4. Some of the audience is thinking that Freddy is leaving the show. He is a major actor on the show at the moment. With the storyline that the Bull writers are creating for him, he can leave as he may have to leave TAC the company. With the restructuring of how Bull Runs TAC, we might see a difference of opinion.

Overall the episode was a good solid episode with a good strong case of the week. The acting was great in the episode, and I look forward to seeing more of how Bull and The TAC Team. Handle the next case.

Overall Rating 7/10

#CBS #CBS Bull #Bull #Dr. Jason Bull #Michael Weatherly #Freddy Rodriguez #Monday Night #TV Show

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