#Her character is saturated in queer themes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

niannianyabao · 1 year

Text

MAKE THIS HAPPEN – Sayo Yamamoto’s Mad Max

Remember when the news broke out that we very nearly had an anime prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road? And then remember that other time we all deeply regretted clamoring for supplemental material about Furiosa and the wives, because there was that eye-gougingly horrendous comic that came out? And we were all left feeling simultaneously angry and sad, but then we watched one of the best action films of the past several decades and felt better again? It’s amazing how such a spectacular film can have such difficulty when it comes to other people trying to throw in their interpretation.

Now, one can argue that Fury Road’s success is largely down to the decades George Miller had to think about it, meaning he only returned to his series when he felt he truly had something to say and thus poured all of his energy into presenting a deeply realized world with minimal exposition and a mountain of unremarked upon worldbuilding. And the fact that it’s so deeply felt and personal a project might mean that we’re forever doomed to have lousy Mad Max material (by which I sort of mean Furiosa, much as I loved Tom Hardy’s performance) if it comes from anyone other than Miller’s hand. But just for the sake of argument, consider with me: a Mad Max miniseries as made by Sayo Yamamoto.

Bona fides first. By far Yamamoto’s most famous work (other than Yuri on Ice) is 2012’s The Woman Called Fujiko Mine (I rather liked it, I don’t know if you noticed), but she’s also done guest directing work on shows like Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy, Gunslinger Girl, and Eureka Seven, with additional storyboard contribution to big names like Death Note, Attack on Titan (she designed that first end credits sequence), and Evangelion 2.0. And perhaps most importantly, her debut as a series director was 2008’s Michiko & Hatchin – a visually striking road trip that sneakily set its focus on the relationships between women while pretending to frame things through male characters.

Yamamoto, as I believe I’ve said to absolute death a time or two before, is one of anime’s most promising up and coming auteurs. Even with only three full series under her belt her work is sharp and easily distinguished, and connections between Michiko & Hatchin and Fujiko Mine have already begun to show hints of pet themes (a hallmark of any auteur, and their curse; there are X number of works to be had before you hit the height of saturation and must either retire, go in a totally different direction for at least a film or two, or become self-parody – see Hayao Miyazaki, Wes Craven, and Tim Burton respectively): sex as a weapon, women in control of their sexuality and sexual encounters, the demystification of nudity, a bit of a lurking background fascination with queerness (which blossomed and matured in Yuri on Ice), children abandoned by parents, hypermasculinity as empty performance, road trips as a central narrative device, and so on.

I expect you see where I’m going with these similarities. There’s no point in remaking Fury Road, but there’s more than enough thematic resonance to be had between this director and the ideas found in that film to say “wow, wouldn’t it be incredible to put them together?” And it would be an excellent stretch of skills as far as Yamamoto’s existing work too: perhaps as a reaction to the moe trend/general sexual passivity found in many of anime’s depictions of women, her work nearly always features female characters for whom sex is a consciously chosen and controlled part of their characters; given how sex is either of minimal importance or used to commodify human beings as of Fury Road (and particularly with a character like Furiosa, whose warmth and protectiveness toward other female characters discards the Bitchy Exceptional Chick stereotype and whose total disinterest in mourning traditional femininity raises her above the “woman playacting as a man/waiting for a man” bit of narrative nastiness – and who is also a character totally divorced from any particular sexuality).

it would be interesting to see Yamamoto’s feminist storytelling grow to include that bit more of varied female presentation. And given that both of Yamamoto’s full series have a fascination with cultures outside Japan while still retaining a not-quite-describable feel of a Japanese director, there would be room to grow there as well in a story where society has completely broken down (but is still colored by the ideas and remnants of the societal structure that came before).

Likewise, characters like the wives would be an excellent opportunity to discard the lens of focusing on male characters altogether – something in the wake of the Citadel’s recapturing perhaps, or a small look into The Dag and Cheedo’s relationship. Or, one could move away from the main focus of the film entirely, and take a look into what the Green Place was like in more idyllic times, during its slow decline, or what life might have been like for the remaining travelers before they were reunited with Furiosa. A full-on apocalypse narrative, with a visual designer from MadHouse or Watanabe’s stable to make the colors pop and the remaining human life feel vibrant against the slowly sickening landscape, could be a breathtaking sight. Yamamoto’s already an experienced hand with setpiece action as well (the roller coaster shootout in Fujiko Mine’s finale or the stalking highway assassin in Michiko & Hatchin), so both interpersonal conflict and hard action could stand represented.

Is all of this a pipe dream? Oh, without a doubt. Yamamoto seems to have taken after mentor Shinichiro Watanabe in terms of pacing her series directorial work, and while Fury Road didn’t do dreadfully at the Japanese box office (about $12 million, converted) that’s not even a sliver of the imaginations it captured worldwide. But I’m more enchanted with the idea – that a director whose work I deeply admire might both get the chance to work on another prestigious project (another, because Lupin III is quite the household name in Japan) that also manages to earn more than cult acclaim. And because I want her work to flourish and grow, and to be challenged by new thematic dimensions and character archetypes rather than settling into variations on the same old story over and over again. And, of course, because if we’re going to get a Mad Max anime I’d rather not have to bash my head into a wall at the idea of Furiosa becoming a second fiddle love interest (I love you anime, but boy do you have a lousy track record about that kind of thing).

0 notes

alastairft · 1 year

Text

Star Track Discovery season 4

One of the reasons I stopped using Tumblr for the longest time was that I wrote an enormous copium-fueld essay on how Star Trek Discovery season 1 was actually really good and had to hide in the mountains of Tibet out of shame for 5 years.

Anyway as redemption here's a bunch of notes I wrote earlier this year about the fourth season of this terrible show I'm still watching for some ungodly reason.

Preface: When I say that an episode of Discovery is alright, I mean by Discovery standards. If a good Discovery episode were a TNG episode for example, it'd be a 3 or 4 out of 10, 5 out of 10 at most.

Episode 1

Uniform redesign looks better. They no long look like prison outfits, but the saturated colours clash with the highly muted sets.

They also look really heavy and hot.

Opening action scene felt like Kurtzman on autopilot. Misunderstanding-resulting-in-chase-scene is trite.

Eerily similar to Into Darkness and Beyond’s opening.

I hate the dialogue.

There's a constant quippy smugness to the dialogue that makes you want to grab the characters by the shoulders and shout 'take this seriously!!'

Joss Whedon has a lot to answer for. Popularising annoying TV dialogue is easily the worst thing he’s ever done.

Introduced to the Federation president.

Half-Bajoran-half-Cardassian is a nice touch.

Nice way of conveying theme of unity. Tora Zeal throwback.

Utterly predictable conflict with Burnham immediately established. Pencil-pushing politician vs (wo)man of action, yadda yadda.

Calling it now; they’ll spend the season hating each other then at the end they’ll realise they’re not so different but Burnham will still get her way without much if any compromise.

Enterprise shoutout; strings of the theme. Lovely.

Stan Faith of the Heart!!!!

Discovery rescues a space station, President comes along.

President is constantly snippy for absolutely no reason.

Weird editing choice: fade after fade between the same two shots of the space station set and Discovery.

Felt like a Tim & Eric bit.

Bridge must have a gas leak; the back walls keep belching shoddy-looking pyrotechnics that looks like they belong at a stunt show.

Stammets is VERY concerned about What’stheirname’s wellbeing.

It’s still faintly inappropriate. Some professional detachment, please.

Burnham gets in an argument with the president when she doesn’t get offered something she didn’t want in the first place.

Sums Burnham up neatly.

Meanwhile Saru is on Kaminar doing something I guess.

Booker does family shit but then his planet and family explode, whoops.

Episode 2

An improvement over the first episode, overall.

Episode called ‘Anomaly’. Two issues:

Very generic name

Disco S1’s titles were bonkers, what happened?

Was already an episode of Enterprise

I hate the lofty whisper Burnham does constantly. Just talk normally!

Saru asks to become the second in command.

Really not how a chain of command works.

Ian Alexander, whose character I’ve now realised is called Grey, is getting a new digital body.

No show kills and subsequently unkills its queer characters like Discovery.

Broadly I didn’t have an issue with this, until they tied it into Star Trek Picard, which can fuck right off.

VERY nervous that the next episode is called ‘Choose to live’.

Kurtzman: It’s NOT a cool phrase. Stop trying to make it catch on.

Still of the opinion that that character IS dead and unkilling him goes against the entire idea of the trill symbiont.

Related: Still not over that they made Captain Picard into a zombie android.

I still can’t remember what What’stheirname’s name is.

Something beginning with V?

Booker’s planet was destroyed by a roving binary black hole.

‘We’ve never seen anything like this before!’ except the whale probe and V’ger and pretty much every superweapon in Trek history but other than those, nothing else like it.

Glimpse of a Ferengi; first live-action Ferengi since Enterprise season 1.

Looked faintly wrong though.

Not season 1 Klingon levels of wrong, more like Discovery Andorian levels of wrong; a few needless extra things added on that gave a sense of ‘why didn’t you just go with the proper design?’

I totally thought that guy was Booker’s husband. The way it was shot and written he absolutely came off as a spouse rather than a brother.

Probably would have been more obvious if my memories of season 3 weren’t dominated by a sad child setting the galaxy on fire with the space crystal wifi in his brain.

Booker is sad but does space research with Stamets anyway.

Burnham gives a lofty speech so Booker doesn’t kill himself, but it was impossible to focus on; pretty sure it was generated by an AI designed specifically to produce lofty speeches.

Not helped by the lofty whisper voice™.

They discover the roving black holes can travel anywhere, that’s no good!

Episode 3

Despite invoking that stupid Romulan murder nun order from Picard, this episode was alright.

‘Choose to live’ is still lame, no matter how much they explain the entomology.

Add to that ‘Absolute candour’ and the whole ‘lost cause’ thing and they REALLY feel like they’ve been ripped from a 15-year-old’s sketchbook.

It’s taken me far too long to realise they’re Jedi rip-offs.

Episode opens with sword murder, very Star Trek, much cool.

I’ll only accept Star Trek sword murder if it’s done by the Klingons.

We’ve not seen any Klingons since season 2…

Given the look of Disco Klingon’s and Lower Decks making them look correct that’s probably a good thing.

The mystery of the episode was fairly compelling; a rogue Romulan murder nun defending an endangered species.

Plot was resolved without violence and gore. A low bar but it’s a rarity in Discovery.

Burnham-President relationship still trite and predictable.

Tilly has nothing to do so she takes up gardening

That’s it that’s pretty much the entire plot point.

One line of dialogue really stood out to me:

‘This mission will do her good and her it’

Acceptable but REALLY stretching what you’re allowed to do with English sentence structure.

Stamets is trying to figure out the anomaly by doing stuff involving Dark Matter.

Can we talk about how wrong sci-fi constantly gets dark matter?

Dark matter is when the maths says there should be something there but what it is can’t be quantified. Once you’ve identified what it is enough to work with it, it’s no longer dark matter because you give it a name.

I hate it when sci-fi treats it like a cake ingredient. The Flash does it constantly, too.

Replace the phrase ‘dark matter’ with ‘funny magic gunk’ and absolutely nothing is different. Prime technobabble nonsense.

Grey’s robot zombie body saga continues!

I still think it defeats the point of the trill to permanently resurrect a host.

There was that episode of DS9 where Kurzon doesn’t want to go back to being dead and it’s treated as a bad thing.

Was there a scene cut between Grey getting briefed and going into the android body? Felt like the actual ceremony of removing him was missing.

What’stheirname is instantly scared and angry that Grey hasn’t woken up.

Clingy much?

That’s their entire relationship. One day they’re going to wake up and realise they can’t stand each other, I guarantee.

He wakes up like an hour later without any consequences, so all the worry and drama seemed unnecessary.

Discovery has a new bar I guess?

What’s the point of the mess hall now? The mess hall is just a boring blank room, but this bar has like, THINGS in it. Having both seems superfluous.

Episode 4

Final negotiations for Navar re-joining the Federation

Navar President springs new clause last second. Pretty sure that’s a dick move when the pen is basically hovering over the contract but there we go.

Because a black hole might kill everyone, Navar wants the ability to spontaneously do a Brexit. Unclear how this will help them survive a roving black hole crisis but anyway.

Federation president isn’t into this idea.

Burnham’s solution: basically, poke her head around the door every now and again and ask, ‘Everybody cool?’.

Navar back in the Federation now.

Navar President and Saru might be a romantic item? Okay.

B-plot: Tilly goes on a cadet expedition, but the shuttle crashes and a teaching aid dies.

Why do people trust this woman to captain ships? She screws it up catastrophically every time she tries.

Cadets don’t like each other but then they learn one thing about each other then they’re best buds.

They climb a mountain so they can send a distress signal, but the signal gets them chased by giant crabs I guess I’ll be real this B-plot was really boring and it was kind of an uphill battle to keep paying attention.

Entire episode was kinda boring.

Instead of learning the lesson that she shouldn’t be in charge of anything, Tilly decides that her true calling in life is to be a teacher; she leaves Discovery.

Her exit was a brief montage at the end, last season the genocidal cannibalistic space fascist Georgiou got an entire storyline culminating in a two-parter where everyone tearfully toasted her.

Misc. notes:

Where’s Tig Nataro? Where’s she vanished off to?

She was always in episodes very inconsistently, has she permanently left now? Weird that no one’s even mentioned her.

Too much ambient score in this show.

It’s as if the show is afraid to be quiet and let the scene breathe, as though the audience have to be constantly told what emotion to feel

Every episode I tell myself that this will be the one where I memorise What’stheirname’s name, and it never happens.

Something beginning with C?

Episode 5

Oh there’s Tig Nataro.

Burnham & co. discover that the roving black hole is artificial and was made by someone.

Thought that was fairly obvious but it’s apparently a big shock

They run down a big list of godlike/mysterious aliens from Trek lore that could be behind it for the sake of winking at the audience.

They know the name of the Caretaker’s species, but they don’t know that the Romulans use a dilithium-free warp drive that could have negated the entire third season.

Still not over that.

This episode: dickheads!

Discovery rescues a colony that’s about to get black holed, but the magistrate is a dickhead who’s really into the idea of letting prisoners die.

Burnham isn’t so she and Booker go to rescue them.

Assigns someone else to do the bulk of the work which we don’t get to see.

The prisoners are guarded by Mega Man enemies; scarab beetles that shoot buzzsaws and explode.

There are 5 prisoners who all committed minor offenses except one of them who’s sad that he did a murder 30 years ago.

The prisoners need a weird amount of persuading to escape, apparently ‘there is a roving black hole coming to kill you all’ isn’t persuasive enough.

They escape after being guaranteed political asylum, except sad murder man who stays as penitence.

He gives Burnham an heirloom he stole 30 years earlier. Booker isn’t into leaving him but whoop gotta go.

Burnham gives Heirloom back to original owner’s daughter.

It’s a hologram of a family tree but it looks shit, could have made a new one in about twenty minutes.

End result: Colony of 1000 rescued; Burnham saved a total of 4 people.

Good job.

Meanwhile, Stamets does science with a psychotic dickhead who looks and sounds distractingly like Alan Arkin.

If this were a high school PSA he’d be one of the mean older kids that encourages people to smoke.

Stamets and Not Alan Arkin try to make a mini black hole controller.

Almost explodes, peer pressure bad.

It’s unclear why this couldn’t have waited until after the evacuation, when they could give all of Discovery’s resources to the project.

Not Alan Arkin and Booker meet in the bar at the end and Not Alan Arkin implies he knows more about the black holes than he’s letting on just for the sake of being a dickhead I guess. Gotta commit to the bit.

This episode was fairly decent, which is like being the most handsome person at the Andrew Lloyd Webber lookalike contest.

Episode 6

The seasons format has become predictable; each episode exists to drip-feed one new piece of information about the DMA. Consequently, the events of each episode end up feeling like they exist just to dress up a single line of exposition for the season’s inevitably one-and-done McGuffin.

This episode’s bit of drip-fed information: the DMA originated outside the galaxy.

DMA sounds like an obscure file format from the Napster era designed to combat piracy that requires two separate plugins to work which takes up 70% of the computers background processes which in turn just convinced more people to pirate stuff.

Star_trek_discovery_season_4.dma

Discovery gets stuck in a void where some anomaly is coming to disintegrate the ship.

Demonstrated by slowly killing a screaming robot

They hang a lantern on the fact it’s screaming which seems needlessly gruesome.

Could have just been a random probe. Audience would have understood that disintegration is no good. Maybe they felt like they needed to hammer home that it can kill people.

Meanwhile, the computer has emotions now.

It’s overwhelmed so it plays chess with Grey.

Computer is unsure whether or not to report a massive gaping hull breach. Eventually it does.

Result: A yellowshirt dies, but not everyone on the ship dies so… that’s good?

Everyone’s over it pretty quickly, the attitude is essentially ‘Eh, everyone makes mistakes.’

In fairness that’s pretty standard for yellowshirts in Trek.

They use sonar to navigate and leave the void.

Everyone stores themselves in the transport buffer, so they don’t catch fire. Burnham puts on a dumb looking Daft Punk disco spacesuit to pilot the ship out.

They have to deactivate life support as well, but I forgot why to be honest because the DMA exposition drip was right at the top of this episode and my ability to pay attention was diminishing.

Still a lot of fire considering the lack of oxygen.

Also, Booker messes up the spore drive and sees his ghost dad.

He’s all pissed off and then he leaves.

Burnham works on a family tree which for some reason includes most of the crew.

I keep hammering it home but please, can we have some professional detachment in this show?

Holograms in the TNG era – 800 years earlier – looked solid and had full colour. Looked entirely real. Holograms in the Discovery era are blurry, transparent, and exclusively blue.

Nit-pick: The pictures on the family tree rotate so they’re always facing the camera like enemies in the original Doom. From Burnham’s point of view, are they twisting back and forth?

Meh episode.

Episode 7

This episode was actually pretty good overall.

An episode consisting entirely of talking in rooms debating stuff, prime TNG fodder.

A-plot: Debating what should be done about the dark matter anomaly.

FedPrez™ wants to attempt diplomatic solution to DMA crisis.

Booker and Not Alan Arkin think they should just destroy the thing that makes planets spontaneously explode. Not Alan Arkin very bluntly proposes using dangerous illegal weapons which the delegation isn’t into.

Also revealed that Not Alan Arkin is from a parallel universe and wants the energy from the DMA to get back home.

Didn’t seem like a particularly necessary or well-implemented detail, he mentions it in an aside and it doesn’t really affect anything.

Burnham thinks they should give peace a chance

Obviously she’s going to be right in the end but in the episode it makes Burnham seem incredibly tone-deaf that she wants to be diplomatic with the force that murdered her boyfriend’s family and civilisation.

The delegates vote to try diplomacy.

Ending: Booker and Not Alan Arkin go off to destroy the DMA anyway.

Honestly pretty exciting cliff-hanger. Good note to go into the mid-season break on.

Conference hall had an extremely impractical design. It was one million stories tall, no way the people at the bottom would be able to hear or see anyone at the top (or vice versa).

Also, no chairs. That just seems cruel given that they knew Michael Burnham would be talking.

B-plot: Debating what should be done with sentient computer.

Computer won’t give coordinates because it’s worried about the crew’s safety.

Shit computer. Like if Windows 11 refused to open excel because it was scared of the sums the user might do.

David Cronenberg, Stamets, the doctor whose name I’ve forgotten, Saru, What’stheirname and Grey sit in a room and debate it for ages.

Seven or eight lofty speeches and a lot of stock footage later they decide not to delete the computer and that it’s allowed to join Starfleet, because it demonstrates that it’s reprogrammed itself so that its priority is caring about the crew.

I was with this b-plot until this part, when it got way too sugary and saccharin in typical Discovery fashion.

The stock footage does that Star Trek IV thing where it just uses fully edited footage from the show that it would have no way of capturing.

Characters entering the scene reminded me of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, specifically in the way they burst into the room and suddenly monopolised the conversation.

Just needed one of them to go ‘ey-yoo!’ as they walked in, holding a case of beer.

Grey leaves the ship to go and learn how to stir mud on Trill. Wouldn’t think there’d be much to learn about it but he’s fairly surplus to requirement on Discovery so fair enough.

Tig Nataro’s vanished again.

Episode 8

This episode: Confusing gambling!

Burnham and that helmsman not the one who got that headwound last season the other one whose name I’ve forgotten so let’s just call her Sparky track Not Alan Arkin and Booker to a casino.

Not Alan Arkin and Booker want to win a thing to do a thing

Burnham and Sparky want to stop Not Alan Arkin and Booker from winning the thing to do a thing.

Sparky gets into a wrestling match for unclear reasons against a massive cocky guy.

Called it the moment I saw a comical glowing wrestling ring in the middle of the dingy set.

Entirely predictably, she throws 2 bouts and wins the third easily.

Wouldn’t it have been a more interesting moral dilemma if she was wrestling someone desperate? Who wasn’t as experienced and was clearly worried, but had no choice but to fight so their family as enough money to buy food? If she had to weigh up the needs of the many or the one on the fly? Could have made for an interesting B-story about how far people are willing to go to do what they think is the right thing, paralleling Booker’s motivation this season.

Would have helped establishing the casino as somewhere morally scrupulous, too.

See STD writers, this is called outlining a story, it’s a thing people do in writers’ rooms instead of just spout trite cliches.

I should write 2-hour long aggressively pretentious video essays.

“THE REAL PROBLEM WITH DISCOVERY YOU DIDN’T NOTICE”?

Burnham, Booker and some goons play poker and Burnham acts like a child for some reason.

Booker wins and makes off with the McGuffin, but twist! Burnham put a tracker on it, so Starfleet knows where they are.

There’s a changeling there who’s doing something unclear, then she gets caught and that’s the end of that.

Always thought changelings had more lofty agendas, apparently they rob casinos on the side.

This episode’s bit of drip-fed information: The DMA is mining equipment for a civilisation based in a faraday cage.

Misc. note: It never ceases to astonish me that this show has 4 main cast members but 27 producers.

Uninteresting episode.

Episode 9

The breathing apparatus lady from the last season returns, her orders are to kill Booker if it comes to that and Burnham can’t do it.

Discovery tracks down Booker and Not Alan Arkin

They spend most of the episode flying around and shooting at each other in a way that feels weirdly casual.

This weeks drip-fed piece of information: The DMA takes a week to mine a system of all its McGuffinium.

Burnham tells this to Booker and he agrees to stand down for a week.

Not Alan Arkin just fires anyway, destroys DMA.

Later: There’s a new DMA, species 10C now aware of Federation presence, implied hostility.

Why 10C? Why not 10A or B?

Assuming the Federation species cataloguing system works by placing every letter of the alphabet after a number before moving onto the next (4Z would precede 5A for example) that would make 10C only the 237th species the Federation has encountered, which is self-evidently far too low.

In season 3, it was stated that at the Federation’s height its member species numbered 350, which based on my calculations, is a bigger number than 237.

Keep in mind 350’s only the number of species who were part of the Federation, not the total number of species the Federation had come into contact with.

This would mean that the Federation had 113 more member species than the Federation themselves were aware existed.

Overwhelmingly unremarkable episode. Almost nothing to say about it as shown by the barely semi-related rant about categorisation systems.

Episode 10

Christ this season is dragging.

Discovery goes beyond the galactic barrier to contact species 10C

The idea of the galactic barrier has been thoroughly retconned; it was in an episode of the original series but since then every other season, and in fact the original series itself, has ignored it so it feels odd that they’ve brought it back for this.

There’s plenty of episodes about people leaving the galaxy. Where No One Has Gone Before, to give just one example.

Where No Man Has Gone Before, that’s another one

If you REALLY want to go here you could point out that Tom Paris technically leaves the galaxy in Threshold. But that’s Threshold so…

The galactic barrier is a series of bubbles that make the colours go all weird.

Sure does look like they could just go over the top of it…

Discovery lacks, amongst many other things, a sense of geography. They talk about ‘the galactic barrier’ but… where, precisely? Which quadrant are they in? Which EDGE of the galactic barrier?

They fly into enough bubbles that they manage to exit the galaxy.

Didn’t seem all that difficult all things considered, not worth episodes of build-up.

FedPrez™ receives news that the DMA is headed for EARTH!!!

Also Navar I guess but EARTH!!! The audience knows what Earth is!!!

Can’t wait to see the Mars Defence Network prove completely useless for the 6th time in Trek history.

Burnham and FedPrez™ back-and-forth over whether they should inform the crew or whether it will disrupt their duties.

Eventually, Burnham lets FedPrez™ announce it to the crew.

Stamets and What’stheirname’s (something beginning with B?) relationship continues to feel more and more inappropriate.

I’d give anything for them to drop the surrogate child schtick. It gets creepier with every episode.

THEIR

BOSS

Saru and the Vulcan President’s relationship gets taken to the next level, good for them I suppose.

Meanwhile, Not Alan Arkin bumbles around his old prison cell with Booker and waxes lyrical about his edgy backstory.

They’re there to find some McGuffinium to rub on the ship so they can also exit the galaxy

Not Alan Arkin believes his old cellmate is still alive, that’s probably going to be important at some point but then again this is the Kurtzman era so it might be forgotten about completely, even odds really.

Episode 11

Discovery, well, discovers a ruined planet that was inhabited by 10C, Burnham leads away team (Colbert, Saru, Dettmer) to it to discover anything about them.

Before departing, the delegates express that galivanting around a planet might be a massive waste of time considering Earth and Navar have 26 hours before they start getting DMA’d.

This A plot had distinct Red Dwarf vibes, just needed to be filmed in a power plant with a tenth the budget.

The air is filled with fear pheromones that the spacesuits aren’t filtering out.

Solution: Dettmer presses like two buttons and that fixes it.

They comes across a disused 10C nursery, filled with giant skeletons.

They come to the astonishing conclusion that the 10C care about their children not dying.

That’s pretty much the universal defining characteristic of biological life but apparently this is a ground-breaking discovery.

Burnham huffs some love dust and cooms.

This is the worst sentence I’ve ever written and I’m sorry but that’s totally what happens.

Everyone else huffs love dust too.

They conclude 10C communicate via pheromones.

That’ll come in handy when communicating with them over a viewscreen when they’re dozens of kilometres away.

What’stheirname thinks Dettmer is cool

Not quite sure why as the only thing she ever really did was brain herself when the ship crashed last season.

Conclusion: 10C might be able to empathise with having their planet destroyed or on the other hand they might just be dicks.

Booker and NAA are there also? Somehow? Did they not need to screw around with the whole galactic barrier nonsense?

They sneak aboard Discovery to secretly rekerfooble some energymotrons, and while they’re at it they recruit one of the anti-10C delegates to do some more sabotage stuff.

NAA gets caught by Tig Nataro (who is in this episode) but she gets taken prisoner… somehow? Really doesn’t seem like a situation where he could capture her.

He was literally found cowering under a desk in one scene and in the next Tig was aboard his ship behind a force field.

Feels like something was cut.

This episode was okay.

Episode 12

Apparently it’s written Ni’Var? Whoops.

Discovery finally encounters the 10C. They spray emotion gas on their space fence resulting in the ship getting sucked into their realm.

I actually like that all we see of the 10C are distant shapes in the fog. It leaves them mysterious. I hope they don’t ruin it next episode by showing them in full.

The cinematography this episode blew chunks. Most of the episode consists of people standing perfectly still in a line, followed by endless close-ups. Felt incredibly utilitarian and unnatural for something marketed as a premium show.

Star Wars prequel-esq; establishing shot, shot-reverse-shot again and again. Nothing kinetic.

Except in this instance, they don’t even cut back to a medium shot so they can slightly change position like the prequels do. I kept thinking how uncomfortable everyone must be just constantly standing.

Burnham, Saru, FedPrez™ and the delegates decode a simplified version of the 10C language, before getting invited onto a probe which takes them to a facsimile of the bridge.

Despite this episode being about decoding language, everyone kept coming off as a complete dullard. The Vulcan president, upon going into the probe, immediately asks ‘did it transport us to the bridge?’

On the subject of dullards, one of the B-plots has to do with the doctor, Stamets and What’stheirname figuring out that Tig Nataro has been kidnapped. Despite a million very obvious signs, they simply cannot figure out that she’s missing, thanks in no small part to the computer that has a total inability to give a yes or no answer.

Meanwhile, Tig Nataro manages to convince Booker that NAA is an insane sociopath by pointing out that his equations will make things worse and cause more damage.

Booker, finally acquiescing to the possibility that the utterly bonkers psycho might be an utterly bonkers psycho, confronts NAA and gets locked up with Tig after a bit of a punch-up.

He can justify it by being grief-stricken but still, it was blunt and obvious as a brick through a plate-glass window.

NAA goes further into 10C-land to shoot them a bit.

Burnham et al make some progress talking to 10C but get kicked out when NAA starts causing a kerfuffle.

This season is almost done, it’s almost finished.

This episode was fine. In spite of everyone being thick as a brick more happened in this episode than the usual Discovery fare and it had a nice ominous sense of mystery.

Episode 13

This episode: The nightmare is finally over.

The General who gave NAA and Booker what they wanted confesses, realises she’s been a total chump.

Booker convinces NAA that he’s been a total nob about all this, gets him to calm down.

Too late to stop the plasma thingy they were going to use to destroy the 10C.

Tig Nataro beams back to Discovery

Luckily, the General volunteers to crash a shuttle into their ship which sorts all that out. That’s convenient.

She gets beamed back to Discovery just in time.

NAA beams Booker off ship but his signal gets lost when the ship explodes.

NAA dead, probably.

Earth Spacedock: Tilly and Admiral who was in The Mummy sort out evacuations.

Tilly is absolutely the last person I’d ever want to organise any kind of evacuation. All the poise and reassurance of a wasp that’s just gotten wankered on ket.

We finally get a look at a 10C. They’re giant jellyfish. Also, a hive mind.

They conclude that nuanced communication is impossible in a short time span. 10 minutes later they do it.

The usual Kurtzman era fare of flowery answers and speeches where a single word would suffice, not least of all because they’re talking to an unknown race whose language they translated 20 seconds earlier.

10C ask why Burnham is sad; she responds because Booker died. Then it turns out they snatched his transport signal and he’s fine.

So much for narrative consequences.

Discussion scenes with 10C, as with last episode, weren’t staged particularly interestingly. Just close-ups of people looking up at nothing.

10C agree to only do DMA stuff in uninhabited systems because they didn’t realise lifeforms within the galaxy were sentient.

I’ve got the same problem.

Booker says to shut it down altogether because the DMA kicks out toxic gunk.

10C immediately go ‘okay’ and stop, disable hyperwall for good.

Millenia of civilisation fundamentally altered in a sentence.

Earth safe. Also Ni’Var and Titan etc etc but mainly earth.

General that betrayed them faces absolutely no consequences for almost dooming all life.

Booker to face harsh punishments for firing Isolitic weapons, stealing a ship, almost ending all life: several months of community service.

The final scene:

Lots of crying, hugging, everything wrapped up neatly.

Earth re-joins Federation

It does exactly the same thing last season did where it feels like an ending for the entire series. There’s nowhere else to go now, other than to just introduce another season-long one-and-done McGuffin.

They did absolutely nothing with that fancy new drydock they introduced in the first episode.

Why did they make such a big deal of that? Why did they break out the Enterprise theme for that?

Middling finale to a middling season.

Didn’t climax with an embarrassing catfight so points for that I suppose.

Addendum

The fact that Discovery’s nacelles float besides the ship rather than directly connect to it has ruined my life and thrown me into an existential spiral the depths of which know neither the light nor warmth of the sun.

How do the nacelles connect to the warp core wirelessly? Are they beaming the particles it collects directly to the warp core? That sounds like it’d take up a shit-ton of power if so, not least of all given the dilithium shortage they’ve just come out of. It doesn’t seem anywhere near as efficient as just plugging them into the warp core. Why is having them free-floating in any way preferable to having them directly connected? Plus, if the ship lost power a key component of the ship would just float away.

Imagine if your car had a wireless fuel tank. You’d immediately know it was a bullshit scam because, having a brain, you know that important bits of machinery have to connect to things and can’t just float!

It’s all just another prime example of Discovery being all flash and no substance. Almost all the technology in this show is hand-wave magic bullshit.

Even at the nadir of the TNG era’s technobabble sins, you still got a sense there was an internal logic. That the writers had an idea what each part of the ship did and how it worked, how they all interacted with each other.

This is shown by an exception that proves the rule: in late Voyager they actually did step over that line quite regularly, and most problems were solved with the application of ‘Borg technology’, which narratively might as well have just been a magic cream and it jarred with the tone of the earlier TNG era where they actually had to solve problems.

Discovery is much the same. Any problem solving feels fairly weightless because the ship basically works on magic. I doubt the showrunners really know or care how the Discovery itself works.

0 notes

whilereadingandwalking · 3 years

Photo

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, is a vivid, honest look at contemporary womanhood. It centers on Natsuko, a young woman whose sister Makiko and niece Midoriko are visiting her in Tokyo. The two are in the midst of a fierce mother-daughter battle, and Natsuko is caught between them. In the second part of the novel, we jump forward to see Natsuko as a writer, coping with adult friendships, and quietly thinking about motherhood.

Single women cannot adopt or use fertilization methods to become pregnant in Japan. And yet Natsuko's life is saturated with strong single mothers, all doing their best to provide their daughter with a good life. It's an honest text, that investigates whether we can actually judge a child's life by their potential parents or parent. Is it a given that a couple will provide a better life for a child than one parent? Does a child have a right to know if the people who raised them aren't their biological parents?

Natsuko, interestingly, seems to be asexual (she could also, with some imagination, be read as queer). She is averse to sex with men. It makes her desire to be a mother even more complicated, and she talks about the other difficulties—of other people not understanding, of her desire for a romantic but not sexual relationship. It was a compelling addition in a book that dwells quite a bit on bodily autonomy and how we inhabit our bodies as women, from Midoroko's terror at the idea of getting her period, to the dizzy dreams Natsuko has while drunk, to Makiko considering breast implants.

It's the small touches and connections of the book, Natsuko's tendency to let words wash over her, and her struggle with her past and her future, that make this novel so well done. The themes of sisterhood, motherhood, and female friendship were explored by a cast of real-feeling, vivid characters. Kawakami's writing had me completely hooked—I couldn't put this one down.

Content warnings for mentions and/or discussion of domestic abuse, sexual assault, child abuse, pedophilia, suicide, cancer, and substance abuse, as well as for transphobia (misgendering) and depiction of sexual harassment.

#breasts and eggs #mieko kawakami #bibliophile #book nerd #book review #women in translation #books in translation #my book reviews

20 notes · View notes

starry-eyed-psychopomp · 2 years

Text

I posted 248 times in 2021

56 posts created (23%)

192 posts reblogged (77%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 3.4 posts.

I added 180 tags in 2021

#toh - 44 posts

#lumity - 28 posts

#the owl house - 19 posts

#toh spoilers - 19 posts

#the locked tomb - 17 posts

#amphibia - 13 posts

#shadow and bone - 11 posts

#raeda - 11 posts

#griddlehark - 9 posts

#yulivia - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#if anyone’s wondering why i’m posting about star wars unprompted i just read some of the recent darth vader comics and i’m feeling things

My Top Posts in 2021

Les Mis would be so much better if Marius didn’t exist and the romance was between Cosette and Eponine. Just imagine: two childhood friends/rivals unexpectedly reunite in opposite social positions than they were before. They have to deal with the pain of their pasts mingling with their newfound feelings for one another. Their parents won’t approve, and are are in active opposition with one another, so the whole “forbidden romance” aspect is even stronger. Eponine has a more active role with the students, bringing out more of her pain over the life she could have had and making her ties to revolution and conflict with her parents even more profound, and pretends to be a boy for longer portions of the story. Valjean catches them together and thinks Eponine is a boy, then goes to the barricade looking for “him,” where he finds out the truth and realizes the pain Cosette has been going through. (Maybe he realizes how much she had been hiding from him and realizes he should be more honest with her about his own past) He accepts her and the whole thing brings them closer together. Eponine is more sympathetic to Valjean than Marius was, as she knows what it’s like to be forced into a life of crime. A romance between members of different social classes with a long history together is just a much stronger narrative than two rich kids who meet once. Also Eponine tracking Cosette down and protecting her from Thenardier is much sweeter when they’re the ones in love instead of just doing it cuz she’s into Marius. There’s just so much potential with this!

168 notes • Posted 2021-03-16 22:29:31 GMT

Stop what you’re doing and go read The Girl from the Sea!

It’s a beautiful ya lesbian graphic novel by Molly Ostertag (who you may recognize as the author of The Witch Boy, writer of the gayest episodes of The Owl House, and wife of Noelle Stevenson) about a teenage girl falling in love with a selkie.

Morgan, a closeted teen in a seaside small town, has a plan: get through high school while remaining closeted and distant from her friends and family, then go to college far away where she can be out and truly find herself. All that changes, though, when she meets Keltie, a selkie who’s much more open and unabashed about her feelings.

It has so many cute scenes and kisses, with a lot of emotional and relatable elements! While the coming-out element is important, it doesn’t really feel like a lot of the more serious and heavy coming-out stories that saturate gay media. It’s a very beautiful urban fantasy story with an amazing romance and great queer themes! The art is gorgeous and it is so so worth it to get the book. Easily one of my favorites!

290 notes • Posted 2021-06-13 14:55:48 GMT

Look, idk what kind of unholy bargain Dana Terrace had to make to let TOH be this explicitly queer, but I think we all owe a permanent debt to her

686 notes • Posted 2021-08-01 21:03:56 GMT

Harrow: I love all my siblings equally. Ianthe, Mercy, Augustine—

*Looks at smudged writing on hand*

*immediately passes out*

783 notes • Posted 2021-10-01 21:43:51 GMT

Are you kidding me. Seriously, fuck Disney. They buy out a studio just to shut them down and now we’re going to be deprived of a movie that could have been incredible. Blue Sky was about to make a movie adaptation of Noelle Stevenson’s comic Nimona, a creative and wonderful story with LGBT leads and a unique style. This is why I don’t trust Disney; they take over everything and shut down any sort of progress that doesn’t fit their money-making agenda. Capitalism breeds innovation my ass.

25703 notes • Posted 2021-02-10 01:37:29 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Lol I am VERY gay #I don’t have Spotify so this is the closest I’m getting to the hype around that

2 notes · View notes

jitteryjive · 2 years

Note

Ok so I dont really use Webtoon because Im not much a comic read/reading in general. So what up with High Class Homos? Is it like the High Gardian Spice of Webtoon?(Ie: has a lot of LGBTQ+ representation but 1.) has horrible story telling or 2.) doesn't represent the LGBTQ+ comunity respectivly)-C

oh my god. okay. I’m gonna do an entire rant underneath the cut because it’s really bad

tldr: it’s horribly racist and stereotypical and it is basically a way to lure queer people even further into shitty stereotypes. stop praising it for being like progressive or whatever the fuck it’s supposed to be

okay where do I start. basically I may not be allowed to say most of this stuff since it was so bad that I stopped reading it around like. episode 15/16? inform me if I need to change anything

okay so. I don’t remember anyone’s names except for augustus and sapphia so I’ll nickname the other important characters as knight [mlm love interest], maid 1 [first wlw love interest], and maid 2 [second wlw love interest, one with the lighter hair]

first of all: the fucking RACISM oh my god.

so basically here’s the main cast okay? all of them are white. the same exact skin tone [except for maid 1 who’s tanner but white]. except for knight, who’s black.

repeatedly throughout the panels, knight’s skin tone is always saturating and lightening and usually never stays a darker tone? which is? very blatant whitewashing??? dude just pick a fucking tone and stop being weird

and then. god okay. so the main “character trait” of knight is that he’s stupid. he’s described as being like teehee I’m so ditzy and gay and stupid and there’s a scene where I have no idea what gay means or what it is!!!!! which is fucking awful and racist already. and I do understand that in medieval times it wasn’t uncommon to be illiterate but every other person in the cast can read and write and yet the knight’s ENTIRE plotline is having no idea how to read or write which. if you’re following that’s just. literally why the fuck are you emphasizing that the ONLY black character’s stupid and illiterate. literally what the fuck is wrong with you.

second: the horrible stereotyping and further fetishization + demonization of orientations. + bad trans rep

alongside that, every single character except for the transhet character and the trademark #”evil nasty cishet” character are gay or lesbian. unless something was stated that I missed in the more recent episode, a webtoon that’s praised for having amazing “””lgbtq+ themes””” only has gay and lesbian, not??? arospec or multiro or any other romantic orientations????? not to mention that they are pretending aspec people are nonexistent and everyone is definitely allosexual without a fault. but the thing is. this tiny representation of a huge community is. so. just absolutely awful.

prince augustus and knight are both represented by being uwu soft boys because they’re gay and always being nervous oh no!!! what if he thinks I’m weird >~< type of characters. honestly just say you fetishize gay men to be crammed into your soft owo yaoi boxes and get the fuck out of here.

princess sapphia and the maids are either fetishized or demonized as well. princess sapphia plays into the disgusting stereotype than lesbians are furious, violent monsters due to her constantly destroying things and yelling at everyone and generally being a huge asshole. maid 1 isn’t as bad and has a grasp on sense but she’s still incredibly rude. then maid 2 is forced to be like a soft cute lesbian who’s clueless to the fact that maid 1 loves her!!! she’s so cute and sweet and has no idea she’s in love with the lesbeans!!!! god grow up is it not hard to treat lesbians like real people.

and oooh yay they’re pretending [identity] doesn’t exist again! assuming from webtoon’s ads spoiling everything, there was a heated love triangle between the maid characters and the princess oh no!!!! as someone who’s polyam I think I’m gonna lose my mind if media keeps mislabeling weird love corners as love triangles and ignoring the fact polyam people. exist?? like it’s not weird for three or more people to enter a relationship????

with that said, every single mlm buildup scene is soft and >w< and completely non-sexual while there’s a fucking scene where maid 1 walks in on sapphia with only a bra on and she freaks out because OMG!!!! with that being the only chemistry at all between them.

plus that. from what I read of course the author mainly only focused on the mlm relationship and only made sexual/weird jokes about the wlw relationship as it was pushed aside. at least make the attention equal if you’re gonna ONLY make cis gay and lesbian characters.

finally the trans character has fucked up rep. fortunately they aren’t pulling the sad depressing #brocken💔 “I don’t fit in this body……….” trope or having every character misgender them repeatedly until they’re “””fixed””” but instead he mysteriously says “once upon a time I wasn’t called lucas….!” and then it’s. never mentioned ever again. hey, if you’re gonna make an amazing webtoon with fantastic queer rep maybe you shouldn’t vague the entire trans umbrella and never talk about it again

and it’s not super related but they’re making the only cishet character portrayed as some sort of evil antagonistic person which. is a shitty thing to do because it shows that in media with good queer rep there’ll never be a cishetallo character who isn’t repetitively seen to be some sort of monster

okay. rant over. I hope more people stop getting into high class homos and blindly praising it with so much love

#rant #ask #I hate it so much I hate it so m #strong language #swearing #racism #homophobia #fetishization tw #stereotypes tw #ask to tag

1 note · View note

aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

Best Romantic Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now

https://ift.tt/3pc4e7e

Some movies brave enough to tread where only pop songs and poems go, and try to capture all the drama, contradictions and happy, bubbly feelings that come along with romance and love. It’s high-time that we honor them and defend them against their unearned sappy reputations with the best romantic movies on Amazon Prime.

We’ve scoured Amazon Prime to find the best romantic movies available for your viewing pleasure. Here are the best romantic movies on Amazon Prime. Ok, some of them are perfectly sappy.

The Big Sick

Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily Gordon’s theatrical debut made big waves when it came out for the singularity of its vision and just how plain funny it is. Now Amazon gets to reap the benefits of producing a bonafide romantic indie hit by getting its exclusive streaming rights. The Big Sick is the real life story of comedian Kumail Nanjiani meeting and falling in love with his wife, Emily (who is played by Zoe Kazan in the film).

Kumail and Emily’s courtship process is difficult enough to begin with due to Kumail’s family pressuring him to find a nice Pakistani girl to settle down with. But soon things get even more difficult as Emily suffers a health scare and Kumail must suddenly contend with that situation and Emily’s eccentric parents who have just come to town. The Big Sick is a clear vision from talented people and tells a beautifully convincing love story while making plenty of room for laughter. Not only that but it’s a big win for our list of best romance movies on Amazon Prime.

Watch The Big Sick

What If

Canadian drama What If (originally known as The F Word before the MPAA got its greasy fingers all over it) is a fun romantic movie and a tremendous showcase for its two young stars Daniel Radcliffe (you know what he’s from) and Zoe Kazan (The Big Sick). Radcliffe stars as Wallace – a directionless young man living in Toronto who decides to become more social after his girlfriend cheats on him.

Enter Kylo Ren (Adam Driver playing a character who is unfortunately not named Kylo Ren) who takes Wallace to a party where he meets the alluring Chantry (Kazan). Wallace and Chantry immediately fall for each other. Unfortunately there’s the small matter of Chantry’s boyfriend. What If? is a sweet little Canadian flick that knows how to push its audiences romantic buttons.

Watch What If

Still Mine

Still Mine isn’t necessarily about romance. It’s about love – a deep prevailing love built up over decades. Craig Morrison (James Cromwell) is a farmer in rural New Brunswick, Canada. He intends to build a new house for his ailing wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold) but runs into trouble with the local municipality’s bureaucracy prevents him from doing so.

Still Mine is as romantic a movie about bureacratic development regulations as has ever existed. Cromwell and Bujold have wonderful chemistry and paint a portrait of profound, abiding love.

Watch Still Mine

Some Kind of Wonderful

Some Kind of Wonderful doesn’t have the same pop culture standing as other John Huges films like Sixteen Candles or Pretty in Pink. Still this remains a worthwhile entry into the Hughes canon on teenage love.

Movies

Celebrating John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles

By Carley Tauchert

Movies

The Bee: The $50 Million John Hughes Movie That Fell Apart

By Simon Brew

Keith Nelson (Eric Stoltz) is a high school outcast who has his eyes set on popular girl Amanda Jones (Lea Thompson). Thankfully he has his tomboyish Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) to help court her. Based on that meager plot description, you may think you know where Some Kind of Wonderful is going to end up, and…you’re probably right. That doesn’t make the journey any less satisfying.

Watch Some Kind of Wonderful

To Catch a Thief

You know who would make a great romance film? The guy who did Psycho. Yes To Catch a Thief is a classic romance film from none other than Alfred Hitchcock. Of course, there’s a lot more going on in this heist thriller.

Cary Grant stars as retired cat burglar John Robie. When another burglar starts copying his act, Robie has to undergo One Last Job (TM) to catch…a thief. In the process John comes across the wealthy Frances (Grace Kelly) and the two strike up an unlikely romance for the ages.

Watch To Catch a Thief

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Hello, My Name is Doris

Between TBS’ Search Party and Hello, My Name is Doris, director Michael Showalter had a stellar 2016. Hello, My Name is Doris is a wonderfully sweet, equally tragic and completely hilarious romantic comedy. Sally Field stars as the titular Doris, a lively woman in her 60s who after the death of her mother becomes infatuated with a younger man.

Movies

Best Romantic Movies on Netflix

By Alec Bojalad

Movies

Best Romantic Movies on Hulu Right Now

By Alec Bojalad

With the help of cliched self-help materials she does whatever she can to get his attention. Hello, My Name is Doris is an empathetic romantic comedy that will change how you view age.

Watch Hello, My Name is Doris

Sabrina (1995)

Let’s get one thing out of the way right now. Sabrina‘s theatrical poster is dope. When I was a kid and I would pass the VHS cover in Blockbuster, I couldn’t help but think “Wow, that is a real adult movie.” At a young age, the mere sight of a woman’s lascivious red lipstick (lascivious in my head at least) was enough to fry my brain. Poster aside, however, Sabrina is an excellent romance with some real star power. It’s a remake of the 1954 film of the same name starring Billy Wilder and Audrey Hepburn.

This version was directed by the great Sydney Pollack and stars Harrison Ford, Greg Kinnear, and Julia Ormond. Weirdly enough Greg Kinnear plays the ultimate rich playboy while Harrison Ford plays his studious older brother. Weird casting choices but it works out alright thanks to each actor’s chemistry with Ormond.

Watch Sabrina

Ghost

Ghost is much more than just the reason you can no longer attend a pottery class without giggling. It’s a legitimately great sci-fi romance yarn. Patrick Swayze stars as Sam a banker who is killed by a mugger. Immediately post-death he discovers that he has become a ghost and can no longer directly interact with his girlfriend Molly (Demi Moore).

Sam sets out to solve his own murder and somehow reconnect with the woman he loves. Ghostcomes along with all the corniness of an early ’90s blockbuster but its central theme of love trying to achieve the impossible plays in any decade.

Watch Ghost

Brokeback Mountain

Longing is a crucial part of the formula in any romance movie and Brokeback Mountain has it in spades. Ang Lee’s 2005 film played a crucial role in bringing queer cinema to the mainstream and it did so by presenting mostly straight audiences with a universal depiction of love and passion – the kind of love that supersedes the norms and expectations of everything in your life to that point.

Heath Ledger and Jake Gylllenhaal star as 1960s Wyoming cowboys Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist. While herding sheep on the Brokeback mountains, Jack makes a sexual pass at Ennis and the two begin a summer-long physical affair. The movie then follows the pair through the subsequent decades as they try to return to their “normal” lives, all the while unable to forget their time on Brokeback.

Watch Brokeback Mountain

Letter to Juliet

Somewhere along the way, Hollywood decided to let Amanda Seyfried become the queen of romantic comedies set in exotic locales…and that’s perfectly fine with us.

In Letters to Juliet, Seyfried stars as a New York fact checker Sophie on “pre-honeymoon” with her fiancé in Verona. There she learns of the phenomenon of “letters to Juliet” where women women bring love letters to Juliet Montague’s Verona courtyard. When Sophie answers a letter from 1957, she embarks on a decades-spanning journey of love and self-discover.y

Watch Letters to Juliet

What Men Want

Back in 2000, only one film had the distinction…nay, the courage of trying to figure out What Women Want. The answer, apparently, was Mel Gibson. We don’t talk about this movie that much.

Books

Which YA Romance Should Netflix Adapt Next?

By Kayti Burt

Books

Yesterday Is History: Meet the Latest Addition to the Time Travel Romance Genre

By Alana Joli Abbott

2019’s What Men Want is a loose remake of the earlier film. And it has something that the original never did: Taraji P. Henson! Henson stars as Ali Davis, a sports agent who gains the ability to read men’s minds after meeting a shaman. The movie puts Ali’s male-dominated profession to good use and in the process tells a nifty little romance story.

Watch What Men Want

There’s Something About Mary

More than two decades later, it’s still wild to see that above screenshot. Like, that ran in newspapers. It was on a poster! And if you don’t know why a photo of Cameron Diaz with a unique hairstyle is a big deal then you’ve likely not seen the Farrelly Brothers 1998 gross out classic There’s Something About Mary.

This is not so much a romance movie as it is an exploration of the pitfalls of attraction. Diaz stars as Mary Jensen…and there’s just something about her. Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, Lee Evans, and Chris Elliott all play men who are helplessly in love with Mary and trying to win her affection. In the process, many injuries as sustained.

Watch There’s Something About Mary

Moulin Rouge!

If you like your romance with more than a dash of Baz Luhrmann saturated colors and big, sexy musical numbers then Moulin Rouge! is almost certainly the movie for you.

This 2001 film is set in 1900s Paris amid the Bohemian movement. When Christian (Ewan McGregor) falls in love with Moulin Rouge cabaret actress and courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman), he must contend with her impending betrothal (or really sale) to the Duke of Montrose. As one might imagine, this is resolved with quite a bit of singing and dancing.

Watch Moulin Rouge!

Sylvie’s Love

Amazon Prime’s 2020 film Sylvie’s Love positively oozes jazz era atmosphere and tells a compelling, decades-spanning love story in the process.

Tessa Thompson stars as Sylvie Parker, a young woman who one day meets an aspiring saxophonist (played by Kerry Washington’s husband and former NFLer Nnamdi Asomugha) and in her father’s record shop in 1950s Harlem. This leads to sweeping romance that guides the pair through the era’s jazz music scene.

Watch Sylvie’s Love

The post Best Romantic Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3tMJBC9

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

6 notes · View notes

pass-the-bechdel · 4 years

Text

The Good Place season one full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (thirteen of thirteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

49.58%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Twelve of the thirteen; seven of those are 50%+, and two of those are over 60%

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-four. Eight who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and three who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-two. Eleven who appeared in more than one episode, three who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Solid; the nature of the show is such that they really need to be making a concerted effort to reflect positive, progressive morality, and as such faults in the content would also almost certainly be considered faults in the show itself (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Magnificent! It’s a wonderful ride, whether it’s your first time through or not. Just delightful.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

So, let’s talk about plot twists. In the current entertainment landscape, it seems like everyone is intent upon ‘subverting expectations’, and the good old-fashioned plot twist is very much swept up in that, since a subversion is almost always going to play as a ‘twist’ by definition. The unfortunate thing about this current landscape is that it’s rife with ‘subversive twists’ which are really just bad storytelling; they’re only there because of some pathological fear of predictability, or worse, because the creative minds just want to feel cleverer than their audiences by delivering content that no-one saw coming, serving their own egos at the expense of coherent narratives. If your ‘twist’ is about your own (supposed) intelligence, if you’re baiting the audience by playing into a common trope and then laughing at them for thinking you meant it, if you’re changing the story out of nowhere just for shock value without bothering to build toward the twist because you’re too afraid that someone might figure it out before the reveal...that’s not a real twist. It’s not even a real subversion, it’s just a bad-faith gimmick. It’s not there for the story at all, it’s there to make the writer feel special, because apparently feeling special for delivering quality storytelling isn’t good enough anymore. A proper, genuine plot twist should:

1. make sense in the context of the narrative (it should not be tonally dissonant or jump the tracks into a different genre)

2. make sense with the content of the narrative (it may recontextualise previous events or character choices, but it does not contradict or ignore them in order to function)

3. be foreshadowed (if it comes out of nowhere, that’s not a twist, it’s a random event. It’s a deus ex machina. There’s no story in it if it isn’t built into the fabric of the narrative)

4. ultimately further the storytelling (if it has no consequences for plot or character, it’s a shock-value gimmick, not a real twist).

The above points do not guarantee that a twist will be good storytelling and not just a subversive contrivance for the fuck of it, but they should at least ensure some logical cohesion and protect the integrity of the plot instead of sacrificing it in the name of empty surprise. That covered, it’s easy to see how – even (or perhaps, especially) in this twist-saturated tv landscape we currently inhabit – the big twist for season one of The Good Place still manages to be – in technical parlance – dope. The writing protects the twist not by being ‘too clever’; it simply offers a decoy issue to drive the plot. Eleanor is a Good Place fraud; that’s the first twist in the plot, and it compels the entire season forward. Other twists - Jason’s reveal, Eleanor’s confession, the introduction of the ‘real’ Eleanor - set the stage for this being A Show That Has Twists, but in a way that makes so much contextual sense that it doesn’t set us up to be looking for the next one (a common problem for those shows that rely on ‘cleverer than the audience’ twists - they’ve set themselves up as mysteries for the audience to unravel, and then they kill their own storytelling as they twist in knots trying to keep ahead of millions of intelligent viewers). The Good Place actually tells us outright that something is wrong with this supposed ‘happy afterlife’, it just fools us into thinking that we already know what’s wrong, so that we don’t see the signs of the truth for what they are. Crucially, however, it doesn’t matter if you figure it out before Eleanor does. You can have your suspicions (or have had the show spoiled for you in advance), and you can still appreciate and enjoy it as it unfolds, you can pick up the clues and have a good time with them, and that’s something that all of those gimmicky-subversion plots out there are missing. Their ‘twists’ are not proper functioning pieces of the narrative, and so the story doesn’t work if you already know the reveal; there’s no juicy build-up to enjoy, or worse, you expose your own illogical contrivances or outright plot holes that were created in the course of writing a crappy twist just to feel relevant. The Good Place works because - like any good story - it isn’t about the twist. It’s about the journey.

An important part of what makes the twist work also is that it interweaves the sins of Tahani and Chidi with the discissions of morality without drawing too much attention to them; if all four humans had simply been frauds, it would have been narratively empty, especially if the reveals were coming late in the piece. Jason’s works because it comes out early, and because the Jianyu cover is interesting and distinctly different both to Eleanor’s ploy and to the behaviour of the rest of the neighbourhood, but if the others had turned in the same way it would have been too contrived, too easy, and it would toss out the personalities we had gotten used to (which would violate Good Twist point #2). Since the show DOES pull that trick with Michael (which works because he’s the architect of the whole situation, not a pawn within it), it’s essential that they’re more subtle with Tahani and Chidi’s reasons for being where they are, and in playing it as they do they also reinforce the show’s central deliberations on morality. It’s an inspired framework for approaching what are traditionally considered ‘heady’ themes (and y’all know I’m into it), and every decision about how to approach and balance character behaviour is coming from a position of ethical consideration, weighing not only the acts themselves, but how they compare to the moral theory of various different and conflicting philosophies. It just goes to show that you don’t have to make something ponderous and inaccessible in order to have a cerebral conversation through television - you can do it just fine with afterlife comedy.

As I noted above the cut, the nature of the show automatically lends itself to careful consideration of any feminist and/or progressive content, and as such it should keep a pretty clean bill throughout, or risk cracking its own concept. I do wish they would come out stronger on the queer side of things (as I said in the episode posts, they really aren’t vague about the idea that Eleanor is attracted to women, but her saying words about hot women is still not delivering a lot on the representation front, especially when she is known to do more than say words when it comes to dudes, and the only other queer content we get is the fact that Gunnar and Antonio are soulmates, and that doesn’t technically mean they’re romantically or sexually involved (especially since they’re fakes anyway, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing)). In the mean time though, we have a female lead, 100% on the Bechdel and an essentially balanced number of male and female characters abounding, plus some really nice variety in racial backgrounds (and great names to go along with those - it’s a bit of a peeve of mine usually when show’s include multicultural characters but land everyone with Anglicised or ‘white-friendly’ names. Let the Bambadjans of the world keep their names). We’ve taken a clear stance on even ‘benign’ sexism (i.e. the stuff that’s just men saying inappropriate things - ‘just a suggestion! just a joke! just trying to get a reaction out of you, why are you so sensitive?’ - it’s all literal demon behaviour here), and I won’t pretend that I’m expecting them to get into the real nitty-gritty, but that’s ok. I’m happy to have something which is making a point of not being problematic, because such refuges have real value. So, maybe there won’t be a lot for me to tease apart as the show progresses, but that’s not a bad thing. At the moment, we have green lights across the board, and that’s a hard thing to find. I’m going with it, and we’ll see where we end up.

#full season review #The Good Place #The Good Place season one #Bechdel Test #female representation

31 notes · View notes

writcraft · 4 years

Text

GRACERENE FIC RECS

I’m afraid with upcoming fest deadlines I haven’t been able to write my dear friend @gracerene09 a fic for her birthday, as I had hoped. Instead I decided to do a rec post featuring ten of my favourite fics by Grace. I was spoiled for choice as Grace has a huge catalogue of works with many different themes and pairings, so I decided to pick ten stories with different pairings so there’s a little something for everyone, whatever your tastes.

Dearest Grace, THANK YOU for being such a wonderful friend and for all you do for fandom as a beta reader, as a mod, a regular reader and reccer and for all the beautiful stories you have produced over the years. I hope you enjoy this small token of my appreciation and I promise I’ll finish your gift fic sometime soon!!! You’re a marvel.

Recs beneath the cut.

Palace of Eternity (Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy) | 27,909 Words

It had been twelve years, five months, and six days since the last time Harry had laid eyes upon Draco.

REC: I have said this to Grace before but she has been smashing it out of the park recently with Drarry fics. So many engaging stories handling incredibly different topics and plots. It was a very tough job to pick just one favourite, but this story has stuck with me since I first Brit Picked it and I’m going to select this with a strong recommendation to check out Grace’s other Drarry works. I love how Grace approaches the creature fic trope, dealing with the things people lose when they become immortal as well as the sexy (and oh BOY is this sexy af) side of vampire romance. A struggling but determined Harry, a hot as hell Draco and a gorgeous story of two men who have lived longer than most finding one another through the years. Love it.

Side-Effect (Harry Potter/Firenze) | 3,716 Words

Harry's all mixed up over his feelings for Draco, so Firenze offers him some mystical Centaur herbs to help grant him some clarity. Turns out these herbs have some… unexpected effects on humans.

REC: This is the power of Grace. To take a very rare pairing I never expected to enjoy and to write something brilliant that made me want to read more. I love that Grace always challenges herself to write different pairings for the monthly Daily Deviant prompts and like all of her others, this one brings depth and layers to an unexpected pairing and is hot enough to burn. Brilliant.

bluelight (Luna Lovegood/Ginny Weasley) | 1,553 Words

Ginny knew this camping trip would be special.

REC: I think it’s pretty clear to anyone that reads Grace’s work that she’s a deft hand with scenes with explicit content. I’m recommending this story because I think it’s a really wonderful example of how well Grace does with other things, like offering gorgeous character details and tackling difficult emotions without being overwrought that make the short story so incredibly satisfying to read. I love this quiet, gorgeous femslash offering so much and highly recommend it.

to taste your beating heart (James Sirius Potter/Teddy Lupin)| 2,184 Words

All James had ever wanted was Teddy's heart.

REC: This story blew me away. It’s super dark (heed the warnings) but that never puts me off a story. I love the twists and turns, the obsession and blood lust that this fic is saturated with. It has elements of ambiguity that leave the reader guessing without feeling unfinished or unsatisfying and I just loved seeing the darker side of Grace’s writing! Terrific.

Find This Feeling (Alicia Spinnet/Ginny Weasley) | 27,444 Words

Ginny has everything she ever wanted: a lovely (if small) flat in the City, a wonderful boyfriend to share it with, and most importantly, her dream job as a reserve Chaser with the Holyhead Harpies. She thinks she's got life all figured out, until a new friendship forces her to reevaluate everything she thought she knew about herself.

REC: I love this beautiful story. A long femslash from Grace was such a treat and I couldn’t wait to read this when I found out she was working on a piece exploring Ginny’s queer awakening and coming out. This feels so true to life, so warm and satisfying to read. A beautiful story of growing up and finding love in the most unexpected of places. The characters are so well fleshed out and the scenes Grace creates are vibrant and full of energy. I just adored reading about Ginny gradually finding herself and found this whole story terrific and moving from start to finish.

Show You The Ropes (Bill Weasley/Sirius Black) | 3,884 Words

Bill's got a problem, and Sirius is more than willing to talk fuck him through it.

REC: Another example of Grace catching me unawares with a pairing I never knew I needed. This is so HOT I love the whole premise of the story, the way Bill and Sirius experiment together and how Sirius helps Bill out. The dynamics are brilliant and it was a real treat to see this unexpected pairing brought together in such a delicious way.

Won’t You Give Me What I Want? (Harry Potter/Remus Lupin) | 7,417 Words

Harry knows what he wants, who he wants. What Harry doesn't know is how to ask him for it.

REC: HELLO CROSS-GEN FIRST TIMES I LOVE YOU. This is a pairing I love, and the dynamics in this are exactly how I like my Remus/Harry. A persistent, bold Harry who knows exactly what he wants and a resisting (but not really wanting to) Remus. The ‘we shouldn’t because it’s wrong’ dynamic is handled brilliantly here, with gorgeous tension and build up to an incredible smut scene. Awesome work as always.

Corridor Quickie (Harry Potter/Charlie Weasley) | 1,065

Written for the prompt: There's nothing quite like making Harry come in his pants.

REC: Yes, this was my prompt so maybe I’m biased but I’m still not over how damn hot Grace made this story. This is such a good example of how good Grace is at creating an incredibly hot story within a small word count. The relationship between Harry and Charlie is so well fleshed out and the scene itself is ridiculously sexy. I love everything about this.

Through The Dark (Draco Malfoy/James Sirius Potter) | 3,543 Words

Being kept in the dark should terrify him, but this time it doesn't. In his company James felt safe.

REC: I’m very picky about Draco with any one of Harry’s sons, but I do dabble in Draco/James Sirius from time to time and this is a terrific example of a Draco and James that hits the right spots for me. I adored how this story explores kink in a way that really gets into the emotions of it, and the hotness of the way James sees Draco and fantasises about him. This is just such a delicious, feelsy story and the growing relationship between them brings about a very satisfying, hopeful ending. I love it.

The Hidden Side (James Potter/Teddy Lupin) | 38,353 Words

Twenty years ago today, James Sirius Potter was born into this world. Four years, two months, and six days later, somebody took him.

REC: I know I said I was going to choose ten different pairings but going through Grace’s works I couldn’t let my only Jeddy rec be a very short fic, because Grace, GryffindorJ and Shiftylinguini got me into writing Jeddy in the first place, way back in the day and this story absolutely deserves a mention. Let the killer opening line to this story pull you in and then remain captivated throughout. The story is so immersive from start to finish and even as some aspects might become clear early on, it continuously keeps you gripped throughout. The unfolding relationships are such a joy to read, the pacing is sublime and it’s an incredibly enjoyable piece to read. I don’t want to say too much about this one because spoilers, but I encourage Jeddy fans to go and check this out for yourselves.

THANK YOU Grace for all the wonderful, hot, fun and sexy work you put out there into the world. Have a brilliant day.

#gracerene #happy birthday grace!#fic recs #recs #hp fic recs #hp fic #jeddy #drarry #linny #drames

67 notes · View notes

letterboxd · 3 years

Photo

How I Letterboxd #9: Julie Collette.

Christmas movie lover Julie Collette tells Jack Moulton all about her seasonal movie habits, the best big screen Santa Claus of all time, disability visibility in festive films, and some of the weirder holiday picks.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: when Letterboxd members turn to the Neverending Christmas List to help plan their Christmas movie viewing. Arrange it by highest rated, arrange it by newest release, or by popularity—any which way, there’s something for everyone, from corny TCM romances to obscure seasonal horrors.

Created six years ago by Canadian member Julie Collette, the list runs to more than 4,300 titles, and contains the word ‘Christmas’ 1,837 times at last count. Julie and her husband are die-hard Letterboxd fans, having allegedly used the platform every day for the past nine years. She’s logged every film she’s seen in theaters since 1996.

A message from John McClane in ‘Die Hard’ (1988).

What inspired your Neverending Christmas List? Can you please explain the minimum requirement for eligibility? My husband had told me about a list on Letterboxd of Every Horror Film Made from 1895–Present and that gave me the idea to start the neverending Christmas list. My eligibility rules are not strict at all. It can be a film that centers on or around Christmas time. Even New Year’s counts in my book—as long as there’s a moment in the film that has a Christmas song, a Christmas scene, or Christmas decorations. Die Hard is definitely a Christmas film. First of all, it takes place on Christmas Eve at an office Christmas party. There’s that great note that John McClane sends to Hans Gruber on a dead guy’s shirt: “Now I have a machine gun, ho-ho-ho.” Now that’s Christmas! There are a couple of titles that test my relaxed requirements. Examples would be Psycho—there are a few Christmas decorations at the beginning [and Bryan Fuller agrees]—and the documentary Beauty Day by Canadian director Jay Cheel, which has Christmas lights at the end.

And what percentage of the films have you seen? As of right now, I've watched 20 percent—that’s 882 of the 4,322 films on the list. I’ve got a lot of homework to do. Here’s a few hidden gems I recommend: Mon oncle Antoine, Holiday Affair, Remember the Night, Olivia, On the Twelfth Day…, Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas and One Christmas, which is Katherine Hepburn’s last role.

David Bowie and Bing Crosby sing ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ in ‘Bing Crosby’s Merrie Old Christmas’ (1977).

When does your Christmas movie viewing season start? I usually start mid-November to try to keep up with the TV rom-coms because they start to air even before Hallowe’en. This year on Hallowe’en night we rewatched The Night of the Hunter and I had forgotten that there was a sequence that was set at Christmas time. It was a perfect segue between Hallowe’en and Christmas, so I started November 1st. As far as how I pick what to watch, I go through my list and randomly pick some. I try to watch as many first-time watches and mix up the genres. But the closer I get to Christmas, the more I want to watch my favorites—for the most part I go with the flow. Christmas Day is usually a day of family time, but I try to sneak in one favorite if I can.

What was the first Christmas film that got you into all of this? I’ve always loved Christmas and growing up I watched the yearly airings of vintage Christmas cartoons and A Muppet Family Christmas. When Home Alone came out it was an instant obsession, then Home Alone 2: Lost in New York was just as good. Even now it’s our yearly tradition for my husband and I to watch the Home Alones while we decorate the Christmas tree.

If not Home Alone, what is your all-time favorite Christmas film? It’s a Wonderful Life is up there for me. Partly because growing up I watched it every Christmas Eve and kind of forced my dad to watch it with me. I think he secretly didn’t mind. As a kid, I didn’t dwell on the sad parts of the story, I just wanted to go to that candy shop and run in Bedford Falls like George in that beautiful thick fake snow. Now as an adult, I appreciate the story about a small town coming together to support a man at his lowest of lows more. Jimmy Stewart is amazing as George Bailey and we can all see ourselves at some point in his journey in the film. The chemistry and comedic timing between Stewart and Donna Reed is one of the best. Every time they sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, I always get a bit misty-eyed.

メリークリスマス Japanese style, in ‘Tokyo Godfathers’ (2003).

What have you noticed about the ways in which Christmas films have changed over the years? In classic Christmas storytelling, there are a lot more religion-centered ones like The Bishop’s Wife and It’s a Wonderful Life. The ’80s and ’90s were about the blockbusters that the whole family could enjoy; Batman Returns, Home Alone, and The Santa Clause. The last twenty years have brought us a lot of different movies, but I do find that the start of the 2000s had a better crop of Christmas movies; Love Actually, Elf, Tokyo Godfathers, Far from Heaven, Bridget Jones’s Diary, About a Boy and so many more. The last decade has been saturated by the rom-coms of Hallmark, Lifetime and their imitators, but from the last five years, a few stand out that could be destined to become Christmas classics: Carol, Little Women and The Night Before.

The best, most rewatched Christmas stories tend to be remade. Do you have a classic Christmas story that you always love, no matter who’s telling it? Hands down Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. From my favorite—Scrooge—to The Muppet Christmas Carol, to Scrooged. Growing up, I had the book of Mickey’s Christmas Carol and I loved the cartoon adaptation. I love to see the different actors’ excitement and elation at the end when Scrooge wakes up on Christmas Day. My ultimate favorite is Alistair Sim in 1951’s Scrooge. He’s so jubilant asking the maid what day it is and wishing himself Merry Christmas in the mirror. It’s a bit darker than others. When I was a kid, the intro with Jacob Marley and the build-up of the chains scared me, but I couldn’t stop watching. Patrick Stewart’s Ebenezer [in the 1999 TV movie] is also great for his relief that he survived the journey through time. What an actor! An honorable mention to The Shop Around the Corner, In the Good Old Summertime and You’ve Got Mail, which are all based on [the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László].

A Christmas Treat in ‘Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square’ (2020).

Treat Williams stars in not one but two of this season’s films (who knew he could sing?!). Which actors bring that special spark to festive films for you? Yes, and boy can he sing! Another actor who can sing and puts me straight in the Christmas mood is Bing Crosby. Those classic songs in White Christmas and Holiday Inn are favorites of mine. Jimmy Stewart is an obvious one. He has that charm that’s perfect for Christmas movies, especially in The Shop Around the Corner.

What’s your guiltiest pleasure on the list? Why do we love cheesy movies so much?! Every year I watch TCM’s Classic Christmas marathon [but I also watch] the Hallmark and Lifetime Christmas rom-coms. For me, I love them partly because there’s always a happy ending. I love to see all the decorations and all the cute small towns—some I wish existed so I could visit them because they’re so darn cute! Another reason I love them is the nostalgia, as some of the better ones star TV actors from the ’90s and ’00s like Candice Cameron Bure, Lacey Chabert, Jonathan Bennett, Adrian Grenier, Mario Lopez, Alicia Witt, Alison Sweeney and so many others.

One of the other great Christmas-themed lists on Letterboxd is the one about Christmas movie posters with white heterosexual couples wearing red and green—though many members pride themselves on having seen none of them. I like those movies because I can zone out and enjoy the predictable Christmas ride. However, like other Letterboxd members, I know that these aren’t Oscar-caliber films—though some are better than others! I’m glad that the powers that make these movies are starting to be more inclusive with more POC and LGTBQ+ characters. As a wheelchair user with a physical disability, I was happy to see that Lifetime has an upcoming one called Christmas Ever After, starring Ali Stroker.

Ali Stroker finds love in ‘Christmas Ever After’ (2020).

Indeed, our Make the Yuletide Gay list is an attempt to highlight queer festive films, but the pickings have been slim. Yes, very slim. There’s been queer characters in Christmas films but it’s your stereotypical gay friend or something like that. This year I feel there’s a shift in the air to be more inclusive. My favorites this year so far have been the star-filled lesbi-rom-com Happiest Season, The Christmas House—featuring a landmark first gay couple in a Hallmark festive film, Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square and Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey—with Ricky Martin! I’m looking forward to checking out A New York Christmas Wedding, The Christmas Setup and Dashing in December.

What is the scariest Christmas film that your horror-loving husband has made you watch? The best one is Black Christmas. I love that it’s female-centered and ahead of its time in their portrayals. The killer’s POV really gets me into it and still to this day puts me on edge, so much so that an ornament fell off our tree while watching it this year and it freaked me out!

Also, should we be watching The Nightmare Before Christmas on Hallowe’en or on Christmas? I watch The Nightmare Before Christmas on both holidays so you get the best of both worlds—the ghoulishness of Hallowe’en and the merriment of Christmas!

What other films on your list show Christmas in an unusual light? The first weird one that popped to mind is The Star Wars Holiday Special. That was weird! Also, from what I’ve watched I would say Eyes Wide Shut, The Ref and 3 Godfathers are not your usual Christmas films. I do have quite a few on the list I have to watch that seem weird and unusual like Elves, Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

[Editor’s note: Previous How I Letterboxd interviewee Dave Vis urges you not to watch Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny under any circumstances.]

Which actor is the quintessential Santa Claus? For me, it’s the Santa in Miracle on 34th Street, played by Edmund Gwenn. He truly embodied the part in the way he plays Kris Kringle. The gentleness and innocence he shows throughout the film is magical. It’s no wonder he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his performance.

Gunn Wållgren in ‘Fanny and Alexander’ (1982).

Of course, so many films in the Christmas canon are American films. What are some of the best Christmas films from around the world? This question makes me realize I haven’t watched enough Christmas movies from around the world. With that being said here’s a few; A Christmas Tale from France, A Child’s Christmas in Wales from the UK, Tokyo Godfathers from Japan and Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander from Sweden. Mon oncle Antoine is a great Canadian film set in a small mining village during Christmas. It reminded me of the stories my mom and grandma talked about their Christmas traditions in their small village.

Are there any overrated classics you want to protest? I didn’t watch A Christmas Story growing up, so when I finally did watch it as an adult, I didn’t connect with it. The iconic scenes are funny and all, but it’s just okay. Now I’ll be on my hubby’s naughty list!

Does the film marathon continue through that purgatory week between Christmas and New Year? Do you have any film-related traditions to ring in the New Year? It does continue during that week to a certain extent. Some years after Christmas I’m done and what I haven’t watched goes to the following year but other years I can watch a few more and not feel overwhelmed. On New Year’s we have no traditions per se, but this year we might do a Tarantino marathon.

Christmas season is also synonymous with awards season. You keep track of a lot of Academy Awards history. How are you feeling about the awards season this year? First off, like many others, I haven’t even set foot in a theater this year and that is sad. I hope that the theater-going experience is not irreparably damaged. One good thing that came from the pandemic is film festivals streamed online and we were fortunate to watch some great titles from TIFF from the comfort of our home in September. I saw Nomadland, and it’s going to be a frontrunner for many of the main categories. I hope Regina King’s One Night in Miami gets some love. Miranda July’s Kajillionaire script is so unique—Evan Rachel Wood and Richard Jenkins should be contenders. I haven’t watched a lot of docs yet but Boys State stands out. I’m also eager to see First Cow, Minari, Ammonite, The Truffle Hunters, Soul, Mank, The Father and Promising Young Woman.

This Christmas is going to be weird for a lot of people. What’s one film you’d recommend for a guaranteed happiness injection? Weird indeed. If I have to pick just one it would be John Favreau’s Elf. Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf instantly brings a smile to my face. You can feel his joy for Christmas from start to finish. From the classic claymation, to New York City at Christmas, to eating all that sugar, to that hilarious scene with Peter Dinklage—it’s Christmas gold!

And finally, are there some other Letterboxd members you recommend we follow? Emily, Flurryheaven, Guyzo997, Peter Spencer, Michael Dean, Brent Vanhomwegen, Ara Hiddleston and also some more Christmas lists.

#letterboxd #how i letterboxd #letterboxd community #letterboxd culture #letterboxd members #christmas #christmas films #christmas movies #holiday movies #holiday films #jack moulton

1 note · View note

skruttet · 5 years

Text

Gay Analysis of the Opening Scene of Moominvalley

Buckle up, lads.

Let’s start off with what Marika Makaroff and Steve Box had to say about this scene in the Creators’ Comments video:

Steve: The first thing you see feels a little bit sugary and...

Marika: Pinky clouds, just pinky clouds and everything

Steve: Yeah, saturated and Disney-like or something, for younger children, and straight to the cliché of- ‘cause I think the cloud flight is quite well-known and, you know, very cutesy.

[...]

Marika: And I think that, the whole theme, that first you think that “well, this is a... this might be a kind of nice animation drama”, but then you understand that there are deeper meanings in there.

I personally think that they intentionally made the opening scene fairytale-like and cutesy as an almost parody of what some viewers may expect the series to be like; they’re showing us what we expect from the series (especially if we expect it to be like the 90s series), then they’re subverting that expectation by revealing it to be a dream that Moomintroll is rudely and abruptly awoken from.

At this point early point (the earliest point, even) in the series, Moomintroll has not gone through any character development yet, and we know the series is about him growing up; therefore, in this scene, he is in many ways still a child. The pink clouds are reminiscent of the 90s anime in which he is quite literally a child; in his dream, he is living in the innocent, happy-go-lucky world of his childhood; a fantasy that does not truly reflect the reality in which he lives and must face throughout the series after he wakes up.

Here’s where the queer part of this analysis comes in: in this fairytale-like dream world, one of the aforementioned expectations would be that Moomintroll is in a romantic relationship with his female friend Snorkmaiden - and, ah yes, right on queue, she appears, casting a shadow on him in the process (I’ll let you decide if there’s something in that).

The episode then sets up how their relationship will play out in a lot of the future episodes, with Snorkmaiden being the one to usually initiate any romantic advances, as she seductively encourages him to join her on the cloud (to tip this to the “moomintroll is bi” side of things, you could say that the fact that this is happening in his dream shows that he is to some extent attracted to girls and to Snorkmaiden, but if you’re on the “moomintroll is gay” camp, you could argue that this is just how she presents herself to him in real life and so his mind is just replicating that).

Our hero is hesitant and reluctant to her advances, pointing at himself in question as if to stall, then when he prepares himself to jump, he looks scared to death.

Despite this, he takes the leap of faith and lands rather clumsily onto the cloud, Snorkmaiden once again being the initiator in clinging onto his arm. As a more positive look at their relationship, this could be a reflection of how she pushes Moomintroll throughout the series to tackle dangerous situations head-on, therefore helping him in his process of growing up.

...However, a lot of the times when she does that, it isn’t quite what he needs. Whenever she pushes him, or he attempts to lead the way/protect her, they are just desperately trying to fit into the heteronormative roles of Hero and His Damsel, and it usually leads to Snorkmaiden ironically having to save Moomintroll. In the Hattifattener episode, she tells him that he must go rescue Little My alone; because he is afraid of doing so, he stalls, so much so that Little My returns to them on her own and saves him the trip. They would’ve had a much better chance at finding her sooner if they had both gone out together, but because they stubbornly stuck to fulfilling their traditional gender roles, they only succeeded in annoying each other. In the Park Keeper episode, Moomintroll grabs Snorkmaiden’s hand and leads her into the woods to look for Little My, saying he knows the forest like the back of his paw. He does not, and causes them to get lost. He tries to ask some forest people if they saw My, but this proves futile and it is Snrokmaiden who suggests that they build a bonfire; this plan goes more smoothly yet she gives him the credit, calling him “my clever Moomintroll”. In Ghost Story, Moomintroll plays the role of the brave hero yet again, but ends up just scaring and then angering Snorkmaiden, who puts the ghost on the windowsill, inadvertently sending her love to his doom, and she ends up saving him. (In contrast, Snufkin helps Moomintroll get through a scary unfamiliar situation in the Groke episode by guiding him through it and being there with him to save and support him when needed, yet still letting him get the hang of it on his own, and the two have fun together in the process).

You could argue the same negative consequence happens in this dream, where Snorkmaiden encourages him to ride the cloud which eventually disappears from beneath him, though I don’t think it’s quite the same. Regardless, Moomintroll initially does not look happy, but rather worried as Snorkmaiden whisks him away:

Luckily, he’s cheered up in the next shot, enjoying the view seemingly more than he is enjoying Snorkmaiden; the two glance at each other, though whilst Snorkmaiden holds the gaze, Moomintroll quickly looks away and at his parents on the ground, pointing them out so that she stops looking at him. I personally see this as another little shred of evidence that Snrokmaiden is much more invested in their relationship than he is, and he may not in fact return her romantic feelings for him (or at least those that she thinks she has for him).

Snorkmaiden waves at mamma and pappa and Moomintroll follows suit, which I’m honestly not quite sure what to make of. I don’t know why he doesn’t just immediately wave back to his parents and instead only does so when he sees Snorkmaiden doing it. Maybe he’s just enjoying the moment.

Moomintroll then looks quite joyful to be on the cloud, until a hole appears in it and then Snorkmaiden turns into clouds herself, waving goodbye to him before poofing out of existence. The cloud he’s riding quickly does the same and he falls before waking up. This is quite literally a wake-up call: Moomintroll needs to wake up from the sugar-coated fantasy of his past & what’s expected of him and face the real world. The fact that Snorkmaiden is a part of this world shows to me that she is no longer what’s best for him, at least not as a romantic partner, and he needs to move on; much like how he needs to become less dependent upon his parents, who are also a part of this dream.

This ties into the larger theme of his struggle between family & freedom, or childhood & adulthood, or dependency & independency, with Snorkmaiden being a representation (or a part) of the former, and Snufkin of the latter.

My bi ass of course believes he should leave the safety and comfort of a heteronormative life to pursue the true desires of his heart - and, yes, it’ll be scary, but one must sometimes face their fears head-on in their pursuit of lasting happiness; interestingly, Moomintroll has already faced the Groke once, and we know that she’ll be returning in the future. Who knows what he’ll learn about himself.

#can you tell the semi-colon is my favourite punctuation mark lmao #inever plan these things out so it's an absolute mess im sorry #moominvalley analysis

84 notes · View notes

womenandfilm5 · 4 years

Photo

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) is a dynamic, true crime, avante garde film that explores the history and complexity of the relationship between famous artist Andy Warhol and radical feminist Valerie Solonas. The true events depicted in this film are told through a mixture of narratives that both highlight the socio-political climate of the 1960s and the struggle for female identifying empowerment. I thought it was particularly interesting that the film was first intended to be a documentary about Valerie Solonas, but the filmmakers could not find enough footage of her, nor any individuals to speak about her. Throughout the film, the various narrative perspectives mirror a documentary styled memoir. Mary Harron tells Valerie’s narrative using a combination of flashback narratives, self recorded home videos of ‘Valerie’ reading from her own Manifesto as it pertains to the current storyline, and an unnamed character reading Valerie’s file referring to her as ‘the patient’. The last narrative technique allows the viewers to gain some context surrounding both Valerie’s intentions and behaviors. The unnamed narrator discloses Valerie’s history with being molested, prostitution, homosexual activity, and ultimately her belief in ‘the natural superiortiy of women over men’. These biographical narratives ultimately illustrate a much bigger picture than just the relationship between the two. . The key themes highlighted in I Shot Andy Warhol include superiority, ironic male validation, radical feminism + matriarchy, mental illness, revolution, lesbianism, and revenge. . Valerie’s detrimental motives as a protagonist in this film are driven by her attitudes toward female superiority over men. Valerie’s constant push to educate the masses on her S.C.U.M Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men) is bound by the idea that women are biologically superior. Within this superiority complex is a duality of anti-man rhetoric, paired with using men for her advantage when she needs to. I found it ironic that while Valerie is so anti man, a recurrent theme in the film is the chase for male validation; especially Andy. From the first time Andy Warhol’s name is mentioned in the film, Valerie is desperate to get Andy’s attention in hopes that his connections and artistry will help her spread her radical views through media. Valerie constantly pushes her beliefs onto Andy and even gives him the only other copy she has of her screenplay for him to read. Even after begging Andy to read it, he dodges Valerie’s push for production but still holds onto her beloved copy. This stands as a symbol of Andy still holding a piece of ownership over her but refusing to give her the validation she is chasing. As mentioned in the original report, Valerie’s erratic behavior and radical beliefs stem from a comorbidity of mental illness, likely OCD and Schizophrenia. It is revealed at the end that Valerie is sent to a ‘Hospital for the Criminally Insane’ following the shooting. While it is unclear to the audience whether or not Valerie realizes her diagnosis, Valerie’s mental health is obvious to the other characters. Valerie sees herself as a revolutionary, while others (specifically men) consistently label Valerie as a ‘lunatic’ and insane for her beliefs. There is a wide gap in perspective from Valerie’s view of herself versus other’s interpretation of her. . The cinematic aspects of the film were what captivated me the most while watching. One recurrent technique throughout the film was the specific and deliberate use of the color red, red lighting in particular. The first time Valerie visits The Factory trying to find Andy, the lighting surrounding her is a shadowy, transparent red glimmer focused on her face. When Valerie goes to meet with the publisher to sign her book contract, she specifically picks out and wears a red dress. After being ‘excommunicated’ from Andy and his group and going to confront him, there is dark red light surrounding the group as they walk out of a tunnel. However, when Valerie’s face enters the frame to speak to Andy, the red light behind the group disappears and the light shown on Valerie’s face is harsh and bright white. The repetitive incorporation of the color red stands in as a symbol for many emotions and moods, such as: embarrassment, frustration, humiliation, bloodlust, romance, need for validation, and superiority. . The visual techniques during the party scene at The Factory were especially noticeable. The bright, saturated, revolving and color changing lights stood to amplify the mood of the party for those in attendance. The mixture of light movement paired with diverse colors and patterns added a layer of intoxication to the scene and reflected how the party-goers were feeling under the influence. . I think the most important cinematic aspect in this film were the deliberate mirroring shots to tell different aspects of the same narrative. During the scene of the party at The Factory, both Andy and Valerie are surrounded by people but standing alone. They both slowly look up and make eye contact with one another from across the room as the camera pans in on each individual. The last scene of the film depicts Andy standing in a crowd surrounded by others, when he hears a popping sound reminiscent of a gunshot. This triggers Andy to turn around as he sees Valerie standing alone directly across the street. The two once again make eye contact, and in the same angle as before, the camera pans into both individuals’ reactions. Andy stares nervously and Valerie disappears after a car passes by. While both shots mirror one another in technique, the emotion and context behind both are drastically different. The first implicates admiration and need for validation, while the final shot indicates fear from Andy and accomplishment from Valerie. . Many aspects of the film are reflective of the time period being portrayed in the film. As mentioned in the original report, this film took place during the Vietnam War in the 1960s, where the socio-political climate was extremely volatile and filled with protest and anti-government and anti-war sentiments. While I do not think anti-war attitudes were presented at the forefront of this film, or even mentioned more than once, I do think that Valerie’s passionate and revolutionary motives were inspired from the political climate during this time period. . The set design and costumes were also extremely reflective of the 1960s. The ‘retro’ aesthetic of this time period can be found within sets such as the old fashioned classic diner and especially The Factory. A ‘cinema fact’ on the back of the DVD case revealed that Harron and the filmmakers were given permission to reproduce some of Andy Warhol’s paintings and silk screen for the set, but they had to destroy them after filming. One could argue that the set of The Factory is more reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s artistry, which is ultimately a reflection of his peak during this time period. . Even attitudes of the characters were reflective of the oppression of certain identities during this time, especially lesbians and trans people. Valerie is consistently degraded by the men around her for being a lesbian, most harshly insulted when she was the only woman in the room. Feminine heterosexual women portrayed in the film were also degraded and stereotyped, but in a hypersexualized way that the men validated as attraction. Degradation towards Valerie came from a homophobic standpoint that was not based on attraction. For example, when Valerie appeared on the television interview, the man rudely demeaning her while discussing the ‘controversial’ topic of homosexuality cited the Kinsey Reports. Debuted in the late 1950s, the Kinsey Reports introduced the concept of sexuality as a spectrum and changed the way a lot of people viewed homosexuality in general, for better or worse. . I think one thing that stuck out to me the most throughout the course of the film was that it seemed as if S.C.U.M. and its manifesto was inclusive of all womxn identities. Even the ad in the newspaper seeking actors to audition for the screenplay “Up Your Ass” directly welcomed ‘butch dyke lesbians’ and queer people. However, towards the end of the film when Valerie was convinced that Candy had worked with Andy to set her up, Valerie cruelly invalidated Candy’s identity as a transwoman and called her a man. This invalidation is not only misogynistic and exclusive to trans people but is especially demeaning to say to a friend who originally brought you into the scene. At first I was excited and even surprised to see trans representation within the film. Although it was disappointing to see transphobia shine through, especially from Valerie, this type of fear and intolerance was common and is still common surrounding trans identities. . It was fairly hard for me to actually get a physical copy of and view this film, and I believe it was well worth the difficulty. This film is an intimate storyline of a historic and iconic incident that stands to narrate more than just a dynamic relationship. – ECo

2 notes · View notes

ckatmyla · 5 years

Text

Elsa’s Girlfriend and the Bottom Line [an essay]

It is safe to say that – even nearly six years on from its release – Frozen is still a phenomenon. Despite its over-saturation and the backlash it inevitably faced because of it, Frozen is still a strong film from Disney with great characters, beautiful songs, and a lovely core theme about the power of familial love.

(its only real stumbling block in this blogger's opinion would be its case of 'twist villain syndrome' but we'll just gloss over that for this post.)

Although it is certainly true that this is a film for every age group, it continues to strike a chord the most with kids. I work in a daycare with children ages three to five (most of whom were not even born yet when Frozen was released) and it is still one of the most requested movies for me to show them. They argue over who gets to play as Elsa and Anna during dress up time, and I have even encouraged some of the young boys that it is perfectly fine to like a 'girl movie' if you like the characters so much.

Even though both sisters in the movie are integral to the plot, and I tend to speak about them as a unit, for most of the kids in my class it's all about Elsa. Literally, they don't even call the movie Frozen, they just call it 'Elsa'.

It brings back memories of that Christmas season in 2013 when I went to the Disney store and all of the Elsa dolls were gone, leaving most of the Annas still on the shelf (which made me quite sad, since I tend to relate to Anna more myself).

It's not a stretch to say that Elsa is not only the breakout character of her movie, but a huge part of its crazy popularity. Everyone knows her, knows her powers, and knows her iconic song (whether or not they like it.)

She is an icon to so many people across the world, and as such thee are certain aspects of her future in the Frozen sequel that many people would like to have addressed. Will she continue to harness her powers or perhaps learn from where they came? Will she continue to break down the walls she built up around herself to let her sister closer to her? And possibly the biggest and most controversial question: will she ever find romantic love and if so, will it be with a man or a woman?

While there is something to be said about the fact that Elsa is a strong, independent queen who don't need no significant other of any sort (and as previously stated there are other aspects of her story that need to be addressed just as much if not more so than who she's courting), there is merit in the theory and/or hope a good portion of her fans have that she just might be into girls.

While researching for this post, I read two of the children/middle grade Frozen chapter books: A Frozen Heart by Elizabeth Rudnick and A Warm Welcome by Erica David.

In Frozen Heart, we follow both Anna's and Hans' perspectives during the events of the movie, and during one of the portions from Hans' point of view we learn that Elsa has not only done what we have seen her do (close the gates of the castle to her subjects and isolate herself as much as possible) but evidently turned away any potential suitors looking to court her.

And in Warm Welcome, Elsa an co. travel to the kingdom of Eldora where they meet the queen of that land named Marisol and we see from Elsa's point of view that she finds the queen's name beautiful. Now, one could take that however they wanted, but when I showed that part to my friend she said 'Wow Elsa, how very gay of you.”

Then of course there is the queer-coded subtext of Elsa's story. Being told that she should hide her powers and conceal her true self from the world until she is finally able to accept herself in the now forever-ingrained-in-our-brains earworm.

Now the production team of the movie could have spun her story another way to make the powers more explicitly nothing more with no perceived allegory other than 'being different is okay'. BUT one exchange Elsa has with Anna after they meet up again post-Let It Go makes one wonder. She explicitly says that she left Arendelle so that she could 'be who she is without hurting anybody'. That alone colors her powers in a different light, and makes them far much more than a simple magical ability and closer to the same type of vibe one gets from the subtext of the X-Men.

So, there is definitely some evidence to support the hypothesis that Elsa could be sub-textually queer, but this blog post is centered around the big question: Should it be overtly canon?

While this blogger would be perfectly happy to continue her headcanon that Elsa is asexual (possibly aromantic) and will make it through the entirety of Frozen 2 with no love interest whatsoever, I can also see the other side of the debate.

Most would agree that a female-led animated film hardly ever has a protagonist not fall in love by the end. And when they do they are usually children and so don't need a love interest (Moana and Coraline to name a couple), but they do happen occasionally. Elsa would still be an amazing paragon of female empowerment if she were to remain single, leaving the romantic love story to that of her sister and Kristoff.

BUT what is also abundantly clear is that we have yet to see a main character in an animated film fall in love with a person of the same gender. It would be a game-changer in the worlds of animation and family entertainment, for sure. And while some would say that that type of thing is unsuitable for children to see, most of those people are perfectly fine with the plethora of heteromantic pairs so abundant in animation. (If the argument is that kids shouldn't see romantic love between anyone that would be a different thing, but I have never heard any outcry about that.)

Were Disney even to approach it, there is also the question as to whether or not Elsa is the right character to make that particular story choice. Yes, she is a prime candidate, but as she is one of the most beloved Disney characters possibly ever, there would inevitably be some backlash to her and with that to the Frozen brand (because remember, Disney is foremost all about making money).

The other option some have some up with -to create an entirely new animated film where we star a same-sex couple – has merit as well. It could potentially introduce not one but two new princesses to the Disney Princess lineup and do all of the things that the LGBTQ community and its allies want out of Elsa while giving us a brand new, possibly totally original new story.

This blogger would be completely on board for that as well, but there is also in this idea the possibility of a backlash, or even a boycott. And if the first same-sex animated feature doesn't do well at the box office or in the merch sales, there might not be another one for a long time - if ever again.

Frozen 2 on the other hand – however the quality of the film ends up being – is almost a guaranteed hit before it even comes out. It is sure to rake in both ticket and merch sales by the boatload, even if they do decide to give Elsa a love interest of any gender.

So, the concluding statement should be in favor of giving Elsa a same-sex romantic plotline, right? If they're going to actually do it, doing it with this movie would pose the least risk to the bottom line.

There is one more thing to consider, however: The story.

One of Disney's adoptive child Pixar's founding rules is that 'story is king'. That means that whatever will make the story as a whole stronger and the best it can be is what should be done for any film.

(However you feel about Pixar's latest outings, that's still one of their philosophies).

So, the real final conclusion of this post/essay is that when it comes down to it, Elsa should have the storyline that best fits the overall plot and make Frozen 2 the strongest movie it can be. They could always just throw in a girlfriend for her with no real thought other than 'they want representation'. That is what inevitably failed the attempt of ABC show Once Upon A Time when they decided to introduce a same-sex romance.

If the very first female-female romance in an animated film is going to happen with Elsa, it needs to feel natural and integral to the story. It can't feel tacked-on just for the sake of having it.

The same could be said of giving her a male love interest, or allowing her to remain single. As long as it fits the story and Elsa remains the wonderful character that so many have fallen in love with, any outcome would be fine.

I'm all for Elsa opening up her heart to new experiences like romantic love, as a fan I want that for her. I want her to stay close to her sister and become more confident in her powers, and if the story supports it, find love with whomever her heart desires.

In this blogger's opinion though, anything other than a male love interest for her would be preferable. We already have so very many of those stories told already (even in the same franchise). Elsa deserves something different, something as groundbreaking as she is.

Whatever is in store for our Queen of Arendelle, I can tell you I will have my ticket to the first screening I can find of the sequel in order to find out.

#frozen #elsa #queen elsa #disney #disney animation #lgbtq #give elsa a gf #asexual #homosexual #gay representation #give elsa a girlfriend

102 notes · View notes