#but!! just understand that the problems with this show are more than a couple cop characters existing.

[respectthepetty]

10 QL Girls I Want Carnally

Because @twig-tea hit me with the tag in their 10 QL People I Want Carnally list sprinkled with women as @negrowhat requested, let me slide up in here to show some appreciation for only the ladies because the amount of GLs we have leaves me thirsty, and these women look like a beautiful stream in the dusty desert.

Honorable Mention - Namtan's Characters [Pluto]

I don't understand the plot of this upcoming series. Namtan is playing twins and one or both of them love May (played by Film). Full disclosure here, I don't give a fuck about the plot because I'm going to watch it regardless. I'm always showing up for Namtan (and Film and Clize). When I'm being offered beautiful women in a GL plot, I do not question the gifts God bestows on me.

Honorable Mention - Jung One [She's Makes My Heart Flutter]

Fucking Korea and its short ass shows! I only had this precious babygirl for one hour, and I would murder for her. I would treat her so well that she would never feel nervous about another thing in her whole life. She is like Jim from Moonlight Chicken, just trying to help her niece and run her bar, but I'll be like Wen and WORK FOR FREE because that's how much I want to be in her bed warming her up at night. Money ain't the only way to pay me for my services.

Hydration Station

Maya & Rose [Laws of Attraction]

Choke me. Maya AND Rose are my ideal throuple with me being the third. Silvy had me hot and bothered in her scenes with Joong and New in The Warp Effect (bisexual reawakening), and Organ had me hot for mommy in Never Let Me Go, so Laws of Attraction giving me both in a Be Gay, Do Crime plot was heaven sent. Watching them manipulate and beat up men, knowing they were going home to each other is the energy I need from all my GL plots.

Yuna [Semantic Error]

She rides a bike and has beanies for every occasion. She'd let me wear her hoodies. She'd let me wear her beanies. She let me ride her bike. She'd let me ride her. Her entire demeanor lets me know what's up without her even having to open her mouth, and I've already signed up for a two-month subscription before I even approach her. Whatever she wants to do, I'm down whenever including going down wherever.

Tee [GAP]

Let me say this with my full chest "FUCK, SAM!" If I was Mon, as soon as Tee would've asked my name, it would have been "Sam, who?" because TEE COULD GET IT! I'd let Tee fuck me in front of all her friends and God on that table. Tee's game was unmatched. No hate to Sam being inexperienced, but Tee obviously knew thangs and was more than willing to share her knowledge, anytime, any day, anyway. *bites knuckles*

Phai [My Dear Gangster Oppa]

I don't fuck with cops. But . . . girl definitely knows how to use handcuffs. And the way she always told Muffin to shut up did things to my sacral chakra that told me that even though I don't fuck with the police, I would 100%, without a doubt, fuck the police(woman).

Proud [7 Project]

This is going to be a theme in this list because I don't just want Proud from 7 Project, who deserved so much better than that horrible story. I want Samantha, the person who played Proud. Sammy has been in everything for a solid decade now. She deserves the lead already, and I deserve to watch her and those beautiful lips of hers make out with another girl again! 2024, do me and my girl right.

Luna [Sleep with Me]

She has problems sleeping. Like an actual medical diagnosis. Not even trying to take away from the seriousness of her condition but . . . I've heard intensive physical activity is good for sleep. I'd be more than willing to test this scientific theory out by fucking all night long. It couldn't be just once though. In order to prove a theory, we'd have to do it a couple of times. I'm great at pulling all-nighters and being an enthusiastic participant for *science*

Cher [GAP]

GAP gave me so many beautiful women, and all of them were mean to Sam. Blessed. But my favorite Mean Girl was Cher. I had her for only a few seconds, but I would leave my SO on vacation if I saw her walking through the resort. Her AND her girlfriend could get it. Call me. Beep me. If you wanna reach me.

Ray [Club Friday]

This bitch was crazy. And I. Loved. It. But playing crazy is apparently what this actress does best.

As Ray, she was wildin' out trying to have a baby between her husband, her husband's boyfriend, and her ex-girlfriend, and as Anthika in Midnight Museum, she was wildin' out trying to resurrect the savior. And you know what? I would proudly stand next to her and commit queer wrongs every day instead of demanding she come to her senses if it meant she was making me come every night. Ooookay.

Mayris [The Sign]

Is she open to a two-night stand with a girl? I don't know, but I'm sure the hell gonna try to persuade her.

Ink [Bad Buddy]

There is a reason everyone loved her in that show. In Magic of Zero, Pa was trying her damndest to get Ink to remember her, and girl, same. If I had a girl like Ink, I would be the brattiest bitch. I'd pout until she gave me all of her attention. I'd be pissy if she even looked at someone else. I'd want her all to myself and she'd have to lose her job because I'd keep her in the bed ALL DAY. Well, not the bed. We could pull a Pat and Pran and fuck on the couch, the kitchen counter, and outside after drinking.

The One to Rule Them All

Sine Inthira, the person, not the character.

I want this woman carnally. She could tell me to shut up in front of my friends and God, and I WOULD DO IT! She could say something that went against all my feminist beliefs, and I would not give one fuck. I would ruin my life for this woman. I would be peak toxic for this woman. Why The Eclipse cast her as the teacher and tried to make me feel bad for Khao's character was the rudest thing to ever happen in my bisexual existence, but I know where my heart lies because I was telling Ayan to shut the fuck up and let my beautiful angel speak.

LOOK AT HER! If y'all ever hear of an American sitting in a Thai jail after chasing after this woman, know that American is me because my ass will not be sane if I see her in person.

I'm only tagging one person in this list of women I want carnally.

💙Daddy💙

@dribs-and-drabbles, I'd love to know who you want helping you break in that bed after you move it in this weekend. You've been so focused on shared clothing when all I want to know is whose do you want to take off.

#tag game #multi bl #I love the ladies #and I thirst after them too #love to know what your type is #so I could be it

[emostudent]

TEEN WOLF BRAINROT

so, i've been rewatching teen wolf bc apparently netflix hates us europeans and it will be removed on may 31st and here are a few of my opinions TM

scott is actually a very good main character. listen, i got into this fandom when i was older, so i probably don't understand why there is this trend of hating scott, but he's a valid MC! he shows an example of positive masculinity that is honestly so refreshing to see in modern media: he's kind, compassionate, always optimistic but not stupidly so, has an amazing relationship with his mum AND his friends, he's not afraid to show emotions and cry. honestly a very healthy, albeit traumatised, young man. yes, he did stupid stuff for the girl he liked, and yes he misjudged a few situations, but please, remind me, how old is he supposed to be? 16? 17? 18? yeah. i did worse things at his age.

scott and stiles come from working class families!!! they have money problems!! it's honestly so refreshing to see teenagers discuss money in a supernatural/fantasy tv show. it doesn't usually happens and I've found it refreshing because it's something that usually happen between irl teenagers.

i don't get sterek. really, really don't. maybe it's bc i've watched the show through a gen z lens (meaning the media and the culture (read: THE INTERNET) when i watched the show were influenced more by gen z than millennials' values) but i really don't get it. and the age difference makes me uncomfortable. (same thing with parrish and lydia, SHE'S A MINOR DUDE, there's a reason people don't like cops istg) SOMEONE EXPLAIN STEREK TO ME PLEASE

in fics stiles and scott's personalities are often swapped: stiles is the caring one, the pack mum, scott is the one with homicidal tendencies. like, my dudes, the fact that scott is a GOOD person through and through is the reason he's a true alpha. also the reason we, as viewers, like stiles is bc he's sarcastic and more morally ambiguous than scott (not really, but you get it, he cares more about himself and his immediate friends, the others can die, scott instead want to save everyone period), it's like taking away the thing that makes stiles stiles

malia and stiles were SO cute, i didn't expect to like them so much, but when they broke up my heart shattered

stydia is everything i want in a ship and i will not accept any criticism on it, it's literally one of the only straight ships i like. you have the slowburn, the malewife x girlboss trope, the he fell first but she fell harder, the mutual pining. it literally checks all of my boxes

isaac was such a cool character and he and scott had an amazing dynamic, like come on, they had something going on between them

kira is a badass. that's it, that's the comment. i like her so much

derek's development is one of the best. i couldn't stand him in season 1, but in s4 he became one of my favourite characters. but i think this has more to do with the fact that they aged him up? he was supposed to be in his early 20s in s1, but then they aged him up in s3? well, anyway, i liked how he literally wised up, stepping into the role of a teacher and guide instead of a leader, it suits him so much better (and i'm sure it's less stressful)

peter is such a charmingly evil bastard. i hate him, but i love him at the same time.

thiam is the best ship in the show, i don't care if it's canon or not. i've read airplanes, it's canon to me

we would've liked (simped for) s5 theo more if he had the same haircut he had in 6b. he was just stupidly hot.

allison and lydia should've kissed and so malia and kira. give me my wlw couples.

#teen wolf #scott mcall #stiles stilinski #lydia martin #stydia #sterek #thiam #these are just my opinions lads #i don't care if you don't agree with me because these aren't facts #these are opinions #but if you were to respect my opinions that would be greatly appreciated #thanks

[kdramaxoxo]

hihi!! i wanna ask for a list of dramas with a lead whos cold, mysterious, haunted by a troubled past, secretive, prolly has a vocabulary of like 10 words. but is super soft on the inside, like they push ppl away cus theyre afraid of hurting them or being abandoned or smthn like that. ik this is hyper specific so sryyy if its hard to answer, but all my fave characters fit this bill so wanted to kno if u have any kdrama that can give me this high (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧ thxxx!! ♡

p.s. it doesnt have to b exxxactly this but if it fits a few of the categories, ill be happi! ♡♡

We LOVE mysterious haunted trauma babies over here so thank you for this ask. (also this might be one of my favorite lists ever??)

K-Dramas leads with cold personalities/mysterious past, secretive trauma pups...morally grey a plus

The Smile has left your eyes - Kim Moo-Young Aside from this k-drama being a masterpiece that’ll leave you a pile of tears, Seo in Guk as Kim Moo-Young is the perfect example of a morally grey character you will fall in love with. He’s involved in a murder plot line, uses women to get what he wants and is clearly hiding something. You’ll try to resist being interested in him sure, but you’ll fail.

Beyond Evil - both leads This is a passionate unrequited romance crime drama about two detectives that are paired up to solve a crime in a small town. Everyone is really messed up and that's what makes this drama super good! Scary, haunted and super well written.

Tale of the Nine Tailed 1938 - Lee Rang Lee Rang is one of my favorite trauma pup blorbo from my shows! This drama is the second season of the fantasy drama Tale of the Nine Tailed. I recommend you watch both but season two was my favorite because it focused on Lee Rang. You will LOVE HIM! MUST PROTEC.

Alice The Final Weapon - Gyeo Wool Finally a GIRL with a traumatic past and the boy who loves her!! Actually everyone in this drama is messed up and dealing with horrific things. It's a very short and creative little drama and despite the gore, I really fell for the mains! They are blorbo from my shows!

See You In My 19th Life (both leads) This drama featuring a woman who can remember her past lives was one of my favorites this year! Both leads are tackling the trauma of the FL's death and there is a lot of healing that has to happen. Shin Hye Sun is a goddess!

The Eighth Sense - Jae Won A queer kdrama about two leads that meet surfing and fall in love. This drama is my favorite "bl" k-drama ever and the lead definitely has a traumatic past he's in therapy for. I highly recommend this one!

Flower of Evil - Hyun Soo: A psychological thriller centered around a jewelry maker who is running from his past, and his cop wife (power couple alert!)  who doesn’t know his original identity. The chemistry of the couple is amazing and all of the characters are nuanced and interesting. I was on the edge of my seat, AND sobbing! Also, I finally understand Lee Jun Ki stans, he was SO GOOD in this! A total trauma pup you won't believe it.

Doom at Your Service: Doom A girl is diagnosed with cancer and a morally grey god grants her wish to live 100 more days the way she wants to live. While I didn't LOVE this drama, the romance is amazing - that KISS! Doom is the perfect damaged god with a chip on his shoulder.

Hello Monster - Lee Hyun and His Brother Jung Sun-Ho Featuring two brothers who have a murderous backstory, both are morally grey. Sure one is definitely “worse” than the other when it comes to being a murder baby but let’s face it - they both have their problems (sorry, didn’t want to post any spoilers so that’s all I can say about that!)

The Crowned Clown: Ha-seon The King The contrast between the good guy and the bad guy in this historical drama are so interesting to watch because one brilliant actor (Yeo Jin Goo) plays the same character. The king is insane and a murderer. He’s terrible in every way with literally no way to be redeemed but you’ll still feel for him…just watch.

My Liberation Notes - Mr. Gu This slice of life takes place mostly in a small town where siblings who really don't want to be there, live. Mr. Gu is renting one of the buildings and he's extremely burdened and and keeps to himself. I personally didn't ship him with the lead but he's definitely the type you're asking for!

Scarlet Heart Ryeo: Wang Soo Scarlet heart will destroy you, but you’ll also find yourself deeply empathetic to (and totally in love with) the most toxic of princes: Wang Soo. Cast out by his relatives, and treated like an animal he’s deeply wounded and despite knowing in your heart that he’s done terrible things, you’ll find yourself making excuses for him and imagining him as your boyfriend (wait…can you ignore that last sentence?)

Summer Strike - Both leads This slice of life has a quiet and thoughtful male lead who is traumatized by the murder of his sibling. I was a little disappointed in the ending but overall the show's mains were so soft and lovely.

Just Between Lovers - Both leads but. Kang Doo! I'm sure you knew I'd put this on the list but kang doo is my favorite trauma baby of all time. Slice of Life romance between poor pups just trying to live! The OTP is one of my favorite couples EVER and even as the years go on, very few couples have matched their love in my opinion. There’s a lot of comfort/healing themes with for me is just *chef’s kiss.* Lee Junho became my bias wrecker because of that drama.

Psycho But It’s Okay - Everyone A gorgeous k-drama using fairytale narrations as a backdrop, features two brothers who lost their mother, and a beautiful & famous author who grew up in a traumatic and abusive household. Everyone is very closed off and holding onto intense pain, but the three come together to help one another move on and find happiness. Gorgeous angsty and melodramatic romance.

Thirty But Seventeen - Woo Jin Precious puppies with past trauma! The main has basically stopped living his life because of his past. Don’t be turned off by the shows description as it turned out to be one of the best surprises of 2018 for me. The leads are lovely and everyone relies and supports one another - it’s so sweet.

Come and Hug Me - Do Jin This thriller is not for the faint of heart but the main theme is healing. Two friends are torn apart when the boy’s dad kills the girls entire family. Later in life, they find one another and walk on the path to healing while still being tormented by their past. It also focuses on the trauma and manipulation the killer has on the whole family, making the show beautiful, terrifying and heartbreaking at the same time. 

Goblin: Grim Reaper Most of you have watched this drama but I’ll try hard not to spoil it. The Grim Reaper is such a hilarious character in the current time line but in order to be a Grim Reaper, you have to have done something “bad” to become one. His pain is deep and cutting and you’ll want to protect him.

It’s Okay that’s love: Jang Jae-yeol This is one of those cold male leads that you’ll just end up liking even though he’s kinda the worst in that “Pickup Artist” type of way? I had this show listed in my top 10 but then I recently watched it again and realized I’ve made progress in my “don’t like jerks who display jerk behavior” because he’s kinda an ass. You’ll soften for him when the plot moves along for sure, but he’s aggressive and says really sexist things sometimes (as does most of the male characters honestly - i really need to remove this from my top 10)…

Enjoy!

#kdrama recommendations #kdrama #kdrama recs #beyond evil #tale of the nine tailed 1938 #flower of evil #doom at your service #morally grey characters #i love a list #i think my favorite characters are this too! #it helps if they have a side of soft tho

[olderthannetfic]

Me, an aroace person: You know Miraculous Ladybug, which has used the actual words "ace" and "aro" about characters, has been accused of queerbaiting?

I admit that that confirmation about Max and Alix was on the showrunner's Twitter, and that Western children's animation is much more prone to cancellation at too big an onscreen hint that there's queer characters than a Netflix show being adapted from the book by one of the same people who wrote the book. You might have a fraction of a point about using the actual words onscreen here.

But you understand why I am not convinced that you'll think anything is aro and/or ace rep unless it's set in the present-day English-speaking featuring characters who would freely use those specific words about themselves.

And you understand that, while I would indeed like more media that meets that very narrow description, I would also like much more media with ace and/or aro rep where the characters wouldn't use those words about themselves. Either because outing themself is dangerous, or because they don't speak English so they don't have those words, or, you know, they're six thousand years older than those words are, and they have been a bit busy preventing the apocalypse to update their self-description.

--

I just want people to understand the sheer degree to which "They're like an old married couple!" and "It's a love story!" is said about absolutely every piece of buddy media ever, including by queerphobes who adore this media and have no problem with the type of love they see depicted.

GO does nothing outside of the buddy cop show mold, and that includes the heart eyes (which I agree are intense).

This is literally the same level as Starsky & Hutch in the 1970s.

That's why I'm skeptical about it as significant representation in a broader sense. (Obviously, it feels personally meaningful to lots of individual people.)

When I talk about "representation", I'm talking about something that is blatantly, objectively, and intentionally in the canon, not something that can be read in if fans choose to—Not even something the creators maybe sort of meant as one possible set of subtext among various.

It's the difference between having a black lead and making a show about an alien played by a white actor whose problems with oppression can be read as a metaphor for racism.

GO isn't a case of a character in a historical drama describing their attraction in historical terms or not having language to describe it but canon's writer(s) clearly knowing what kind of attraction the character experiences: this is a story about non-human characters that side-steps the whole question of sexuality for them and presents itself in a very standard buddy story way that a huge swath of the audience will likely read as cishet by default even as they pay lip service to angels and demons technically not having gender, sex drives, etc.

This type of love story is everywhere. It's every epic friendship stretching back through most media traditions into the time before the invention(s) of writing.

If one sees oneself in a piece of media nobody actually can invalidate that. It's a feeling. It's personal.

But I wouldn't give GO's creators any particular credit.

[alrightbuckaroo]

Thank you for saying what you said. Sometimes I wish the writers hadn't made Carlos a flawed character because of how some people have leapt on it to paint him as the bad guy in every situation, even ones from previous seasons. And that makes me sad because Carlos as a character makes me feel seen. But it's nice to not feel alone in seeing some of the discourse and feeling upset.

Of course! I don't know if this is in reference to this post or this one; but the sentiment remains the same: let Carlos mess up!

I can understand where you're coming from about wanting him not to be flawed; because character development like that can be polarizing and not always fair to the character.

It's why I hate it when a black or brown queen on RuPaul's Drag Race is given the "villain" edit because it just opens the doors for microagressions, coded remarks or blatant racism from the fandom.

I remember when the first couple of episodes of season four aired, and while I didn't necessarily love the marriage storyline, I did think it was weird to see some people just suddenly "turn" on Carlos.

Rafael had said something to the extent of like, "I hope you learn to love Carlos again" or "fall back in love with Carlos" and I was like...again? What happened? It's only been like three episodes lmao. I definitely think there are things Carlos has done that aren't perfect (when will we be free of cop era Carlos, I beg) but I think some people have gotten so used to seeing Carlos as the "perfect" solution to TK's problems and the moment he was shown not to be that, it kind of opened a floodgate.

All that said, I like that's he's shown to be flawed because that's what makes fictional characters that much more human!

Maybe it's because I'm BIPOC and most of my friends are too, but it's been really cool to see a queer man of color confront things like his internalized homophobia, his strained relationship with his father, and hell, just his emotions in general.

That said, when dealing with all of that, people aren't always going to make the "right" decisions or respond "correctly" but I think they deserve grace at the end of the day.

Obviously, it's a nothing more than a television show at the end of the day, and Carlos is just a character; but I really hope that the idea that men of color, especially queer men of color, aren't allowed to also mess up doesn't transfer to the real world, that's all I really care about at the end of the day.

Call out problematic behavior when you see it, but realize everyone's human, we're all going to mess up because we're human, but we still deserve grace to grow and change (to an extent) because we're human.

#but yeah; you're definitely not alone! i'm watching this show through the lens of a woc so i'm always going to be ready to go to bat #like the moment i see one thing about grace i'm going to war lmao #rambling wreck #asked and answered

[willowmosby]

Listen I told my self that I wasn't going to get invested enough in Person of Interest to talk about here but here I am anyway. It was chugging along being a good background show with Some really fun, if a little trope-y, cop characters and watching Harold Finch and John Reese act kinda gay and stop crime. I'm a big Amy Acker fan ( that's actually why I even started the show) so I wasn't upset about the shift in focus towards Root and Shaw a little bit as I entered season 3.

The problem I have actually run into is fucking season 3 episode 9: The Crossing. It just made me angry at a show's choices in a way I haven't felt in a while - please note I haven't watched past that episode as of writing this but I will eventually do so.

An the assumption that she really is dead( that looked pretty fucking fatal) I will miss Joss Carter a lot but that's not necessarily what made me angry. It seemed to me that the writers knew that the actor wanted out of the show from the start of the season as the whole season 3 arc was a seemingly slow moving suicide. It wasn't poorly written but it was obvious that this was a different type of Joss Carter than season 1 & 2.

No my problem wasn't necessarily her death. It's the "romantic" declarations of the episode. Now before you look back at the start of this and post and think I'm just mad because it wasn't my very unlikely to ever be a cannon ship that got confirmed, well you're only partially right.

Yes I'm a Rinch shipper( if follow my blog at all you've probably put together that I often root if the queer ships) but I genuinely would have been fine resigning myself to fanfiction while they get hopelessly paired up with some unsuspecting women. I understand that's how crime drama TV operates. And you know I actually like John and Zoe as a ship, if they were developed a bit more I think they could've been a lot of fun.

My problem is not that the whole you "saved me from commiting suicide" speech John gives Carter is equally, if not more, applicable to his relationship with Finch. Well, okay my problem is not only that. My problem is where was any of the romantic build up between Carter and John, like literally anything? They work great as narrative foils when Carter was still on the "the law is the only law" train. And they work great as friends as Carter steps more into the "some minor crime for the greater good is okay" camp. But not once did I think " oh these two are about to fall in love". Not even when Shaw asked about it earlier in season 3 did I think the show was going to actually pair them up like this. Now I hear you when you say that there are examples of characters with less chemistry have become couples. It's just, I'm not sure what the narrative gain is here. They had to know they were killing off Carter that same episode and this "revelation" doesn't add anything to the character. If anything it doesn't make sense with the revenge for Cal Becher (Beacher? Beecher?- You know who I'm talking about) angle that the writers have been using all season. And if it's about furthering John's character that's just dumb. I wouldn't consider it fridgeing as I'm pretty sure this is an actor who wants an out of contract situation(feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), but that doesn't excuse it as a narrative choice. John unequivocally cares about Carter and would be upset about her death regardless or romantic inclinations, as would Lionel and Finch. They already have an in on the revenge story line (which is where I assume they are going with this). Why bother with the romance especially when John already has the lost love story in his background. Like what Jessica isn't enough of a dead romance they needed to shoe in Joss as well.

Anyway I also wish this was like a mid season finale not episode like 9. Like bro why are you putting away one of your biggest villains so far and this is only a third of the way in the season.

And I wish that Lionel wasn't just suddenly back in the plot, like I know you have a bigger cast now and I m glad he's here but build the guy up a little bit better please.

I also think the Root in a cage thing is a little weird like I know all of these people are chugging the " the ends justify the means" juice but it still seems like there are other options Finch would choose. ( that being said Root and Finch's conversation about the machine somehow come off like " I had sex with your daughter, and I don't care if you know” which was hilarious to me)

Anyway sorry for the rant thanks for listening and I do hope the show gets back into a groove.

#Tldr: R.I.P Joss Carter; I would you stayed the cop propaganda you were meant to be #instead of dying mid a shoe in romance plot. #person of interest #POI #person of interest season 3 #person of interest spoilers #Harold Finch #john reese #Joss Carter #lionel fusco #Root #sameen shaw #zoe morgan #rinch #anti joss x john

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Eleanor, the Channel 4 people tell me the day before we meet, is very keen I watch the third part of her new series, The Couple Next Door. The problem is that the audio on my preview copy of this episode is so wildly out of sync I can’t follow what’s going on. Anxious hours pass, but by nightfall the problem is sorted and I soon understand why Eleanor Tomlinson ― she who was Mrs Poldark ― wants me to see it. There is plenty to discuss. And the sex is wild.

Tomlinson is Evie in this compulsive six-parter. The daughter of strict religious parents, she has been together for ever with her first boyfriend, Pete, and they are now expecting a baby, which is why they are moving to a larger house in a quiet Leeds suburb. Their neighbours, the couple next door, are something else, a mesomorph cop and a vampy yoga instructor both temperamentally unsuited to the quiet Truman Show-like community in which they live. The old terms for them would be wife-swappers or swingers, but we would probably call them polyamorists these days. Anyhow, you know what I mean. By episode three of what you could call a complex relationship drama, but which is really a sex thriller, it looks likely that Evie and Pete will RSVP in the affirmative to their new friends’ approaches, which are about as subtle as a Bogof sign in a supermarket.

Plot-wise, The Couple Next Door is a slight departure for Tomlinson, not just because the role does not require a period corset but because while she has played many rule-breakers, they usually settle down. The most famous example, of course, is her Demelza in the BBC’s Poldark, a character who started off feral but ended up doing the dishes and giving birth to Captain Ross’s many progeny. After a bit of a scrap, she even accepted the pectorially blessed mine owner back into her bed after his seduction/rape of a childhood sweetheart (which is more than Tomlinson would have done, she told one interviewer). In this series we watch the butter melt in Evie’s ingenuous mouth, first slowly, then very quickly indeed.

We meet on the poop deck of a canalside café in Hoxton, east London, where we are having coffee.

It’s a dangerous game, I say, this extramarital sex thing. Copulation has consequences. Does she agree?

“Do I agree with adultery?”

Does she agree with me?

“Well, look, in terms of ― I don’t know what you call it ― couple-swapping, I guess, it’s not for me, but that doesn’t mean I would judge anyone who wants to do it. I think we’re now in a time where people are liberated and feel at home expressing themselves and who they are. They won’t be confined to certain boxes any more. So if it works for you, then terrific. It’s not a route I would explore.”

We discuss the series’s pristine under-populated precinct, actually a new-build housing estate in the Netherlands chosen by the show’s Belgian director, Dries Vos. “He’s kind of leant into the idea that suburbia is a bit creepy and a bit entrapping. I think everyone has the fear that their life is suddenly going to become scheduled. You leave for work at this time. You go about your day. You get home at this time. Eat your dinner, have your chat and go to bed. It’s that fear.”

Well, that’s the fear of marriage, I say, and she agrees. But she also means that now she is 31 she sees that her twenties flashed by, half of them consumed, professionally, by Poldark. “You just want to say, ‘Stop! Let me just go back to being 18 for five minutes.’”

Talking of marriage ― as I was at least ―Tomlinson last year wed Will Owen, a 28-year-old rugby player with Clifton Rugby Club in Bristol. I suggest The Couple Next Door might feel a strange project for someone who 15 months ago exchanged marriage vows.

“Actually not at all, no, because it’s just a character,” she says. “It’s just a character who is very different from me and I can get stuck into and enjoy playing. My personal life doesn’t really come into any of my work decisions.”

And this is where things with the sharp yet warm, canny yet open Tomlinson get interesting: her work decisions. I am not divulging with whom Evie ends up having the sex of her life in episode three, but it is epic lovemaking. On closer inspection, however, it does not count as TV nudity. My next sentence will sound prurient, but I promise it is relevant to showbusiness in the era that dawned when HBO turned up the lights at The Sopranos’ Bada Bing! club and upon which ― thanks, Netflix and you fellow streamers ― the sun has yet to set. In this sex scene there are no (female) nipples visible and certainly no genitalia. I ask whether this squared with what Tomlinson has previously said about her reluctance to do nude scenes.

“I have done nudity before but, for me, it’s based on each project and how necessary I feel it is. And I didn’t feel like it was for this. I mean, there was a conversation where they were pushing for it and the harder they pushed for it, the more I felt like saying, ‘No, you’re just not being creative here. There are

so many more interesting ways that you can show this.’ So much of it comes down to the chemistry between the actors and working with the intimacy coordinators. You find a balance. You don’t need to show everything, because ultimately that immediately pauses everyone’s concentration. They’ve just seen something and they’re actually not invested in the scene any more.

“I think because [the show] is so obviously about sexual exploration, it would have been such an obvious choice to have nudity in it. I actually think not having it makes it more interesting.”

So she had a conversation?

“I quite enjoy the conversations where someone tries to tell me why it’s necessary. And if, after they’ve been through my rigorous checklist of questions, I believe that it is necessary ― and I already know at the beginning whether it is or not ― then I would enter into another conversation about it.”

But they’ve never convinced her yet?

“Well, there was one project in which I was convinced and that was a film called Colette a couple of years ago, with Keira Knightley and Dominic West. And because of my character and who she was and what she meant to those two very real characters ― it’s all based on a true story ― and because it was so much from the female gaze, so much about the female exploration of sexuality, I felt like it was necessary for that particular role. But I’ve yet to find a role since.”

Or before?

“Yes. Also, there’s an element of self-preservation that comes into it because you’re opening yourself up to be screenshot and paused, and those pictures end up online and will for ever be there. So it’s a very serious thing that you have to decide. I think if you have the confidence to do it as an actor or actress, great. And it’s not that I don’t have the confidence; it’s just that for me it has to be character-driven.”

It must also take confidence to say no. Younger actors may not have it.

“And that’s the thing. Whenever I’m on a project that younger actors are involved in and they have to do sex scenes, I always make a point of speaking very openly to both parties or all parties about it and just make sure that everyone is comfortable and they don’t feel forced into anything or that they’re frightened of anything. At the end of doing it as well, if they want to talk to someone about what they’ve been through that day [I’m there]. Because it’s a pretty weird thing.”

It is pretty unusual to find on television investigations of female sexual appetites at all. Pete, Evie’s partner, and Danny, the police-biker neighbour, almost too obviously embody two contrasting varieties of adult male human. As Pete, Alfred Enoch (formerly of Harry Potter) is slight, cerebral, an investigative reporter on what is left of his local paper. As Danny, Sam Heughan (the Outlander star but here leather-trousered not kilted) is seriously built and seriously dim. His home features a very big television and little in the way of reading matter.

Does Tomlinson have a type?

“I’ve never had a type. For me it’s all about personality and a sense of connection and, you know, someone who can really make me laugh, someone I can be totally myself with. I always hate that saying ― what is that saying? ― that he or she is punching… I hate that.”

Punching? What does that mean?

“If a guy is dating a girl who is very good-looking, someone might say to him, sort of lad talk, ‘Oh, he’s punching above his weight.’ I hate that. I’ve always tried to steer clear of that and just get to know people for who they are. Particularly these days, with apps and phones, everything is so based around what you look like.”

Certainly her husband looks nothing like Harry Richardson, the actor whom she dated for a year after he was cast as Demelza’s brother, Drake, on Poldark in 2017. Richardson is neat and svelte; Owen, his Instagram account reveals, has biceps that could crack coconuts. Playing centre, Tomlinson explains, Owen is not involved in scrums, but there have been a couple of “bad scrapes” and “quite a few trips to A&E”. “It’s just one of those things where you go, ‘OK. And breathe.’ ”

They met through a friend who was married to Owen’s team captain at the time. “They dragged me along to a rugby game. I hadn’t ever really seen any rugby before but there he was and suddenly I was very keen to watch more rugby, let’s put it that way.”

For ten years in London she lived alone but, when lockdown was declared in March 2020, the couple decided to hunker down with his parents, his two sisters and their partners. The younger sister was a little awestruck at first, as one of her go-to films growing up was Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, in which Tomlinson had starred aged 15. She quickly got over it.

“Covid just sped everything up, didn’t it? Suddenly, I was in their space and with them all the time. And it was quite an amazing thing, really. I just feel very lucky that they are who they are and that they accepted me in the ways that they did. We forged a bond, or I did, with all his family that would have taken us years otherwise.���

Tomlinson and Owen married in July 2022 at a country hotel in the Cotswolds. According to the Daily Mail, which is reliable on such things, she wore an off-the-shoulder Pronovias gown and Christian Louboutin heels (he was in a three-piece lounge suit, incidentally). Among the credits for the big day was her publicist, Victoria Raeburn-Wales. But there was no need to PR their happiness. “He’s a gentleman and I feel very lucky to have found my one,” she says when I offer my congratulations.

Had she planned to marry in her late twenties or early thirties? Her reply rather explains who she is.

“I think at some point I thought, ‘Yes, I’d love to get married,’ but I’ve always prioritised my career. I’ve never really thought, ‘This is what I want. This is when I want it.’ It’s always just been working as hard as I can, following the jobs, and trying to find someone who understands that is quite tricky.”

Yet marrying an actor would have been hard too?

“I love what I do, but I couldn’t think of anything worse ― well, obviously I could ― than to come home and have the same conversation as basically what happened in my day with someone else,” she says. “It would drive me crazy. Also, there’s an inherent competitiveness in my soul. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, if you’re working and I’m not, it’s not going to go well.”

Born to an actor, Malcolm Tomlinson, and a singer, Judith Hibbert, young Eleanor decided to become an actress aged ten on the set of The Bill, where her father was working. By 14 she was playing Jessica Biel’s younger self on the very profitable Hollywood romantic mystery The Illusionist. Back home she was in the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

A lot of her education was perforce conducted on sets with tutors, which made keeping up with her friends at Beverley High School back home in East Yorkshire hard. “There were a “couple of instances where I felt a little bit ostracised”, she admits, but in any case she was quite “insular”, lacked confidence socially and was not particularly academic (but always worked hard).

In 2013 Bryan Singer cast her for a main role in Jack the Giant Slayer but the $185-million movie flopped. She now knows never to predict how something will be received. The stars were aligned for Poldark, however. In 2014 I went to report on the making of the first series and arrived at the West Country shoot feeling sceptical. Having rewatched some of the original Seventies series, Poldark seemed faintly ridiculous and hardly worth reviving. Yet talking to the new version’s star, Aidan Turner, and its writer, Debbie Horsfield (Tomlinson was not around that day), I felt intimations of greatness. Its first season duly averaged more than eight million viewers and made Turner the hottest hunk on television, although not so distractingly that people failed to notice how seductively good Tomlinson was as his young wife.

I wonder whether she feared nothing in her future career would make the same impact but she says no, because she so enjoyed making Poldark. “I learnt so much. I mean, I was 21 when I got the part and 26 when it ended. I just did so much growing up. I learnt so much about myself as an actress.”

Since it finished in 2019 her career has known ratings triumph and ratings disaster. Stephen Merchant’s BBC1 comedy The Outlaws, about a gang of community service ne’er-do-wells in which she plays the troubled influencer Lady Gabby, is going to a third series and next year she will feature alongside Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) in Netflix’s adaptation of David Nicholls’s One Day. Her big break into American TV, The Nevers, however, was cancelled swiftly by HBO, despite having been created by Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Hunter fame, and Sky black-holed Intergalactic, a kind of female Blake’s Seven, after one season.

“I’ve had to grow a thick skin,” she says.“I wasn’t always thick-skinned. Every job that didn’t go my way used to break my heart, and every time a job finished I would just cry for weeks because I missed all my friends and I missed the role. I missed that thing of being away and being part of a company.”

Although she had been in the business for a decade even then, it was Demelza who migrated her from ingenue to leading lady. She made the role her own partly by insisting that the fiery peasant girl who lands Ross should be a redhead, although in Winston Graham’s Poldark books Demelza was dark-haired and Tomlinson is naturally dark blonde. (She wasn’t, by a long chalk, even born when Angharad Rees played Demelza redheaded in the Seventies series.)

“They fought back on it a bit. They wanted her to be blonde at some point, but I remember feeling this kind of drive. I was like a dog with a bone, and that role came up and I just wouldn’t let it go. It just consumed me for ages. I was put through the wringer with auditions and chemistry tests ― whatever they are ― with Aidan and then eventually the role was mine. But even going forward, it was like I inherently knew who I wanted her to be and her having this kind of fiery red hair. It just felt so right to me, and in the end they agreed.”

And red she has stayed?

“To be any other colour would feel really odd. You build a brand. I became known as Demelza and I suddenly thought, ‘Well, why would I change it now?’ Because something finally worked, you know?”

The other day, she says, she turned down a tempting part because it did not “feel” right. I say she is fortunate to be able to make such choices.

“I’m very fortunate,” she says. “I feel very, very lucky to do what I love doing. But, you know, it doesn’t always work out. It’s not always rosy.”

But when it does, it is clearly all-consuming.

“I can’t describe it. It just makes my heart beat faster. Finding a script, reading a script and getting into the character ― whether it’s an audition, whether it’s the offer of a role ― it just makes my heart beat faster. It drives me.”

There will, I promise, be many hearts beating faster when The Couple Next Door starts. It’s good. Just keep your cardiologist on speed dial come episode three.

The Couple Next Door begins on Monday, November 27, at 9pm on Channel 4. All episodes are then available to stream

Andrew Billen has been a journalist for 40 years, including two stints on The Times from 1984-89 and from 2002 to the present. He specialises in interviews with celebrities, politicians and writers as well as writing long-form features for the magazine. For ten years he was also The Times's television critic.

THETIMES.CO.UK #TheTimesMagazine #AndrewBillen #interview #EleanorTomlinson

[moviemunchies]

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Mission Impossible movie; I’ve watched the first, second, and sixth. The movies come in and out of Netflix and Hulu, so sooner or later I’ll get to them all.

Oh, hey, J.J. Abrams directed this movie!

Our protagonist, Ethan, has a fairly stable life right now, and he’s engaged to a nurse named Julia, and everyone’s happy! Except then Ethan is abruptly pulled into a rescue operation to save his protege at the IMF, Lindsay Farris, who was sent to spy on an international arms deal named Davian. They do get Farris out, but a detonator implanted in her head goes off, killing her and any possible intel. To finish her mission, Ethan and his team capture Davian, discovering that he’s after something called the Rabbit’s Foot, but shortly after learning (from a message left by Farris) that Davian had a mole within the IMF, Davian escapes. He and his henchmen kidnap Julia and force Ethan to steal the Rabbit’s Foot, or else he’ll kill Julia in 48 hours.

I’ve decided that I can’t watch these movies too close to each other. Ethan is always on the run from his superiors, and always being pushed to his limits. I’m sorry, but it can get repetitive if I watched these one after the other. I would only get exhausted. It’s great that these movies are willing to go all-in on the action and the stakes; I just think you’d get numbed to it if you dealt with them in a row in a short period of time.

The biggest problem with this film is that Abrams often doesn’t show us some of the coolest parts of the story. Ethan is given a deadline of forty-eight hours to grab the Rabbit’s Foot, but the movie skips around without telling us how long he’s got left (through dialogue) until it’s only a couple of hours. And then skipping ahead to less than that. And THEN not showing us the actual heist itself. That’s a cop out! I want to know how, in a matter of minutes, Ethan breaks into a heavily-guarded facility to steal the Rabbit’s Foot and only barely escape! Isn’t that the entire point of a Mission Impossible movie?

Also pretty egregious is the final battle–when Ethan and Davian finally duke it out. Spoiler alert, Ethan wins (which you knew because Tom Cruise is in four more Mission Impossible movies after this). The way that he wins, after a brutal battle, is not due to anything he did, but a total coincidence that neither character had much control over, making it seem pretty cheap. There’s also a resolution to a problem that I don't think would have worked–and reminds me that J.J. Abrams often works on a vague understanding of how science works.

Worst, though, is that we don’t have a clue what the Rabbit’s Foot actually is. It’s as generic a McGuffin as they come because of it. One character theorizes what it might be, but no one ever says. And yes, it could be any generic doomsday bioweapon and the Plot wouldn’t change; still, I think it’s likely that, given what I know of J.J. Abrams in 2023, he didn’t want to do the work to have a clue what to do with it. I don’t know, and he never did, either.

Ethan’s team is underdeveloped, though that’s pretty par for the course at this point. I believe that the next movie is when team members other than Luther have personalities developed enough to care about. It’s a little disappointing though because it’s a great cast.

The action that we do see is very good. The fight scenes are all exciting to watch, there’s a great chase scene, and the scene where Ethan rescues Ferris is a pretty awesome showcase as to what type of agents they are and how effective they are in the field. Tom Cruise does really good action scenes, and watching the film you can tell why they keep Ethan around even if they keep disavowing him–he’s really good at his job!

Ethan also isn’t stupid, which is better than a lot of action heroes. When his team points out that they can’t just hand the Rabbit’s Foot to Davian, he explains, rather frustratedly, that he knows that, he’s planning on tagging it with a tracker before they do that so that they have a chance to get it back right after the handoff. I think that there’s a lot of action movie protagonists who would not even consider something like that, being too overwhelmed with emotion to do anything but fulfill the villains’ demands.

Davian’s a fun villain? In an understated way. He’s not the greatest of the great, but he is interesting in that he almost never loses his cool. In these movies, spies are able to buy time and leverage by talking, and Davian always shuts down Ethan by not giving a crap about whatever he’s talking about. I appreciate that. Philip Seymour Hoffman does well in this role.

So this movie’s fine. It’s fun, though there are a few very notable problems in the film’s execution. It’s good, but those problems are holding it back from being an excellent movie. I understand that some of that is perhaps time constraints. Still, I think that you can have fun watching this one if you need a loud, action-packed movie. It’s not a must-see, though, and there are other movies in the series that are more worth your time.

#Movie Munchies #Mission Impossible #Tom Cruise #M:I

[k8fics]

Could you make a headcanon for the guys about the reader being like super young and is one of the camera people and basically everyone treats them like a little sibling? It doesn't have to be anything specific, I kinda just wanna read a bunch of fluff with all of the crew is all. Sorry if this is too much. Thank you for your time💜

Obtuse

rating: unrated — all stunts preformed by professionals.

note: not a problem at all! thank you for requesting, sorry for the late response

- i’m kind of basing this off knate lee, but you’re about 20-23 during the jackass show.

- you probably knew one of the crew so you got recommended. that’s how you got the job!

- you’re pretty much an amateur at filming high-risk or public stunts, only filming skating videos.

- the filming crew gets pretty frustrated with you in the beginning; having you in the background of shots, focusing on something other than the stunts, or just you fucking around in the background of scenes.

“Y/N, you’re in the shot!”

“Get out of the way. Fucking amateurs.”

“Johnny stop flirting with Y/N, they need to film this.”

“Dude! Record the stunt.”

“Sorry, Kosick. Wee-man wanted me to film Preston’s reaction to this.”

- the footage is good and all, you just need to focus on the things at hand.

- which is understandably hard, especially being surrounded by all these hot, grungy guys.

- you’re in your prime, and very horny.

- they have you recording at the bars a few times.

- but once you got distracted by men coming up to you the first couple of times, they gave the role to someone else.

- the crew will never tell you off for it though. you’re a talented camera person.

- you get close-ups on the animals with no hesitations, can get all the reactions from the guys, and have a pretty good personality on set.

- you can pretty much convince anyone to do a stunt with enough motivation.

“Come on, Bam. It’s going to look awesome.”

“There’s no fucking way I’m doing that!”

“Where’s Y/N when you need ‘em?”

*Cut to the next scene:*

“How the hell did you get him to do that?”

“I said I’d clean his room for a month.”

- you and johnny love doing public scenes together.

- and you’ve definitely been arrested a few times for the public stunts.

- you swear up and down that you’re filming a tv show , but you just keep giggling that the cops don’t believe you, until jeff shows up.

- then you’ll be made fun of for a few weeks maybe a month or two.

- even though you’re not scared of a lot of things, you cringe.

- like a lot.

- honestly, i get it. you’re dealing with bodily fluids most days and on top of that, embarrassing yourself and others in front of the public.

“I can’t do this. I can’t watch this.”

“Come on, it’s just a little bit of poo.”

“It’s 20 pounds of shit.”

- i think your worst experience on the show would be the ‘gumball 3000.’

- you’d be hungover most days, and being in a car with steve-o and chris would be awful.

- you threw up a few times, all being recorded (either by rick or chris), followed by steve-o throwing up.

- after a few years, you stopped being as grossed out by the jackass crew as a whole.

- of course, they would invite you to do the other jackass franchise stuff. such as wildboyz, which you absolutely loved.

- you were able to record whatever, whenever in different places while being intoxicated off your ass.

- you still record close-ups of animals but you started to film reactions more frequently.

- the crew loved these scenes, you were able to film so many reactions within the frame and they respected that about you.

- the jackass movies were great to be a part of. i feel like they would give you a lot of creative freedom.

- which probably helped the movies in a way, you would give inspiration on stunts, ideas for the guys to do for pranks, and (your favorite) give interviews to the guys.

INTERVIEWING JACKASSES FT. Y/N

Johnny

“Hello everyone, in this episode-”

“Isn’t this your first episode?”

“Yes, but we still need an introduction. God! Anyways, I’m here with Johnny Knoxville! America’s biggest asshole.”

“You mistranslated, I’m America’s biggest lady’s man.”

“The women of America know that is not true. But today I am going to be asking Mr. Knoxville some very, very important questions. First being; How did it feel like to kill in the balls via a bunch of first-graders?”

“My balls are still alive and well, you can test them out if you’d like.”

“That wasn’t the question, dummy. You’re a horrible interviewee.”

Ryan

“-Today, I’m here with the wonderful Ryan! Ryan, how are you feeling”

“I’m great! How about you?”

“This isn’t about me. You’re about to jump off a ramp into a shitty creek, are you excited?”

“No. Why would I be excited? I do it for my fans.”

“Alrighty, I guess that makes me you’re number one fan?”

“You’re the only one that’s going to cheer me on so yeah, I guess so.”

Bam

“Hi, my name is Bam, this is Y/N-“

“Let me record, you’re my guest.”

“Ryan says your interviews are awful, I’m making them better!”

“I try my best. How do you feel about snakes?”

“Why? What are you planning? I’ll kill you.”

“I’m not planning anything! You’re overreacting, it’s a question.“

“If there are snakes anywhere near me, I swear to god, Y/N. It’s over for you. I will get you so hard.”

“You didn’t even answer the question.”

Wee-Man

“I have my favorite person on the show today, Wee-Man!”

“Hello! Can you call this a show though?”

“I’m the Oprah of Jackass. Back to the segment, why do you like pain?”

“I don’t think I like pain, I like being stupid.”

“I think I like seeing people in pain.”

“In a sexual way?”

“Maybe?”

Dave

“Welcome! In today’s episode, I’m with Mr. Dave England. Dave, thanks for coming on.”

“It’s great to be here.”

“Dave just made breakfast, what did you make exactly?”

“An omelet. With my vomit.”

“Sounds amazing! How’d it taste?”

“Disgusting, want a bite?”

“No thanks. David get the vomelette away from me, you sicko.”

“Just a bite! I’ll buy you drinks for three months.”

“And I get to kick you in the balls?”

“And you get to kick me in the balls.”

Steve-O

“Hi guys, today I’m here with… Steve-O!”

“Yes! Hello!”

“Also known as Gilly.”

“Ew, you’re the only one that calls me that.”

“Not true!”

“Name one other person that calls me that.”

“You know, just because no one says it to you directly, doesn’t mean they don’t call you that.”

Ehren

“Ehren please do an interview with me.”

“No Y/N, you’re going to prank me.”

“I don’t prank people. It’s not my style.”

“You literally pranked me yesterday.”

“Barely.”

“You drew on my face and let me go out in public like that!”

“I was coerced.”

Chris

“Welcome back to ‘Interviewing Jackasses with Y/N!’ In today’s episode, I have here with me Chris Pontius.”

“Howdy.”

“You’re also known as Party Boy, correct? How many ladies do you gain from that reputation?”

“Many. Lots. Tons.”

“….Can you name one?”

“Candice.”

“Candice who? Miller?”

“No. Candice dick fit in your mouth!”

“That was so stupid. Get off of my show.”

-

as a younger sibling, i dont know how to act like a younger sibling. but thank you for requesting <3

#imagines #jackass imagine #jackass #jackass x reader #jackass fanfic #johnny knoxville #steve o #chris pontius #ehren mcghehey #wee man #dave england #bam margera #ryan dunn #x reader #fanfic

[beardedmrbean]

But wait Nunya, I’m a autists adhd man that like the uncensored version of the black eyes peas song, but it accurate to when I play games like Saints Row

But a new undercover brother movie (I really need to find a way to watch it) could work…if black Hollywood had self awareness

But as many Africans been complaining about certain black American celebrities and creators….after talking to Mexicans, Indians, and other people from different countries I realize a huge issue

The problem is a lot of black content creators especially on the woke side don’t understand they are American as hell. In fact worse that your average patriotic hillbilly

Like sorry the magical negero thing…the white people they complain about seem like the upper middle classes and up ones that the average working class white person see as insufferable

(Aka the Karens)

It like how the Barbie try to say the Ken’s represent women throughout history

Oooh Greta, I don’t think you should compare say Jane Fonda rights vs what my great uncle had who died in Vietnam during the 60’s

Not to mention the Kens are treated more like how Hollywood treats women than the average society (psst your classism is showing Greta)

And the Karen movie, someone pointed out the black couple moved into neighborhood named after a confederate general. And I hope they don’t do something to humanize the racist Karen-

Wait her hatred towards black peoples because her cop husband was killed by a dedicated cop killer?

Aaaand the black couple later kills her and her brother thus leaving the Karen kids now motherless and very likely to go to foster care?

Writers didn’t think this script through did they?

Also it was BET film, oh BET who awards show is basically a high budget strip show and make content about black people so racist one would think it’s made by kkk grandwizards

Sorry for ranting.

But wait Nunya, I’m a autists adhd man that like the uncensored version of the black eyes peas song, but it accurate to when I play games like Saints Row

ADHD and Dyslexic so I'm with ya there

But a new undercover brother movie (I really need to find a way to watch it) could work…if black Hollywood had self awareness

I miss self aware over the top humor, Wayne's family had a gift for that.

But as many Africans been complaining about certain black American celebrities and creators….after talking to Mexicans, Indians, and other people from different countries I realize a huge issue The problem is a lot of black content creators especially on the woke side don’t understand they are American as hell. In fact worse that your average patriotic hillbilly

They gonna be mad at you for saying that, but you may have a point

Like sorry the magical negero thing…the white people they complain about seem like the upper middle classes and up ones that the average working class white person see as insufferable

Be nice if people could remember class is a better determinate of where people will land than race, #1 thing that crosses every single demographic in determining life outcomes is a father in the life of the child.

I would imagine the same would hold true for the mother if they managed to look at those numbers too, but given the way society is set up the mother isn't usually the one that goes missing since they're pretty easy to locate and determine who they are without any real issues.

It like how the Barbie try to say the Ken’s represent women throughout history Oooh Greta, I don’t think you should compare say Jane Fonda rights vs what my great uncle had who died in Vietnam during the 60’s Not to mention the Kens are treated more like how Hollywood treats women than the average society (psst your classism is showing Greta)

jane fonda represents nothing but treason, gretta is just parroting hillary anyhow.

I know the rest of the quote and the context and in it's own way ya she's right, men don't have to suffer anymore after they've been killed, not that that makes this any better, also she's forgetting the children who's parents die that aren't female.

Son will feel the loss of his father, father will feel the loss of their son, and now husband can feel the loss of his husband as well making hillary's statement here not only sexist but homophobic as well.

And the Karen movie, someone pointed out the black couple moved into neighborhood named after a confederate general. And I hope they don’t do something to humanize the racist Karen- Wait her hatred towards black peoples because her cop husband was killed by a dedicated cop killer? Aaaand the black couple later kills her and her brother thus leaving the Karen kids now motherless and very likely to go to foster care? Writers didn’t think this script through did they?

I'm very big on not blaming the group for the actions of the individual or even the extreme minority of the individuals, which might be a point they're trying to make here, but I bet it would lose a lot of steam if folks started to think about that too hard given so many of the complaints made in certain groups.

Also it was BET film, oh BET who awards show is basically a high budget strip show and make content about black people so racist one would think it’s made by kkk grandwizards Sorry for ranting.

Like I said, if people moved away from collective blame there might be some push back.

#zoomer huey anon

[monkey-network]

Every Tyler the Creator Album Ranked

And then, out of the bleu, I listened to every album from the predictably unpredictable Tyler, the Creator. Frankly, I only knew him best from Loiter Squad and The Jellies with the occasional cameo via Regular Show and Axe Cop. It was last Fall where I started listening to music more, eventually going Tyler's full discography. Here we are now, recognizing his game, getting surprised in more ways than one, and going through his albums from good to peak. Don't take this as a "worst to best" ranking, I will confidently say he has no bad records. But, gotta discuss one thing though before we get to the list and that is...

0. The Grinch Album

Back in 2018, Tyler was commissioned to make a couple songs for Illumination's Grinch movie. They were okay even though they wasted his version of "You're a Mean One" on the opening minutes instead of the part that matter. It was in the same year that he made an EP with songs inspired by the movie that weren't used in said movie, just something Tyler was into doing. It's only six songs, ten minutes and change, but it's breezy while not being annoying about the Holidays. I'd overall say, since it came beforehand, the EP's great in getting a feel of IGOR's instrumentals but with a more upbeat tone. You can really tell Pharrell Williams was a big influence to Tyler here, coincidentally since Pharrell made songs for Illumination and a couple of these Grinch songs resemble his works in a way. If I were to rank it, it'd be number 6. Way too short to fairly ranked among the others but admittedly memorable compared to the bottom 2. With that said, NOW let's do this...

7. Cherry Bomb

Again none of these are bad albums, and I say this was a very important one for Tyler's career. Cherry Bomb is to Tyler what Vaudeville Villain was for MF DOOM. After the Wolf Trilogy, this was him popping off one more time like the old days before coming to terms with where he wanted to go next, you notice with how things mellow out halfway in. You get how his direction in music shifted while not feeling ashamed of what used to be his initial style; Flower Boy wouldn't have worked without this and I can see why it's Tyler's personal favorite. With that said, most the tracks aren't as memorable as the later albums on this list. 'Deathcamp' is a fierce bop opener, I love 'Find Your Wings', 'Okaga, CA' and '2Seater', but man it can be a tonal mess that doesn't reach the same highs. Plus it's the one where I can say the mixing is weird; like some vocals feel muffled and the production sounds unintentionally worse than Goblin. The titular 6th song I just hate, personally the all time worst song he's ever made and it's not close. Not as great an album as I'd hoped, but to dismiss this album would feel wrong as it exists no differently to Tyler's growth as a artist. Change ain't easy, y'know.

6. Goblin

Yeah, even I can't deny this is the weakest of the Wolf trilogy. It's better than Cherry Bomb in that it has a... more consistent flow, but that leads into my biggest problem. Goblin feels too same-y and just a messier expansion to Bastard. 'Yonkers' I'm amazed got the praise it did when I could tell Tyler made it as a joke; emblematic of his career I guess. Still, when it hits it hits, we got 'She', 'Tron Cat', "Nightmare', 'Windows', and you get into it better than Cherry Bomb. Now I'm one of those crackpots that thinks of this, where if you ever get into Tyler's music, I recommend Goblin after Wolf where you'll understand the latter more but listening to Goblin then Wolf as naturally ordered will play out like an edited timeline story if listened to all at once. Goblin overall feels like that middle child where it fits the time it was released but hasn't aged as well as its siblings.

5. Scum Fuck Flower Boy

This is probably blaspheme but it is one of those cases where this is great but the next few albums are just better to me by comparison. I can appreciate this album more after listening to Cherry Bomb; the neo soul heavily leaning from CB's latter half songs. The vibes are more chill but retains those underlying somber feelings like previous albums. This felt like he refined his style; Tyler got to loosen up lyrically & it's all a mood. At the same time, I didn't grow up with this album while I wish I did. It just doesn't resonate with me as much while I do grasp how the Creator was feeling when he made this. Best way to describe is that I could see the characters that exist in the albums; I can see Wolf Haley, Baudelaire, IGOR, etc. It's hard seeing Flower Boy himself because he feels that overshadowed between his works of the past and future. Again not like I didn't understand, just that it wasn't as impactful as I'd hoped. Don't take this as a negative, because this is just how strong Tyler's music can be for me.

4. Bastard

I genuinely tend to switch between Bastard and Wolf as to which is number 3. For Wolf, it's with the storytelling and the composition that's done better. For Bastard, it's the energy and unfiltered fun with it being Tyler's first mixtape. I was taken aback initially on the contents of this like I will not call it "horrorcore" but it's like JESUS christ; can't even tell you what's on this for the fear of getting flagged. However, I say Tyler's music gets better with re-listens. Bastard feels like the title lives up to the name; Ace and Odd Future making bangers together, flippin' birds to the sky, and the titular track laying out that it isn't just shock value for the sake of it. This feels like the album Tyler would always want to make starting out, with that no fucks given confidence being the foundation of him exploring his troubles with love and developing a career. Basically, the "Fatherless Behavior album" as my friend pointed out that blessfully hasn't aged like milk given the man's future livelihood. I enjoy Bastard for its garage appeal and this being where Tyler got to start out before 'Yonkers' pushed him to stardom.

3. Wolf

This to me has the best storytelling in Tyler's discography. I like that it kinda tricks you in terms of what the perspective is for the album's concept. You could say this is about Wolf Haley himself finding some peace after Goblin and getting in the love triangle with Samuel and Salem. You could say this was more Samuel's album while Wolf is mostly out the picture hanging with Salem. Either way works with Tyler's growth considering this is far less shocking than Goblin and Bastard combined. You can tell while Samuel exists as the remaining edginess of Tyler's past, he's cooled down with the graphical lyrics for a different approach to his music; 'Answer' and 'PartyIsntOver' shows his softer tune that fits the album's camp aesthetic. Again, this and Bastard I will flip ranks on certain days, but I can see why it's the fan favorite among the initial three.

2. Call Me If You Get Lost

From what I've seen before listening, I figured that this would be a flex album and Tyler did not disappoint. Tyler Baudelaire felt like a real persona, I'd say the evolution of Wolf Haley with DJ Drama being the cherry on top. I think this wouldn't have worked as well without the hypeman, not only for being a great jab at DJ Khalid after the one sided beef back in 2018 but an enjoyable narrator that I couldn't imagine any other for the spot. Call Me is just the epitome of swagger, the time where Tyler can finally gun out with his rap skills while it's not full on chest beating. Like his previous albums, it explores his love life and how he works out his feelings when things don't go right. Felt like Tyler at his most vulnerable, especially with 'Wilshire' that's the longest song if you don't count the notable conjoined tracks like 'Sugar/I Thought You Wanted to Dance'. When you recognize growth, this album was it. Incorporating his previous albums into this, utilizing his ability to make banger after banger. That's if you don't count The Estate Sale, basically a victory lap upon the existing victory lap that was the base album. When I say 'Sorry, Not Sorry' was the pinnacle of Tyler's whole career I mean it. Call Me If You Get Lost felt like a celebration, where you're with Tyler in how much he's living life. This seriously would've been number 1 with or without Estate Sale, if not for...

1. IGOR

Might as well say it now: it's his magnum opus. I've brought up a couple times now that Tyler's music can be messy and that can apply here, more on a emotional level than technical. Here though, that's what makes it perfect. This album is about the love you had being pulled and eventually crushed, and it's not around to sugarcoat. What helps it stick out is knowing IGOR exists as his own being, not just a persona of Tyler. He embodies how we all can feel when it comes to heartbreak and how ugly the emotions can actually be. This wouldn't have worked without 'New Magic Wand', without 'What's Good' or 'I Don't Love You Anymore'. Tyler's music, from what I've recognize, has always been taking ugly with the beauty you can find and this is that note perfected. Being the shortest album of the collection, this album's ergonomic where I can hardly listen to one song on its own and was the record I've listened to the most because it got better every time. This isn't even accounting for 'Are We Still Friends', which I've considered the all-time greatest closer I've ever listened to. It brings me to actual tears every time and it's like everything clicked. This felt like more than just Tyler proving himself as the Creator, but him respecting the oldheads of music with this neo-soul masterpiece.

Conclusion

Tyler's music is the first instance I truly grasped what he meant by each album pinpointing the certain periods of his life. Listening to his works in order, you understand his growth as an musician without it ever feeling out of nowhere. What I love most is that you can tell he constantly had fun producing; the confidence he always has even at his worst can't be understated. It feels like Tyler got to grow up on his own terms, never taking his success for granted and becoming the most prolific artist I've known next to Kendrick and Dre. Having caught up, I'm genuinely interested in his next direction because hell, what else is there to say?

He's the Best

#tyler the creator #Tyler Okonma #odd future #music #hip hop #rap #neo soul #albums ranked #list #reviews #long post #Good Stuff

[cyarsk52-20]

I wouldn't be mad if Megan came out with a song that called out every person in the industry by name who shitted on her during that trial… lyrically destroy them! The fact that there are still people defending him disgusts me. I’ll never understand this obsession with wanting assault victims to be liars. i will get back to my rant in a moment but i need to say that i always want the world to burn and pay for their crimes for their mistreatment of black women.

it’s not just meg. Rihanna, Kelis, Tina Turner, Ashanti, Keke Palmer, Dee Barnes, Michel'le, & so many other Black women were done wrong

Aaliyah never really came forward. But when the news broke that she was illegally married to R. Kelly she was shamed as if she wasn’t a victim. You can literally look up what happened during that time. Her industry peers was still working with him & didn’t give a damn.

Robin Givens was framed as a “gold digger” & was victim blamed after Mike Tyson abused. The Black community was terrible to her. Despite Mike Tyson saying in his book that punching Robin Givens “was the best punch I've ever thrown in my entire life.”…

People were nasty as hell to K Michelle when she accused Memphitz of abusing her. Only for him to later admit that he actually abused her. I can’t recall anyone who dogged her out in his defense recanting or even apologizing for the harm they brought to her.

Biggie used to abuse tf out of Lil Kim & instead of people acknowledging what happened to her they just rush to talk about her plastic surgeries (as a result of abuse btw)

Karruche, Tyra Banks , Kimora Lee Simmons , Tisha Campbell etc. all lost jobs and opportunities for speaking up

The police leaked Rihanna’s nude pictures from her phone. Nas & Dr Dre are still pillars in the community. People made fun of Keke hiding from Trey. The women of love & hip hop basically told K. Michelle she was lying. Like come the tf on. Society doesn’t care about victims especially if they are black.

if you support a nasty person who hates bw and intentionally harms them and abusers, then you’re dead to me and you can go to hell you abuser and anti bw slut!

Now back to that Canadian pos.

It’s the way he’s gone out of his way so many times to avoid accountability and paint him as innocent it’s disgusting. The narcissism. The sociopathy. The way he played the victim

Overall, Tory’s ego is why he is in the predicament that he’s in. Not because of him shooting a woman (a problem in itself). Had he owned up to what he did & took a plea deal, he would’ve been better off. He would have never had to face two decades of prison and deportation, just a couple of years in jail and that’ would be it.

& We all know folks love an abuser redemption arc. I just see it now “he took accountability for what he did” “he changed” “he’s showing growth”.. So folks would’ve ate that up! 🙃🙃 like you can’t redeem those who haven’t genuinely repented

God really blessed him with the worst team/lawyers possible. Still remember his lawyer acting a fool. “Y’all come back with a not guilty verdict yet?” He really thought social media was the judge and jury 🤣😂🤣😂

He thought the fact other misogynists and abusers were loudly backing him meant he would've gotten off. Womp womp!

she more of a real nigga than him. she was just gone let that shit ride but he started talking shit. He should have been grateful that she didn’t turn his dusty behind to the cops at the crime scene at first, she was gonna let him off the hook and was willing to let the whole situation go as well? She was being extremely gracious but he chose clownery, he still decided to run his mouth & drag her on the internet now he’s jailed. It’s what he deserves.

the fact that she literally tried to protect him from the police at first despite what he did to her. she was literally willing to let it go and try to move on, HE dragged it and was in the blogs calling her a liar.

Literally or just not say anything if no one else was saying anything he decided to drag it a be corny

if a mf show you mercy, just take that lesson and keep it pushing. At the very least be grateful. Most people would have turned that person who shot them that same night and called the cops. When people grace you you better not take it for granted.

I swear people be getting too big for they britches and think fat meat ain’t greasy.

i say this all the time not once did he show a ounce of empathy or even keep quiet , he was antagonizing her for a whole 2 years straight being the ring leader having ppl encourage his disgusting behavior, Literally all he has to blame is his ego. Megan had no initial intention of cooperating with the state/cops or outing him as the shooter. He could have gotten away with this if he wasn't such an egotistical, opportunistic, entitled, sociopathic, narcissistic, misogynist prick. so now he’ll have plenty of time to think about his actions and I hope they deport that leprechaun with the quickness 🫶🏾 .

It’s definitely his fault and I’m glad to see him burn.

#Poor baby smh she’s been through so much 🫶🏽🥺 #fuck everyone and everybody who said that megan was lying #they can all choke #my heart is constantly with meg 💝 she's been through far too much #I’ll never forgive anyone who disrespects and abuses black women #Rihanna #Kelis #Tina Turner #Ashanti #Keke Palmer #Dee Barnes #Michel'le #& so many other Black women. #To hell with the world they will pay for their crimes for disrespecting black women #Don’t fuck with black women #Don’t harm them or disrespect them if you can’t love them #K. Michelle #Robin Givens #Janet Jackson #Whitney Houston #i will always want the world to burn and pay for their crimes for their mistreatment of black women. #If you supported abusers and those who have done black women dirty #then you are dead to me and you can go to hell #i don’t give a fuck #I don’t even care if you’re my mother #You are nothing to me if you are being a cocksucker to an abusers and someone who has disrespect bw. #i said what i said #argue with the fucking wall

[outrunningthedark]

I don’t understand the buddie vs tarlos debate. I don’t care much for LS but regardless of why tim created tarlos, whether it was an alternative to buddie or not, more representation is always a good thing even if you (general you) don’t personally like the ship? again I don’t care about tarlos but I find it so hypocritical of some OG fans to claim buddie would be a great step toward better rep and then shit on tarlos, which is at the very least decent rep. even IF it was an alternative to buddie, more queer characters and relationships is something we should strive towards and not fight against or be bitter about. and yeah obviously tim caters to tarlos fans but I don’t see how that’s a bad thing, when showrunners are always catering to straight ships and audiences; even if it is fan service on some level, it’s still a good thing. also buddie happening or not won’t have anything to do with tarlos, it will happen if they decide they want it to happen, it’s not set in stone or tied to tarlos’ existence in any way, especially now that the shows don’t even do crossovers anymore and are mostly separate entities.

This is a message I can get behind.

I will never understand the excuse that one piece of queer rep somehow cancels out the wish for more or isn't "good enough" just because it's not what a viewer wanted to see. Nobody has to like LS or Tarlos, but to act as though they are "less than" based on how quickly they got together or what Tim does with their scenes...sounds like bitterness to me. - Sure, a lot of people enjoy a slow burn while watching a work of fiction, but plenty of couples IRL (regardless of gender and sexuality) go from 0 to 100 without thinking. Tarlos is an example of this while Buddie could/would be the opposite.

It's no different than people rooting for the Diaz parents to be homophobic because "We already saw what acceptance looks like through Carlos's story." (Most don't want the representation as much as they want the drama for fic purposes.) - It's one thing to be upset about (what feels like) fan service when it comes to Buddie scenes (because fandom doesn't know where the story is going or what to believe), but...Tim doing (mostly) right by the Tarlos fan base is a problem because...those fans get to be happy, and you're not? Is that it? Just because he's not eager to do what OG fandom is hoping for does not mean the viewers who have supported the canon m/m ship from day one should suffer alongside you. - Are a lot of Carlos's scenes intertwined with his partner? Yup. So are Karen's. So were David's. (So are Chimney's, for fuck's sake. But anyway...) You know what those characters have in common? They were/are recurring. Signed for less than a full season; sometimes way less depending on scheduling parameters. Carlos is being treated the same as the other two simply because it's what the contract dictates. Fewer opportunities for appearances means fewer opportunities to explore a character as an individual. That's how it goes. And, uh, just for argument's sake...if people are so opposed to Athena's career story lines...then surely Carlos The Cop is a less favorable option compared to The Boyfriend, yes? Rep is not good rep when you don't even want to consume the content. Ngl, I think a huge problem people have with Tarlos is knowing that they're (almost certainly) never going to split up unless something happens with one of the actors in the future. (The jealousy!) Being a recur means Rafael's main purpose is playing the significant other of a main. No Tarlos? Not as much of a reason to keep him around (sadly). Tarlos is presumably getting their happy ending (with some bumps in between). But with Buddie... What's the "ending"? Will it be happy?

#good talk‚ nonnie #i had fun #anonymous #tina speaks #buddie #tarlos #tv: 911 #tv: 9-1-1 #911: lone star

[autolenaphilia]

I finished listening to The Magnus Archives many months ago. It is a horror audio drama podcast that was very popular here on tumblr. Yet i felt underwhelmed. It was okay, I guess? I felt that the statements were actually scary in the first two seasons, and by season 5 I was not scared at all, despite horrific things happening regularly.

Like there was nothing outstandingly bad in the writing. The characters were fine, nice representation of cis gays I suppose. Although the only trans woman being a single statement giver who doesn’t actually appear in the show is a bit disappointing. For me, perhaps the most important point of media representation is to get creative people from marginalized communities employed. I get it's a single-writer thing, Jonathan Sims writes every episode, but employing a trans woman actor to give the statement (something that happens with plenty of other statements) for the only transfem statement giver would be nice.

Well the only trans woman if you don’t count Nikola Orsinov. Oh Nikola, she is literally a man turned into an evil fake plastic mannequin/doll woman who hides her malevolence under an exaggerated cutesy performance of femininity and like Jame Gumb, steals skin to appear like a human woman. Giving potentially another meaning to the acronym TMA there, but I’ll give the writer the benefit of the doubt and say that’s probably not intentional. even if it does express some anxieties about gender. Besides, she’s my favourite villain by a long shot, Nikola Orsinov is a lot of fun.

I also disliked one of the canonical lesbian couples, Basira Hussain and Daisy Tonner. It's a typical example of the trope where the butch lesbian character is a cop, and on top of that, the series does a police brutality arc with them. It's not like women can't be violent cops, but like come on, Magnus Archives. When police brutality happens and a non-white lesbian like Basira is involved, they don't tend to be the perpetrator in the incident.

Anyway, the show was entertaining but felt underwhelming.

And I think I finally figured out why. It’s because the basic idea of the series is that it starts out seeming like a horror anthology series. It’s seemingly disconnected stories of people being menaced by the supernatural, with no explanation of what the supernatural actually is, as in most horror stories. The statements in Magnus can be good, solid horror fiction, if a bit derivative.

And then it reveals its true face: it’s actually a horror serial. The series actually has extensive worldbuilding which connects together and explains all those seemingly disparate stories.

The shift from horror anthology to serialized drama is frankly just awkward in general, it's such a radical shift in story structure. The show sticks with the statement structure for continuity reasons long after it makes any dramatic sense, when the story is carried forward by dialogue rather than any information gained from the various statements..They interrupt the story by the final seasons rather than develop them. In season 5, characters are literally annoyed with the statements because they interrupt the plot progression.

Yet the problem with this storytelling shift I think is far more deeper. That’s because I think horror is kinda antithetical to worldbuilding. I think horror needs some mystery to it, a sense of the unknown, of humanity being menaced by inexplicable forces. When you can explain the supernatural, as extensive worldbuilding tends to do, it ceases to be really scary. And The Magnus Archives has macabre and dark worldbuilding, but it also explains far too much. It tries to be a metafictional commentary on horror fiction, but it ends up showing how bad it is at understanding the genre

It presents these very genre-typical horror stories, with all their unexplained supernatural events and it seems writer Jonathan Sims saw their unexplained nature as a promise of a future solution instead of actually standing on their own. And that’s not how mystery works in the horror genre for the most part, and for good reason.

I’ve sometimes heard The Magnus Archives described as Lovecraftian, but looking at what Lovecraft said about horror in the classic Supernatural Horror in Literature, I think he would agree with me. “The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” And in what he claimed in the true weird tale “A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint...of that most terrible conception of the human brain—a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space.“

This is a kind of horror ethos that is antithetical to worldbuilding. Worldbuilding maps out and explains a setting’s fantastical elements, which works best for a kind of Tolkienian fantasy, whereas horror relies on the unknown. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos is often seen as the kind of explanatory worldbuilding Magnus engages in, but that’s something his lesser imitators such as August Derleth engaged in far more than Creepy Howie himself. It’s an impression created more by the Call of Cthulhu RPG than Lovecraft’s stories.

M. John Harrison’s criticism of worldbuilding is also relevant to The Magnus Archives:

“When I use the term “worldbuilding fiction” I refer to immersive fiction, in any medium, in which an attempt is made to rationalise the fiction by exhaustive grounding, or by making it “logical in its own terms”, so that it becomes less an act of imagination than the literalisation of one. Representational techniques are used to validate the invention, with the idea of providing a secondary creation for the reader to “inhabit”; but also, in a sense, as an excuse or alibi for the act of making things up, as if to legitimise an otherwise questionable activity. This kind of worldbuilding actually undercuts the best and most exciting aspects of fantastic fiction, subordinating the uncontrolled, the intuitive & the authentically imaginative to the explicable; and replacing psychological, poetic & emotional logic with the rationality of the fake. “

This is harsh, but describes the problem of The Magnus Archives quite accurately. I would add that in horror this kind of worldbuilding also undercuts any genuine horror. The “rationality of the fake” is no substitute for fear of the unknown. Supernatural horror without any mystery regarding the supernatural things just becomes a depiction of fantastical torture.

In season 1, the Archivist tries to deliver "rational" explanations for the supernatural events described, and they deliberately ring hollow. It reads as a man trying desperate to shore up his worldview against events that defy them, showing a "malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature" It's a classic horror writing trick. But by season 3, the archivist knows the basics of the story's worldbuilding, and starts explaining the statements with a new supernatural logic, which is shown to be correct.

And Sims doesn't seem to realize that he has simply replaced a naturalistic rationality with a supernatural "rationality of the fake." The stories in the first two seasons show the supernatural disrupting the laws of normal existence, and are therefore scary. Yet then the story creates a new "safeguard against the assaults of chaos" in the form of worldbuilding explanations of these events. Its fantasy with a lot of suffering, rather than horror.

The Magnus Archives might seem like a story that is very certain of itself. It has built this extensive worldbuilding construction to explain its every fantastical flourish, and even its genre and medium. We get explanations for genre staples such as "why are people able to give such articulate and clear statements of horrific and traumatic events?" And because it's yet another audio drama that has a "found footage" or rather a "found recordings" gimmick, we even get an explanation for why everything plot relevant is recorded.

Yet this is to mask a deep uncertainty, as it clearly feels a need to deeply justify its fantasy. A story that was more genuinely certain of itself would allow things to remain unexplained and not need to justify its own flights of imagination.

I don’t care much about spoilers, but I have some further more specific thoughts under the cut. I won’t summarize and explain concepts and plots from the series because it’s boring to write, so think of this as supplementary criticism for those who have listened to Magnus.

The problem with The Fears as explanations is that they are so boringly anthropomorphic. In fact they are explicitly explained in the final episode as arising from the human emotion of fear, a final bit of worldbuilding that adds explanation at the cost of actual horror.

And their motivation is so boring, in that they are basically sadists, whose goal with everything they do is to create fear in humans. It’s such a mundane motivation for interdimensional amorphous powers. That’s about as scary as the serial killers in the most boring kind of mystery and horror fiction, which is not much.

And it sucks all the actual surrealism and imagination out of the setting. Anytime Magnus borrows from surreal horror fiction, it’s not actually surreal, because everything is explainable. Things are surreal because surreal supernatural events scares humans and the supernatural entities want to scare humans. So things that are meant to be surreal horror like the Stranger ritual in the season three finale or most of the hellscapes in season five aren’t actually surreal.

Speaking of season five. For all my criticisms of the series overall, I have to praise the season four finale. It ends on a revelation that the supposed hero’s effort were all meaningless and that actually he has been manipulated into bringing out the apocalypse he hoped to prevent. This revelation is really effective tragedy, especially as it comes after what seems to be a happy ending for him and his partner Martin. Good shit, the series could very well have ended there. It would be a bleak ending, but that fits a horror series.

Yet then the series continues with another season. And by this time the transformation into Tolkienian worldbuilding fantasy is complete. The story of season five is how Frodo and Sam must journey through Mordor to defeat the eye of Sauron by destroying the source of his power. Sorry, I meant that Jon and Martin must journey through hellscape Britain in order to defeat the rule of the Eye and destroy the source of its power. The parallels are obvious.

This season feels so unnecessary, a fantasy quest to undo the tragedy of the fourth season finale. And they largely do, Jon and Martin are gone, but the fears leave the world. It is all justified with the worldbuilding, but again ending on this note of world-saving heroic sacrifice has barely anything to do with horror.

The hellscapes of season five are dark, but they are not effective horror. It’s the final confirmation that Jonathan Sims did not truly understand why his horror stories in the earlier seasons were so effective. And that was because they were set in a largely realistic and contemporary world. People living mundane lives before they are menaced by the supernatural. Most horror fiction does this, not only because it gives a “it can happen to you” quality but because horror most easily comes from taking a safe, mundane and explicable world and subverting that with unexplained and frightening supernatural events.

The Magnus Archives does have stories like that and they work, but then it undermines it by explaining the supernatural in rationalistic terms. And in season 5, it even takes away the mundane setting. Now almost everyone except the servants of the entities live in hellscapes literally designed to make them suffer over and over again. There is no longer any normal world to provide contrast, just entire landscapes of torture. It may sometimes present bitter parodies of realistic situations, but so removed from real life that is hard to connect with or regain the sense of horror from those early stories.

And again, because the rationalistic worldbuilding of The Magnus Archives there is no real surrealism to these hellscapes, because why they exist is explained. There is just torture and no mystery or wonder to the fantasy of season 5. It’s just suffering for the sake of suffering, the worst and least interesting kind of horror. And it’s a deep-seated problem within the show, developed to its utmost extreme.

It's fiction that feels the need to justify itself at literally every turn. It doesn't dare have something happen without explaining why. So we get this fake surrealism, where if anything weird happens it's because supernatural powers want to scare people with the weirdness.

Apparently there will be a sequel, a Magnus Archives 2, despite earlier promises there would not be. And considering the original show went on for far too long and explained its world too much to be truly scary, I don’t think there is much fruitful to be gained there, but we’ll see.

#my writings #the magnus archives

[recentlyheardcom]

‘To drive around in a Dodge Charger and no one thinks you're cool': This Seattle man dropped $35K on a car just one year after bankruptcy — here's the harsh reality he was forced to faceFor some, an emotional decision might be buying takeout after a bad day or slamming on the horn when someone cuts you off in traffic. But for James of Seattle, an emotional decision means dropping more than $35,000 on a Dodge Charger less than a year out of bankruptcy.James, 28, was a recent guest on an episode of Caleb Hammer’s YouTube Show, “Financial Audit.” He copped to a number of bad money moves, blaming “lifestyle creep, a couple of emotional decisions, a poor understanding of how finance works overall and how to use credit cards” for landing him in the hot seat.Don't missHammer — who’s known for savaging guests for their waste and insanity, even as he shows them how to do better — was shocked by James’s choice and he didn’t hold back on expressing his disdain: “To drive around in a Dodge Charger and no one thinks you’re cool when you pull up to them at a stop light… you’re paying $850 a month for that — to be judged.”From Beemer to bankruptcyJames earns a comfortable salary of $80,000, but he admits upfront that he struggles with personal finance — espcially when it comes to using credit cards wisely. Hammer told him he should be in the driver’s seat given that his wife brings in just $40,000.But James crashed his finances on a previous car: a BMW he bought for $20,000 that bit the dust after less than a month. Bouncing back from his poor judgment and money miscues — he had no emergency fund when the car died — has been an uphill struggle at best, even though the bankruptcy was a painful three-month process.Story continuesFor a while, he got by on an electric scooter. But with his wife expecting, James bought her a 2008 Acura TL, on which he still owes $7,252 at 23.69% interest, or as Hammer put it, “a death stupidity interest rate.” That might not be super terrible if the couple were otherwise debt free. But then there’s the monthly $850 Charger payment: Only $411 goes to paying off the principal.“Dodge Chargers and this kind of debt? After a bankruptcy that just blows my mind. The fact that you actively chose to do this — crazy,” Hammer told him.Read more:Thanks to Jeff Bezos, you can now use $100 to cash in on prime real estate — without the headache of being a landlord. Here's how‘More clarity and accountability’In the hour-long video, James admits to eating out excessively. And because he and his wife have separate checking accounts, there’s a lack of focus in terms of family finances — especially concerning now that they’ve welcomed their son.“That’s why I’m here,” he told Hammer, “to get more clarity and accountability.” And while the YouTuber may lack the credentials of a professional, he’s relatable for his utter lack of formality and niceties.He also brandishes some nifty problem-solving skills. In real time, Hammer created a monthly budget pie graph for James that accounted for as many expenses as they could list. In the process, he discovered that the couple’s phones were financed as well, eating up $270 a month — and that the “stupid car” at 14 miles/gallon was guzzling another $600 in gas.Hammer urged James to use the $2,500 a month left over for setting up a two-month emergency fund immediately, even before tackling the debt. That it would likely take them six months moved Hammer to hammer away: “This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. This sucks.”On the brighter side, Caleb projected that in three years and two months, James would be debt free with that emergency fund in a high-yield savings account if he stuck to the plan and held off on wasteful purchases. He and his wife could then take meaningful steps towards retirement savings, provided they got on the same page.His closing encouragement to James was powerful.“You guys can live the greatest, most fun life — better than anyone around you — just by sacrificing over the next three years and two months,” he said.

“It’s so worth it. Please do it for your future and for your child and potential children’s future.”What to read nextThis article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.

[the-firebird69]

3:18

Afroman - Because I Got High

YouTube · AfromanVEVO

Oct 8, 2009

Really it works to calm them down they have appetites and they start acting human even people are stupid it's really weird and Tommy F planned it we knew about it we knew what he was doing and his father and her son right now but with ants we do understand what he's saying. And the marijuana is medicinal but you can get one a day for 30 days each prescription and they are the dragon they are sold rolled and they come in special package like a cigar and they're about the size of a cigar. It's a matter of time before people get the idea no they're smiling and saying oh this is something and they're waiting for it and it's mail order but you can get it FedEx and you can get it in some cities and it's going to become huge and these things are huge I also have a version where it sounds like six smaller once called serpents and really the smoke in the dragon and smoking the serpents and it's going to make it popular and they have it on the box and it looks like it's from China but it's not really that Chinese it's more like our stuff

Zig Zag

We're buying the beer now and it says it's bottled and it is by tube and we understand what it means now we didn't know what the hell that was it means that it is shipped by tube and it says 10 miles or less to the packing facility and the reason is it is an isolated plant and it's secure and they don't want anybody messing with it and that is the actual reason cuz I did it with the packaging plants it's way too much trucking the driving this damn trucks everywhere and all tired and pissed off so we we do understand it too cuz we went through it too but this is solving the conundrum and the virgin Shirley is real I've seen them go there I've seen them in a plant and he wants to go to Wisconsin but he can't go there he knows I bet you if he had money we'd get him to go on the tour and he give us a couple dragons thinking we'd be out and he probably would be at this time but my God this is awesome the beer taste great it tastes better than any beer I've had Red oak is what it tastes like it's not really bitter and he tasted it it wasn't drinking and he said boy this is really good it does look like an ale or it looks like a dark beer but it's not it tastes like an amber and this looks like an Amber and tastes like a really rich Amber and boy does it taste good goes down easy you don't feel crappy so we got a whole bunch of it and being shipped in now it's coming to the package store which is downtown Port Charlotte it's the one that is over by home Depot on Cochran I think

Mike g

So we are having a lot of fun and this horrible today and this guy Tommy f is just a f** and everyone's going to be drunk and beating him up I'll tell you what though we really need this stuff it's like medicine he said for us and it really works I mean it's it's no joke he said we're on the wrong drug and people thought about it is Elvis Huxley and there's no solution to what they want a solution for and people go nuts thinking about it and stupid this song is great too but boy this is great Laverne and Shirley is a great show and I know our friend used to watch it all time they had no idea what he's watching it's his stuff is that get us out of here so we know what to do and he said get me out of here and we know what it is we're going there it says soda and it's not as hilarious and yeah those bottles are the best and he liked them too cuz you didn't get the gurgling and it was like drinking it from a cop but you don't have to worry of it you can cover the bottle and you can drink it without a problem and twist off and I'll answer and regular sized but you know we do have those two but my gosh all the plants are doing it they're switching over it's taking less room and they're making food and stuff from the other ones it's intense this is an intense company he's working with

Ronald f.

I don't know what to say this is more fun than I thought it would be we're getting things done in this beer ID is cooking with gas I'm going out there to test it I can't believe I'm going out there it's such a stupid place we have a problem and we did detect it and this is drawing us there and it is like a magnet okay we have to go and he go out there too soon and be a problem but man he wants to see the furniture before a real audience I mean he's into that kind of thing and they dig it okay they're here and they saw him he didn't recognize them and they're always here serving him and they got jobs there and their managers and the test of the product all the time he says don't worry about testing the product it's the job and you guys spend half your lives drunk and your thousands of years old and they said okay but really if you have to drink and drive make sure that the one who drank less is driving so they said that's a rule excellent let's get that going. So the managers so they put that on the wall and then they said have the one who drank less drive and it's awesome it's the way he thinks about it and he's to drive all the time he's drinking a lot he'd wait and he's sober up he's a little weird and drink water and if you find and later we found out he was still kind of drunk

Mac daddy it's a horrible experience when you can't control yourself because of the surgeries and we have to get over it and when you drink you feel a little bit better because the reasoning guy is a little bit out to lunch and I noticed that's also what he's doing so this could run better than we thought. So it's showing an image of Claudia and I think she passed away it's not good A lot of them were left and showing her flying upside down thinking boy I think I am fine and she was like that I miss her too

Mac