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tortol · 2 years

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as per my good friend @sepublic’s req, here are some quick notes from dana’s talk yesterday that i somehow managed to get into and wrote as it went on to remember everything, now that i’ve put my brain together and processed all the stuff dana said that y’all might find interesting :)) long post!

when i walked into the room she was just sitting on a chair eating cookies which i guess is irrelevant but it was a huge reality check because like… holy shit? dana terrace is a real human? and she’s eating cookies? i literally could not process her presence but that made it settle in a little more

first answer to a question was that after the shortening of toh she never quite got used to it and just had to suck it and learn to work with what she had. she says that she also feels uneasy by the current reality of the industry and wonders what’s in store for creatives, but hopes the landscape will change in the future

her first reaction upon learning about the shortening was to say “fuck you” and then lock herself away in her room to cry :,)

she heavily considered ending season 2 in an insane cliffhanger and then never actually finishing the show to spite disney, but was convinced by a couple of her friends (including matt braly!) to keep working on it

cancellation news came by the time eda’s requiem was being produced

she was asked about amphibia crossovers and she said that she likes to think anne and luz have crossed paths

a girl in an otter onesie thanked her for making the show. dana got emotional and cried, then got up to hug her

we were her first live event since the show aired!

she’s currently throwing ideas around and working on pitch for a new series (she’s not set on anything tho)

king was originally meant to be very tall

one of the projects she’d love to get to the most is a graphic novel

she’s also interested in writing for live action

hexside was not on her original plans (at least the version we know now) and the execs pushed her to add a school setting into the show

she found making season 1 a lot more challenging due to execs’ restraints

she would’ve liked to dive further into bump and eda’s relationship

the inspiration for belos comes from cult leaders (obviously) and matthew hopkins, as well as many of her own conservative family members, particularly those with homophobic ideals

she doesn’t like writing belos at all

when i told her my name she went “oooo” which made my soul melt from within

i asked if she was able to disclose any unused or potential plot threads she would’ve added if not for the short s3! she said that wasn’t something she could say anything about so she let me ask another question (we were talking for real and she saw my person there in the room can you fucking believe that. she passed me the mic with her hand. insane. i touched dana terrace mic)

so i asked if she was met with any challenges when pitching characters who were part of such a diverse cast, not only in regards to queerness, but also for not quite fitting into a box and just being overall very… different (neurodivergent for the homies, lol) and if the execs had any trouble understanding them

unfortunately i think because i used the word “cast” she misunderstood my question and thought i was talking about the voice acting cast of the show, and said that disney didn’t have any issues hiring diverse people and she always wanted to make sure a character’s diverse traits matched the actor, mentioning avi roque and raine as an example

when she first heard sarah-nicole robles’ audition for luz she didn’t like it because she used a voice that was too high-pitched. thank fuck people in the studio suggested she give her another chance with a more neutral voice, and that’s show she landed on her to voice luz

actually, she said voice casting was the easiest part of her job

disney is not interested in producing any more owl house content

a girl asked about huntlow and she said that was something she couldn’t answer specifically because she didn’t want to give away any spoilers (?)

even though she doesn’t regret what she wrote, she would’ve liked to see how the story would’ve progressed if luz hadn’t been admitted into hexside. she thinks not much would’ve changed; she would still be friends with gus & willow, fall in love with amity, and, eventually, slowly prove to bump how capable she is

she really, REALLY wishes she had gotten to do another episode with young raine and eda. she LOVES those two, and mentioned how much she dreams about doing a series of them as teens

she went through a period of really neglecting her health and sleeping only about two hours a night due to the stress of working on the show and her busy schedule, which really drained her, and advised everyone who wanted to become a showrunner to learn to take care of themselves even in stressful times

i told her how much the show meant to so many people and that every sleepless night had been more than worth it, that everyone was grateful for everything she’d done and keeps on doing, that her efforts had paid the fuck off. also that i hoped she was doing better lately and taking care

she wants to take a good fucking break once the show is over

i also thanked her for making lilith aroace, as no one in the room had mentioned it, and said she was glad people were able to resonate with that

she pitched another show alongside the owl house, and will show the pitch later

they took some pictures with her and the people in the room before wrapping up

respectfully, she’s so fucking fine

i don’t know what else to say man, she just really manages to light up a room. her presence is something so special and those couple hours of just chatting with her alongside other people became easily one of the best moments of my whole life. she really is incredibly passionate about what she does and so eager to help aspiring creators, which is why we were all ultimately there for. i don’t think the past two years of my life would’ve been the same if it hadn’t been for her work impacting me the way it has. i feel like the luckiest person on earth :,)

#this is all the stuff that stood out i think?#it was so great oh god. and so casual #i still can’t believe it i get jelly legs thinking about it #dana terrace #the owl house

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girlwholikestoread · 1 year

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My least favorite to My favorite books I read in 2022

23: We are totally normal by Rahul Kanakia: Okay first thing first this book made me incredibly uncomfortable; however not because of the sex but because this book did an amazing job capturing how cringe,annoying, and mean highschool students can be which I enjoyed. When books have teenagers I feel a lot of stories feel the need to make them more mature to better fit the plot but in this book they felt like real people you probably went to high school with…take that as you will. Anyways the book is about Nandan who never before liked guys but hooked up with his friend Dave, Nandan starts his journey trying to understand his sexuality. I didn’t love this book but I didn't hate it. I was excited to give it a chance because it seemed pretty heavily disliked. I understand the hate because Nandan is incredibly unlikable at times and I do feel bad for Dave at times because Nandan's actions hurt him, however Nandan is written to be a confused teen and never doesn’t do anything bad on purpose. The ending for me wasn’t my cup of tea and personality. I didn't want Nandan and Dave to get together since I think them being friends works better but not horrible. Overall not my vibe, but it made me laugh at times and I liked the realistic portrayal of teenagers.

22: Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers: First this book cover is beautiful and I love the idea of an workaholic overachiever doing something crazy and reckless as they slowly find themselves and it was sapphic on paper this book sounds amazing…but it was just okay, the book was pretty boring and I practically had to force myself to finish it. Grace Porter, our main character, gets drunk and marries a woman she doesn’t know in Vegas and that sounds really cool but the execution was a huge disappointment. None of the people in Grace's life including her best friends/ roommates, her parents, or even her love interest are written to be very interesting and Grace herself is pretty boring. I did however like the writing style the author chose for this book and the way the author describes the characters, setting, and what and how they feel is written beautifully and I truly enjoyed that. Overall it was pretty mid, My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

21. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli: I bought this book to get a discount from Barens and Noble not because I wanted it. I haven’t read Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda nor did I see Love Simon so I came into this not knowing anything about Leah or the other characters. Despite that I thought the book was alright, nothing too special and pretty predictable but fine. The book is about Leah who’s getting ready for Prom and preparing to head to college, she’s a plus sized bisexual girl which is great to see and all the side characters are pretty cool. I’m not a big fan of Leah’s personality at times and her romance with Abby is fine and at times really cute, I like Abby encouraging her to pursue art that was nice. I also liked seeing Leah bond with her mom’s boyfriend and find the perfect prom dress that was really nice. Overall cute story. fun characters, and a nice romance, Nick deserved better

20. Across a field of starlight by Blue Delliquanti: Fun space adventure and first graphic novel I’ve read with two non-binary characters as the main character. Fassen and Lu have had a long distance friendship. I loved the artstyle and the diversity but I found the storyline super hard to follow to the point I can’t even give a real description. Fassen and Lu are both cool and I liked the characters but the storyline wasn’t for me. Overall beautiful art but hectic plot.

19. The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang: Adorable and charming. I really liked the unique art style in this book and the relationship between Prince Sebastian and Frances is very sweet. The graphic novel is about Frances who is a talented seamstress who is secretly hired to make dresses for Prince Sebastian who enjoys wearing beautiful dresses but can’t let anyone including his parents know because of his royal status. Sebastian and Frances' friendship is sweet and I love how they treat each other. I felt like their falling out was forced and I didn’t really understand why Frances was upset, but the last two chapters made me so happy. Overall I loved the artstyle, loved Sebastian and Frances friendship, and loved chapter 11 & 12.

18: The girl from the sea by Molly Knox Ostertag: Morgan and Keltie are adorable and the art style was gorgeous. This sapphic graphic novel is about Morgan who lives on a small island with her mom, little brother, and has friends. After accidentally falling in the ocean she's met by a fish girl named Keltie who she once met when they were both children, after saving her they share a kiss, Keltie then comes into her life saying her love transformed her from a seal to a human girl. It’s cute, it’s silly, and it's sweet. Bittersweet ending but a fun read. Overall sweet sapphic love story, seal girls are better than mermaids.

17. The Gravity of us by Phil Stamper:It’s basically what would happen if the moon landing happened in modern day. We follow Cal, a 17 year old journalist who has to leave his life in Brooklyn to move to Houston when his dad gets a job working as an astronaut at NASA. Cal is probably the most unlikable protagonist I’ve read so far but he gets better as you read the book . The romance between Cal and Leon was really nice and I really like Leon as a character and found him the most relatable. Overall fun read, Leon should have his own book.

16. Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert: I love Geeks falling in love. It's my favorite holiday. This book is a duo POV with Alden and Conrad, while I didn’t see it as enemies to lovers as the book is advertised I still really enjoyed it regardless. We follow Alden and Conrad as they go on a road trip together to make content for a YouTube channel they both make appearances on called “Gamer Grandpa” which they play a card game named Odyssey also plan on playing at an tournament to win money and an opportunity to play the game professionally. Learning about both the characters' struggles, family lifes, and why they need to win the tournament all while becoming closer and closer was so fun to read. I really like Alden and Conrad and think they made a cute couple. I'll admit I knew who was gonna win barely half way through the story but that doesn’t matter to me. I liked the romance and where the characters ended up at the end. Overall this book was adorkable and I wished Odyssey was a real game.

15. Out of Characters by Annabeth Albert: More Geeks falling in love but now ex-friends to lovers version. This book is also a duo POV with Jasper and Milo, Jasper was a minor character in Conventionally Yours and in this one he gets his own story where his old childhood friend Milo comes to him needing help after he lost his older brother expensive Odyssey cards in a game. Seeing Jasper and Milo reconnect was adorable and their adventure was so much fun to read. I also loved reading about Milo getting out of his comfort zone, making new friends, and better coming to terms with his sexuality. It was so great and he and Jasper have amazing chemistry. Overall friends to lovers is underrated and I need more books with the characters cosplaying.

14. The darkness outside us by Eliot Schrefer: This book was a mindfuck and I loved every single page. This was one of my first Sci-fi books and it is amazing! Ambrose and Kodiak are both sent into space on a mission, they have no memory of the launch and the only company they have is each other and the ship’s operating system which tells them to do their tasks and encourages them to follow their mission to get on Titian. Since the book is mostly building suspense and leaving small clues leading to the plot twist the romance isn’t that developed but I still think Ambrose and Kodiak are good together and I really liked them. Overall a great book and the ending is so satisfying.

13. You should see me in a crown by Leah Johnson: This book makes me so happy! We follow Liz an black gay teenage girl living in a primarily white and rich neighborhood. She has no interest in popularity but when she finds out the winner of prom queen gets scholarship money that can help her pay for her dream school she starts running and works hard to get votes. I related to Liz so much when it came to friends, her family, and feeling like she needs to protect the people around her. Seeing Liz reconnect with her old friend, make new friends, and her relationship with Mack is just so wholesome. Overall great book and I wish Liz was real so we could be friends.

12. Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera: This seems hit or miss with some people but I loved it! This is the second book in the Infinity series. It’s hard to explain the plot without spoiling anything from the first book but I really enjoyed it and can’t wait for the next one. Overall Ness is my favorite character and I hope Adam Silvera doesn't kill him.

11. Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: The Hype is real. It’s the story of Achilles' life Achilles told by his lover Patroclus. The two meet after Patroclus accidentally kills another boy over dice and his father Menoetius banishes him away. The two become friends and later start a romantic relationship. We see Achilles' life from childhood to when he fights in the Trojan war. It's written beautifully and it’s truly heartbreaking. Overall terrific book, Achilles and Patroculs are the best historical gays.

Honorable mention. Rogue Sun volume one: Cataclysm: Okay so this was a book my brother really wanted me to read so I gave it a chance and it was really good. We follow Dylan who is a regular highschool student who recently finds out his father passed away, when going to the reading of his fathers will he finds out his dad was the town's hero named Rogue Sun and he passed down his powers to him. I liked it, I thought it was a good mix of action and real life emotions and Dylan was a great main character and really grew on me, I also thought it had a nice twist. Overall not my usual vibe but I enjoyed it nonetheless

10. I kissed Sara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston: Casey McQuiston has never written a bad book in their life and I kissed Sara Wheeler is great, We follow Chloe green who goes on an adventure to find her academic rival and most popular girl in school Sara Wheeler after she kissed her on prom night then completely disappeared she has the help of Sara’s boyfriend Smith, and another character named Rory who Sara also kissed on prom night. Sara leaves small clues for them to follow to help find where she is. My only real issues is while I like Sara and Chloe I liked the side characters even more and wanted to see more of them, I wanted to see more of Smith’s exploring his identity and his relationship with Rory, other characters like Ash, Benjy, Georgia, and more seem like interesting characters who could’ve been so fun to read if given more attention. Overall fun mystery and I need a second book about Smith and Rory.

9. Red, White, and Royal blue by Casey McQuiston: I’m a basic bitch I know but I really did love this book.This book is about the first son Alex falling in love with the Prince of Wales Prince Henry. I really don’t know what to say about this book that hasn’t already been said but I loved it. This book is super funny and Alex and Henry had immediate chemistry which was so much fun to read. I wish the side characters like Pez, Nora, and June got more attention but since this is a romance I understand why they were sidelined. Overall sweet political romance and obtuse fucking asshole is the most romatic line in any book ever.

8. One last stop by Casey McQuiston: It’s probably slightly controversial having One Last Stop ranked higher than Red, White, and Royal blue but the main reason I ranked it higher is because I loved every single character and felt like everyone one had a nice conclusion unlike Red, white, and Royal blue and I kissed Sara Wheeler where I wanted more attention on the side characters. I also loved seeing August and Jane's relationship build while also trying to help Jane understand what happened to her and seeing August find herself on the way was great. Overall another great mystery by Casey MCQuiston, I’m a sucker for sapphic romances

7. Extraordinaries by T.J.Klune: This book is the reason I downloaded back Tumblr it fucking amazing! Gay superheroes, fanfiction, and a main protagonist who is hilarious and relatable this book is fucking awsome. We follow Nick Bell who is the biggest fan of a neighborhood superhero named Shadow Storm who fights his arch rival Pyro Storm. In this world people who have super powers are called Extraordinaries and Nick desperately wants to be extraordinary and to make his fanfiction come true by being with the super hero of his dreams. I’ll admit I didn’t love Nick much at first but she really grew on me. Not only is the book great but it also has great ADHD rep and LGBTQ rep. Overall my favorite superhero novel better than marvel movies

6. Every word you never said by Jordon Greene: This wins for having the prettiest cover I currently own. This book is also a duo POV following Skyler Grey an nonverbal boy who was just recently adopted and enjoys wearing skirts and dresses and Jacob Walters who recently came out and dealing with shitheads because of it including his own father. The book is about Skyler fighting for his right to express himself when Jacbo’s own father tries to make rules to stop him from doing so. Skyler and Jacob are adorable and seeing them get closer and closer was heartwarming. However the book does talk a lot about politics and the ugly side of christianity which made me feel uneasy at times but the romance and message was so strong I couldn’t help but love it. Overall clothes have no gender!

5. Winter Orbit by Everina Maxwell: To be completely honest this is probably the best written book I’ve read all year. The writing, story building, character building, and explaining of the politics of the world was written, in my opinion of course almost perfectly.The book is about Kiem and Jainan who are forced to marry to seal an alliance between their respective empires after Jainan pervouse partener was killed suddenly. However it becomes more complicated when a Jainan becomes a person in interest in his death. Admittedly the romance in this book is pretty secondary in the story and is mostly about Jainan and Kiem trying to prove Jainan is innocent, I still liked the romance tho and seeing Kiem being sweet and patient with Jainan who has a lot of unresolved trauma was nice. My only issue is that the book felt kinda slow at times but the end result is totally worth it. Overall I felt smart reading this book. Kiem is a sweet cinnamon roll who deserves the world.

4. Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake: I don’t usually like adult books but this is a huge expectation. This book is a romance between Claire Sutherland who is a single mom with an eleven-year-old daughter dealing with an undependable ex-boyfriend and Delilah Green who is hired to be her estranged step sister Astrid photographer at her wedding. Delilah had it tough growing up with losing her mom, dad, and living with her uncaring step mother and Claire had her own issues with being a single mom and dating. Delilah and Claire are sweet together and I really liked their relationship and it was a nice story. My only issues is that there is a side plot where Claire and another mutual friend of her and Astrid wants to stop her from marrying her dick head fiance and that pretty much goes nowhere in favor of the romance, I love Delilah and Claire’s romance but I would’ve liked to see more of then trying to talk sense into Astrid. Overall Cute and spicy sapphic romance can’t wait to read Astrid Parker doesn’t fail next year.

3. Heat Wave by T.J. Klune: FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC ending to the extraordinaries, The dad squad had my entire heart, seeing everyone work together to stop Simion evil plan of taking over Nova city was epic and the epilogue at the end its probably the best epilogue I’ve ever read in a book. However I wasn’t a big fan of the ending and what they decided to do to Owen and I hated how they kept talking about how “You shouldn’t see things as Evil vs. Good because things are more complicated than that” when Simion was very clearly evil and had only bad intentions but with the great plot twist, sweet moments, and of course the amazing epilogue I was able to get past it and enjoy a great conclusion to a great series. Overall this series was extraordinary and Jazz is a badass.

2. Flash Fire by T.J. Klune: This is more just me. I tend to like the second book in trilogies the most and this wasn’t any different. Seth is my favorite character and in Flash fire he gets more attention and I loved that. This is also when we learn more about Nick’s mom Jenny who passed away 3 years ago and Nick learns more about himself, in this we learn more about Simion’s plans, we also meet new characters like Mateo/ Miss Conduct, Jerry the burrito guy, and T.K who are all introduced in a cool and funny way. Overall Second time is always the best and Pyro Storm is bae.

1. Cinderella is dead by Kalynn Bayron: Words can’t describe how much I love this book but I will try. This new dark retelling of Cinderella's story takes an unique and cool spin on a classic. We follow Sophia who lives in a world 200 years after Cinderella found her prince charming and “Lived happily ever after” Ever since the king forces the people in the village to live their lives following Cinderall’s story. Sophia has no interest in marrying a man and would rather marry her childhood friend Erin but is forced to go to an annual ball and find a husband or else. I love this fast paced story about fighting the patriarchy and learning the real story of Cinderella. Sophia and Constance bounce off each other perfectly and I love their chemistry, not much romance but the book was so good it honestly doesn’t bother me. I loved this book so much and it’s my absolutely favorite book in 2022. Overall I loved a dark retelling and Sophia is a girlboss.

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away-ward · 9 months

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About the DN series, I would've loved a bit more diversity (like between the girls), and especially with Emory (like she would've been another race, another religion...) the drive between Will and her would've been more significant, so more angst and her being way more different than everyone else at Thunderbay Prep (or in the whole town in general). High school Emory mentions that she felt really different because the school or town was full of WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants), so she was a minority. The only times POC were mentioned were in Killswitch (the young black escort) and in conclave (the Asian lady that Alex was taking nude pictures of), which was only about sex work (nothing wrong with sex workers, but as a POC I felt weird undertones about it). I know Kai is a POC (half-Japanese), but it doesn't really feel like it, it was just giving diversity hire.

I also found Rika and Winter really bland. In the sense that they're both blonde, white girls with blue eyes, wealthy, privileged sure they have their traumas, I actually sympathize with Winter more, since she's blind and all. But with Rika, when she becomes Ms ninja, swords and knives, he didn't feel authentic, I just think PD wanted a heroine that they could live through, but chose the wrong girl to do that.

Also, I would have loved it if Damon ended up with a girl as intense as him. I appreciate Winter's character being soft and strong when needed, but she lacked intensity.

Also, is it just me, or does Michael doesn't really have a personality, one that screams him. Kai should have been the leader, it makes more sense.

I would really like your opinions on this and love your WillEmmy fanfictions

(sorry if there are any mistakes, English is not my first language)

You’re English is wonderful; probably better than mine! Please don’t apologize.

So, first, I want to say that I agree with you. I have wished and thought that there should have been more diversity in the books. Whether it would have made sense for the part of the US it’s set in (small town in New England) or not, it’s a work of fiction and including more POC is a choice. There was no reason not to in this case.

Second, I want to say that PD’s choices seem to be… on the safe side. I think they wanted to include POC but, and speaking only from my experience as a white person who writes on occasion, there’s a very real fear of getting it wrong. From personal experience, even having a wide variety of friends that have backgrounds and heritages from across the globe that I am free to consult at any time, I still have a fear that I’ll give it my best effort and still get it wrong, even for a minor character much less a main one. The added pressure of publishing to a wide audience would be enough to make me hesitate and pull back some. The thinking is people will get mad if I don’t include POC characters, but people will also get mad if I don’t portray them accurately. It takes a certain skill level, and honestly, some authors and writers just aren’t there yet. I’m not saying this is what happened with PD. I just don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. All that considered, the result tends to be POC characters that are a bland and neutral and don’t feel like authentic POC. PD is always going to put sex-positivity first because that seems to be something they’re comfortable with, and it seems to be for them a safe way to include any minor character, POC or not.

Again, not an excuse but a possible reason. I haven’t contributed any negative motives to PD on that area, taking from my own experiences with writing. Then again, I’m not a person of color, so maybe it’s not for me to say.

All of the girls felt very similar. Two blonde, two brunette. PD tried; Rika is technically South African; Banks is half-Russian; Emory is at least a quarter Jewish, possibly half. But it didn’t feel like any of it affected their characters. At least, I wasn’t sensitive enough to it, and that could just be me. Though it sounds like it felt that way for others as well…

As for Emory, she is a minority but with her being agnostic or only taking part in certain traditions, it doesn’t feel as important to her or the reader. Though, that is a very real identity that people have, being Jewish culturally or ethnically but not religiously, so I don’t want to pick on that. I have found myself wondering how deep it goes for her. Like would she get a tattoo? Will is obviously very into them, so would she get one as well? Even a little one? Where are her boundaries? We just don’t know, because she never talked about it really.

I think I would have liked to see Kai struggle a bit more with his cultural backgrounds, but he seemed to struggle more with his class. As he mentioned, his father was poor growing up and his mother was wealthy but knew how to manage money. He seemed to take it all for granted. Somehow, through all of that, he was in touch with his father’s Japanese side and his mother’s Italian side fairly well, which felt odd to me. I would have thought that taking his wealth for granted would have transferred to other parts of his life, such as his heritage. I would have thought he’d try to be more American TM, like his friends. But in the narrative, I don’t remember him fighting with it all that much. I think he probably did struggle a bit to balance them, we just didn’t see it on the page, which is sad.

Honestly, the one I felt was the weirdest was Aydin, a Middle Eastern man, becoming so completely obsessed that he derailed his entire life for what I considered to be an average white American woman. Like? I mean, don’t get me wrong; Alex was obviously gorgeous. But… So are a lot of people. And Alex was obviously confident and appeared to him to be smart. But so are a lot of people. This was a man who was going to be a doctor, but was sidetracked by a 19 year-old white girl?

I guess it’s just one of those ‘you had to be there’ kinda things. TBH, a lot of the romances in this series relied on what feels like an insta-connection that is quickly approaching insta-love. Not saying it doesn’t happen in real life. Just saying it happened a lot here in this series.

Maybe that’s partly why Will and Emmy felt different. At least he had three years of watching and obsessing over her before we got to the start of the story, and even then, she was still resistant and in denial of the connection, unlike the other girls. That made a bit more sense to me.

At times Rika did feel like a self-insert for PD wish fulfillment, but I’m not going to begrudge them for that. We all do it. If they put a lot of themselves into Rika – thinking Corrupt was going to be a stand-alone – then they probably weren’t thinking about where the character was going to go in the long run. At least that is where I place the blame for the progressive weakening of Rika’s character. She really wasn’t meant for more than one book.

Same with Michael. After Corrupt, his personality tends to disappear too. It’s not just you; a lot of readers say that I think.

I will say, if I were to make any changes, I would keep him as a leader but show more of his strategic side. To be a team captain, he’d have to have some sort of mind towards that. And in Hideaway, we see him seeking out Banks’ guidance because he knows he needs to improve in this area and has identified her as someone with the same skill (sidenote: which, oh my god! Why are you seeking out Banks’s guidance? She doesn’t like you! Just dumb.). I would keep him as leader and keep Kai as his second but give Kai more opportunity to display the wisdom he’s supposed to have from his father. That way, he can act as the team’s heart. This isn’t to say that I think Kai’s unintelligent; it’s just a different kind of intelligence. Kai would have to have the skills to follow Michael’s thinking, act on it, but also know when he’s going too far. In some ways, he need to be smarter, both mentally and emotionally, than Michael. I think Kai is to start with, so that’s a good building block. It just also think there was more that could have been done there. These two are supposed to complement each other, work in tandem. I really would have focused on showing that. And even if it was weakened by Kai going to prison, I would have tried so show that too. I’m not sure if I could have executed it any better than PD, but that’s what I would have focused on as far as Michael.

Oof Damon and Winter. I agree with you. I liked that Winter was soft at times, because Damon needed someone that contrasted his own hardened shell, but I kept waiting for that moment where I understood what he saw in her other than her softness. I kept waiting for that moment she showed me she was something different, but it never came for me. So she bit him once and showed him that pain can be redirected? And that’s why he’s obsessed? I didn’t get it. I didn’t see anything else for him to latch on to, other than her being a pretty dancer. But maybe I’m missing something; other people seem to get it. I’m still not sure what she “brings to the table”, so to speak. For me, Winter is still… loading??? Buffering? Processing? If any of those make sense. Idk anymore.

Thank you for your love of the willemmy fics. I appreciate it. Always happy to share the joy.

Thanks for the ask. It’s an interesting topic I haven’t been able to get into before, not being sure how to approach it. I’d be interested to know what other’s thoughts are of the diversity, or lack thereof, in the series. What could have been done better?

#asked and answered #devil's night series stuff #devil's night series #the horsemen of devil's night #the women of devil's night #diversity of characters #or the lack thereof #asked and answered 73

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joshjacksons · 3 years

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Joshua Jackson interview with "Mr Porter" (2021)

Minutes before Mr Joshua Jackson joins me in a booth for a Friday afternoon drink at a vibey hotel bar in Santa Monica, he’s confronted by his past. Or rather, a woman in her early twenties who is binge-watching Dawson’s Creek, the teen show about a close-knit group of high-school friends coming of age in a sleepy American town, which made Jackson incredibly famous between 1998 and 2003. The series, which also made household names of Ms Michelle Williams and Ms Katie Holmes, went off air 18 years ago, but is now streaming on Netflix, to the bemusement of Jackson, who played lovable rogue Pacey Witter. “This girl was like, ‘Are you...?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I am. He got old. I’m sorry to break it to you,’” he says, before ordering an iced tea and a charcuterie board to tide him over until dinner time. “It always surprises me when young people say they’ve just got into Dawson’s Creek. I’m like, ‘Is it a costume drama to you? Do you feel like you’re watching a historical documentary?’”

The idea of a Friends-style reunion episode or a Sex And The City revival feels equally far-fetched to Canadian-born Jackson, now 43 and wearing it well in a pale green linen shirt and tailored linen trousers by Oliver Spencer that complement his fading brown hair and Cali-tanned skin.

“I don’t know why you’d want to [bring it back],” he says. “Nobody needs to know what those characters are doing in middle age. We left them in a nice place. Nobody needs to see that Pacey’s back hurts. I don’t think we need that update.”

And Jackson doesn’t need Dawson’s Creek. From Mr JJ Abrams’ sci-fi series Fringe (2008-2013) to the Golden Globe award-winning The Affair (2014-2019), from Ms Ava DuVernay’s ground-breaking true-crime drama When They See Us (2019) to the recent Ms Reese Witherspoon and Ms Kerry Washington-produced Little Fires Everywhere (2020), he has commanded the small screen – with a collection of dynamic and diverse work – ever since.

His latest role as Mr Christopher Duntsch, the Texas surgeon convicted of gross malpractice when 33 of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them and two of them died, in chilling Peacock crime drama Dr Death, is only stepping his career up another gear.

“I’ve never played anyone irredeemable before,” says Jackson, who is joined in the eight-part series (based on the 2018 Wondery podcast of the same name) by Messrs Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin. “He is charming, gregarious and has a high-level intellect, but he’s also a misogynist, probably a sociopath, certainly a narcissist and a complete incompetent who is incapable of seeing himself.”

If Duntsch is terrifying, then Jackson’s portrayal is even more so. The artist formerly known as Pacey is virtually unrecognisable (thanks to prosthetics) in the opening scene, but the real challenge for Jackson was allowing himself to view someone who is so “spectacularly evil” as a human being in order to walk in his shoes. “It’s a more damning portrayal of the man to make him into a human being, rather than just make him the bad guy,” he says. “He really believes he’s the hero, he’s the genius and that he’s the victim, so once I got past my own judgment, all the other things fell into place.”

Jackson might have his pick of stellar roles – and challenges – now, but it has not happened by accident. Take it from someone who has been in the business since landing his first job aged 14 in Disney’s live-action movie series The Mighty Ducks, opposite Brat Pack alumnus Mr Emilio Estevez.

“You try to make it look like it happens accidentally,” he says, “but there is no way to do this and not be ambitious. I’d say I’m extremely ambitious because I’ve been doing this cutthroat job for nearly 30 years. I’m in the pay-off phase of my career now. One of the benefits of surviving for as long as I have is you get to learn from your own mistakes.”

Such as? “I wouldn’t say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ because it all becomes bricks in a path, but [after Dawson’s Creek] I was not choosy enough about the things I was doing. You get stuck. You start trying to perform the performance you think people are hoping to see you do. I was so used to working all the time that I just worked all the time. There was definitely a conscious moment in my mid-twenties when I realised I wasn’t really enjoying the work that I was doing. My manager at the time just said, ‘Take a breath. You’re burnt out.’”

The turning point came in 2005, when Jackson was offered a role in the two-hander Mr David Mamet play A Life In The Theatre, opposite Sir Patrick Stewart. “God bless him, Patrick could have made my life miserable because I had no idea what I was doing, ” he says. “I hadn’t been on stage since I was a kid and now I was in the West End in over my head. But it reminded me that I actually enjoyed being an actor, that it’s not about the red carpet or travelling around the world. What I really enjoy is working on good material with good people.”

It’s no surprise Jackson’s time on Dawson’s Creek led to a career crisis. From the ages of 19 to 24, he lived with his fellow cast mates in Wilmington, North Carolina, filming day in, day out, in an arrangement he likens to college. “You get to the end and they’re like, ‘Here’s your degree. Go live now. You’re an adult. Go out into the world,’” he says.

But most graduates don’t have to deal with global fame. “It’s transitory. You’re only ever cool for a moment and then you become much less cool. I was always pretty dubious about flatterers,” he says, recalling a time he was stung in London in the mid-2000s. “I went on a date in Hyde Park with a woman whose name I will not use – she was socialite-famous – and she was acting completely bizarre, looking over her shoulder the whole time. I came to find out that she had hired a photographer to follow us through the park and gave a whole story to the tabloids about how I was going to meet her family.”

It was his growing fortune, rather than fame, that caused Jackson the most anxiety. “Suddenly, at 19 years old, I was making more in a week than most of my friends’ parents would make in a year,” he says. “It was lovely to have the money, but it was that feeling of nobody is worth that kind of money. You feel like a fraud and it took me a long time to forgive myself for not being the thing that I was perceived as.”

Born in Vancouver, but raised in Topanga, California, until he was eight (before moving back to Vancouver following his parents’ divorce), Jackson bought his childhood home in 2001 and lives in it today with his wife, British Queen & Slim actor Ms Jodie Turner-Smith, and their 15-month-old daughter.

“My father unfortunately was not a good father or a husband and exited the scene, but that house in Topanga was where everything felt simple, so it was a very healing thing for me to do,” he says. Fast-forward to 2021 and his baby daughter now sleeps in her father’s childhood bedroom. “There was a mural of a dragon on the wall in that room that I couldn’t believe was still there, years later. The owner [who sold him the house] said, ‘I knew it meant a lot to somebody and that they were going to come back for it some day.’”

Becoming a first-time parent during a pandemic sounds stressful, but it afforded Jackson months at home with his wife and child that his normal work schedule wouldn’t have allowed.

“I now recognise how perverse the way that we have set up our society is,” he says. “There is not a father I know who works a regular job who didn’t go back to the office a week later. It’s robbing that man of the opportunity to bond with his child and spend time with his partner.”

Despite his obvious career ambitions, fatherhood has changed Jackson’s priorities in “every possible way”, he says. “It’s 100 per cent changed how I approach my work and my life. That has been made so clear to me in this past year. For me to feel good about what I’m doing day to day, my family has to be the central focus.

“There are plenty of things left for me to do, but now the thing that gets me excited is experiencing the world through my daughter’s eyes. I can’t wait to take her scuba diving. I can’t wait to take her skiing. I can’t wait to read a great book with her. I’m not worried at all she’ll be a wallflower. She’s been a character from the word go.”

Jackson met Turner-Smith, 34, two days after his 40th birthday. He had been single since his 10-year relationship with German actress Ms Diane Kruger ended in 2016. “I was not looking to fall in love again or meet the mother of my child, but life has other plans for you,” he says.

The couple met at a party. Turner-Smith was wearing the same The Future Is Female Ejaculation T-shirt Ms Tessa Thompson’s character, Detroit, wears in the 2018 film Sorry To Bother You. “That’s what I used to break the ice. I shouted, ‘Detroit!’ across the room. Not the smoothest thing I’ve ever done, but it worked. We were pretty much inseparable from the word go. It was a whirlwind romance and I can tell my daughter I literally saw her mother across a room and thought, ‘I have to be next to this woman.’”

A self-confessed “useless” shopper, Jackson gives his wife full credit for his current wardrobe. He is jewellery-free, apart from a wedding band and a gold signet “JJ” ring on his little finger (a present from his wife), and discovered tailored sweatsuits (by Stampd and Reigning Champ) in the pandemic.

“Jodie has influence in the way that a wonderful wife encourages you, through love, to dress well. She was like, ‘We’re going to throw away all the sweatpants from your past and I’m going to get you some that actually make you look like an adult male and you will still feel comfortable around the house,’ and I’m like, ‘What an amazing idea!’ Who knew you could get sweatsuits that actually look good on your body?”

Jackson’s style has evolved, he says, “from slovenly teen to it’s-nice-when-your-clothes-actually-fit-you”. The penny dropped after he auditioned for his former co-star Estevez, who was directing the 2006 Mr Robert Kennedy biopic Bobby. He said to me, ‘You only got this job because I know you. You came in here to play a very well-put together 1960s political operative and you’re wearing jeans and a hoodie.’

“I had to grow up a little bit. We are very much raised in Canada to never, ever show off, so it took me a while to recognise it’s OK to look good when you go out.”

Still, when you’ve grown up in front of the camera, “every pimple literally documented”, and lived (very successfully) to tell the tale, you can probably be forgiven for the odd fashion faux pas.

“I wore a silk Ascot to an event once in Paris and I still have nightmares about it,” he says. “I looked like Fred from Scooby Doo, but you live and learn.”

#joshua jackson #interviews #jodie turner smith #dawson's creek #dr death #fringe #emilio estevez #mr porter #patrick stewart #michelle williams #katie holmes

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thexfridax · 4 years

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Translated interview

Screenplay writer Céline Sciamma: The women behind the big emotions

Patrick Heidmann, in: DER SPIEGEL, 18th of March 2017

There are very few screenplay writer stars, but she is one of them: the Frenchwoman Céline Sciamma. Whether it is ‘My Life as Courgette’ or ‘Being 17′, there is currently no one else who writes as empathetic as she does about growing up.

// Additions or clarifications for translating purposes are denoted as [T: …]. //

Interviewer: Ms Sciamma, you already directed three films, but at the moment you are quite successful in writing screenplays for your colleagues. Does that not almost feel like going backwards?

Céline Sciamma: Oh, not at all. Writing screenplays has always been my job, and that is also what I studied at the film school. To work behind the camera as a director only came later, with my first film ‘Water Lilies’. So, it’s not unusual for me to write for other directors. And I don’t find it unsatisfying, because I don’t pick random commissions.

I: Indeed, you cherry-pick your projects, such as the animated film ‘My Life as a Courgette’ or now ‘Being 17′...

CS: I often work with directors for their first film, with colleagues of my generation. So, with Claude Barras for ‘My Life as a Courgette’, who brought me in for his film years ago. I hadn’t even started working on my own film ‘Girlhood’ back then. But when a director legend like André Téchiné came knocking at my door, that was a new and very exciting experience.

I: Téchiné is 74 years old and hired you for his film about two 17-year-olds, also because there are not many who write so well about young people and their emotions like you do. Where does this ability come from?

CS: If only I could answer this easily. The way I see it, it is important to take adolescence seriously and not dismiss it as a phase, which you need to leave behind. What I’m not interested in are questions like ‘What makes young people tick nowadays?’ This ignores the fact that there is nothing more universal than the experiences that you have as a teenager. What else is there that every single human being in this world goes through? And whether it be in the 19th century or with a smartphone in your hand today - the emotional side of coming of age is always the same.

I: True, but that’s also what others could come up with. There must be a personal reason why you are so good with these stories.

CS: I just have a strong connection to my own childhood and adolescence. It is not so much about memories but perceptions and feelings. This frequently invoked ‘teenage angst’, this vague fluttering in your stomach - all of this is still quite familiar to me. As if it were yesterday. Likewise, adolescence is not hazy-nostalgic for me but crystal clear before my very eyes.

I: As a gay man I have a theory about this: maybe your perception of adolescence was just different for you as a lesbian... [T: That is so straightforward 😏, ze Germans!]

CS: Possibly. We may have experienced this stage of our life not only differently but also more intensively, because we had to think a lot more about our feelings and our identity. On top of that, there is also the element of secrecy. If you have to hide a part of yourself or choose to, then it makes you a good observer. Lying nurtures the ability for analysis, and makes you lonely. [T: Not necessarily what Céline was referring to, but these articles (1, 2) talk about how ubiquitous lying is.] Maybe that is why you are more of an observer than other teenagers, and you are more aware of your experiences during that time.

I: Many of your characters are not heterosexual, but it is the first time that you write about male adolescents in ‘Being 17′. Was that different for you?

CS: The elementary thing about adolescence, like first love or searching for your own identity, is certainly not so different for boys and girls. But they don’t experience these under the same conditions, that is the difference. The expectations and pressure are different or are at least imposed on them in a different way and area. The environment just reacts differently to an adolescent girl than an adolescent boy. I think about this a lot, ever since I made ‘Tomboy’ and [T: tried to] figure out what it means to be a boy.

I: So, you didn’t feel like you were talking about something that is unfamiliar to you?

CS: So basically: oh, men, how exotic? Not at all. In fact, the great thing about cinema, for me as an auteur and for the audience, is: that you can empathise with someone who is different, irrespective of their gender, age, nationality or anything else. I probably would have faced a bigger challenge if Téchiné and I wanted to do a film about being male [T: male gender is used here in German] or the typical male teenager. But for us it was specifically about these two boys - so I could fully concentrate on depicting their personalities as accurately as possible. The universal effect of a film is always derived from the unique and personal.

I: Fortunately, ‘Being 17′ doesn’t shy away from showing the physical, sexual side of the love between the characters. That’s not a given in a film about gay youths.

CS: True, but I can’t really take the credit for that. Téchiné and I only wrote ‘They have sex’ in the script! He worked with the boys on everything else during the shooting. When I saw the finished scene, in all its explicitness and length, I was gaping. This 74-year-old man is really gifted, he is truly the boss!

I: Is that not bitter for you as a screenplay writer?

CS: Not at all. As a writer, I really want the director to accomplish something great and make the best film possible. But you can’t sell yourself short. Téchiné could also make the aforementioned scene so convincing, because of the way we developed the characters and story up to this point.

I: If you compare the French and German cinema, it is striking that many more queer stories are told by [T: French cinema]. Also in mainstream and by well-known directors. Do you have an explanation for that?

CS: I would really like to tell you that the French [T: film] industry is inclusive, interested and liberal. But that’s not true. I guess the reason for the difference that you noticed can be found in the figures: Our film industry is huge, we produce 250 films per year. And we have a high number of debut film directors. This provides of course more space for diversity and so-called niches.

I: Pity, I was hoping for a socio-cultural theory...

CS: Maybe there is one. You wrong-footed me, I’ve never really thought about the issue in this way. Is homosexuality in France more established in cultural mainstream, because Marcel Proust [T: see here], one of the biggest novelists of all time, already wrote about it a century ago? That’s possible... But don’t forget that the German cinema had Fassbinder [T: see here] after all. And the Italian one had Pasolini [T: see here]. That there is not much left of it, has probably more to do with the business than art.

I: And what is your own stance in this industry which is equally characterised by art and business? Do you feel a certain obligation as female, homosexual director to provide more diversity?

CS: I do, more and more. I notice that many people expect me to do something different with my work, to change something and even make a difference. But I don’t see this as a burden but as an opportunity. It also corresponds to what I expect from my films. There is nothing more exciting for a director than fresh, new stories and characters who are outsiders. And when I look around, then I really get the feeling that it is similar for a large part of the audience.

Picture sources: [1], [2]

#DER SPIEGEL #Céline Sciamma #German interview #March 2017 #Screenwriting #Being 17 #André Téchiné #My Life as a Courgette #Claude Barras #My translation #long post #Just out here making a difference

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amillioninprizes · 5 years

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An entirely too long post on how to fix Veronica Mars

So, anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows: 1) What a massive Veronica Mars fan I was and 2) how distraught I’ve been over the most recent season that debuted on Hulu in July. I’ve been pretty angry about it since it dropped, but the first month after I was pretty occupied with real life stuff. Now that I’m more settled, I’ve found myself getting sadder and angrier over time with just how terrible S4 was and what an obvious fuck you to longtime fans it was. It feels dumb to be so upset over a tv show, but this show got me through a lot over the past 8 years, and I feel like it’s been taken away from me.

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether there will be a new season. Ideally it would end here with maybe an alternate ending filmed to avoid alienating fans further. On the one hand, the botched release, overwhelmingly negative response, and silence from the creators after initial interviews don’t look good for renewal chances. On the other hand, Hulu doesn’t have a lot of streaming hits, it probably did relatively decent numbers, and there are rumors floating around that its pickup chances look good. On a personal level, I hate the idea that this is where the legacy of Veronica Mars ends, while at the same time being extremely wary of what the creators have planned. I think a big part of the disappointment with S4 was that the movie and books set up what could have been some really interesting storylines and situations, all of which RT and co. squandered for cheap drama and to apparently turn the show into an entirely new vehicle; additionally I had hope that S4 would be a chance to rectify some problems the show has long had, but again, S4 exacerbated them. At this point I don’t expect anyone higher up in the creative process or at Hulu to give a fuck about the fans or making the show better as long as they hit streaming targets, but here are some suggestions:

Fire Rob Thomas

While he created the show, it’s become clear that not only has he lost touch with the audience and the original spirit of the character, he doesn’t seem too keen on putting much effort into writing the show (as I will discuss below). Then you have his clear misogyny: his views that women in relationships can’t be interesting, that what makes Veronica interesting as a character is her trauma and how much she can endure, and the fact that basically every female character in the history of the show has a history of sexual victimization. He thought that making the Mexican cartel hitmen “philosophical” was subverting expectations (which says a lot of what his expectations of Latinx characters are). Then this is the way he essentially exploited his long term fan base to earn a new season of the show, only to turn around and tell us that we don’t matter. From a business perspective alone keeping him doesn’t make sense; selling a streaming platform on your loyal fanbase and then proceeding to purposefully piss ~80% of them off would be pretty questionable to me as someone in charge. The sheer cruelty with which he treated not only the fans who have supported him for 15 years (I fucking used to liveblog iZombie y’all. iZombie!), as well as how he callously dismissed long time cast members in favor of celebrity guest stars should not be rewarded. He’s admitted in interviews that he would be ok with younger writers doing a reboot many years in the future; why not just let him have a producer credit and then hand the show over to someone who’s invested in making it good?

Put a woman in charge and diversify the writing staff

A big problem with a) Veronica’s characterization in S4 b) RT’s ideas about what makes female characters interesting c) the show’s long history of problematic treatment of sexual assault is that it comes from a man’s conception of the female experience. The Veronica showcased in S4 and that RT wants to write in the future is very much a male fantasy: hates marriage and children, traumatized, DTF, and is too cool for other women. RT stated in interviews that he wanted to show Veronica at a “crossroads” this season in a way he claimed had been shown for men but not women; many female viewers found this depiction to ring false (few women are spending their time fretting about how committing to marriage after five years in an established relationship will bar us from strange sex going forward). In addition to having RT at the helm, most of the show’s writing staff for the majority of its run has been white dudes, which doesn’t bode well for telling the story of a female PI in a diverse community in today’s political climate. Putting a woman in charge would hopefully help rectify these issues to make the character feel more true to life and put a damper on the misogynistic storytelling. The show has a natural candidate in RT’s second-in-command Diane Ruggiero-Wright (despite her problematic history, never forget #KeisterEggGate), who has admitted to not being able to watch the last episode. Jennifer Graham, who wrote both of the books, would also be a worthy addition to the writing staff; while the books had a mixed reception, most fans agree that she got Veronica’s character right. And with the show’s problematic historical treatment of minority characters, adding more POC writers going forward is also necessary.

Bring back Logan (alive)

You don’t have to be a LoVe shipper to recognize just how integral Logan has been since the inception of the show, not just as Veronica’s partner but as a character is his own right. Logan’s journey in many ways parallels Veronica’s, and shows a contrast in how different characters respond to similar trauma. The most critical plot line in the show’s history, the mystery of who killed Lilly Kane, simply doesn’t work without Logan’s importance to Veronica. RT and his defenders like to claim that Logan was holding her back from true growth, which is frankly bizarre as he is the only character to consistently challenge her, like when he tells her that she obviously isn’t happy this season. Additionally, Logan’s scenes this season were the lone highlight of what was otherwise a painful slog of a season. Of the people who have said they would watch a potential S5, a good portion are only interested because they believe that the ambiguity of the last 10 minutes of the season means he’s not really dead (despite what RT has said in interviews). Then there’s what Logan’s death does to Veronica’s character, effectively cutting off what would have been an interesting character arc and stagnating her forever. No matter how much they try to shove Leo the pedo creep and other milquetoast RT self-insert love interests on us, no one else can possible measure up to Logan’s level in terms of being able to match Veronica as a character, intellectually or as a result of shared history.

Plus, the fact that we haven’t had a Weevil/Logan interaction since S3 is a goddamn travesty and should be rectified immediately.

Bring back Veronica

As sad as I am about Logan’s death, for me the most upsetting aspect of S4 was the assassination of Veronica’s character. For many viewers (including myself), the character we saw Kristen Bell portray in S4 wasn’t Veronica Mars but a different character with the same name. Between her abusive behavior towards Logan, her general indifference to her father’s medical condition, her dismissal of Wallace, and her racism towards Latinx characters (using a kid’s lawyer to threaten deportation: not a good look!), she was lacking the marshmallow-y center that always balanced out the pricklier aspects of her character and made her compelling. This change in characterization was especially jarring given that she was not this way when we last saw her in the books, where she mused about having children and sent her half-brother Hunter to summer camp (side note, but does he even exist anymore?). Many of us who had grown up with Veronica were hoping to see her grow with us as a character; instead we got an extreme regression lower than we’ve ever seen her. It would be one thing if they were trying to depict a PTSD storyline, which would make sense given her background, but since her change in behavior is never addressed by the narrative, it just makes her look like a cruel asshole and makes it impossible to root for her. This is exacerbated by the fact that RT has made it clear he has no interest in portraying her inner life, as shown by his wanting to avoid showing her grief over Logan’s death because it would be a real downer compared to the entertaining but ultimately hollow banter and quips he wants to focus on. Veronica this season was also just plain dumb: you mean to tell me that the girl who nearly got killed by Aaron Echolls in her back seat wouldn’t think to check her backseat every time she gets in a car? (And let’s not even start with RT’s bizarre assertion in an interview that she apparently votes Republican). Not helping matters was Kristen Bell’s performance, which felt very flat for me this season compared to S1-3 and the movie; I don’t know if this was due to personal limitations or a reflection of the bad writing. Writers of future installments and KB herself would be wise to revisit S1, the movie, and the books to figure out what makes sense for Veronica’s character, leading me to my next point:

Get reacquainted with canon, develop a show bible, and hire a continuity director

This show has long had a problem with dropped plots, timelines, and continuity issues. Shelly Pomroy’s party has two happened either in the summer, or the fall. Then we have the movie paradox: Veronica graduated high school in 2006, which means her 10 year reunion should have taken place in 2016. The movie was released in 2014 and the books seem to keep to 2014 dates. Then S4 states that Keith’s movie accident took place in 2013, and mysteriously ages Veronica up to 35 when she should be 32 in 2019. Logan mentions an Aunt Naomi in S4--why didn’t she take care of him after Aaron was arrested (and what happened to Trina)? How the hell is Leo working as an FBI agent when he presided over the disappearance of the Lilly/Aaron tapes? Veronica is shown to be tentatively forgiving of Weevil taking the settlement from the sheriff’s department in Mr. Kiss and Tell, but is then shown to be extremely angry towards him for it in S4. This is just a small selection of the inconsistencies within the show. Plus there is the problem of repeated plot lines: Veronica rejects Leo in favor of Logan in S1, then rejects Leo in favor of Logan in Mr. Kiss and Tell, only for her to...reject Leo in favor of Logan in S4 (and RT says he wants to leave the high school plots behind). This sloppiness doesn’t bode well for a series that is supposed to be about mysteries, which require tight plotting. It would behove TPTB going forward to once and for all determine a timeline of Veronica’s life, keep a detailed record of past plot and character points, and have at least one person on staff who thinks to remember this stuff (RT notoriously has only a “solid, not spectacular” memory of the show, no matter what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says).

Make an effort (and do your fucking research)

Moving on from continuity issues to more general problems with the laziness of RT’s writing. He has basically admitted that he doesn’t care much about facts or characterization when writing plots--he shoehorns details to fit the plot rather than have it evolve organically from the characters and prior canon. I know that when writing it’s often impossible to make every story detail 100% accurate, but the extent of RT’s sloppiness is alarming. This excellent Reddit thread details a lot of the problems with S4 in particular, but this has been a problem since S2. Did anyone ever understand exactly why the Fitzpatricks were invested in framing Logan for Felix’s death? In the movie, it makes no sense that if Cobb and co. wanted Carrie silenced, they would add the complication of framing Logan for her murder--given her history, it would have been a lot easier just to make it look like she had accidentally overdosed. Given his previous patterns of villain writing fans were able to guess the identity of the S4 bomber based on casting alone. The mysteries in both Mr. Kiss and Tell and S4 are both ripped from the headlines, which indicates that RT wants to turn VM into the next Law and Order. Meanwhile, he complained about how hard including Logan in the story in S4 was, while Logan arguably had the best lines and most interesting scenes this season--apparently when you put an effort into things, they work out! This laziness extends past storyline issues and into factual problems that detract from the quality of the plot. Longtime fandom pals are probably tired about hearing me go on and on about how there’s no way Aaron’s lawyers could have gotten Veronica’s medical records due to HIPAA laws. Logan’s career change from naval aviator to intelligence is highly unlikely (and unnecessary, given that they changed it only to fridge him at the end of the season). Meanwhile, I know fanfic writers who have spent hours on the phone with strangers in order to research what type of firearm would cause a specific type of bullet injury. It’s very puzzling to me that RT wants to take the show in the direction of being mystery-only when apart from that one time he is piss poor at writing mysteries and puts no effort into them. I shouldn’t have to tell television writers to, you know, do their job but this is what we’ve come to in 2019.

Know your audience

A majorly annoying thing about the promo for this season is how in every single interview Rob Thomas did he was always talking about how he wanted VM to be like other shows and movies: Fargo, True Detective, Game of Thrones, Chinatown (which is apparently the only noir movie he’s ever seen). The thing is, if I wanted to watch those shows, I would; I watched Veronica Mars specifically because I enjoyed its unique qualities, and I would say most fans agree. The general perception within the fandom is that with this season Rob Thomas seems to have been aiming to dump the old, majority female, CW fanbase in order to achieve what he perceives as a cooler prestigious male fanbase; the issue is, new people aren’t going to take up a show in its fourth season if they didn’t watch or didn’t like earlier seasons. Also, trying to write a prestigious show doesn’t make your show prestigious. Considering that based on anecdotal evidence most of the people who like S4 seem to be male, he may have succeeded in the first part of his aim. However, this majority female fanbase he was so willing to cast aside are the ones who have run fansites and rewatches during fallow times (i.e. between S3 and the movie and then between the books and S4), so drumming up interest among fans (and therefore streaming views) in the future may be a challenge. Plus, women are a better advertising demographic since they are more likely to be in charge of household purchasing decisions, so maintaining us as a fanbase makes business sense as well. He may have tricked enough people into watching S4 that S5 is given a go, but I wouldn’t be surprised if streams are weak beyond that. If the show is to succeed as a commercial endeavor, better to go with appealing to a known quantity than trying to make a generic show that very few people have expressed interest in watching.

Bring back the mystery of the week

This is a more minor thing I felt was missing from S4. I think after the criticism of S3 not having a season-long arc RT overcorrected in focusing on one mystery. However, the mystery of the week had the following benefits: 1) giving chances for the characters to interact and telling us more about them 2) helping to modulate the pace of the season-long arc. With better writing a season-long standalone mystery could maybe work, but in the case of S4 specifically the mystery was kind of dull and repetitive and could have stood to include a couple of diversions in the form of a smaller case here and there.

Re-evaluate the creators’ interpretation of the word “adult”

Much of the promo and reviews for this season noted the more “adult” content to be expected this season now that Veronica’s grown. Many fans hoped that meant seeing Veronica act like, you know, an adult with adult problems rather than a teenager less mature than the actual teenager she was. Unfortunately, the show’s interpretation of the word seems to be more in keeping with a television rating sense of the word--meaning sex, drugs, and gratuitous violence (But apparently not the word “fuck.”). Look, it was expected that as the show moved to a streaming service and given the overall dramatic scope that there would be an upgrade in some of this sort of content (and I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t looking forward to steamier LoVe moments, which were sorely overpromised), but the way it was included this season felt like RT and co. included this stuff just because they could and not to serve the storyline. For me, personally, the biggest example of this was Veronica’s drug use, which I know didn’t necessarily bother everyone. Given her history as the daughter of an alcoholic as well as someone who had been the victim of two roofie attacks, not to mention the fact that her character never seemed to be into partying, I found it very out of character (and book writer Jennifer Graham agrees). It felt like RT included this just bc they thought it would be funny to see Veronica on drugs without considering whether it made sense for her character. Also, were the beheadings strictly necessary? Plus there’s RT’s little temper tantrum over not being able to use curse words this season--they weren’t present in the original show, no one was going to miss them now, and the “cuss” thing was just annoying and reminiscent of The Good Place.

Dealing with a parent who maybe has dementia--that’s an adult storyline. Too bad RT ended it with a dumb excuse about “mixing meds” (another factual error! Pharmacy software would have caught it!) rather than actually exploring what it would mean for Veronica to see her father in decline and take over the family business (and give Rico Colantoni the exit he appears to want). This is the kind of adult content I would hope to see in future seasons.

Adult is not a synonym for “unrelentingly bleak” either. The original show, while dark, always had an element of hope that was completely removed from S4 (no matter what KB might claim). And would it have killed the writers to show Veronica wearing disguises and going undercover like she used to? There was nothing fun about this season (and no, I don’t count the multiple partying scenes as fun, more like sad).

Kill your darlings

It’s cliche, but it’s true. Another issue the show has long had is the writers keeping around characters or inserting jokes and references for their own personal amusement rather than for the story. The most notable example of this is the continued presence of Dick, a highly problematic character considering he pushed Beaver into the room with Veronica the night of Shelly Pomroy’s party, among a whole host of other racist, sexist, and generally obnoxious actions over the years. But because Ryan Hansen is so widely beloved among the cast and crew, so he stays. Then there’s the matter of the infamous Keister egg in 3x08, which the writers and KB have all expressed love for, despite the fact that said Keister egg is an example of sexual assault--which, even if the victim is a douchey fraternity president, is never funny.

Also the constant Big Lebowski references are tiring. Watch a new movie.

Improve Neptune’s gender ratio

Veronica Mars, despite having a female lead, has always been a male-dominated show; other than Veronica herself, the only consistent female character over the original show was Mac (and she didn’t even come back this season). This is unacceptable in 2019, for any show. The books introduced promising female characters in the form of Marcia Langdon and Petra Landros, but Marcia’s character was was watered down for S4 and Petra was nowhere to be found. Additionally, Veronica and Mac have always been written as “cool girls” who looked down on other women for their femininity, which isn’t a great message. Almost every other female character, even the innocuous Parker, is portrayed as somehow bad or incompetent. I would love nothing more than a season centered on the women of Neptune and their interactions with each other. While we’re at it, stop giving every woman on this show a background of sexual victimization.

Treat VM as an ensemble show, not a Kristen Bell vanity project

A major complaint from Burnt Marshmallows and S4 defenders alike was how little time was given over to the original core cast this season. While Veronica may be the protagonist, a large part of how the show became so beloved was her relationships with the other characters. Yet RT has decided that going forward VM will be a KB solo project, with her traveling town to town quipping and sleeping with strangers. This seems strange, given Kristen’s recent interviews talking about how difficult it is to shoot VM and how she never wants to be first on a call sheet ever again, not to mention how she asked for less screen time all the way back in S2, which resulted in the Weevil-Logan storyline, which was way more interesting than Veronica’s storylines during the first half of that season. (The traveling detective thing also seems weird considering that KB is pretty insistent on shooting in LA to be near her family.) Additionally, if this is truly the last season of VM with all the original characters, then no one got a proper sendoff.

I’m not sure how willing much of the cast will be to return for future iterations, given how uncomfortable many of them seemed during promo as well RT and KB’s treatment of them (insensitive at best, deliberately mean at worst) this season (shout out to Tina Majorino for recognizing what a shit show this was going to be), but bringing back all the original characters into the fold and giving them significant storylines would go a long way to mending fences with fans, improving the show from a character arc perspective, and would also give KB the break she apparently wants.

Recourt the fanbase

What has VM always been renowned for above all else? It’s incredibly loyal fandom which not only got it renewed twice during its original run but also put up their own money to get the movie made--I know many people who donated when they really couldn’t afford to. RT basically owes the last 6 years of his career to VM fans--the success of the Kickstarter arguably got him the iZombie show running gig, and the fourth season likely wouldn’t have even happened if not for it. Thus, the blatant cruelty and disregard with which RT and KB have treated fans during the promotion of S4 has been incredibly insulting and hurtful; I still can’t fathom what in the world possessed RT to think that throwing away this 15-year relationship was a good idea. It’s not a good sign when the 2 fansites most active during the post-movie period (VMHQ and VM Confessions) cease operations in the wake of S4, and when at least 3 out of 8 board members of the oldest running fan group, Neptune Rising (who were dormant during the post-movie period but played a critical role during earlier fan campaigns and in the S4 promo) resign. A fandom this loyal that was betrayed will not stand idly by if the S5 RT wants to make goes ahead; given the number of tweets the official Hulu VM account has had to delete in the wake of S4 due to the overwhelmingly negative response as well as the controversy over editing out Logan from S4 promos, I imagine that S5 will be a PR nightmare. Even if future seasons are amazing the trust can probably never be fully repaired, but it would be helpful for RT (or fingers crossed, a new show runner) and KB (as star and EP) to go overboard in reaching out to fans and at least admitting they made a misstep with the entirety of S4. Back in the day, the old Mars Investigation fansite was invited to set to conduct interviews; maybe do that again. Also someone should get KB some sort of VM fandom-fluent media trainer because I don’t think she has conducted a single interview during her entire stint on the show that didn’t anger fans (it might help if she actually bothered to watch the show).

Map out an endgame

Look, this can’t go on forever. As long as RT keeps leaving every installment open ended with the hopes of maybe getting renewed again five years down the line, the story is going to keep running into the issues the movie and S4 faced with having to shoehorn the characters into nonsensical plot lines to reconcile those endings and deal with actor availability issues. Either plot another 2-3 seasons to wrap the show up with a satisfying conclusion, or map out a greater timeline of Veronica’s life with spots where a mini series or movie here and there could fit in.

#Veronica Mars #still angry #mainly written for personal catharsis #need to stop being angry about this and focus more on studying synaptic transmission #Burnt Marshmallow #we use to be fans

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readyourimgaines · 4 years

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Shayn-- Flirting Over Coffee

“You’re really short and cute and you buy a cup of black coffee every morning but you make weird faces as you sip it and you never finish it. Are you trying to look mature or something?”

Meets

Character A writes bad pickup lines on Character B’s coffee cup every time B goes into the coffee shop.

@tony-andonuts

Shane had been working at the “Grab a Cup Coffee Shop” for two years. He knew he was cliche. A gay drama major from a Midwest state moving to L.A. and working in a coffee shop. He preferred the warmth, the larger and more diverse population was amazing.

Everyday, for the past month, a short man who didn’t look totally white would come into the shop. Judging by the messenger bag he carries, he was a college student like Shane.

“Usual small black coffee?” Shane smiled.

“Yes, please.”

“I don’t know how you do it, buddy. I couldn’t drink black coffee if someone paid me to.” Shane tapped the iPad, following the prompts, to ring the man up. “M’kay. That’s $1.25.”

The man patted his pockets. “Do you uh… Do you take debit cards for that little?”

“We do not, but consider this one on the house,” Shane dismissed.

“I didn’t mean-”

“I know you didn’t. Don’t worry.” Shane took a cup and pen so he could write on the side.

“You’re the barista that writes the godforsaken pickup lines on my cups, aren’t you?” Ryan smiled.

“That I am.” Shane wrote on the cup for another few seconds before turning it towards the man. “Today’s is: are you my appendix? Because the feeling you cause in my stomach makes me want to take you out.”

The man emitted a wheezed giggle. “Have I even told you my name?”

“You...You have not. But I-” Shane pointed at the name tag on his apron- “am Shane.”

“I’m Ryan.”

Shane held the cup out for Ryan to fill with a house brew of his choosing. “What do you think then, Ryan?”

“About what?”

“Me taking you out.” Shane was beaming.

“You’re serious about that? I thought you were joking around.” Ryan took a sip from his coffee and Shane couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

“Of course I was serious. I mean, you’re really short and cute, and you buy a cup of black coffee every morning but you make weird faces as you sip it and you never finish it. Are trying to look mature or something?” Shane didn’t have it in him to be bashful about his spewed confession.

Ryan blinked a few times as what Shane said started sinking in. He had been ordering black coffee as a lame attempt to impress the barista. Shane thought he was cute?

“When uh… When did you wanna go out?” Ryan finally managed to get out. He cleared his throat after he asked the question.

“I’ve got a class at noon that gets out at 2:00. I’m free after that.”

Ryan ran his own schedule through his mind. “That should work. I don’t have work today and my next is tomorrow at 9:00.”

“Oh! Where do you work?” Shane leaned forward on the counter. Ryan thought for a moment about how much such a drastic angle must hurt Shane’s back.

“I’m an intern at BuzzFeed. Not the best pay, but I’m hoping to get a job as a video editor right when I graduate.” Ryan scratched the back of his head.

Shane backed from the counter and opened the mini-fridge to get the milk out for Ryan. “Make your coffee drinkable, Little Guy.” Shane slid the sugar jar so it was beside the half carton of milk.

“Thank you so fucking much.” Ryan quickly scooped in two of the spoons of brown and added a splash of milk before stirring it in with one of the skinny black straws.

“Two sugars and a half milk,” Shane observed. “Noted. So, does 2:30 work for you? I can pick you up from...wherever?”

“I can make it easier on you and pick you up from your lecture hall,” Ryan offered.

“Someone’s thinking with their galaxy brain. The real question, though, is: what do want to do?”

“Wanna watch a movie at my place? I can get snacks-”

“I’m bringing popcorn. I’ve got so much of that shit in my dorm. My roommate's probably sick of the dorm always smelling like popcorn but I’ve been in that room for three years and she’s a freshie so she can fight me.”

Ryan laughed. “How’d you get dormed with a girl?”

“I’m in the LGBT mostly dorm building. She’s a lesbian and got in a fight with the girl was boarded with, my roommate--he’s bi--moved into his girlfriend’s dorm so I had an open bed,” Shane explained. “Do you not have a class? You’ve been in here for like 20 minutes.”

“I had three classes yesterday, and two tomorrow so I’m supposed to be doing homework today,” Ryan shrugged.

“Ah...three class days. I don’t miss those even a little bit. You’re a Freshie, then?”

“Yeah. I graduated high school in the Spring. College is a lot more different than the school guidance counselors made it out to be.” Ryan adjusted the strap of his messenger bag. “So what hall am I picking you up from?”

“You know where Keats is?”

“Mhm.”

“Alright. I’ll meet you by the front doors at 2:10?”

“Sounds good to me,” Ryan confirmed. He looked around and noticed how dead the place was. “It’s morning, I would have thought it would’ve been more busy.”

“Well, morning classes aren’t until 8:30, actual morning rush isn’t until 9:00 and people trickle in through the day. You just beat everyone else.” Shane filled a cup with coffee after lining the bottom of it with milk and $3 in the cash register. He took a sip. “How’d you get an internship at BuzzFeed if you’re a Freshman?”

Ryan chuckled. “I got amazing recommendations from my English and Computer teachers.”

Shane laughed. “You shouldn’t have any trouble getting hired there for real, then.”

“Yeah… I need to actually graduate college to get an actual position. Maybe I can join the AV Club for practice in editing or some shit.”

The bell over the door jingled and a few half-asleep college kids fumbled their way into the coffee shop.

“I’ll let you get back to work, Shane.” Ryan smiled again, stepping away from the counter.

“I’ll see you are 2:10,” Shane reminded.

“See you then, Legs.”

#combefere's journal #read your imagines #coffee shop au #shane madej imagine #ryan bergara imagine #ryan x shane #shyan #skeptic believer #bfu imagine #buzzfeed unsolved imagine

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poemsforpersephone · 4 years

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Over the course of the past year I’ve read over 70 books. Some haven’t quite lived up to expectations but the 10 below stuck in my mind for long enough to make it onto this list. I’ve written a few details about each to explain why they stuck with me and why I think you should give them a shot.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

Rating: 4.5/5

Brief Synopsis: In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg and something is wrong; a statue moves, his grandfather’s pines explode, and his brother accuses him of madness. When the India Office recruits Merrick for an expedition to fetch quinine—essential for the treatment of malaria—from deep within Peru, he knows it’s a terrible idea. Nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who’s made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is desperate to escape everything at home, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for a tiny mission colony on the edge of the Amazon where a salt line on the ground separates town from forest.

Favourite Quote: “There are things you wouldn’t do, if you had a motherless child waiting at home. Or with you. Places where you would turn back.”

Why This Book: I’m not usually a fan of historical books, but I absolutely loved this one. The way the world is written, the characters, the unfolding of the plot. Everything just worked together so well. Not sure if it’s canon queer or not but there is strong m/m relationship vibes from two of the characters, like in my eyes they romantically loved each other, im just not sure if it was intended that way by the author or not.

The Wicked King and The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: (of the first book in the series, for context) Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

Favourite Quote: ““If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying.”

Why These Books: The entire series is just pure gold. The audibooks are fantastic, but more than anything it’s the story, and the voice of the main character, and of her family and enemies. I love books which work along fey story lines and worlds, so this was perfect for me. f/f secondary character relationship.

The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and in the process trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school transforming the lives of everyone around them in this searing and timely story.

Favourite Quote: “One small kindness in a sea of cruelty, one word of truth among lies, these are the seeds that can change the world.”

Why This Book: Jesus christ this BOOK. Girls protecting girls is literally my most favourite thing in the entire world. Coming together, standing together, fighting together. And diversity too! If you add girls protecting girls and queer girls into the same book you officially have my heart. I have goosebumps covering my arms and my heart is aching just thinking about this book.

The Last Sun and The Hanged Man by K.D. Edwards

Rating: 5 (who am I kidding, it’s a clear cut 10/5. I can’t put into words how much i love this series).

Brief Synopsis: Rune Saint John, last child of the fallen Sun Court, is hired to search for Lady Judgment's missing son, Addam, on New Atlantis, the island city where the Atlanteans moved after ordinary humans destroyed their original home.

Favourite Quote: uhhh can i like, list the entire contents of two whole books here? no? huh. alright. ““Didn’t you know what his father was like—what kind of ability Rune has inherited? Those aren’t just shoes to fill, it’s the whole fucking shoe factory. Don’t you ever doubt whether he can do what he says.”

Why These Books: They hit every single trope I love, the writing is fantastic and witty, and characters jump from the page and the plot keeps you ensnared and engrossed. The world is alive, and to top it off, the author is super nice and interacts with the fandom, which is always nice to see. m/m.

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: What happens when America's First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

Favourite Quote: “That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.”

Why This Book: Where do I even start? How do I sum up everything I feel for this book in one single paragraph? I cannot write down the noises of joy I made throughout reading it. I can't draw either of the two times i actually hugged it. This book. God. This book. Just go read it, okay? m/m.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Rating: 5

Brief Synopsis: A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.

Favourite Quote: “All the world is a cage in a young girl's eyes.”

Why This Book: It’s massive, an actual tomb that could damage someone if you hit them with it, and from start to finish it ensnared me with its rich world and realistic characters and AND!!! The diversity!!!! The women in this book!!! I wanna marry them all!!!!!!!! I’ll be their loving wife as long as they’ll have me!!!!!!!! like legit the definition of "i would let that woman step on me" im so gay for them ALL. f/f.

Salt Magic Skin Magic by Lee Welch

Rating: 4

Brief Synopsis: Lord Thornby has been trapped on his father’s isolated Yorkshire estate for a year. There are no bars or chains; he simply can’t leave. His sanity is starting to fray. When industrial magician John Blake arrives to investigate a case of witchcraft, he finds the peculiar, arrogant Thornby as alarming as he is attractive. John soon finds himself caught up in a dark fairytale, where all the rules of magic—and love—are changed.

Why This Book: I absolutely devoured this book. I listened to the audio book version on 1.5 speed most of the way through and even popped into 1.75 and 2 speed because I needed to know what happened so badly. I had my suspicions and they were proved correct and it was so beautiful and lovely. m/m and absolutely wonderful.

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargave

Rating: 4/5

Brief Synopsis: On the eve of her divining, the day she'll discover her fate, seventeen-year-old Lil and her twin sister Kizzy are captured and enslaved by the cruel Boyar Valcar, taken far away from their beloved traveller community.

Favourite Quote: “I could see the roots of the trees below me seeking water, and the leaves above me seeking sun.”

Why This Book: Beautifully crafted, effortlessly enthralling and dark like vampire stories should be. I’m torn about the ending but the lead up? The characters? The plot? All so well put together. The bond between the two sisters was strong, well written and beautiful. It’s f/f also, which is awesome.

#2019 book rec list #book recs #lgbt book recs #lgbt books

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catra-is-my-waifu · 4 years

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She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - A Millenial’s Take

Or, How I Learned How Much the World Has Changed, Thanks to Our Hard Work.

Welcome, fans of all ages! I’m 34 years old, a woman, and I have no labels. I’ve worked all of my adult life for LGBT rights and representation. I know a lot of you might be younger, and I want to give you a gift. When you have reached my age, your youth is pretty much done, and you begin to see what’s really important, and how you’ve shaped the world around you. I promise you this: You DO shape the world around you. You ARE shaping the world around you. You DO matter. Your actions DO have widespread effects. Please continue to read. Please engage with me. Especially during quarantine, let’s all come together around Noelle’s vision. Here we go.

. . .

SPOILERS AHEAD

• September 2004. I was 18 years old and it was the third night at my tiny university. I had never thought about why I was interested in LGBTQ+ rights when I was in high school. This night, I attended a storytelling hour in the basement of a dorm building featuring the life stories of LGBTQ+ students at the university. This night has been burned into my memory, so it must have been life-changing for me. I was so young, and so impressionable, but my mind was ready to be opened. I was really vulnerable, so I’m sure that’s part of why this particular night made such an impression on me. Students stood in front of a microphone in the spotlight on a stage and told their coming-out stories, their sad stories, their stories of personal triumph. I cried over and over again. I had never, ever, ever, EVER heard stories like these - first-person - before. In the early 2000′s, there still wasn’t much acceptance and tolerance for LGBTQ+ - especially in a conservative Christian mostly-white middle class American suburb like the one I grew up in. This one night inspired me to continue to fight in what ways I could for LGBTQ+ representation and rights (and normalization) in my life, after that. It’s been 16 years. A LOT was done in those 16 years, but one thing that was always missing was a NORMAL representation of LGBTQ+ in teenager-focused MAINSTREAM MEDIA.

• Noelle Stevenson has always worked to change that. I’m so thankful. I’m thankful to the staff at Dreamworks and Netflix who hired her to create and head this project, who gave her the room and the means and most importantly, the platform, to do it.

• She-Ra begins by introducing a concept familiar to its target audience: I FEEL ALONE. I DON’T FEEL LOVED. I DON’T FEEL LISTENED TO. I DON’T FEEL LIKE I BELONG. Right away, we connect with Glimmer and Catra. Glimmer is being stifled by her overprotective mother. Catra has only one friend, Adora, who “abandons” her to join the enemy. Glimmer has only one friend. Nobody else listens to her. Nobody takes Glimmer’s message seriously, even though she’s screaming it. And Catra: we could devote an entire series of analysis on Catra. I’m sure it’s been done. We know Catra.

• This show normalizes the fact that people of all backgrounds can become and remain strong friends. Adora is a girl JOCK, Bow is a sensitive black young man, Glimmer is outspoken, dark-skinned, and plus-sized, Catra’s well, an alien, and everyone in the Fright Zone and on Etherea is different. These people continue to be represented by the show for all succeeding seasons. We’re introduced to so many people - and most importantly, young people - who look like us, sound like us, do like us, and they’re all THERE. On a NETFLIX screen.

• This show, shows us that our individual power comes from not only BEING ourselves, but ACCEPTING ourselves for who we are. That’s what all of its heroes and even anti-heroes do.

• This representation is far-reaching. It normalizes us. Yes, we’re here. Yes, we deserve the same rights that everyone has. But most of all? We’re just like you. It’s normal. It’s okay. I’ve been waiting a long time to see this in mainstream media. Thank you SO much, Noelle, her staff, Netflix and Dreamworks. Thank you censure-freedom for allowing this. Thank you free speech, thank you billions of people who pay for this, thank you billions upon billions of heroes in history who have come before us to make this possible. Now let’s get to the celebration.

• Spinnerella and Netossa - the first gay couple we’re introduced to. They had a lot of screen time and appreciation this latest season, and they’re adorable, interracial, each different body shapes, and they’re accepted, and powerful, and their love for each other is celebrated. (same with Bow’s dads too!)

• Entrapdak - Love on the Spectrum!!!! How can we not just LOVE this couple?! They mention them being friends, but it’s so clear that both Entrapta and Hordak feel something very deep for each other.

I love Entrapta, and one of her writers admitted somewhere on Twitter that she’s based on a member of staff who’s on the spectrum. I like to imagine Hordak’s on the spectrum too. They’re both misfits, they’re both painfully aware they’re not like other people, they find each other in this mess. Yeah, their brains are different. Yeah, Entrapta faces flak from the other Rebels about her strange brain and how it happens to work. But she knows what she’s doing is just her being herself. And the others come to accept that and even love that. But Scorpia and Hordak were the first people to truly accept and care for her, just the way she is. And Hordak’s the only person in her world who is like her, who she can relate to on a level that makes sense to her, and vice-versa. Hordak thought the only place he could ever belong and ever be accepted was by being cherished by Prime. Entrapta showed him that was wrong. I’m glad they get a future together.

• Catradora - we’re all here for this.

We have been on this ship’s side since ep 1.

I wanted to hope, but my personal experience told me the show would end with Catra and Adora holding hands and saying, “We’re best friends forever.”

I was NOT ready to be wrong, to be so pleasantly surprised. I was NOT ready. I cried tears of 16 years’ worth of “waiting to see this moment.” I am telling you all: it’s been a long time coming (not to downplay any other media moment here, like other works, books, stories, animations, shows, etc). Yeah, about that - Why is this different?

Here’s why. This is a show about HEROES.

These are people we idolize in mainstream media.

These are PRINCESSES.

This story has been told over and over again in history- and yeah, it’s definitely been told in 1980s cartoons, the kind marketed to little girls like me. I saw She-Ra and Rainbow Brite on my screen and I saw heroines. Girls who could change the world. Girls who could fight. I learned from these women. But it was never enough, was it? She-Ra was white. She-Ra was beautiful. She-Ra consulted her brother. She-Ra was created because He-Man needed to market to girls. It was never deeper than that.

Disney, yes, has come a long way. We now have racially diverse female heroines like Mulan and Tianna and Moana. We have stories like Frozen that celebrate not focusing on the love story between a man and a woman, that celebrate and accept mental illness. And Disney is still number 1. Little girls and little boys and little children everywhere will always know Disney.

But Disney has yet to feature in a mainstream, box-office hit an LGBTQ+ hero or main character. I don’t have a lot of faith right now that that will change soon.

So I was SO SURPRISED to see She-Ra’s endgame:

A KISS between two same-sex characters on a Netflix screen- a same-sex kiss for the hero.

We’ve come a long way and it’s time to really celebrate. Thank you, Noelle.

I’m gonna repost the SHITE out of these two ships, I’ll join you in that. But I wanted to take a moment to talk about what this TV moment means for a millenial like me who grew up watching the original She-Ra, and cartoons like it, and never saw a moment like this until now. Thank you!!! I’m SO GLAD that young people everywhere get this. Let’s cherish this.

Thanks for reading. Ask me anything~! Let’s talk further please~!

sincerely,

a 34-year-old forevernerd. sorrynotsorry.

#spop season 5 spoilers #spoilers #spop #she-ra #catradora #entrapdak #noelle stevenson #dreamworks animation #netflix #spop adora #spop s5 #spop season 5 #spop season five #lgbt rights #lgbtq positivity #pride #queer pride

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the-ronan-cycle · 5 years

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Diverse Book Recs

I recently typed up a list of books for a friend who said she’d stopped reading because she couldn’t find diverse/queer books. This list is predominately focused on queer diversity but there’s also lot’s of super awesome ladies and poc here too. The list is also in two parts, the first are all books that I’ve read myself and include me trying to give a summary, content warnings (If I can remember, I can’t guarantee they’re all exhaustive.) and a rating. The second part has books on my to read list that, to my knowledge, have queer characters. All of the titles are linked to their goodreads page.

I Was Born For This - Alice Oseman

A Hijabi ace fangirl goes to London on a week long trip to meet her internet friend and go to the concert of her favourite band. Jimmy, the trans, gay, mixed race, mentally ill singer for said band is figuring out how growing up famous has changed himself and his friends. They cross paths and stuff happens. A really interesting look into fan culture, both the good and the bad. Really fun characters and relationships. Written by the same person who does the Heartbreaker webcomic. CW: alcoholic behavior, brief mention of unintentional trans outing 4.5/5

The Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater

Welsh mythology meets small town Virginia. Gorgeous, poetic writing by Stiefvater tells the surreal story of a group of teenagers on the search for a lost welsh king and wish foretold if one wakes him. Along the way they discover the power of ley lines, dreams, and ~friendship~. One of the main characters (my favourite character) is canon queer (he’s into a girl and guy but like, the word bi isn’t explicitly said) and one of the other main characters is canon gay. It’s a difficult story to describe but it’s such a fascinating read. CW: child abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, there’s a scene in the second book that I think the author confirmed was sexual assault 5/5

Shades of Magic Series - V.E. Schwab

Avatar the last airbender meets pirates and royalty and multiverses. In this world there are 4 earths that intersect at London. Kell is one of the only two people who can travel between Londons. Grey London is our world, Red London is Kell’s, full of magic. White London is a wasteland barren of magic and ruled by bloodthirsty twins. Black London is dead. The main cast of Kell, Lila Bard, a pirate thief who gets caught up in the adventure, Rhy, the (gay? Bi? I forget lol) prince of Red London, and Alucard, (also gay? Or bi?) actual pirate have to save the multiverse! Lots of great subplots, written by a queer woman and impossible to put down. If you saw me with my kindle in class after winter last year, it was because I literally couldn’t stop reading. CW: frankly it’s been too long since I read it im sorry 5/5

Leah on the Offbeat/Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda - Becky Albertalli

Simon Vs is the book Love Simon is based on. Simon (gay) has a mystery pen pal, Blue. All he knows is that Blue also goes to Creekwood High and is gay. But Simon leaves the emails open on a school computer because he’s a dumbass and then also an ass but the bad kind, Martin finds them and blackmails Simon. It’s similar to the movie but I prefer the book! There are some scenes and plot points that didn’t make it in. Also his friends don’t suck as much when he’s outed. Leah on the OffBeat is the sequel about Simon’s friend, Leah. She’s bi! Simon thought all his friends were straight but jkjkjk gays flock together. Cute wlw high school story. CW: character is outed against their will, underage drinking SVTHA 5/5 LOTO 4/5

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue - Mackenzi Lee

Main character is a total slut and we support him. Bi and ready to party. But wait it’s the 1800s and that’s not super chill. In a final hurrah before he has to become master of his family estate, Henry Montague takes his best friend (gay and also ready to party) and, reluctantly, his little sister (ace and ready to be a doctor) on a tour of the continent. Along the way they discover a plot and their trip turns upside down. There’s pirates! Period accurate medicine! Characters unlearning their prejudices! CW: Child abuse, period typical homophobia, sexism and racism 4/5

Captive Prince Trilogy - C.S. Pacat

hEAR ME OUT. This is probably my favourite series I’ve ever read. You’ve heard of enemies to lovers? Get ready for enemies to friends to lovers to enemies to allies to lovers! Crown Prince Damianos of Akielos is caught up in a coup lead by his half brother and sent to the enemy nation of Vere to be a pleasure slave for their crown prince, Laurent. Now here you think it’s gonna be some kinky sex romp but it actually becomes the best political intrigue with a thoughtful, loving, very vanilla romance. “If you gave me your heart, I would treat it tenderly”. Dw they only have sex after the whole slave thing is over. Also, they abolish slavery so there’s that. If you don’t like the first book, I get it but just try the second book, the tone changes with the change of setting. The author does some really interesting stuff with her setting. Typically writers will just make society reflect our by default but Pacat threw that out, homophobia? Never heard of her. In Vere it’s actually taboo for men and women to have sex before marriage because of the threat of bastards. So everyone just is gay instead. You want a matriarchal warrior women country? Pacat has got your back. The series does lack in well written women. There are a few women but not enough, Pacat has talked about this and is basically like, u right, I’ll do better in my next series. Written by a queer WOC (kinda? Woc is the wrong word but just read these tweets where she describe it better than i ever could) and I love it, the end. CW: child abuse, child sexual abuse, incest, rape, sex slavery, prostitution, graphic violence, non consensual drug consumption, child death, suicide, torture, animal death (also it should be obvious but none of these things are glorified, the abuser is the worst and he sucks and everyone hates him) 6/5

Carry On - Rainbow Rowell

Based on the Harry Potter parody series from Rowell’s book Fangirl. Simon Snow (doesn’t ever figure out his sexuality but had a girlfriend and boyfriend) is the chosen one, orphaned and brought to a magical boarding school, must save magical britain from evil. His best friend, book smart Penelope and his (possibly evil and a vampire? Also gay) roommate Baz must work together to defeat the humbug. This book has a really fantastic closed magic system and gives the character very clear limits. CW: rat death? 5/5

Queer There and Everywhere - Sarah Prager

A nonfiction book about 23 people throughout history that were both queer and very cool. From Frida Kahlo and Abraham Lincoln to the actual Danish Girl and Kristina Vasa, Prager dives into the lives of many historical figures who were also queer. A really wide gamut of women, men and nb, cis and trans, white and poc. Could have had more historical figures from the east. A fun, easy read. Made me cry, i want lesbian moms. 4/5

Huntress - Malinda Lo

It’s been a few years since I read this so bear with me. Cool magic girl main character and less magic but also cool other girl as well as a misfit group including the prince and a badass lady named shae (hell yeah) have to go into the fae world to right the magical imbalance of their world. Wlw, written by a queer woc CW: I don’t remember sorry 4/5

Outrun the Wind - Elizabeth Tammi

(I’m actually only half way through this) (Also it’s written by a mutual of mine on tumblr so that’s tight) A queer retelling of the greek myth of Atalanta. Atalanta (bi) is taken by the hunters of Artemis and has to help them defeat Apollo who’s being shitty. Wlw, written by a bi lady CW: animal death

Iron Breakers trilogy - Zaya Feli

Bastard Prince (queer), Ren, is happy to be out of the line of succession and just party it up but suddenly is framed for the murder of his brother and on the run along with a prisoner who escaped with him. Ren is faced with realities of y’know, not being a prince and decides to help save his country. Political intrigue with some twists I didn’t guess. MLM CW: slavery, graphic violence 4.5/5

All for the Game trilogy - Nora Sakavic

Think dark, queer, sports anime but with a co-ed team. Neil Josten (demi sexual- “which way do you swing? “I don’t?”) is on the run from his mob boss, murderer father and finds himself on the collegiate exy team of the palmetto foxes. Exy, a violent cross between lacrosse and soccer is Neil’s favourite thing but the team is made up of misfits. Neil has to survive both his father and the Raven’s (another exy team) owner, another mob boss, coming for him and his team. Super fast paced, very intense, after the first book I couldn’t put it down. The characters are all super interesting as are the relationships. Multiple mlm relationships, one briefly mentioned wlw couple CW: (o boy here we go) suicide, graphic violence, graphic torture, non consensual drug consumption, alcohol and drug abuse, prescription drug abuse, non consensual kissing, rape, child sexual abuse, sex work, mention of gay conversion therapy, discussion of self harm and self harm scars, child abuse 4.5/5

The Posterchildren - Kitty Burroughs

It’s been years since I read this so I really don’t remember much. It’s about a school for superheroes. Definitely wlw I don’t remember any else 4/5

Six of Crows Duology - Leigh Bardugo

A misfit group of criminals is hired to travel north to break into an impregnable prison. The cast of characters is lovable and the plot is fast paced. It’s set in the same universe as Bardugo’s first series but you don’t need to read them. (I did and they were ok but six of crows is better). Two of the main characters are mlm. CW: gore, graphic violence, child abuse 4.5/5

The Percy Jackson Series and Magnus Chase Series

I don’t need to describe these lol. PJO has two canon gay characters, the most recent series has lesbian and ace huntresses of artemis, and a bi main character. Magnus Chase has a non binary main character starting in the second book.

On My To-Read List:

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

I love her writing, it’s poetic without hurting my brain to read. This is a classic queer novel. It’s been said that Woolf wrote it as a “love letter” to Vita, her lover. The main character changes gender throughout the novel.

Stars in Her Eyes - Clare C. Marshall

I bought a copy of the first book in this series from the author at a convention last summer. It’s about a school for people with powers. I asked and apparently there’s a queer character but you don’t find out til the second book.

Ash - Malinda Lo

A wlw retelling of cinderella by the same author as Huntress.

The Academy Journals - Garrett Robinson

Apparently there’s trans, lesbian, gay, poly, ace, bi, pan! It’s about a magical school. It has really good reviews on goodreads so that’s promising

The Abyss Surrounds Us - Emily Skrutskie

There’s gay lady space pirates. Actually maybe not space? Idk i got space vibes

Vicious/Vengeful - V.E. Schwab

A story about moral greyness and supervillains. Kinda reminds me of Nimona tbh. I heard the main character is ace?

Our Bloody Pearl - D.N. Brynn

There’s mermaids, and pirates, and it’s gay apparently. The main character uses they them pronouns I think.

Breaking Legacies - Zoe Reed

Fantasy wlw by a trans dude (i think? They went through some sort of gender transition but i can’t find their pronouns)

The Dark Wife - S.E. Diemer

A wlw retelling of Hades and Persephone

The High Court Series - Megan Derr

Fantasy political intrigue mlm and I was told the main character is trans

Btw my rating system was basically:

4/5=i enjoyed reading it and would recommend it but probably wouldn’t read it again

4.5/5=I really liked it and would probably reread it

5/5= i love it, i either have or plan to reread it

#booklr #book rec #captive prince #the raven cycle #percy jackson #all for the game #I was born for this #shades of magic #carry on #iron breakers #huntress #outrun the wind #the posterchildren #six of crows #most are YA or adult #feel free to ask me about any of these!! i love talking about books #theres a lot of schools and pirates on here

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obsidianarchives · 5 years

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Of White Blaise and Black Hermione: The Highs and Lows of my Harry Potter Journey

The year was 1999. My cousin handed me a book, telling me ‘you have to read this.’ It was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It was a fantasy book, which was right up my alley, but it was also a kids book. One I felt I was too old for as a teenager. So I sat on it for a while, enduring his endless prodding for me to read it. Finally, I picked it up and read it. It wasn’t instant love. That would come later. While I enjoyed the book, I didn’t automatically seek out the sequel. Then the movie happened. I was spellbound. It was everything I liked about the book but magnified. I immediately went back to my dorm room and dug through my trunk for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

For years, Harry Potter was a solitary obsession. I didn’t go to midnight releases of the books or the movies. I didn’t go to conventions. I waited patiently for the books to be released and kept my thoughts about them mostly to myself. I lurked in Harry Potter forums and read fanfic, but I didn’t participate. Eventually, I would find friends who also loved it. I would attend line parties for midnight screenings of the movies. I wore my Ravenclaw (or Slytherin) scarf with pride. I even made my own Hogwarts student costume. As I immersed myself deeper in the fandom, I began to notice that my experience was mostly a white one. The friends I found were mostly white. The characters I read about, both in the books and in fanfiction, were white with a few exceptions here and there. The movies were no help. After all, they hired a white actress to play a Black character once her role increased. Even while I was enjoying myself, I still felt a little like an outsider looking into a world I wasn’t really part of. That message would be driven home to me later with a little announcement from J.K. Rowling concerning a certain Slytherin named Blaise Zabini.

I grew up on fantasy with little to no diversity, so finding the same in the Harry Potter fandom wasn’t surprising. It was a series that reached people all over the world yet represented different races sparingly. Even the fanfiction I loved to read often relegated the characters of color to the sidelines, if they were mentioned at all. Then Rowling revealed that Blaise Zabini was Black. Before that announcement, Zabini often made an appearance in fanfic. Being a character without a description, authors could transform him (or her, as was speculated by some) into what they wanted him to be. Like with most characters whose race isn’t explicitly stated, Blaise became white. I don’t know how widespread this description was but it was the default one I read in fanfic and saw in fanart. When I heard the announcement of his actual race, I was glad there was another Black character in the series and I excited about all of the fanfic and art that would now feature a Black Blaise. How wrong I was.

Black Blaise wasn’t universally accepted by the fandom in the same way white Blaise was. The character had lost his allure for some. While I felt happy that there was more Black representation in the books, I saw people reacting negatively. The message was clear: a Black character wasn’t as good as a white one. And if they thought that about the characters, what did they think about Black fans? Were we welcomed or just tolerated? It made me want to take a step back from fandom.

I stayed away for a while, disillusioned with this fandom that I had once thought was accepting. Then one day, I saw fanart depicting Hermione as Black. As Black fans, we often find ourselves finding ways to relate to characters who look nothing like us and come from backgrounds completely different from our own. I found my own ways to relate to this trio of white British children, finding similarities in personalities or actions that I would have taken if I were in the same circumstances. I saw myself in Hermione’s quest for knowledge and need to do well in school. Making her Black added another level I could relate to. It made me feel like I was part of the story in a way that I wasn’t before.

What started as a fandom reimagining of a popular character became canon with the casting of Noma Dumezweni, a Black actress, as Hermione in the West End and Broadway runs of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I was amazed by what the power of fandom could achieve. People now saw the smartest student, the one with all the answers, as a Black girl. People saw one of the main characters in this popular series as a Black girl. People were taking control of the narrative and happily injecting more Blackness into it, not taking it out. Black Hermione made me see the books in a new light and drew me back into the universe. This side of fandom became the welcoming, inclusive place I’d always wanted it to be. I wasn’t alone in wanting to see myself reflected in series. I wasn’t alone in craving more strong Black characters while still wanting the ones already there to get more attention.

It started with Black Hermione but through her I found a place where Black characters were brought to the forefront and celebrated, where Black fans spoke up and made spaces for themselves in the Harry Potter world, and in doing that made space for me too. I was no longer looking from the outside in.

#The Critical Companion #Harry Potter #blackness #Noma Dumezweni #Blaise Zabini #Hermione Granger

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garmonboziasworld · 2 years

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Oh god I haven’t heard of Milva being a Chinese archer. I mean… Diversity yeah cool, but… Milva is suuuch an East Asian sounding name right? Look I like diversity, but when it makes sense. In GoT I liked that each part of the world had its own culture and people’s melanin actually went along with where they were from. They even went as far as only look for actors with certain accents for different parts of the world. *That’s* dedication. I majored in geography and I like when worlds make sense. TWN makes absolutely no sense. Yennefer and Fringilla being a different race is wack but considering how much they changed I wouldn’t be surprised if the Toussaint storyline won’t even make it. Not that I care lol. And when they hired a half-Indian actress for Yennefer because they couldn’t find anyone better (I highly doubt that but the casting director is quite known for overlooking Slavic actors and always putting British drama students forward - which Yen’s actress was + there was some bit of protection from the CD because she knew the actress from before) then they should have given her a backstory that resonated with one of her parents being from a different part of the world - Nazair for all I care. I just don’t think that the people who work on the show really care about worldbuilding or even understand the material - let alone the characters. Yen is too young and too much like a high school mean girl, Ciri too old and obnoxious, Geralt… I very much dislike Henry Cavill because he presents himself as the no1 Witcher fan but he never even heard of the books until he was cast and the show runner was like “so, the book eh?”. He’s always after the next big and popular thing (throwback to him being all “I wanna play in a RDR2 live action if it ever gets made” right when it got popular - he even admitted he hasn’t even finished the game while saying that iirc) and his Geralt is the worst Geralt adaptation ever. Good old Polish live action Witcher! Seriously, I never understood why Netflix let Americans and Brits - the two nations that treat Slavic people as subhumans even in todays modern age - take over and make this show when Netflix Poland was *right* there.

Ok no I need to stop there because I can rant about the Witcher for ages ahaha ! But yeah, I’m a big disappointed Slav who came to love her culture through Sapkowski’s stories and I actively ignore the existence of the subpar show on a dying streaming service. I wish Netflix dies so the show can die and we can all just go back to the time when we only had the books and the games and we were all perfectly happy with the adaptation we had. ~Lily

This. I agree.

You know, first I was sad because good old Roche wouldn't appear in the show because he is games only but now I am SO happy about it 😂 If they had butchered my man then oh boi I'd be pissed!

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idealisticrealism · 6 years

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Blindspot 3x05 recap

Aka the one where all my sons are idiots and all my daughters are precious angels who deserve all the hugs.

Late again, because when am I not? Again, I blame the travelling.

So I’m kinda intrigued by this pair; the bleeding, accented woman and the young guy with an American accent in what seems to be a super-dingy bathroom? What is going on here??

Patterson has been doing some fancy analysing of the adoption records and yeppp, Jane definitely had a kid. And ugh Patterson is so sweet and gentle about it and has done so much research so she could give Jane ALL the info and Jane is just Not Dealing. But hmmm Patterson tells her there’s no way to test if she’s had a child and lbr that’s not exactly true? A good ObGyn could generally tell just by looking at the cervix. Not a perfect measure, but it’s definitely an option. But anyhow Jane is too busy flipping out anyway, and ugh she mentions the Taylor Shaw thing and already having everything ripped away from her multiple times and man my heart just hurts for her rn. And Weller’s so at a loss for what to do or how to comfort her ugh my poor babies

Lol Reade and Zapata and their little Wizardville rivalry is super cute. And then she’s completely open with him and asks him directly about the State Department Guy thing and wow Reade just harshly shuts her down. I’m glad Patterson interrupts this little moment because it was definitely going nowhere good. But speaking of things that ARE good, omg I love her pun about the ‘backbone’ of the case and Weller being all killjoy about it haha. That’s right, honey, just ignore him. Your humour is too good for him anyway. And so anyhow the tatt leads to a NYPD evidence log number, though Zapata notes that the code is different to what the NYPD uses now, and Reade gets super snarky at her for it. Geez son, learn some manners! Patterson backs Zapata up tho (yaaassss my girls), showing that the code is like 20 years old. Jeller go to check out the warehouse it points to while Zapata is given paperwork by Reade (wow, petty), though tbh Zapata ends up with the better deal since Jeller have to fight some bad guys and literally put out a fire. Ugh the way Jane yells for him as she tries to fight the fire alone-- it’s only when its the two of them together that they manage to extinguish it. Symbolism, much? Patterson calls right at that moment to warn them to get out, and it’s a little late, but well, it’s the thought that counts haha. Other warehouses have been burned, which means someone is trying super hard to destroy evidence but doesn’t know where it is. Jane, because she’s amazing, finds the box they nee-- and in it is a whole bunch of untested rape kits going back 20 years. I love the conversation the guys have about the low priority assigned to sexual assault testing-- it’s some good commentary from the writers about the state of the real world.

Meanwhile, Stuart’s phone has been found in the river, and both Patterson and Zapata are very suspicious of the way Reade basically tells her to leave it alone. Looking super suss rn, bro, and I do not like it at allll.

However, I really DO like listening to Jane speak in other languages. So damn cool. And as someone who is currently staying in a foreign country and communicating solely in the local tongue, I have a renewed respect for her fluency lol. Their Russian suspect conveniently elects to speak English though haha. How handy. He’s a bit of a tough guy but through a sneaky move on Jeller’s part, he gives them the info they need-- how he got paid, which gives them a lead on the people hiring him. Patterson also drops another pun, which is three so far this ep and I’m so proud. She also figures out that the the victim was likely linked to Kazarus, which as far as I’m aware is a fake place though tbh my geography is not super great. But anyhow, that narrows their search to two sexual assault survivors.

And then aww Patterson pulls Weller aside and tries to support him about the whole surprise-kid thing, and ugh she’s just so sweet and wants to help both him and Jane as best she can. But he’s upset bc he knows he can’t fix this; no one can. I guess it all just takes time, right? Meanwhile Jane’s in the locker room, getting a call from Roman, and dude he really knew the whole time?? And ugh if she was sixteen when she had the baby (to her high school sweetheart aww) then he was probably about 14 at the time, just a kid himself who had suddenly become an uncle, and man I’m so sad for them both?? But lol she gets to the bullpen and covers the phone while practically yelling for them to trace the call. Not super subtle, Jane. And he tells her she initially fought Shepherd on giving the baby away and then she just ran away? I’m confused. I guess we now understand a bit more about why Remi joined the army though I guess. Not sure how she ever went back to working for Shepherd, though, but maybe she saw the memory wipe as a way out? And Beardy was meant to fill her in on everything including the kid. Idk. Jane’s now having a small breakdown in the locker room and decides she has to go see Shepherd, but Weller’s right when he says that Shepherd would just mess with her head. Don’t give her the satisfaction, Jane! And oh look, a mention of Bethany, haven’t had one of those in a while. And tbh that’s the way I like it, show, so keep ignoring her existence please haha.

In the lab, Patterson admits defeat about Stuart’s phone-- it’s as dead as he is. (Too soon??) But Zapata didn’t spend all that time at the CIA without gaining a few skills in the realms of deception and deviousness, and so they hatch a plan to bluff and lure out the possible mole. And then a lab tech in a headscarf calls them to see something, and the panning shot of the lab also shows another tech in a turban. Firstly, I approve of some diversity happening here, and secondly, I hope that this casting choice was deliberate so there would be people that looked at those characters and went “the traitor has to be one of them” so that when it’s shown that the traitor is someone else, the people watching have to examine just why it was that they thought either of these two background characters were guilty. (Hint: it’s racism!). Anyhow, the rape kit in question has been tested, and it turns out the rapist is the king of Kazarus. Or, the former king, since he died and his brother has assumed the throne. The only spanner in the works being that the rape resulted in a child, who, as per the Kazarussian monarchy, is the rightful heir to the throne. Which naturally means that Scar’s gotta have him taken out. Now we know who we saw at the start of the ep-- the kid and his mother, who was clearly attacked by the assassins but escaped. Now it’s a race for the team to find them before the Kazarussians do.

And then who appears but Weitz, who is now a congressman, and conveniently an expert on Kazarus. I love that everyone looks at Hirst and she’s all “Don’t look at me, Darlins” and how is someone using ‘darling’ in plural like that so damn endearing??? The accent is what truly makes it though, obviously. But nope, it was Reade who called him, which is just another in the list of things Reade has done lately that we do not like. Weitz manages to make everyone hate him even more within mere seconds of showing up, and tbh I love to hate him. His antagonism towards Zapata is hilarious. I like that even Hirst gives him some shit lol. Atta girl. Anyhow Weitz informs them that the ex-king’s brother Cyrus is a Bad Dude and there’s a bunch of american soldiers in Kazarus that are now at risk, and yep the stakes have just been raised

Reade gets called into the principal’s office to discuss his little spat with Zapata. How exactly does Hirst know about that, though? Though I guess if she’s paid attention to any of their interactions today then she probably could have figured it out. I’m offended that he calls Zapata a busybody?? But then he does at least say that she’s nothing to worry about and that she’s a friend. What do you two have to hide though??? Meanwhile in the lab, Patterson has found the kid by examining the curtains in a video that the kid sent to his gf. That’s my lil genius. Of course it’s super convenient that this type of curtain is only made for a specific motel chain, but whatevs, I’ll let it slide as I do with many things in this show haha. I love Zapata teasing Weitz though, suggesting that it was all too smart for him and went over his head haha

Jane’s clearly taking this case pretty personally-- and tbh it does seem veeeeeeeery convenient that there’s a case that resonates so closely with her current situation, until you remember that this time around, all the tattoos are specifically designed by Roman to be revealed in a certain order, so it makes total sense that the case matches stuff going on in their personal lives. More sense than when it happened in the last two seasons, so touche, writers. You win this round. Anyway they get to the hotel, and the kid immediately pulls a gun on them. His mom’s not looking too good though, kinda bleeding out a little on the bed, and ugh Jane does her frightened-animal whisperer thing and convinces the kid to let her help his mom. Naturally he chooses to trust her bc lbr wouldn’t you?? They get his mom to the hospital where she’s super well guarded, and he tells them about only learning at 18 about his mother’s attack. And he only learned yesterday about the whole king thing, and tells them he’ll never go to Kazarus. You just know that Jane is thinking about her baby and how the kid probably wouldn’t want to know her as they must think she abandoned them, and ugh it hurts. Why must you do this, show?

Back in the lab Patterson and Zapata have set their trap, and are waiting to see who falls into it-- only they don’t like the answer. According to her computer, Reade logged into the system to delete the files. Patterson is grim; she doesn’t like it, but she’s ready to believe it. When Zapata tries to insist that Reade wouldn’t do it, that he’s family, Patterson just reminds her: Borden was family too. And ugggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I do not like this at all. I am so done with leaks and moles and traitors and all of it ugh. I do appreciate Weitz for making me smile here; Zapata is back at her desk and he throws a paper airplane at her, then feigns confusion, looking around for who could have done it. Tbh I actually do ship these two a little bit. All the bickering just does it for me lol. She gives him shit about probably not going to be re-elected, but he says he’s doing great in the polls. She says polls have been wrong before-- and is that some political commentary I hear? Man who was the writer of this ep because they are not pulling punches today. Reade comes over and tries to mend bridges, which tbh tastes a little sour after he was such an asshole this morning... give him nothing, Zapata!

Looks like Yasmine is gonna live, which is nice. She and Jane bond a little over protecting kids etc while Weller and the kid go to get something from the vending machine--- and ugh when they’re coming back Wller notices their guard from the door is gone and pushes the kid behind him. I love protective Weller. I also love Weller throwing an injured woman over his shoulder and carrying her to safety. Damn. He also proved pretty smart-- when they realised that the baddies were on their FBI comms, he bluffed and reported that they were headed for the roof while they escaped out the front door instead. Nice. Though why do I feel like that escape was too easy?

Patterson has figured out that it’s not Reade that’s tampering with their evidence, but someone else using his login. She confesses to Zapata about the backdoor that Wizardville gives her into people’s phones, and says she’s never used it before, which isn’t true though right?? Didn’t she use it on that Lowie guy’s lawyer a few eps ago? Anyway Zapata doesn’t care about the illegal biz, she just wants to hear her best(?) friend’s name cleared. Turns out he wasn’t even in the building when someone used an FBI computer to access their files, so that’s at least looking good for him, even if it is bad for them as a whole

Weller reports in, and the team tracks their phones and immediately sends backup-- but too late, considering that the baddies have laid out a trap for them. Was this why it was so easy for them to get away?? Jeller manage to take out several bad dudes on their own, but not before one of them manages to molotov-cocktail their car, which blows up moments later. Dude that’s one potent cocktail… but ugh they all make it to safety, with Weller again literally carrying Yasmine, and ugh the mother and son hug and the husband and wife hug and it’s just a very poignant moment okay?? Also there’s just something really beautiful about the way Jane hugs, I can’t even really describe it. Anyhow they all make it back to the NYO, where the rest of the team (plus Weitz, in his own way) are super glad to see them alive. After a minute Zapata and Patterson sneak off, because Patterson needs to tell her the news-- the person using Reade’s login was Hirst. She’s sure because of biometric software that she runs on all of their computers, and again, man I’m super glad that these powers are in the hands of someone trustworthy like Patterson haha. But ugh this means my honey-accented cool aunt is a baddie?? She even knew that Lowie guy from a few eps ago. Well, bummer. Still holding out for the possibility that there’s more to it, but things aren’t looking great...

Oh dear, King Cyrus was murdered, and the Kazarussians are demanding their heir. Which really sucks for the kid, and Jane and Weller try to protect him, but he’s determined to go and to make things better for his fellow Kazarussians. And lbr, to have to go become king is not the worst thing??

Wow Patterson and Zapata actually went to Reade to warn him about Hirst. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. I would have done some more surveillance or something first? But anyway he is really not taking it well, and kinda attacks both of them a bit over it. And wait he’s known Hirst since he was in Quantico??? That’s news to me. And not good news, either. Please don’t be dirty, Reade. Please…

Jeller are recovering at home after a pretty damn rough day. Jane has changed her mind about finding her daughter-- she wants her just to have a happy, stable life, and that willl be far easier if she never knows Jane exists. And he just hugs her bc what can you do to make that pain better? Nothing, that’s what. She’s going to mourn her connection with her daughter for the rest of her life and ugh it just really sucks

Oh no a time jump, nothing good ever follows a time jump. And oh shit it’s Berlin. Weller’s having no luck with a rude hotel employee, which I find super unbelievable because a) he’s front desk staff at a fancy hotel, b) the person asking him for help is a man clearly traumatised about his missing wife, and c) he’s German. Him being rude makes no sense. But it does give this girl a cool opening to come help Weller out, and man I am jealous of her German speaking skills. Like I said earlier, it’s not easy!! But wait, there’s more. The girl is not only American, but she’s looking for Jane. Her mother, Jane. And oh Weller, you stupid, stupid boy. You foolish, well-meaning idiot. I am sure that your reasons for not telling Jane about this are all purely to protect her (although I also suspect you’re trying to protect yourself from her leaving you again) but dude. DUDE. This is not the kind of secret you should ever keep, and honestly if Jane leaves your ass when she finds out the truth I’m gonna be on her side of the split. Ugh, my stupid son when will you ever LEARN

#Blindspot #Jeller #Blindspot recap

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eichy815 · 4 years

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Did Janet Jackson Get Stalked By A Bear?

Originally Published on January 26, 2016 in Morpheus magazine

Almost as soon as the new year had passed us by, 2016's rumor mill began to churn.

It started during the first week of January, after pop megastar Janet Jackson had announced that she would be postponing her "Unbreakable" tour. Jackson only revealed that she was "recovering," but refused to specify any illness.

Tabloids and talk shows proceeded to ruminate: does Janet Jackson have cancer? Is it a terminal disease? Is her life about to come to an end? What other possible explanation could there be for her canceling this much-anticipated concert tour?

The jailhouse medics who apparently run these "infotainment" outlets made the logical conclusion that Jackson, as a singer, must have throat cancer.

Ultimately, Jackson posted a Twitter video where she confirmed for worried fans that it's not actually throat cancer. But she refused to comment any further on her condition.

Whatever the nature of her sickness, Jackson should be entitled to privacy until she's ready to go public with whatever it is. She may want enough time to get assurances from her doctors that it isn't serious or life-threatening.

Or she may just feel it's no one's business. Just because she's a celebrity doesn't mean she's under any obligation to give us constant updates on her health.

This spiraling rumor was not without recent precedent.

Last month, the lead-up to the theatrical release of The Revenant had cinema thrill-seekers chattering about the possibility that Leonardo Di Caprio's character would be raped by a bear. Such bestial bluster arose following a colorful review by film critic Roger Friedman. The Drudge Report picked up the story, speculating that Di Caprio's portrayal of Nineteenth Century fur trapper Hugh Glass may have undergone some..."creative" reinterpretation.

Mexican director Alejandro Iñárritu publicly laughed off how this absurd rumor about his new film had snowballed to such a ludicrous degree. He also alluded to how, once the studio (20th Century Fox) was forced to debunk the rumor, that may have actually resulted in greater publicity for The Revenant.

Ultimately, moviegoers discovered that Di Caprio's character was mauled (following the historical account of Hugh Glass) on-screen – not raped. Friedman backpedaled, referring to his words in hindsight as a "turn of phrase" while complimenting Iñárritu on how well the director had adapted the book.

The biggest problem with spreading these types of rumors is the existence of naive people out there who so easily believe them. Rumor-mongerers may not always be aware of this.

But sometimes they are. And they simply don't care.

Even if a rumor is false, it runs the risk of damaging a person's reputation. The "slutty" girl who sleeps around with any guy who will buy her a drink. The somewhat-effeminate metrosexual dude who "probably" has HIV. A trailer park gal who has gained a little bit of weight...so "obviously" she must be pregnant. The sugar daddy who has fathered so many children throughout his life, there "must have" been incest involved at some point.

In addition to reinforcing ill repute among the innocent, rumors also can perpetuate stereotypes and cultural biases. For anyone who claims to be a proponent of diversity, that would seem to be a flawed approach toward achieving one's ideals.

We'd think this should be common sense to most people. But then again, consider how many Americans have indicated through polling that they believe Judge Judy is an actual U.S. Supreme Court justice.

When I was in high school, I – the fledgling student activist – placed myself in the middle of a school-wide power struggle over whether to implement block scheduling. I attempted to advocate a reasonable compromise where a combination of 45-minute classes and 90-minute classes would exist concurrently on the same bell schedule.

Many teachers and students agreed with my position. But members of the "pro-block" delegation – including our newly-hired principal – were so intent on having everyone make the transition collectively that they portrayed me as some "anti-block" reactionary. Granted, there were indeed "anti-block" reactionaries amongst our faculty and student body...but I wasn't one of them.

In the end, the principal got his way – and I ended up switching schools and graduating early. The humiliation over my reputation becoming mangled was just too painful for me to allow myself to return to that building for what would have been my senior year. And, unfortunately, some teachers and classmates of mine had let themselves buy into that misbegotten portrayal of me.

Some people couldn't be bothered with asking me what my blueprint for schedule restructuring would specifically look like. They were only accustomed to envisioning one desired outcome...so anything that ran counter to that "must be" something radical or unreasonable.

Likewise, Janet Jackson canceling a tour was such an egregious occurrence that it had to mean a hazardous toxin "must be" ripping through her loins.

Or that the prospect of Leonard Di Caprio filming a scene with a bear is so extreme and surreal that there "must be" bestiality present in the script. Right?

The real reason why so many people thrive on rumor-mongering is because they know that ignoring new ideas or stonewalling alternative solutions might derail their very narrow agendas.

In the cases of Jackson and Di Caprio, the goal was to use these public figures as a way of fabricating salacious gossip. If it generates more Internet clicks and advertising dollars – then who cares if it hurts the people involved, huh?

We should also keep in mind the distinction between making well-reasoned assumptions versus drawing conclusions that are based on snap judgments.

The former is a natural inclination that can still be tempered by rational thinking. The latter is akin to inferring that, say, because John Boehner's skin is strangely pigmented then he must have received a blood transfusion from an Oompa-Loompa.

So, what I suppose what I'm trying to convey would be this: those of you who fall prey to getting swept up in a flurry of crazy rumors are only perpetuating a culture of rampant commercialism, materialism, corruption, and yellow journalism.

Doesn't that just make you proud to be an American?

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animepowermakeup · 7 years

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Hollywood “Ghost in the Shell” Film Review (with Spoilers)

After 7 months of stalling since its release, I finally watched the Hollywood rendition of Ghost in the Shell. I told my followers I would do a film review on it months ago but I could not bring myself to sit down and watch it right away. Keep in mind that I am a HUGE Ghost in the Shell fan of the original manga/anime and had very high expectations when watching this film. I watched it from the point of view as a fan but kept in mind the perspective of someone who was new to the series. This review will contain spoilers because a core problem of the film lies in its twist and- I think you know where I’m going with this. I will break this film down in different sections (no pun intended): Casting, the plot and character development, visuals, and what I liked and what could have been done better.

Casting

I will not focus too much on this portion since a lot of you may be tired of hearing about it but it is still important to include. No, I did not approve of Scarlett Johansson playing the role as the Major and no, the plot did not justify her presence in the film. In fact it worsens the case for her but I will discuss that in “The Plot” section. Batou’s actor is fine (as he is the only character that many fans have made speculations about his original character being caucasion based on different accounts) along with most of the other Section 9 members. Kuze is white yet I never liked Kuze as a character to begin with, even in the second season of Stand Alone Complex (that’s a topic saved for another day). However, I heard many people defend the casting by saying “It’s okay if the Major is white because there are so many POC characters”. You mean POC supporting and background characters? You can hire all those people for the background but not consider one of them for the foreground. Making Ishikawa a black Austrailian will not make up for the Major being white. To me it seemed like a cheap, baited shot at diversity and erasure of Japanese people and their role in the industry.

The Plot/Character Development

The plot is simple. Too simple. Major Mira Killian is a full-prosthetic cyborg who was "saved” by Hanka robotics and now works at a counter-terrorist organization called Section 9. She finds herself on the trail to hunt down a hacker by the name of Kuze only to discover that her past may not be what it seems. Some action stuff happen and frankly it gets a bit muddy from there but in the end she discovers she’s, in fact, not Mira but actually Motoko Kusanagi *gasp* who was a girl who ran away from home and was basically kidnapped for the 2571 experiment which is the action of placing a human brain in a robotic body. So Mira wants revenge but in the end she decides to stay where she is while embracing the fact that she is really Motoko.

Now the core problem with this film is the plot twist that Mira is Motoko. They went through all the effort to actually cast an actress to play the real Motoko and even her mother yet only cast Scarlett Johansson because she’s “well-known” and would “bring in more revenue” as well as appeal to a Chinese audience (for the Chinese market, not Japanese). Obviously their plan failed since this movie bombed in the box office.

Another big issue I had was that they stripped away any complexity from the original source material. The 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie was so thought provoking and unafraid to challenge its viewer. The true Motoko Kusanagi was a symbol of philosophy and “the next step” in our human evolution. She transcended herself and her peers in all aspects and was willing to learn more about the world despite what little she knew of her past self. Mira simply gets butthurt about being lied to and when given the chance to join Kuze, she turns it down because despite everything, she still thinks Section 9 is her home or something like that. Honestly, it was rather forgettable.

The writing was so dumbed down to the point of characters literally explaining every little thing that was going on in every scene. A good writer can convey ideas without always having to explain them. So I get it. The modern American audience can only handle so much but that is no excuse when you have astounding sci-fi films like Ex Machina or Interstellar which are extremely well-written films that make their audience actually think critically. Everything was laid out to you like a book for middle-school readers.

So character development for Mira goes like this. She’s unsure of herself in the beginning, she feels betrayed in the middle, and she has closure in the end (I guess). Now her character is so bland that it was hard to sympathize with her which is a key component in writing a character. We sympathize with Motoko in the original film because, despite how strong and powerful she may be, she expresses her human side and shows moments of vulnerability and questions her own existence right after encountering the Puppetmaster. But in the end, she was able to free herself and move beyond the physical world. Mira, on the otherhand, already begins showing doubts in herself since the beginning of the film. In fact, she doubts herself in every scene until she realizes that they were somewhat true. It’s not that dynamic for her character arc and there was only a “turning point” after meeting Kuze (and by watching him shoot at her coworkers? Like she literally stood there while he fired at them. I just thought that was weird. She like trudges away after that happened).

The most development Batou got was Aquafina bottle cap eyes.

All the other characters were simply props and the only other character who had any dynamicism was Dr. Owlet, I mean, Ouelet, who was the lady who basically brought Mira back to life and knew about Mira’s past. She sacrificed herself to save her from this bad dude called Cutter but frankly, it wasn’t that impactful.

To wrap up the characters, I felt nothing for them which is a shame because I LOVE their true characters from the original manga/anime.

The Visuals

3D technology is a wonderful invention but constant and heavy use of it is not always a good idea (unless you’re James Cameron’s Avatar). Every shot in this movie was riddled with 3D enviornments while attempted to blend it with real ones. Sure the geishas in that one scene were practical effects but that’s the only case of it in this film. I don’t know what it was but I did not get the Blade Runner feel that they tried to achieve and I even recently rewatched that movie the other day.

One of my main criticisms in regards to visuals was the constant bombardment of fanservice. Now I’m not talking about seeing Johansson in a nude body suit every couple of scenes, I’m talking about the scenes recreating exact shots from the 1995, 2004 film and Stand Alone Complex show. I could pinpoint and reference everything as they appeared to me yet it did not make it any better. To me, these sequences did not translate well to live-action. The moment I especially thought looked awkward and out of place was the recreation of the tank battle. Like from the actions to facial expressions, it was all ripped from the movie and it did not look right at all. I believe it’s the fact that there are things that should remain animated and not recreated in real life. The fanservice was more like “Hey if you’re a fan of the Ghost in the Shell series, our movie has those same scenes that you love!!” well if that’s the case, I’d much rather be watching the anime than something that was trying too hard to be memorable like it. The anime is memorable not only because of what took place in it but how it was made in terms of technology at the time and how it still stands to date.

There’s a distinct difference between taking creative liberties with original source material and simply ripping scenes and making them look too forced for the sake of “appealing to veteran fans”.

What I Liked

There are two things that I liked. The songs created by the original composer Kenji Kawai (which was just 2 songs) and the cameo of Gabriel/Gabu, Batou’s basset hound from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. This movie simply made me want to go watch the original movies/read the original mangas/books.

So all in all, what could have saved this film?

Well after watching it, nothing really. Even if the Major was casted to be Japanese, that could not have saved this film. The writing was too bad to work with, the visuals were gaudy, and they tried too hard to be like its source material while failing in every aspect. It wasn’t memorable and if there’s any silver-lining, it was better for Johansson to take the fall for this film than say Rinko Kikuichi because at the end of the day, Johansson can still sit on a pile of cash despite how good or bad the film turned out.

I give this film a 3/10 and that’s me being nice. It was “better” than Hollywood Dragon Ball but no better than The Last Airbender or the Netflix Death Note.

#mine #textpost #hollywood ghost in the shell #ghost in the shell #Scarlett Johansson #movie review #review

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