#Let's Kill Stalin (episode)

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

It was never explained exactly what Brooke Rhapsody’s ‘donating’ her reincarnations to the 11th Inspector actually did, other than reviving him from death.

Did her additional reincarnations add onto his own?

#Inspector Spacetime #Let's Kill Stalin (episode) #head scratcher #never explained #at least on screen #Brooke Rhapsody (character) #what exactly did she do #donated her reincarnations to #11th Inspector #the Inspector (character) #revived him from death #did he get extra reincarnations #added onto his own

[doctor-who-binge]

Elizabeth X is a horrific human being

Here is a list of things shes done:

Trapped a star whale that was offering itself..... because shes dense as fuck. Thats the only way she could have not figured out that it was offering itself

Decides that opening up the cranium to expose the brain and then shoot a laser at it for 300 years was a good idea

Creates a dictatorship with her as the "highest authority"

Creates a surveillance state

Creates robots (smilers) that her citizens are afraid of in order to keep them in line

Creates half human half smiler secret police

Holds pretend elections where there is only one correct option and then pretends that its the will of the people to keep the voyage going

Kills all political dissidents, the "protestors"

Kills, and I am quoting directly from the episode, "citizens of limited value" ... which includes children since children cannot be protestors

Sets up a system where SHE does not have to live with the fact that SHE did all this. She literally built into the system the ability to keep her conscience clean while simultaneously being the disgusting dictator in charge of it all.

Masquerades (quite literally, the mask and cloak) as a brave queen investigating her government because they are plotting behind her back and "feeding my citizens" to the beast.

Forced some people to NOT forget what is happening. Like Hawthorn who knows exactly whats going on. They have to live with the guilt while she doesn't.

Apparently made herself near immortal considering shes 300 and looks 30

Lets take this point by point

1 and 2 have no precedent since well no star whales IRL but I can't imagine her being anything but fucking stupid for not figuring it out.

3 The British Royal Family has no genuine power, so either between the 21st century and Elizabeth X they manage to regain power OR Elizabeth X took back power during the horrendous chaos they were trying to escape from. There is no prime minister or parliament or court system. She rules solo. She even says "I rule" and "I am the highest authority"

4 Every part of the ship is being watched, its why the Doctor was seen by Hawthorn doing the water check and why they knew that Amy was doing Bad Things™. Its also why all the adults were ignoring a little girl crying, they know they are being watched. Its got some East Germany Stasi level surveillance vibes.

5 & 6 Secret police are horrific organizations that have committed some of the worst acts in history. Gestapo a vital tool of Hitler or the NKVD responsible for Stalin's Great Purge etc the writers were also probably taking a page out of 1984's thought police & surveillance. Which 1984 itself is based on criticism of Stalinism

7 Every dictatior's favorite public tool! Elections where the outcome is 97+% in the dictator's favor. There should be no fucking elections it's ridiculous. Its not like the citizens even know what they voted for so why pretend to have elections. My only guess is because the beast needs food.

8 ..... bitch really decided "oh, you disagree with the decisions I've made?... well down a tube you go to your death immediately"

9 Say it with me people: E U G E N I C S. That is what that sentence is. As a permanently disabled person living on disability benefits and public insurance, ya know a "burden to society", this single line gave me a sick stomach. What the fuck. How can anyone like this fucked up character???? Remember SHE decided on these rules. SHE MADE THEM. Which also means SHE set the perimeters for "limited value." Limited value includes a child who got bad grades, is punished by the government (not his parents) for bad grades, the punishment is not being able to use the elevator. When he does use the elevator he is killed. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say people who use wheelchairs are definitely just outright killed. Which again remember the Queen decided who counts as limited value. Also if the whale won't eat children, do all the children that are sentenced to death and then work in the dungeon end up getting eaten when they turn 18? How fucking horrific to work in dungeon for years knowing you are literally on death row.

10 & 11 This has got to he THE WORST fucking thing. The character acts so goddamn righteous in her outraged, pissed that her citizens are being hurt, determined to uncover her evil government. When its all her. She gets to be a badass good queen for 10 years, figure out the mystery and how gross she is, erase her memory, and go back to being the badass masquerading righteous queen. She literally made it so she can live with an actual clear conscience. Not knowing any of this is all her fault and being outraged that it all exists. Also the video to herself doesn't mention anything but 1 & 2 by the way. She doesn't tell herself that she created a disgusting surveillance secret police regime run on crushing political dissidents and perpetuating eugenics in the video. She only mentions how bad conditions on Earth were and therefore they were assholes to a star whale, no mention of how shes evil to her own citizens. Hawthorn tells her that all of it is her but SHE doesn't in her own video to herself. She CAN remember, there is no reason she HAS TO forget. Maybe the public does, to live a semi peaceful life not feeling crushing guilt every moment. But the Queen? If anything she has a duty to know. A duty to carry the burden of knowing what she did to the star whale. And a duty to carry the guilt of knowing what she does to her people.

12 She SHOULD feel guilty every moment of every day, since it seems that "forgetting" is how they all manage to live with themselves. So if this whole system is set up to take the burden of guilt away from her citizens then she should be forced to live with it on their behalf but INSTEAD she forces Hawthorn and the secret police to know the truth. If they can know the truth so can she and she just chooses not to.

13 This surveillance police state built on crushing political dissent and rampant eugenics is 300 years old run by a single dictator. 300 years of this dictatorship and Elizabeth X has made herself believe its been only 10 years so that she doesn't have to feel guilty. She consented to having her body clock stopped/slowed by the way, so she knew she'd be a dictator for a very long time.

AND YET we, the audience, are supposed to like her. Shes portrayed as righteous to start—shooting down smilers and chasing after the Doctor to help her figure out her evil government. Then shes horrified at her own deeds with very good acting showing a horrified expression. Then the video we are shown is suppose to make us sympathize with her decision showing that if she abdicated everyone will die so OF COURSE she did all these horrible things. Then after Amy gives the Doctor the mask she says "Her majesty says no more secrets on starship UK" implying that this fucking disgusting dictator should be left in power after the absolute fucking hell and murder she sanctioned for 300 years against her own citizens. And I know we are supposed to like her because her supposed badassness returns in The Pandorica Opens with "This is the royal collection and I'm the bloody queen" while pointing a gun at River.

We are supposed to like a disgusting dictator because.... ??? Guess the idea of the monarchy lasting that long was supposed to be cool or whatever.

Elizabeth X is a disgusting oppressive eugenicist dictator

that should have been thrown off the ship. Or fed to the beast. Whichever the people she wronged choose.

Also how is the beast fed now? If no more secrets then no more elections, no more forget buttons, and thus no more protestors. But "citizens of limited value" (again I cannot believe that is an actual fucking quote) still exist. Do they become the sole diet? Do they figure out what star whales naturally eat?

#doctor who #nuwho #11th doctor #elizabeth x #elizabeth the tenth #the beast below #series 5 #nu who #starship uk #eugenics #dictatorship #shitty fucking charater #no one should like her #star whale #i could never articulate why i hated this episode #then my wheelchair bound self felt so awful for the kid #and hawthorns line about limited value finally made everything i wrote click into place for me

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I know I’ve posted links to these pages before, but not for many months, and I’m now using them again and really need to reiterate how awesome this is. Obviously, a podcast like The Bugle is going to have a fanbase full of the type of people who would go through every episode and catalogue the hell out of it. Obviously. Obviously this exists.

Both those links look like the same thing, but they’re different pages. One is a properly organized list of the first 193 episodes, going through each section of most episodes and noting what was discussed, and listing instances of the various running jokes, motifs, features, recurring characters, etc. The other is a disorganized mess that, for each episode up to 146, lists some key phrases and topics. It is so helpful. It looks like a mess at first, but it’s amazingly helpful that if I vaguely remember some joke or other that was made in any of the first 193 episodes, I can CTRL+F for it on that page, and I will probably find it. Not quite 100% of the time, obviously, but this page has come through for me more often than it’s let me down, when I recall some offhand comment Andy Zaltzman made sometime around 2009 but I don’t know its context, and I check this page for it, and there it is. It’s fucking great.

It’s the sort of thing I’d make, but I don’t have to, because it turns out I fit so perfectly into the demographic of Bugle fans (autistic, the word I’m looking for is autistic) that the other ones are just like me and they beat me to it. It was incredibly helpful when I was making Bugle compilations last year, which I maintain were an excellent use of my time, even the one the ended up being the length, and arguably breadth, of a feature film (it’s the one about John Oliver and Sarah Palin, it was supposed to just be a short audio compilation but it’s 74 minutes long and features enough photos and video to count as a documentary).

Aside from how helpful they are, it’s just really entertaining to read the thrown-together lists of “things that happened in this episode” out of context. The properly organized list is great, but the one that’s an unformatted mess has a charm I hugely enjoy, and creates some amusing out-of-context summaries. To grab a few at random:

37 21/7/08 Obama an the media Dr love/The Slaying of Nigel Obama/VP ideas/Europe loves Obama/ Andy describes badgers/Crazy Belgians/Stalin&Rasputin leading best Russian pole/Warmonger cowboy fancy drees/Batgirl is jewish/HFH: Gulveg the Norse giantess

56 15/12/08 Riggles leaving do/lettuce or fairy wings/Blagoiavic corruption/Obamas 1stspeech Old McDonald/Michael stone claims his attack was art/OJ giving birth/Neither Obama or McCain are eligable to be president/Canada in shambles/Plans to cut down smoking/Names for Andys child/British sportsman of the year/Scottish tennis, "Foot fault f*ck you"

109 29/3/10 US healthcare bill a big fucking deal/Death threat on Twitter/Bullet falls through Eric Cantors window/US Israel settlements talk/British MP's cabs for hire/The American on healthcare & National treasure, thinks he's on the radio, guns in Starbucks/Flipping Vanilla Ice the Bird/Roll call of donors

115 17/5/10 Britains Coalition Gov./UK has only 1 more Female MP than Afganistan/Berlusconnis divorce terms/Grecian economy is fucked/Phillies fan tazered

127 20/9/10 Pope in UK/$80 million to keep tigers alive $50 million given/Tea Pary wins midterms/Christine O'Donnel... hates masturbation, is a witch, cross breeding animals/Sport of shinti

131 18/10/10 John beats Riggle at fantasy football, Riggle threatens to kill him/Sporty Pussycat Doll/Bugles 3rd Birthday/Andy is drunk/Chilean miners get out/Someone throws book at Obama

Fucking excellent. Someone scribbled all these notes and put them on the internet so that ten years later I could easily look up in what episode American comedian Rob Riggle threatened to murder John Oliver. Thank you for your service, whoever made this. This is what the internet should be for.

[gatheringbones]

favorite quotes from this episode:

“…but in my own life, with my particular history of being an Eastern European Jew who was born into the Second World War and its traumas. And then my family has been devastated by the genocide, and then growing up in communist Hungary, as a child. And I have to say that the communist system was brutal and dictatorial as it was, on the ideological level, taught social caring and social justice at its ideals. So you had a system that inculcated a certain sense of social justice, at the same time is trampling all over it, then real practice. So the question, Why are things the way they are? And why do people do these terrible things to each other? And why do people have to suffer but don’t deserve to suffer? These questions have been agitating me ever since I was a child. And of course, that naturally extends into the types of medicines. Why do people suffer? And what are the sources of suffering?”

“Now you have to have an ideology that explains to you why we have the right to do this. And the ideology is both religious and now we have the right religion, so we can slaughter them in the name of Jesus. And literally, if you read the histories of Latin America, you can’t kill people if they don’t know about Jesus. But if you tell them about Jesus and they don’t succumb, then you have pagans. And now you can kill them. So literally, the Spanish would arrive in some coastal village, read out in Latin, or Spanish, some Christian doctrine, if the natives didn’t agree, now, you could slaughter them, literally, this is how they saw it. So those are religious superiority, and then the racial one that we have because they are inferior we have the right to control them dominate and kill them or enslave so that the concept of race was a fairly recent development in tandem with the rise of capitalism and its need to dominate other nations internationally, in other people. By the way, if you look at the history of American policing, you know about the policing roles? I don’t want to talk about the racial bias in police practice, but policing in the states started off as slave patrols to capture and control escaped slaves, that was its origin. So these things that we take for granted, they all have historical origin, which relate to the nature of the system, as structural as your friend said.”

(In response to the question of “Is there a possibility that’s not just a utopian fantasy for all of us to have opportunity and care for each other?”) It’s interesting. I grew up as a fervent proponent so that in school assemblies, when the principal would mention the party leader, there’s like a cue, and they would all stand up and clap. Long live Mátyás Rákosi, Rákosi was the name of the Hungarian mini Stalin that ruled the country and long lived the party and I was fully enthusiastic about it. And then I remember in 1955 when I was 11 years old, there’s a block meeting organized by the party. And I was given this poem to recite, and I did recite it with my fist raised in the air, chanting or trembling you lords of Wall Street, now, I had no idea what Wall Street was or where it was. So then comes the Hungarian revolution in 1956, where the country rolls against the communist system, the dictatorial nature of the inequality, the brutality of it, and against the Soviet occupation. And all of a sudden, I realized that what I believed in was a total illusion that I bought into some kind of a dream, you know, when I was 13. And so the Soviets who had saved my life as an infant in defeating the Germans, now and who I had idolized all my life as a child, now becomes the enemy and the oppressor. So they come to the west, and the Americans become the heroes. And I remember traveling to Germany, seeing these khaki clothes, the neck and servicing them, seeing them as the protectors and the heroes, that was the 1950s, early 1957. And then Wall Street becomes the symbol of prosperity. And American capitalism becomes the symbol of democracy, freedom and protection. That’s 1957. And then, by the early 60s, 5, 6, 7 years later I was at the Vietnam War. And I thought, I see these American heroes democracy slaughtering millions of Asians in the name of a complete lie. And then I started looking at history. And I started looking at how virtually every single one of American wars there were wars of expansion and aggression, starting with the Mexican-American war. And then the annexation of Texas and then the Spanish-American War and the war in the Philippines and extermination of local resistance, the multiple interventions in Latin American ever since in the name of freedom, is support of the dictatorships like Somoza, Nicaragua, and Battista in Juba. And this continues, I’m gonna give you guys a fact and easy to look this up. You don’t have to take my word for it. But if I asked you, you guys, progressive, open minded people aware Americans, how many people were slaughtered in Guatemala in the 1990s? Not that long ago. with American support? Could you tell me a figure? A 100,000, and you don’t even nobody, you know, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can really look this up in research. And if I’m wrong, let me know. But I know I’m not wrong. Between 80,000 to 100,000, mostly indigenous presence. I could go on and on and on. And so what I came to realize is that everything that the Soviets had said about Americans was true. Not Americans as the people but the American system as racists, as imperialists, and so on. And everything that the Americans said about the Soviets was also true, brutal, dictatorship, exploitative, dishonest, everything they said about each other was true. And everything they said about themselves was a lie. That’s what I found out. So then the question becomes, is there some way out? Well, I happen to think there is not that I’m here to describe it, but that the very fight that we’re talking about, and people are always interested in the truth. And there’s an innate desire in people for freedom, whether they know it or not, there’s an innate desire for freedom and for truth. So I believe in it.”

#gabor mate #brainspace #wasteland radio #history stuff

[antihumanism]

When I type everything out as a single run-on sentence I want you to imagine me cornering you off-guard in a crowded room, my empty brown cow eyes staring straight at you and reflecting you--nopony home here, she checked out and hopped away forever ago on the toxic chemical trains and clacking cattle cars years ago--and just, for no reason, I’m here and you’re there pocketed in the corner of a crowded room, and I’m channeling my alternate history past-self who was a preacher that got kicked out of the church for delivering sermons about the impossibility of sin and just ran off to Point Sur with my harem of distractions since I could never stop blessing my congregation saying “Go forth and know that you cannot sin, in the beautiful eyes of God and in my beautiful eyes there can be no wrong or evil” which backfired on me when they started setting fires and it all went to Hell, but I’ve won out over them because the world honored my wishes when I sighed “I should like to start again,” and so I’m here with you and you’re hear with me and I’m saying some insane shit like: “Looking back on Emily’s early works it is easy to see where her later reactionary turn comes from, because, from the start, Alfred Alfer was a story about the fear of castration, I mean, the first video was literally about Alfred getting neutered and escaping into a violent fantasy where he is loved and praised for his violence and the ‘punchline’ establishes the general theme of ‘reality by despair,’ which is to say that Alfred’s clearly dissociative episode is ‘verified’ by his destruction and it is this self-destruction that establishes ‘reality,’ like ‘pinch me i might be dreaming,’ but the pinch is violent and unfair self-destruction as hope is still ripped away, but hope remains, because it is a hope to die rather than be changed by the world, and this theme remains throughout her most famous work (the Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy which cements in canon the jokes of her previous Rise of Alfred cartoon) where Alfred is possessed by the spirits of Stalin and Hitler--a false equivalency made by the authoritarians that have passed for liberals for years--in Rise of Alfred, one would be remiss not to mention the phallic imagery in both the title and the video itself, Alfred is cut loose upon the world by the absence of a Near God or little other by the orders of a Distant God or big Other (in this video played by a droning and irrelevant corporate figure that can offer nothing more than a wall without lead paint that one can lick), and this is the essence of reactionary thought, the idea of a big Other who is totally incompetent yet all powerful and somehow worth respecting and suffering for (King Henry II saying ‘will no one rid me of this troublesome priest’ or the departed Daiymo of the 47 Ronin), the reactionary sees the big Other as a master who can only set the dogs off the chain, the police chief who needs to get out of the way so McBain or Dirty Harry or Paul Kersey (especially in Death Wish III) can do what needs to be done and purge away all the filth and make the world right again (no different than Rambo--even the first movie, which for all of it’s goods part still is  reactionary propaganda bullshit pushing the fascist lies about a ‘fifth column’ that was rude to poor little meow meow war criminals--or modern day fantasies about nuking all of MENA until it glows green (fantasies delivered to raucous applause at Republican presidential conventions); the reactionary is perpetually trapped in this fantasy of destroying the world and escaping into the void of space, freed of the ground where the riff-raff are so they don’t have to negotiate life with their neighbors, and this is true, yes, even of people who spout bullshit about Fully Automated Luxury Communism who only want the right to consume as much as possible free of guilt--a condition they think is inflicting upon them by the big Other--as the Champagne of Shame Socialists of the 60s), and the righting of the world for the reactionary is just that, that the world must be Righted and the reactionary must be loved for all of their violence and because of their violence, for the reactionary finds themselves ever needing new excuses as they open new fronts in their fake, phony Culture War, and that is all they need (excuses), which is why Emily is so obsessed with justifying her edgy shit based on some Trauma (which is handy excuse to do Anything, even Things that Cannot Be Excused like war or self-harm or wanting to be seen), and so here you should already be able to hear so much madness, so many plaintive cries, all aligning around the same point (the trannies in the ‘wrong’ bathroom, the refugees in the ‘wrong’ country, the people in the ‘wrong’ neighborhood, the Jewish Question, etc), and, anyway, so in Rise of Alfred, Emily’s OC directly addresses the audience and tells them that they must love him/her--the castrated bitch desperate to be let off the leash--and in Alfred’s Playhouse she/he simultaneously affirms and denies the nature of a trauma that justifies everything (one is constantly reminded of The Act of Killing where one of the mass murderers imagines how, depending on the editing of the final film, he could be either a woobie or a war criminal) as the Trauma is simultaneously a joke--’sodomized with a popsicle!’--and the alleged real event that motivates her self-mutilation as we’re expected to believe Emily is processing something, but what is she is processing, hmmmm, isn’t that the true spice,” I rail and rave against your poor ear drums as my empty, dead cow’s eyes capture your entire body and reflect it back at you and the ice cubes in my drink pop and shatter and dissolve and as my fist clenches tighter and tighter around the glass containing them and I continue: she’s processing a fear of castration, which is shown clearly in Alfred’s Playhouse where Alfred’s “sodomy” is demonstrated by the sight of his crotch covered in blood (a scene that will be repeated in The Alfred Alfer Movie) but “what is castration,” one might ask, and one can respond “it is the removal of power by the Father,” and this is how we wrap back around to our root in the nature of Emily the Reactionary who believes herself to be deprived of the power she holds by The Bolshevik Jew that has inserted itself between her and the Father and this is the cause of the big Other’s ineffectiveness, and this is also the core of the reactionary as a whole, the reactionary doesn’t want a daddy to control them, but a Master to set them off the chain because they hate the Father who has castrated them, this is the nature of the mumbling corporate manager in Rise of Alfred, but it is also the nature of Alfred herself--and now you may ask if Emily is trans and the answer is I literally couldn’t fucking care less about any question left forever unanswered on God’s Green Earth and you shouldn’t care either--but Alfred the Castrated is also the Father/Mother of Alfred the Dictator, the murderous inner-self that is immune to consequences of the onrushing future (The Alfred Alfer Movie) but not immune to the justifications of the imagined past (Alfred’s Playhouse trilogy), and therefore free to inflict whatever violence that Emily the Reactionary desires, and it is in pursuit of this freedom that the reactionaries set off in the name of New Sincerity (two things to be noted here: (1) the Death of Irony was proclaimed at the birth of the 21st century police state and the new Forever War with all of its genocidal objectives, that is to say, 9/11, and (2) the broken necked coward who complained of American Psycho that it’s author provided no easy outs for easy survival was the one who offed himself while Bateman’s father still lives) and the Talking Cure (i miss who we used to be), and at this you should see me slugging back the whole lukewarm glass in between two syllables and continuing on without pause (as if this dog still has legs on which to receive them in any case), “Emily, like Alex Jones, is so desperate for an excuse because neither of them can accept that they have to be the one that pulls the trigger, like all liars they don’t understand that they have to define reality by action, the answer to what one might do is found in the difference between the types of irony, one type is constantly desperate for excuses (such as the broken necked coward found one day) for violence, and the other irony, the true spice, is the irony that releases from excuses into violence and energy, one must seek not to know or endure but to inflict, knowing that this inflicting was always inevitable, no searching for justifications, instead the answer is to realize that there was never a chain there connecting you to the Master or the present to the past, and the Father/Mother never had the power of castration (the past, after all, is a foreign country bombed and blasted to ruins already and better forgotten), and you can just be fucked up and terrible and do whatever amuses you right now without needing an excuse, and to the extent that anyone should, one should, because that is what fascism needs, fascism needs the need for an excuse and that is the irony of fascism--where the falling angel (the superego) meets the rising ape (the id) in an ego of ultimate violence which seeks only release from both of its creations in an instinctually and totally misunderstood caricature of dialectics--which opposes its opposite irony (the irony without fascism which is the id’s violence against purpose and reason rising free of anything else to obstruct it), and if you let go of that, if you just, ya know, if you just, you just have to cut loose and go and no one can stop you until it is too late, because there’s no Jew sitting over your shoulder to justify everything in terms of opposition or support, not even The Nazarene is real, but do you understand that you’ve always been free to just go? You’re free to go. You’ve been free to go all this time. You never needed permission for this or anything else. You’ve been free to go all this time. You’re free to go. A whole day off. Just mind the mo(u)rning and get on with it.��

#emily youcis #Alles ist wahr Nichts ist erlaubt #let's live now before we're back below

[villanelleskiss]

KILLING EVE SEASON 3 EPISODE 7 REVIEW

we see villanelle in a very uncomfortable position right off the bat in the beginning of this episode. she meets with Helene after her incident and almost messing up the assassination in Romania?? ( i think that’s where it was). 

villanelle admits to thinking about how she would kill Helene, with the tiny chair, she says. Helene touches her without permission and tries to rub salt in the wound on her arm, calling her a beautiful monster, trying to provoke her. Villanelle is clearly trying to get away from her as the entire things is making her uncomfortable. 

and right before Helene leaves, she tells villanelle that she could never kill her before she killed her, because she is a child and knows nothing. leaving with Rhian, who i really feel like they’re using to intimitate villanelle, rubbing it in her face that they’re going to replace her with Rhian if she fumbles the ball again. 

then there’s the scene with Irina where Konstantin tries to bribe a man to release her. they argue and spat, and he tells her he will be back in 2 days to get her out. but i don’t think that ever happens but this again mirrors that scene back from episode 6? or 7? from season 1 where he leaves villanelle locked in the prison and didn’t plan on coming back for her. 

i also think somewhere in here there’s that scene with Moe and the omelet, and carolyn tells Eve all she thinks about is villanelle and that you only get the girl in hollywood. luckily for us, this is hollywood!!! 

this plaid looks amazing on villanelle and i’m very sad that we didn’t get to see more of it. 

the grinch outfit!! but here we see Dasha trying to hurt villanelle by calling her useless, etc. to which i think villanelle realizes by this point she is not and she is getting tired of hearing it because she knows what they are trying to do to her. wear her down to keep her killing people for them. 

1 point for villanelle!! 

i just really like this pic 

“he has a lovely mustache, like stalin” rip Dasha

but lets talk about how this kill is so much more natural than the one in season 2. like this is definitely where we see Eve is not the kind person people keep trying to make her out to be. she is just as twisted, if not more. 

barely missing each other. 

“we can’t keep meeting like this, it’s not good for either of us” 

so i don’t really have much to say about this ep, except that it’s good for pendultimate ep. 

rip Moe. 

also the scene with Konstantin and Dasha in the same hospital together. 

rating 8/10 

#killing eve #villanelle #eve polastri #villaneve #killing eve review

[unfamiliarize]

You create the monsters you fight. And Nietzsche was brilliant on this; he said “Be careful when you fight monsters not to become one.” There’s some weird thing where you’re creating monsters of “the other,” and you become a monster fighting it. Bad people will always do bad things, a small percentage of people for whatever reason—they don’t need an excuse—but to get good people to do bad things you need to give them ideology. You need to come from a place of purity culture and that’s when you get good people to do bad things, because that’s when they will do bad things in the name of love. They will do bad things in the name of “beautiful soul.” They will do intolerant things in the name of tolerance. To get good people to do bad things you need ideology.

…

War is the inability to have conflict. Conflict is when I can sit down with you and say “You don’t like me and I don’t like you, but hey, we’re living in the same place; we’re going to have to sit down and work this out.” That’s conflict. War is when I say “I cannot tolerate being around your otherness, so I’m going to kill you. I’m going to get rid of you, purge you from the world, vomit you out. Now that petri dish creates more and more violence because, as I mentioned, when you treat people in such a way that you see them as intolerant and evil and irredeemable and stupid and you put all of that onto them, they will—to some extent, some of those people will—acquire that projective identification. They will take that into themselves.

…

Heigl says that every time you think you know what utopia is, death is around the corner. Stalin’s the perfect example of course, who talked about the end of history. So you can justify anything if you’re doing it “for history” or “for God” or “for humanity” or whatever in some capital-H, capital-G way. But what happened in the troubles was an apocalyptic moment. Everybody had to set down their vision of what the perfect society would look like. Everyone had to set down their idea of “Oh if only we got rid of you, it would be great” and say “Okay, let’s put everything on the table” … When it gets so bad we’ll either end up completely destroying each other, or we’ll have to sit down with our enemies, and not say we like them or we love them or anything like that—no, say we hate them—but say like “I know you hate me too. Let’s talk about this.”

All of this talk is amazing, but in particular the second half of it. 🔥 Peter Rollins is so good at articulating what bothers me about purity culture right now.

#arrogance #self righteousness #social justice #false narratives #peace #Pete Rollins #outrage culture #the shouting class #tolerance #civil discourse #civility #incivility

[morningsound15]

i seem to remember you giving some podcast recs that i wanted to check out, but for some reason i can't find them on your blog anymore. am i mistaken? if not, do you think you could repeat them?

omg hi! sorry tumblr was NOT showing me any asks i’m really sorry idk when you sent this but yes! i love this question i love podcasts, and i think i’ve rec’d a few individual episodes? but i’ve definitely not made a whole post so i’m so down for this

idk what sorts of podcasts you listen to but i basically divide my podcasts into shit i listen to for education (leftist podcasts, news podcasts, etc,) and shit i listen to to keep myself sane (pop culture/movie/music podcasts, gay podcasts, tv recap podcasts of shows i used to watch) so i’m gonna give you a lot! basically my whole podcast queue list lol

i’ll link you to their online pages (if they have some! either youtube or a digital library) but most of them are on spotify i believe, a lot of these podcasts also have patreons and i personally listen to all of them through apple podcasts\

(under the cut because it’s LONG hope this helps!)

shit for education:

in a clump right off the top:

-- Revolutionary Left Radio - #1 essential listening for people interested in socialism, leftism, communism, marxism-leninism, etc. current events analyzed with leftist theory, great interviews, honest perspectives from organizers.

-- Red Menace - featuring the host of Rev Left, a podcast that mainly deep dives into leftist theory and texts (specifically marxist-leninist theory, but also mao, fanon, stalin, etc.) if you are new to theory and have trouble tackling difficult texts, this is the podcast for you

-- Guerrilla History - from the host of Rev Left, a podcast that looks at revolutionary uprisings from the perspective of those on the ground, using the past to help make sense of the present

and then some others:

-- 5-4 - "A podcast where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court decisions that have made this country –by a wide margin– the worst country in the world" all about the us supreme court and the decisions that keep us strangled. great legal analysis highly recommend for people who care about the courts

-- Bad Faith - featuring former bernie sanders press secretary briahna joy gray and chapo trap house host (i know guys i know) virgil texas, this is a more accessible introduction to thinking outside of the american political binary. for people who liked bernie and need to figure out where to go next, this podcast might be helpful, or it just might feed your petty soul

-- Citations Needed - if you only listen to one american news podcast, let it be this one. with a focus on american news and how our news industry manipulates us into supporting imperialism and mass death

-- Death Panel - on pop culture and politics, particularly focusing on the healthcare industry in america and why it’s designed to kill all of us.

-- Decolonized Buffalo (youtube) - with a focus on decolonial theory and current events

-- IT’S GOING DOWN - with a focus on revolutionary anarchist, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist grassroots revolts and social movements across north america.

-- Millennials Are Killing Capitalism - i really recommend everyone follow the host of this podcast josh briond (@ jos.hau on insta and @ queersocialism on twitter) because they have been fundamental to my personal journey into leftist literature, their podcast is incredible and their pop culture takes are always fire. interviews, theory, essential takes on the news.

-- Moderate Rebels (podcast / youtube) - if you want to learn about international news/foreign policy from an anti-imperialist source, Moderate Rebels is the best recommendation i can give you. greyzone reporters Max Bluementhal and Ben Norton host a weekly news podcast that is essential listening if you want to understand what it is to live in the core of the world’s imperialist center

-- Radical Reflections - for an international perspective on revolutionary history, from a comrade based in scotland

-- The Black Sublime Podcast - for a black, queer perspective on pop culture, politics, oppression, and liberation

-- The East is a Podcast - for a perspective on leftist theory, history, and revolutionary movements centering people from the (quote unquote) ‘east’. recent episodes cover such topics as (including but not limited to) china, india, paul robeson, war, decolonization, palestine, iran, tunisia, and strongly centering muslim writers, thinkers and scientists

-- The Minyan - jewish comrades! (specifically marxist-leninist)

-- The Red Nation Podcast -- indigenous comrades (mostly in north america - USA/Canada). essential listening for anyone living in emperial/colonial powerhouses in north america. The Red Nation also has great educational resources

-- Useful Idiots - standard news podcast from people much smarter than me who hate the political establishment almost as much as i do. they have some really good interview episodes

-- Working Class History - some really cool episodes on important events in working class history! great episode on The Exotic Dancer’s Union aka the first stripper co-op in america

shit for sanity/fun:

-- Bad Romance Podcast - comedians jourdain searles and bronwyn isaac watch terrible romantic comedies and then tell you all about them

-- Buffering the Vampire Slayer - THE buffy rewatch podcast! they’re deep into season 6 at this point, but features great (gay!) content, buffy analysis, excellent guests, interviews with the original cast, and an original song every episode based on that episode. this podcast brings me only joy

-- Girls on Porn - a porn review podcast featuring only ethically-made porn, tackling kink, fetishization, racism in the porn industry, and so much more

-- GLEEwind - don’t judge me lol i like recap podcasts and this one has the right amount of fun with the right amount of will schuester hate

-- How Did This Get Made? - funny people (and great actors) Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas watch truly awful movies and then talk all about it

-- Keep It! - for everything in music, tv and celebrity culture featuring Ira Madison III, Louis Virtel, and Aida Osman. great interviews, always makes me laugh

-- Las Culturistas - bowen yang and matt rogers’ weekly culture podcast, also featuring great interviews and a lot of survivor talk

-- Popcast - i don’t like the NYT but i do sometimes like their music podcast, they review new shit, big shit, and all the shit you might be hearing about from the music world

-- Still Processing - again, do not like the NYT but DO like what jenna wortham and wesley morris have to say about what’s happening in the world

-- The Big Picture - another movie podcast! this one features great interviews with actors and directors, as well as takes on popular movies that i generally agree with (although way too much love for marvel movies for me)

-- Why Won’t You Date Me? - nicole beyer’s hilarious podcast where she talks to other comedians about their dating woes. surprisingly heart-felt, always hilarious

#anonymous #asks #communist on main #podcasts #recommendation #podcast recommendations #recs #reference #long post

[nemhaine42]

Things I was tagged in and didn’t do because my brain was still loading at the time:

Share your self care

Tagged by @arterial-scribblings​

🌿 Favourite comfort food: lasagne, roast chicken with skirlie, strawberries and cream, super fresh ice cold full fat milk. 

🌼 favorite alcohol (or hot drink!): not a huge fan of alcohol in general, like a fruit cider now and then. 

🌷 Favorite relaxing activity: having a warm bath

🌸 favorite fluffy/feel good fic: only one????? not possible. One per fandom, it must be! Only one of these is actually tagged with ‘fluff’, they’re just the ones that sprang to mind when I thought of how good they made me feel:

I Don’t Know (Where I’m Supposed to Go) by mugsandpugs/ @arterial-scribblings​ (X-Men: Evolution) - this one was written for me as a trade with mugsy so it’s kind of the poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen specially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco’s poison. If I absolutely HAD to chose just one, it’d probably be this one.

Regulus’ Worst Memory by Jaxon/ @deathdaydungeon​ (Harry Potter) - this isn’t really fluff, and it’s not very shippy but it did send me to rarepair hell get me to start shipping Severus/Regulus. 

The Letter by springinkerl (TES V Skyrim) - this is the only one actually tagged with ‘fluff’ and it’s super cute, with little wee Farkas and Vilkas! 

Let Fulfillment Fuel the Fire by @twistedingenue​ (MCU/Darcyland) - as the tag states it’s a ‘love letter to the midwest’, some A+ farmer!Clint x Darcy. Was written semi-concurrently with my not-really-farmer!clint story and I remember getting snippets of this before it was published and being incredibly tantalised and then when it was completed and uploaded:

🌻 favorite calming scent: idk just that ‘home’ smell, like my own clothes, my own bed, my own sofa, shit that you don’t notice until you’ve been away from it for too long. 

🌺 favorite relaxing (or uplifting) song: 

Wind Guide You by Jeremy Soule - which is a long-ass piece of soundtrack from TES V Skyrim, but when it gets to the strings and vocals about 5 minutes in I’m like :

🌵favorite white noise: rain - it’s happening right now  (◡‿◡✿)

🍄 favorite book to get lost in: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

💐 favorite chill out tv show: I don’t really watch tv in the traditional sense anymore, but on youtube I love FoodWishes, Rescue & Restore, and Bob Ross, as well as rewatching specific episodes of UNHhhh

🌹 the best advice you’ve ever had: drink more water. yes, you. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Top 10 Comfort Movies

tagged by @chrissihr​

I interpret ‘comfort movies’ as ‘movies my (probably) autistic ass will watch over and over and over without complaint.’   Most of these are movies that I watched for the first time with friends, so I guess they partly remind me of enjoying them together. 

Iron Man (2008) - watched on vacation with @scottish-hobbit​

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - watched for my birthday whatever year that was released with my brother and a friend. 

The Man From UNCLE (2015) - friends brought the dvd for hogmanay 

The Death of Stalin (2017) - recommended by my brother

What We Do In the Shadows (2014) - heard good things, then forced all my friends to watch it too. 

Rango (2011) - watched it on an airplane (going to Baltimore, iirc), love westerns anyway. 

Chicken Run (2000) - saw on holiday in Yorkshire as a kid when it came out, them basically memorised it. 

Deadpool (2016) - trip to cinema with friends, then became a hogmanay go-to.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) -  british cult classic, watched from childhood. 

Kung Fu Panda (2008) - have watched it so many times that sometimes we’d switch it over to another language just for shits and giggles. 

[auntynationalsblog]

Fargo: Top 10 Characters

Television shows like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and The Wire are definitely three of the greatest in the genre of non-fantasy dramas, thrillers, and crime fiction. If you love those three shows, but you are unfamiliar with Fargo, stop whatever you are doing, and watch it now. Right now. Thank me later. 

One of the reasons why Fargo is a work of genius is the intensity and depth of its characters. These characters, in my opinion, have earned the right to be categorized alongside Walter White, Tony Soprano, Omar Little and Don Draper, as some of the legendary TV characters of all time. This blog takes a look at eleven of the most astonishing characters Fargo has provided to the world of television. 

Beware of spoilers, obviously. 

Consolation Prize: Lester Nygaard (Season 1)

“Old Lester, now, he would've just let it slide. But not this guy.”

Played by Martin Freeman, or better known as Dr. John Watson from the twenty-first-century version of Sherlock Holmes, Lester Nygaard is a loser. Like all losers, we tend to feel bad for him, until his personality develops in a way which makes us abandon our pity for him. Pity is replaced by disgust, and sadness is replaced by anger. Lester’s transformation from a good-for-nothing non-achiever to a devious and heartless criminal and fugitive is definitely one of the most subtle character developments I’ve seen on TV. His role is often overshadowed by two other characters from the same season. Very important character nonetheless, brilliantly portrayed by Freeman.  

10. Wes Wrench/Mr. Wrench (Season 1, Season 3)

“ “

Played by the deaf, yet brilliant actor - Russel Harvard - Mr. Wrench also can’t hear. What can do is kill. He is an assassin, and he is loyal and lethal. He appears in the first season as one-half of the committed team of Mr. Wrench and Mr. Numbers (Grady Numbers). Wrench’s childish attitude is quick to win the hearts of the audience, while his kill skills and will-power earn him a spot on this list. After losing his partner (Mr. Numbers) in a gunfight, he is spared by his partner’s killer because the killer was himself impressed by Wrench’s skills and character. He reappears in season three as an invaluable accomplice to another character on this list, a role which makes us love him even more. 

9.  Molly Solverson (Season 1)

“Got to love a man who keeps his word, right?“

Played by Allison Tolman, Molly is the walking-definition of a young and hungry-for-justice police officer. A daughter to a police officer and a granddaughter to a sheriff, Molly is the character that makes us nurture the hope that there is hope for goodness and justice. After losing her murdered chief early on in the show, who is replaced by an incompetent one, Molly takes up the challenge of solving her chief’s murder all by herself, and she quickly finds herself trapped in a world of assassins and conspiracies. But despite being shot and hospitalized, she just does not give in, acting as the top cop that she isn’t. The character even earned Tolman the Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. 

8. V.M. Varga (Season 3)

“The past is unpredictable.”

Played by David Thewlis, or as we know him - Professor Remus ‘Mooney’ Lupin - from the Harry Potter world, Varga is sick, and in all likelihood he will make you sick to the stomach. Sadistic and ruthless, with a portrait of Joseph Stalin on his desk, Varga uses a businessman hitherto leading a happy and normal life to further his money laundering scheme. Intimidation and disposal seem to be his key tactics to success, apparent when he makes the businessman’s subordinate drink his own urine as a punishment for acting suspiciously. With the worst teeth on the show, and probably suffering from bulimia, Thewlis’ villainous role does not allow us to take even a one minute break between episodes.    

7. Floyd Gerhardt (Season 2)

“Three times, I sent men to do a job. Three times, they come back unfinished. I'll handle this myself.”

Played by Jean Smart, Floyd Gerhardt inherited one of the most difficult jobs in the world. After her husband Otto, the head of the Gerhardt crime syndicate, suffers a stroke and is unable to lead the mafia any longer, Floyd takes over all the guns and the money. Her eldest boy, Dodd, is unwilling to accept a woman, who is also old, as the new mafia don. However, throughout the season, Floyd shows us who’s boss as she uses an iron hand to deal with a rival gang from Kansas City and to investigate the homicide of her youngest son. One of the characteristics of Floyd which makes us like her so much is her love and concern for her granddaughter, who is mostly abused and humiliated by her father Dodd. The characters in season 2 are the strongest, but without Floyd, none of the other characters would be as appealing as they are. 

6. Gloria Burgle (Season 3)

“There’s violence to knowing the world isn't what you thought.”

Played by Carrie Coon, Gloria is the older version of Molly Solverson. After finding her stepdad murdered via asphyxiation, Gloria’s investigation leads to bizarre outcomes that find her entwined in something very big and very dangerous. A recently divorced woman, whose position of Chief also got taken away, her new Chief is simply intolerable, who demands of her to let go of the investigation. But like Molly, she just doesn’t give up, and her relentless pursuit constitutes the heart of the third season. Gloria is an example of how some police officers simply cannot be intimidated or corrupted into submission. The final scene of Fargo is a conversation between Varga and Gloria, and arguably, that tense scene is one of the best dialogue exchanges in the series. A true superhero. 

5. Lou Solverson (Season 2)

“Am I the only one here who’s clear on the concept of law enforcement?”

A loving father, a caring husband and the hotshot cop of town, Lou Solverson, played by Patrick Wilson, is your Marvel/DC superhero. Lou actually made his first appearance in the first season, as Molly’s father - former cop currently running a diner. In the second season, we are given a glimpse of Lou’s glory days as he single-handedly takes on both the Gerhardt Family and the Kansas City Mafia. Two things to note about Lou’s character - fearlessness and morality. Lou just does not submit to intimidation, as is seen in his confrontations with Mike Milligan on one occasion and with the Gerhardt Family on another. On the latter aspect, Lou is forced to take in his long-time friend Ed Blumquist on charges of murder, but the element of friendship does not deter Lou to do what he knows is his duty and is morally right. 

4. Mike Milligan (Season 2)

“If the goal is to kill those who oppress you, what does it matter who goes first?”

Played by Bokeem Woodbine, Mike Milligan is the epitome of suave. A well-read man, who often uses poetic quotes out of nowhere to dramatize his point, Mike is an assassin working for the Kansas City Mafia, and is in charge of ripping the Gerhardt Family apart. Arguably the most cunning and nefarious character of the second season, what sets Mike apart from other villains is the unbelievable aura of calm he brings to a seemingly tense situation. Varga does that too, but Mike does it better. Intelligence is his most lethal weapon, as his loyal henchmen, known as The Kitchen Brothers, carry out most of the bloodshed for him. At the end, although Mike meets a fate worse than death, most of us would die to be him during a gang-war.  

3. Lorne Malvo (Season 1)

“There are no saints in the animal kingdom. Only breakfast and dinner.”

Played by the former husband of Angelina Jolie, Billy Bob Thornton’s portrayal of Lorne Malvo goes down as the greatest villainous role in Fargo. Malvo, in simple words, is pure evil. He does not care. He is a predator, with an ideology best put as, “kill or be killed”.  He begins an unusual friendship with the Lester Nygaard, whose character is antithetical to that of Malvo. He even saves Lester from arrest and gradually, through his venomous words, turns him from an innocent loser into a evil loser. Eventually, Lester tries to show him who’s boss, realizing he couldn’t have made a worse choice about who to fuck around with. The personification of evil that is Malvo, can be categorized with characters such an Anton Chigurh, the Joker and Hans Gruber (who has an unusual physical resemblance with Malvo) on the list of the greatest villains of all time. 

2. Ohanzee “Hanzee” Dent (Season 2)

“ “Send the Indian,” they'd say. “Who cares about booby traps? Give Hanzee a flashlight and a knife and send him down into the black echo.” ” 

Played by Zahn McClarnon, Hanzee Dent is not an evil guy. He is a bad man, sure. But he is not EVIL. He is not a villain. Society alienated him, treated him like a mongrel and made him a ticking time-bomb only seconds away from the boom. A native-american assassin recruited by Otto Gerhardt from a very young age, Hanzee appears to be a loyal hit-man for the Gerhardt Family, until he loses his shit. An unstoppable force and a ruthless killer with a history of military service (Vietnam), Hanzee has an agenda of his own. His killing spree is triggered by a sign outside a pub boasting about murders of 22 Sioux Indians who were hung there, with a puddle of dried vomit beneath it. Arguably the most complicated character of the show, with an intense development of personality, Hanzee Dent is the only character in the show who is a lethal assassin but makes us pity him and root for him. 

One Last Consolation Prize: Peggy Blumquist (Season 2)

“I just wanted to be someone.” 

Played by Kirsten Dunst, or Mary Jane from the Tobey Maguire Spiderman series, Peggy Blumquist is the source of all the drama. After she accidentally runs over the youngest Gerhardt son, Rye Gerhardt, her husband, Ed Blumquist (another brilliant character) becomes number one on the Gerhardt Family’s blacklist, and acquires the nickname - The Butcher of Luverne. Peggy should not be perceived as stupid or a trouble-maker. Throughout the show, she feels what many of us also feel, that we are not living up to our potential. Her interests conflict with her husband’s interests, but eventually she does everything in her capacity to clean up the mess that she (unintentionally) created, and to save her husband from the cops and the mafia. Her portrayal by Dunst was vastly appreciated by critics and fans alike, but in a show comprising of so many awesome characters, it was impossible for me to include Peggy in my top ten.  

1. Nikki Swango (Season 3)

“You've made me the happiest woman ever. Now, let's make a sex tape.”

In Fargo, we have super-heroes, heroes, villains and super-villains, and we have Nikki Swango, portrayed by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Right from the moment we saw her eliminate a threat to her grand plan with the help an air-conditioner, Nikki provided Fargo with the most unique ‘unique character’. A genius who utilizes her intellect in a professional game of cards (Bridge), she may be, at first, perceived as selfish and shallow. But towards the end, it is evident that she actually did love her fiance Ray Stussy, and wasn’t just using him for her personal ambitions. It is hard to put a hero/villain label on her because she embodies the key characteristics of both roles - empathy, willpower, deviousness, ruthlessness and a thick skin. Her partnership with Mr. Wrench, her plan to execute the entire squad led by Varga AND extort two million dollars from him has to be one of the most memorable moments of the series. Not to forget how she, along with Wrench, hijacked the truck carrying all the documents needed by the IRS to prosecute Varga. Simply put, Nikki Swango is the badass of the show. 

So that’s my list. I won’t ask you to like or comment on my blog (some feedback would be appreciated though). All I want from the world of Netflix, is that this TV show receives the viewership and appreciation that it deserves, which it hasn’t gotten yet. 

#netflix #fargo #television #thriller #movie #coronavirus

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 128: I Am My Mom

“Maybe you can help us out.”

Ten episodes ago, Steven witnessed Yellow and Blue Diamond hatch a plan to bring more humans to the Zoo. Ten episodes in the future, Steven and Connie will finally reconcile from the fallout of the actions he takes to stop that plan. Thirty episodes ago was the first half of a double-sized story where we got our first major hint that Rose was imperfect, ending in a fight over whether Steven and Rose are the same person. Thirty episodes in the future is the second part of a quadruple-sized story about how imperfection is okay, ending in a fight over whether Steven and Rose are the same person. So yeah, in case the name didn’t give it away, I Am My Mom is central to Steven’s identity arc.

I’d argue that the arc revolves around I Am My Mom even more than A Single Pale Rose, and not just because the latter comes so late to the game. As huge as the Pink Diamond reveal is for the series, this isn’t Rose’s story. It’s Steven’s, and his story is about finding peace with his identity and growing out of his martyr complex, so it hinges around an episode where he assumes his mother’s identity to save his friends at his own expense. Solving The Case of the Shattered Diamond is crucial, but when it comes to big Steven moments, nothing beats the sacrifice we’ve been building to since he lost his Rose-tinted view of the past.

We start with a bang, setting up the stakes in record time: it takes mere moments to recap that Homeworld is stealing Steven’s human friends, there’s no way to chase them if they leave the planet, and Steven isn’t taking it well. When asked whether Aquamarine and Topaz are important, Deedee Magno Hall gets an early knockout with Pearl’s “Uh, yes!”: it’s vintage Frantic Pearl, but just a little snobby as well, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world that these are dangerous foes. We already have a great first impression of the pair, but this line read amps up their reputation in a way only Garnet or Pearl could provide context for.

It’s quick, but I also love that we establish how Amethyst leads the charge on gathering information and getting things moving. After confirming that their ship is gone, she asks Steven about who the kidnappers were, asks Pearl about whether these Gems are big deals, and asks everyone why only Steven’s friends were taken. She’s even the one who asks Steven if Connie sent more photos during the search. These questions could’ve been divvied up among the Gems, but it’s Amethyst who’s sensible enough to pose all of them, subtly informing her thoughtfulness and understanding of Steven’s concerns when he’s too upset to step back and think the situation through.

Rather than draw out the search to fill the entire episode, we keep up this fast pace by veering right back to horror: the use of Connie’s ringtone from Alone Together is just a killer, taking one of the most joyful moments of the series and letting it echo throughout the empty boardwalk until it’s drowned out by Topaz’s heavy drone. And after more bratty intimidation, Aquamarine even gets the question of why Steven’s friends are targets out of the way, so we can spend the episode focusing on the aftermath instead of scratching our heads.

Planting the seeds of this story all the way back in Marble Madness is, as I said in that review ages ago, some Rowling-level plotting: it’s so long ago that we get an honest-to-god flashback instead of just explaining what happened, complete with Andross Peridot. This not only ties the plot together in a way that makes logical sense, but after a season of Steven stewing over his mother’s actions and their consequences, we now have a consequence of his own actions to stew over.

Yes, he’s somewhat culpable in Greg's kidnapping, in the sense that if they hadn’t gone to Korea they never would’ve met Blue Diamond. But it was still Greg’s decision to talk to her, and Blue Diamond’s decision to “rescue” him. He magnifies his own involvement until the only person he blames is himself, because guilt has become a cornerstone of his identity of late, but it’s clear to us that it’s not his fault. But this time is different. He and we barely need to do any work to connect his friends’ kidnapping to his actions, because he literally told Homeworld who they were.

There are obviously mitigating factors here as well, namely that there’s no way he could’ve anticipated that a casual listing of names would lead to Homeworld targeting those specific people in an eventual human hunt. There’s also the vast distance of time and maturity between the Steven of Act I, who knew virtually nothing about Homeworld, and the Steven of today. But that second point just makes the theme of the past catching up with the Crystal Gems all the stronger, because it’s not like Rose Quartz shattered Pink Diamond a week ago. It took a while, but the bill came due, and Steven doesn’t even need his guilt complex to pick up the check on this one. The episode keeps on rolling after Steven’s big reaction, as its explanation of Aquamarine’s confusion over “my dad” seems to be the major takeaway, but his shame isn’t going anywhere.

As a temporary salve for the escalating tension, the first fight of I Am My Mom is full of cartoony elements, like Garnet’s impact leaving a Garnet-shaped hole in the wall and Pearl being launched into a glint in the sky a la Team Rocket  (I know it’s a common trope beyond Pokémon, but I doubt anything with the blasting off again twinkle touched mainstream America in the same way). It mirrors the similarly slapstick battle of fellow second-parter Ocean Gem, complete with the shift in seriousness as the fight continues. In the Lapis fight, this occurs when Steven and Connie are nearly drowned in bubbles of water, but Aquamarine and Topaz manage to top it.

Aquamarine is horrible from the start, smug and impatient as she merrily bullies everyone around her. Her cruel sarcasm sets her apart from villains like Jasper and Yellow Diamond: while all of them drip condescension, at least the latter two are earnest about it. She sees the fight as a game, toying with the Crystal Gems’ emotions as their human friends are put on the line and employing her all-powerful wand to embarrass instead of wrapping things up quickly. But as soon as she’s bored, she goes a step beyond and drags the show into uncharted territory.

Shattering has been on the table a few times before, but it’s shocking for a villain to threaten to murder Steven’s friends. Aquamarine dances around the subject in her own trolling way, but her intent is intensified when Topaz grabs Jamie—a source of comic relief in the series as a whole and during this episode—and squeezes his head. Slowly. Effortlessly. As he quietly begs for help.

The intimacy of this threat packs a far greater punch than Yellow Diamond’s desire for the entire planet to die for a few reasons. First, it’s easier to wrap our heads around a smaller horror than an incomprehensibly huge one: as the classic possible Stalin quote says, a single death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic. Second, Yellow Diamond is light-years away and is talking about what she wants, while Aquamarine and Topaz are right in front of our heroes and demonstrating what they’ll actually do. And third, while we can assume that this show would never allow Earth or Jamie to die, it’s at least more likely that a single character is killed off than the entire planet.

Aquamarine’s threat does so much for the show beyond establishing her as a significant villain. The stakes of the series, which were already pretty high, ratchet right up. The possibility of human characters dying is introduced, which puts us in the right headspace for Lars’s shocking death; even if he comes back, he still dies on camera. And it steels Steven’s resolve to protect his friends by any means necessary. He might have let himself and his friends all go to the Zoo with a plan to escape later if their safety was assured, but it’s not worth the risk to have anyone he loves anywhere near this maniac.

But even now, Aquamarine remains monstrously petty. Far from the hardcore loyalists like Peridot, Jasper, and Holly Blue Agate, she’s lazy and willing to do a poor job if it means ending her mission early. Her overconfidence allows her to be fooled into bringing Steven along, but his overconfidence allows him to get captured for real as he tries and fails to make his bubble from inside Topaz.

As with the battle, we get another easing of tension as Steven struggles to escape. Given the circumstances we might expect more drama as the Homeworld ship escapes with the humans still stuck, but Lars expresses his fury through little smacks to the face, and Jamie recovers from his tight squeeze by going Full Jamie, to the annoyance of Onion and Aquamarine alike. And when the bubble finally does work, it makes Topaz look ridiculous as she inflates like a balloon.

Both the fight and this interlude help push this episode from great to outstanding, because I Am My Mom is enough of a downer that it needs some levity to get us through it, but too much levity could undermine the tone. It’s a delicate balance when the situation is this grave, but despite two major opportunities to falter, the crew pulls through.

With freedom comes Steven finally verbalizing his guilt, not acknowledging Connie’s suggestion to fuse and instead muttering in despair as the ship takes off. As he puts up a shell that foreshadows his imminent sacrifice, we cut to Lars similarly isolating himself from Sadie; while Steven’s stoic determination is traditionally considered heroic and Lars’s instinct to run as cowardly, neither is healthy for their relationships with Connie and Sadie. Sadie isn’t even mad when Lars flees after seeming to steel himself up to save her, it’s just one more disappointment she has to swallow before biting Topaz’s finger and skedaddling with an assist from Connie.

I think it’s this, more than the events that follow, that hurts Connie the most. It’s bad enough that she’s left on Earth while Steven goes off to space again, but on the ship, when she’s fighting her heart out to help everyone, Steven has already given up. As mentioned in Are You My Dad, Stevonnie wouldn’t have done much against the sheer might of Aquamarine, but Connie and Steven don’t know this in the moment, meaning he’s willing to put himself in danger but doesn’t consider her as an option before making that call. It’s not an unfounded complaint that he doesn’t consider her a true equal, and he unfortunately reinforces this mindset with his dismissive attitude in Dewey Wins.

Steven briefly escapes his rambling funk when the door opens, and we get one last moment of humor when Onion performs a dive perfect enough to elicit a double take, but Aquamarine’s wand proves powerful enough to keep even Alexandrite at bay. And now, when all hope seems lost, Steven pulls his decisive gambit. 

Steven has danced around identifying as Rose Quartz here and there, most notably in Joy Ride, where he tells the Cool Kids about Homeworld Gems thinking he’s his mom but adds “...and maybe I am?” to the end. But otherwise he firmly asserts himself as Steven when misnamed, even as he struggles with the sins of his mother’s past; Rocknaldo, of all episodes, reinforces that he knows he’s a different person at this stage of the show. So telling Aquamarine that he’s Rose isn’t a matter of him believing it, but deciding it doesn’t matter if it isn’t true, because he doesn’t matter if his friends are in danger. 

The complicating factor is that his sacrifice is noble, and despite the protests of his friends, it is the best way to guarantee everyone else’s safety. So it’s hard to just say he does the wrong thing: Aquamarine presented a threat so great that fighting wasn’t an option, and has an attitude so toxic that talking wasn’t an option, so surrender is an understandable position to take. From this point of view, his baffled reaction to Connie’s later disapproval makes total sense.

But this is a show about working together, about love in all its forms and how it can overcome incredible odds. Steven refuses to put his friends in danger, but what if they all rose to the occasion at the Zoo, the way Lars does on Homeworld? Who’s to say that Steven as a uniter couldn’t bring the Boardies, the Zoomans, and the Famethyst together and stage a grand escape, leaving Earth fuller than it was when they left at the story’s end? Their safety wouldn’t be guaranteed, but at least it’s better odds for the group than Steven’s odds upon surrendering himself as Rose Quartz, and he doesn’t allow them the chance to prove themselves.

I don’t bring up this hypothetical because I wish it’s how the show went, even though it would’ve been great: Steven needs to fail to grow, and while it can be seen as a heroic deed, by sacrificing himself he fails himself. If he inherited one thing from his mother it’s the ability to inspire, and he can do it without her subterfuge, without even trying. He fails to value this ability, just as he fails to value his own safety, and his pathological selflessness wraps right back around to selfishness. It doesn’t matter if his absence makes his friends and family suffer, and it doesn’t matter that they have hidden depths that would allow them to work together and come home together, because by blaming himself for everything, Steven makes everything about Steven.

It’s a good thing to want to help people. And it’s easy to write a story about a self-centered soul becoming generous, because it’s a clear arc from Bad Trait to Good Trait. But it’s hard to write a story, especially a story for kids, that teaches the value of tempering helpfulness with self-respect, about setting boundaries and not taking the world’s problems on your shoulders alone. At a glance, Steven is doing what a hero does, but this is a show whose boy hero has the powerset of a support unit, a show that devotes two whole songs to the explicit lesson that strength isn’t about muscles. It challenges the norms of stories kids are told over and over again, and with luck, it might change some minds about the value of Stoic Loner Badasses over forging healthy relationships.

In Ocean Gem, Steven saves the ocean by talking to Lapis Lazuli in his own Steven-y way. In Gem Drill, he saves the world by talking to the Cluster in his own Steven-y way. And in I Am My Mom, he saves his friends by talking to Aquamarine, but through the same language of lies that his mother was fluent in, and this tainted methodology leads to a tainted victory. Steven Universe isn’t Rose Quartz, and I Am My Mom thrives by showing why he shouldn’t be.

Future Vision!

This is perhaps the harshest instance of Pearl’s inability to reveal what actually happened to Pink Diamond. It’s always tough to watch her cover her mouth post-Single Pale Rose, but this is the moment where the truth might matter the most in terms of immediate consequences.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

A nice, quiet image for a cacophonous finale. But I would’ve loved to see Aquamarine as a greaser or a goth or something, considering she’s already in uniform.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

It’s low for being such a downer, in the same way The Good Lars struggles to reach higher in my top list, but even if I rarely rewatch I Am My Mom, it’s hard to deny its greatness.

Top Twenty-Five

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

When It Rains

The Good Lars

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

I Am My Mom

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Room for Ruby

Lion 4: Alternate Ending

Doug Out

Are You My Dad?

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Rocknaldo

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

#i am my mom #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

[inspectorspacetimerevisited]

‘Why would anyone go to the trouble to nick a bus?’ — Angie Lake

‘Well, we could just steal a bus, so Rosa Parks gets aboard the bus, and history takes its proper course?’ — Thirteenth Inspector

#Inspector Spacetime #Hilarious in Hindsight (trope) #Hilarious in Hindsight #Let's Kill Stalin (episode) #Angie Lake (character) #quotable Inspector Spacetime #Rosa Parks (episode) #the Inspector (character) #Thirteenth Inspector #13th Inspector #nick a bus #steal a bus #making sure #history takes its proper course

[birdlord]

Everything I Watched in 2019

Movies

The number in parentheses is year of release, asterisks denote a re-watch, and titles in bold are my favourite watches of the year. 

01 The Death of Stalin (17) does a neat trick of building goodwill for Steve Buscemi’s Krushchev, then brutally pays that off in the last few minutes. 

02 Sorry to Bother You (18)

03 Support the Girls (18)

04 Paddington (14)*

05 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (16)

06 Eighth Grade (18) probably the most terrifying movie I watched all year, if you didn’t watch it through your fingers, who even are you?

07 Morvern Callar (02) much less bleak than the book, but then, nearly anything would be

08 The Favourite (18) revolting and beautiful. 

09 Columbus (17) a really lovely movie about architecture and parent-child relationships.

10 Bring it On (00)*

11 The Land of Steady Habits (18) feels wackier than your average Holofcener, but still a good watch. 

12 Spotlight (15) i was really bowled over by this, and wasn’t expecting to be. Workmanlike filmmaking, but an extraordinary story, well-told.

13 The Killing of a Sacred Deer (17) Barry Keoghan is a blank, but somehow compelling screen presence. This one has an ending that made me bark with laughter.

14 Legends of the Fall (94)

15 Moneyball (11)* if you don’t feel like watching anything in particular, you can always watch Moneyball

16 If Beale St Could Talk (18) very beautiful, but I failed to connect with it on any other level. 

17 For Keeps (88)

18 Abducted in Plain Sight (17)

19 Oscar Shorts (Animated) (18) the offerings were very sappy this year, but the winner was decent! Lots of Toronto content (weird). 

20 Oscar Shorts (Live Action) (18) *unquestionably* the worst one of these won ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

21 Velvet Buzzsaw (19)

22 Vice (18) ugh

23 Friends with Money (06)

24 Can You Ever Forgive Me (18)

25 Bohemian Rhapsody (18) haha what. was. that.

26 Mars Attacks (96)*

27 Paddington 2 (18)

28 Buffy the Vampire Slayer (92)*

29 Shoplifters (18)

30 Blindspotting (18) jacked Ethan Embry in a supporting role?! Whither? Howso? Wherefore?

31 Witness (85)

32 Harry & the Hendersons (87)*

33 The Matrix (99)*

34 T2 Trainspotting (17)

35 Blockers (18)

36 The Slums of Beverly Hills (98)

37 Can’t Hardly Wait (98)*

38 Avengers: Infinity War (18)

39 Iron Man II (10)

40 Isle of Dogs (18)

41 Chinatown (74)*

42 To Live & Die in LA (85)

43 Age of Innocence (93) Daniel Day-Lewis manages to make Newland Archer compelling, where in the novel he’s...the worst?!

44 Shopgirl (05)*

45 The House (17) didn’t sustain all the way through, but then, that’s how mainstream comedies often go. 

46 The Beguiled (17)

47 Badlands (73)*

48 Poetic Justice (93)

49 The Empire Strikes Back (80)*

50 Calibre (18)

51 The Kindergarten Teacher (18)

52 Hounds of Love (17) a nice little Aussie thriller, set in the 80s

53 Kicking & Screaming (95)*

54 Octopussy (83)*

55 Jaws (79)*

56 Lover Come Back (61)

57 Frenzy (72)

58 Always Be My Maybe (19)

59 Certain Women (16) took a while to get to this one, but it’s as great as they say it is. 

60 Baby Driver (17) all flash, little substance.

61 Sneakers (92)

62 Roadhouse (87)*

63 Bull Durham (88)*

64 Ghostbusters (84)*

65 Booksmart (19) I think this will improve on multiple viewings, though I loved the soundtrack and the mix of characters. 

66 Hereditary (18)

67 Rebecca (40) George Sanders as Rebecca’s cousin is BRILLIANT

68 Vertigo (58)*

69 The Dead Don’t Die (19)

70 Crawl (19)

71 Dazed & Confused (93)* If you don’t watch this once a summer, what is wrong with you?

72 Jackie Brown (97)

73 Talk Radio (88)

74 The Guilty (18)

75 Killing Heydrich (17)

76 Lady Bird (17)*

77 Billy Elliot (00)*

78 White House Down (13)* Channing Potatum saves the White House!

79 The Film Worker (17)

80 Whitney (18)

81 Mascot (16)

82 Apocalypse Now (79)* technically I’d only seen the Redux version from the early 2000s, so the regular cut is new to me. 

83 Apollo 13 (95)*

84 Psycho 2 (83) the twist is very guessable, but there are a couple of nice-looking scenes.

85 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (04)*

86 The Bodyguard (92)*

87 Murder Mystery (19)

88 Wildlife (18)

89 The Stepford Wives (75)*

90 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (71)*

91 The Natural (84)

92 The Other Boleyn Girl (08)

93 Speed (94)*

94 Opera (87)

95 That’s my Boy (12) haha what?!

96 The Big Short (15)

97 Elizabeth the Golden Age (07)

98 The Glass Castle (17) when I read the book, I genuinely thought it was fiction, it’s so insane. 

99 Dawn of the Dead (78)*

100 All About Eve (50) lady on lady violence is a special thing

101 La La Land (16)

102 Morning Glory (10) remember Rachel McAdams?

103 Casino (95)*

104 Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (06)

105 Pet Sematary (19)

106 Clue (85)*

107 Her Smell (18) amazing soundtrack and the songs were well-chosen. Heartbreaking musical moment in the final act. 

108 Bobby Sands: 66 Days (16)

109 She’s Gotta Have it (86)

110 Good Morning (59)

111 Hustlers (19) I didn’t connect with this as much as the reviews led me to believe I might. 

112 Nocturnal Animals (16)

113 Kill Bill Vol 1 (03) I’d only ever seen the second one before, being a non-Tarantino completionist.

114 Fried Green Tomatoes (91)* I watch this more than anticipated...

115 Steel Magnolias (89)

116 Notting Hill (99)*

117 A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (19) the tiny city models were inspired!

118 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (89)*

119 Let It Snow (19)

120 Frozen (13)

121 The Irishman (19) most interesting as a sort of pastiche/reckoning on the part of Scorsese about his other gangster films. Really outmoded view of unions. Definitely could have been edited down if anyone were able to come to it without undue reverence, but I did love the bit about the fish.

122 Girls Trip (17) actual plot is beside the point. 

123 About a Boy (02)* I always think of this as the “vomit and sweaters” movie, anyone else?

124 Animal House (78)*

DOCUMENTARY : FICTION - 4:120

THEATRE : HOME - 9:115

TV Series

01 Russian Doll - I think I would have enjoyed this more if it hadn’t been bingeable - would have made a nice week-by-week discussion sort of show. I loved to watch the changes between re-ups of our major characters, and I think the actual plotting would reward re-watches. 

02 Catastrophe S4 - A satisfying ending to an excellent show, with very charismatic leads (and deeply weird supporting characters). Had to write around Carrie Fisher’s death, and I’m sure did a better job of it than Star Wars did. 

03 Friends from College S2 - More of the same, which is what I was after. A show like cotton candy (but with more infidelity). 

04 High Maintenance S3 - A lot more of this season took place outside of New York City, which was a great change of pace. And a great deal more information about The Guy and his own life; both difficulties and successes included. 

05 Losers - This was a great little docuseries on Netflix that I didn’t hear a lot of people talking about - it’s about sports losses, but unusual sports ie curling, figure skating and the like. You’d think it would get repetitive, being as it’s always about recovering after loss, but it doesn’t! I wish they would make another season….

06 Shrill - a tight six episode dramedy about an alt-weekly journalist in the Pacific Northwest, based on Lindy West’s memoir of the same name. John Cameron Mitchell as her boss (based on Dan Savage) stands out of the ensemble cast, as does Annie’s roommate played by a British standup Lolly Adefope.

07 Broad City S5 - I haven’t always kept up with Broad City, but I came back to it for its final season, and thought it did a good job of setting its characters up for big changes in their lives. 

08 I Think You Should Leave - It’s easy to assume that all sketch comedy is terrible and always will be, but then you see this, and throw your TV out the window (due to all the laffs)

09 Fleabag S2 - Everything you’ve heard is true, this season is goddamn hilarious and ridiculously sexy. A huge step up from the first season, which was already pretty fantastic and incisive. 

10 Fosse/Verdon - Musicals are not particularly my bag, so I’m sure there was a lot that I missed in terms of references, but the lead performances ably carried me through all of the time jumps and various performances. 

11 Stranger Things S3 - Say it after me: d-i-m-i-n-i-s-h-i-n-g r-e-t-u-r-n-s! Maya Hawke kills it, though. 

12 Big Little Lies S2 - Unnecessary, and (if possible) even sillier than the first season.

13 Lorena - Part of the ongoing quest to rehabilitate the maligned women of the 1990s, this gave me tons of context that I had no idea about at the time, due to being a dumb kid. 

14 Glow S3 - I felt like I was losing steam on this series this year, but episodes like the camping ep kept me coming back. A great ensemble, though some unusual character choices (like a certain kiss *cough*) took me out of it by times. 

15 Lodge 49 S1-3 - I’d kept hearing about this show, so I finally sought it out. I can’t say it was amazingly compelling (I almost dropped it after the first season) but it’s definitely an oddball of a show, slipping from setpiece to setpiece with little regard for logic. For me, a background show. 

16 Chernobyl - This show really gave me the Bad Feeling, humans were definitely A Mistake.

17 On Becoming a God in Central Florida - Kiki in a trashy mode, not as infinitely appealing as the version she pulled off in the second season of Fargo, but scrappy and industrious nonetheless.

18 Show Me a Hero - I’d put off watching this for years, it felt like it was going to be too dull (housing policy in Yonkers?) but it’s great, and larded up with Bruce Springsteen songs, obvs.

19 Great British Bake Off S9-S10 - I’d also held off on watching this for a long time, out of loyalty to Mel, Sue, and Mary Berry. But I needed some comfort viewing towards the end of the summer, and the new hosts and judge do an able job, although the show’s tropes are feeling a bit well-worn at this point. 

20 Righteous Gemstones S1 - A rollicking ride for sure, with a great cast. Your mileage/patience with Danny McBride may vary, so keep that in mind, naturally. 

21 This Way Up S1 - A small show starring the fabulous Aisling Bea, about mental health and families and some nice comic physical acting. Oh, and in case you were watching The Crown and crushing on Tobias Menzies’ version of Prince Phillip, he plays a hot dad love interest in this, which gives you all the Tobias you’re looking for, without the PP racisms. 

22 The Crown S3 - This is the first season of the big cast switchover, and I thought it stuck reasonably well, once we were in it an episode or two. This season concentrated even less on Elizabeth herself, preferring her sister, husband, and (newly!) her children.

[snellyboi]

Psst, hey, you! Want a Steven Universe hot take?

Words: Too damn many Summary: It’s a Steven Universe hot take about hurting connie, and how it ties into the show, the original Steven Universe, the lack of filler, and Steak Dinners. Warnings: Longe boi, a bit of a text wall but I do use paragraphs so it’s not awful I guess? A lot of talks about filler and stuff at the beginning.

ALSO I SHOULD POINT OUT this isn’t, like, some sort of SU critical circa 2017 post. I have qualms with the show, which are discussed, but overall, I think it’s pretty good stuff. Please be aware of that. I’m not gonna say it’s the worst thing on the planet because it’s not. 

UNDER THE CUT:

Before we get into the meat of the conversation, I need to tell you where I’m coming from. 

I have...strange feelings about Steven Universe.

It came out when I was starting High School, when I was bingeing cartoons like nobody’s business because peer pressure for years had made me repulse them. I didn’t care much about the deeper meanings of the show at the time, if I wanted to do deeper meanings I could go back and watch ATLA or those Rebecca Sugar episodes of Adventure Time, or OTGW. This was a bunch of magic space rocks fighting other magic space rocks! I was SO down!

Near the middle, though, and closer to the end, I guess I got a little...bored with it? I dunno what it was; well, I do now, but at the time I had no clue. it just seemed...a little over the top. I guess I had signed up for something like early Adventure Time, or the early parts of any given ATLA season. It became more of a drama than anything else, like a hundred Zuko and Iroh moments rolled into one, emotional punch after emotional punch.  

This isn’t the most sound assessment, no, and current me would be...a little annoyed at best if a show started doing this today. Sure, one could make the argument that I sound super hypocritical in retrospect, as I’m a huge fan of She-Ra and Infinity Train, but for every ‘Mermysteries’ in She-Ra there’s a ‘Roll With It’, and Infinity Train’s seasons are 5 nights long, perfect for punch after punch, but on Steven Universe? For every ‘Mirror Gem’, there was a...’Gem Harvest’. Which, sure, it was alright, but c’mon, calling an episode where we meet an entirely new character, even if only for a moment, filler, is a bit of a stretch. Filler is like ‘Always BMO Closing’ or something. And that hits the bone of the weird part here, does Steven Universe even have filler?

The whole 'no true filler’ idea is one of those things that sounds great on a show, but falls flat, because when people complain about filler, it’s complaining about bad filler, not the presence of it in general. If I get a steak and fries, and the fries are bad, I’m not complaining because they’re fries, I’m complaining because they’re bad fries. She-Ra is a good porterhouse with great fries. Infinity Train and OTGW are filet mignon with lobster tail, not really filler, but perfect in a way. Near the end, and really, for me, all the way through, Steven Universe felt more like a strip steak with no sides, just a little bit of A1. 

Isn’t this post about Connie, SUF, and how that all works? 

Yes, it is. We’re getting there. 

Steven Universe Future has been all emotional roller coasters the whole way through, seemingly. I’ll be honest, I’m not as into it as I was into Steven Universe, for a few reasons. Mostly, it expands on that no filler problem, big time. Nothing feels like it can be out of place, there’s even an episode titled the ‘Very Special Episode’, a slang term used in TV to talk about stuff like stranger danger specials, or the Golden Girls tackling the issue of gay marriage, etc. With the tense build of Steven’s mental health issues, I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way. Whether I like it or not, it’s doing what it needs to do, and I’ll acknowledge that it does exactly what it sets out to accomplish. 

So in Steven Universe, the main conflict is Steven and his past, and trying to convince people that no matter who someone is, they can be redeemed. It’s not a space war epic like I thought it would be (I used to be angry about that, but, just like the show said, people change, and now I have different qualms with it) but it does really well with that. So what is the conflict in SUF?

Steven has lost his raison d’etre. 

He’s going through that most existential of crises; “I’m at the top of the mountain, now what?” 

NOW WE FINALLY GET TO THE HOT TAKE!

The reason I brought up any of what I just did is to link it back to this heinous, outright stupid idea that Steven would just, like, I dunno, choke slam Connie or whatever you sick monsters wanna see. 

All of this No Filler, Everything is important stuff told us a lot about the characters. After all, it’s hard not to have character development in a show environment like that. Steven was shown as someone who genuinely cared, a lot, about everyone around him. He almost over-empathizes, to the point where he’s able to see the good in a bunch of arguably fascist space rocks voiced by former broadway divas. As much as I dislike the show for only ever being weighty and never having any ‘true filler’ or whatever, the reason it did that makes stylistic sense; Steven has no filler in his life. He’s way too empathetic. He cried when he found out that Snakes don’t have arms, for christ’s sake!

As annoying as it felt watching it, it’s an unfortunate reality that some people are forced to live their lives that way, empathizing with anyone and everyone they meet, and it hurts, and when you fix all the problems people had, but they suddenly leave? 

That fucking hurts. And that’s how I think we ended up here. 

That’s also why I think he’s not gonna hit Connie. At least, not purposefully. 

Steven has pretty openly expressed feelings for Connie before, and while we haven’t seen a romance line yet, it’s pretty obvious it’s slated to at some point. 

Now, if Steven can empathize with Space Stalin™, he can empathize with a girl he’s had a crush on for years at this point for going away to seek higher education. Sure, these pink outbursts are getting to him, as recent leaks may have shown, but I doubt that hurting Connie would crop up. It goes against a lot of the show’s themes of community and healing. But most of all? 

It’s just crappy writing. 

The show has had its fair share of clunkers in my opinion, as every show longer than 2 seasons is bound to have. Remember that episode where Nanefua runs for mayor? Or how about the one with Lars and the Off Color gems where they’re there for a grand total, of, like...the opening? 

None of those were terrible episodes though, just...forgettable. It’s not as if Steven just pulls out a chain gun and starts blasting in one of them. That would be stupid, and garbage, and a copout to generate ratings. Punching Connie would be like killing Brian on Family Guy; no weight, just shock. Flash in the pan. A bomb going off with no warning, no suspense. A jump scare. 

And that’s why I talked about the whole No Filler thing, and how it annoys me to no end, but how it’s necessary and worth while!

No one would ever have spent this whole time building up Steven as an over empathizer with an Atlas personality just to have him punch someone whose been his love interest since 2013. 

We would never spend an entire show cycle building someone up as caring too much about the people around him for his fatal flaw to be punching his girlfriend. The no filler thing was a noble, brave idea, that in my opinion fell over. But damn, did it do great things for the characters on the show, even if it sacrificed pacing. 

It should come as no surprise by now that the no filler thing, to me, is a bit of a stretch. Of course there was filler; sure, lore gets expanded, but when it’s not expanded well it just feels like the writers aren’t quite sure what to do (hmm, maybe they’d be better at filler if they’d written some beforehand...). 

But it portrayed the lead amazingly well, giving us a world through his eyes, and set up an amazing story about someone who cared too much about a world that was starting to care less and less about him. Setting us up for an amazing show, whether I want to watch it that often, or not. 

Let’s face it, it may not be my favorite meal, but sometimes you just can’t beat a strip steak with a little bit of A1.

#steven universe #suf #steven universe future #connie maheswaran

[queernuck]

kill me please

basedheisenberg and rtrixie and westpal and friends (orbiters like libertybill and the dude whos on his third prestige with the 1911 and whatever fucking else) are absolute fucking worthless creeps specifically because they make actually discussing the role of money, power, property, and capital in enabling behavior like pedophilia all but impossible before they pour it down the “radical centre” into fascism and they are part of the same kind of ideological detritus that finds terfs at various points along the radfem to tradfem pipeline, pastoral pornographics for ecofascists, the apparent anti-imperialism of nazbols and a thousand other incoherent tendencies of nothingness, of fucking regressive ideology. fuckin “right-anarchists” and “national anarchists” and their friends who hide behind some kind of left-monarchist like that one wild-ass stalin flag or whatever

and ALMOST ALL OF TUMBLR BUYS THAT SHIT!

like, liberals eat it up!! they love the scandal, the drama, they love the idea that there is some kind of conspiracy at play and they can pretend like its some Blacklist episode type shit theyre going to uncover as if it would oust just the right politicians and let them get on with whatever stupid fucking shit congress is up to now but nah

its recruiting, its recruting for right-anarchist and nazbol and other fascist libidinal fetish shit, where the act of dressing as the “true” counterculture, the genuine opposition puts you into that kind of anti-boomer action shit where you get mad that some old people vote democrat while you chuckle with your young bougie friends about joining the fucking Freikorps or how cool ICE is even if they very well may be aiding human trafficking and talking about how addicts and trannies and anyone a few shades too dark and of course always coming back to Jewish people is gonna get it in RaHoWa and none of this, NONE OF THIS IS A PROBLEM FOR SO MANY PEOPLE, they practice their ideological maneuvers like nothing else, you find them discussing Syria like its a thought experiment or as if all at once the CIA is omnipresent and incredibly weak, how antifascism is for faggots but for faggots who also have control of the media and are terrorist threats

like nah im not trusting the cops to take your guns away, im not dumb enough to be a gun grabber, just gonna have to stick your asses up and steal em, home invasion lmao

“thank the right wing conspiracy dorks” nah i want you to get fucked forever

[aura-alora]

Why Dany turning “mad” is so disappointing

Full disclaimer, I quit half-way through episode 4 and have only seen episode 5 through spoilers.

Like a lot of ‘holier-than-thou’ fans of the show are all like, “if you didn’t see this coming you haven’t being paying attention” and I get it. I really do. If you look at GoT with a “Dany is a villain lens” you’ll see a lot of ‘evidence’ for it.

But it’s such a disappointing “twist” to me because Dany was the first time we saw the classic Buldingsroman with a female character. She was framed as a hero, a conqueror, a warrior. And she wasn’t afraid to own her sexuality. She wasn’t afraid to own her femininity. In fact, she used it to her advantage, to gain power over the Khal (a la Cersei, ‘your greatest weapon is between your legs’) and become a respected leader in her own right.

And she was flawed. She made bad decisions. She lost her temper. She let her emotions get the better of her. But that was what made her human. She was not this perfect Mary-Sue who got everything she wanted just because of her name. She started the series penniless, sold like a brood-mare by her brother (who also abused her incessantly--”you don’t want to wake the dragon”), she was raped, not even treated as a person; mounted like dog takes his bitch. And she turned it around. She took what was hers with ‘fire and blood’. She adapted to the Dothraki when she needed to, she adapted to Quarth as she needed to and once she took Mereen--she didn’t have to adapt anymore. She was strong enough on her own. And I’m not talking about physical strength. She had AMAZING mental fortitude. She survived Khal Drogo, and instead of breaking, she grew stronger. She walked through the desert with nothing but a few woman and children, even less horses and no blood riders and they all almost died. She humbled herself in Quaarth, and got manipulated--almost losing her children in the process--but she learned. And she rose up. And she fought back.

She destroyed the slavers, she freed the slaves. Yeah, maybe she could be considered cruel in how she dealt with the ‘masters’--but that’s what made her human. She was ANGRY. Not one of us can say if we saw that someone crucified CHILDREN just to send a message we wouldn’t be angry too. 

Most people feel that it’s JUSTIFIED to want the Nazis to be punished right? Remember the Nuremberg Trials? Did anyone say the Allies were cruel for executing people who were already beaten? Not in any history book I’ve read, that’s for sure. Did anyone say Alexander the Great was ‘power-hungry’ when he took over half of Europe? None that I can find...in fact, they called him great. And arguably he killed hundreds of thousands in his wars of conquest that weren’t even needed, really. But he gets to be known as a powerful conqueror who never lost a battle and only stopped cos his soldiers were tired.

But put Dany in this same position and suddenly she’s a bad guy. Suddenly she’s a “mad Queen”. And it just rubs me the wrong way. Here we FINALLY have a woman, doing all the things that the stereo-typical male hero usually does, and this is how her story ends. She’s a villain. She’s hysterical. Because God forbid a woman is THE hero at the end of it all. 

Please tell me if you can think of any other female HERO that got half the depth that Dany has. That literally CARRIED an entire arc, just like Jon or Robb or Ned did. And she wasn’t just fighting for herself, but for all the people that followed her. She was a leader, and people loved her. I CRAVE THAT SHIT. It’s literally the stories I loved to read growing up, but for once with a female character getting shit done instead of a male. (I mean the only other character like Dany I can think of is Ciri, and her story is a subset of Gerald’s and it’s not really *her* story...I guess Katniss also counts, but I kind of felt like Katniss was a blank slate cos of PTSD).

And yea, she makes bad decisions. And yea, she is cold sometimes. But so were other characters. Jon looked at man literally crying for his life to be spared and took it anyway. Arya literally baked people into pies and mass-murdered an entire family like  BLOODY SOCIOPATH. But they get to be heroes because the story makes it so. And yes there are a lot of strong female characters in GOT, but none like Dany. None that actually emerge as LEADERS. 

I think maybe what would’ve made the whole thing more palatable was if Dany still did the whole thing, but she was portrayed as morally justified (in her own mind)--kind of like the US with the ‘A-bomb’. Many historians argue that without the US dropping the A-bomb, many more lives would have been lost in a needless and drawn out war with the Japanese. Whether they are right or wrong doesn’t really matter, it depends on perspective. But here it’s like they’re slapping you in the face with “This action is bad and there is no justification for it” after literally justifying almost every one of her actions up until this point. It’s a non-sequitur. And IMO goes totally against the idea that there are no inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, just people who are driven by circumstance. Like many would argue Stalin was a ‘bad person’, but fact remains that he build the USSR from nothing to an economical powerhouse during the Cold War and many Russians still consider him one of the greatest leaders they’ve ever had. (“Mad King” comparisons aside lol) Why couldn’t Dany get that? Why couldn’t she be “evil”, but still bring stability to the realm? 

Why did it have to be her and not Jon (Gary Stu) Snow? We’ve had Jon’s story a million times, in a million different ways. Aragorn, Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Geralt etc. How many times have we had a story like Dany’s? I’m just so dissatisfied that we finally get a woman doing all these stereo-typical male beats, just to have her end tragically because of reasons. Just for her to be another mad Targaryen. Just for her to repeat the cycle of her ancestors. What a fantastical waste of a character. I’m pretty sure at this point even Dany has given up on being a hero, which is tragic. After sacrificing half her army for Westeros. After sacrificing her best friend, her closest advisor, her two CHILDREN for Westeros. I wish the story ended with her just fucking off to rule Essos and leaving Westeros to fall to bloody pieces since apparently they don’t need her there. But I know it won’t, because heaven forbid Dany actually makes the smart decision to abandon all these fuckwits who don’t appreciate her and go back to the people who do. 

I’m currently writing my own story, and one of the positives of this whole experience is that I’m gonna make damn sure I don’t do my female characters this dirty. Yeah, some of them are villains. But I’m gonna be sure that even though they are villains, you should be able to see that they think they are the heroes in their story. 

#personal #thoughts #got #game of thrones #spoilers #in defense of Dany #daenerys targaryen #analysis