#but I think this movie focused a lot on the boys being young teens and part of being teenagers is sometimes dealing with being bigger

[oddly-casual]

I love Raph being the plus sized rep for this movie. Obviously Raph has always been the bulkiest in some iteration, but MM is visibly the widest of his brothers and he throws his weight around to use it to his advantage. Raph was a wider baby too! He held onto it!

I love especially how it’s never brought up. Not to make fun of him, not for laughs, not to make a statement, Raph is just bigger than his brothers in the movie and it changes literally nothing except for how he uses it to his advantage in a fight and I love that we can have that as a society.

#mutant mayhem #tmnt #tmnt mutant mayhem #mutant mayhem fandom #plus size representation #obviously this might change as he gets older he’s probably gonna get more bulky with muscles because I mean come on #even in his room in the live museum he has weights and protein powder #but I think this movie focused a lot on the boys being young teens and part of being teenagers is sometimes dealing with being bigger #some kids are just big like that’s how their body works because of #physical ailments like Thyroid issues testosterone levels #or just the fact that they’re growing boys! #point is I appreciate it

[wanderinginksplot]

What to watch during the writer's strike:

Don't pay attention to companies who blame writers for delayed movies and television shows! The WGA strike comes from people who are trying to make things better - not only for themselves and other writers, but the films and tv shows we all love.

While we wait for a resolution, I thought I would share some existing television shows that I enjoy. I didn't bother with too much well-known stuff. Instead, I focused on shows I feel many people missed because of the glut of content that all premiered at once over the last few years. (I may make another one of these for movies later on, but this one is about tv.)

[Update: Movie version here]

Feel free to add on! Just try to give a quick, spoiler-free synopsis for the show and the streaming service where it can be found.

List under the cut!

Netflix:

The Good Place (2016-2020) - A 'bad' woman is accidentally sent to heaven. She and her moral philosophy professor of a soulmate try to save her soul by making her a better person. Genre: Comedy with deeper implications and one of the best endings in television history.

Russian Doll (2019-2022) - When Nadia dies at her birthday party, she's more than a little confused to come back. Especially when it keeps happening. Genre: Time loop drama with a wicked sense of humor and a dash of theoretical physics. Potentially not ended?

Narcos (2015-2017) - The fight of the American DEA and the Colombian army against cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar and his reign of terror. Genre: Drama with thrilling elements. Lots of violence, some sex and language. Lots of subtitles. Features Pedro Pascal and Boyd Holbrook, if you need some extra incentive.

Derry Girls (2018-2022) - Five teens grow up in Derry, Ireland in the 1990s, amid the final years of the Troubles, a low-level war that lasted roughly 30 years. Genre: Comedy. Some sexual content, some religious content, less violence than you would expect, and the best nun ever to appear on film.

Arcane (2021-?) - Two sisters are alienated when one accidentally kills their adoptive father. Their different paths threaten the fragile peace of a city already on the breaking point. Genre: Drama with elements of action-adventure. Though it's animated, Arcane's animation is beautifully done with tantalizing steampunk elements that will keep you invested.

Disney+:

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008-2020) - If you haven't seen any of the Star Wars animated series, this is a good place to start. Set in the time gap between Episode II and Episode III, this series helps flesh out Anakin Skywalker and the Jedi. It is also a great introduction to some of the characters and plots of The Mandalorian. (Star Wars: Rebels is another good choice.) Genre: Adventure with some drama. Violence and death are a large part of The Clone Wars, but it's usually appropriate for children. The clone troopers will steal your heart!

Gravity Falls (2012-2016) - Dipper Pines and his sister Mabel are sent to Gravity Falls, Oregon to live with their great-uncle for their summer break. But when Dipper finds a mysterious book in the woods, the pair find that Gravity Falls is far more mysterious than it seems... Genre: Adventure with a lot of comedy. Though it's billed as a children's cartoon, Gravity Falls is an intriguing watch with mystery subplots that will keep anyone guessing. It also features a famously strong and cohesive series ending. I was in my late 20s when I first watched this and I was still invested!

Daredevil (2015-2018) - After being blinded as a young boy, Matthew Murdock trained his other senses to replace the sight that he lost. He uses his skills to protect the helpless in the New York City neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen. Genre: Action and superhero. Features a lot of incredibly choreographed violence. (Jessica Jones is also an excellent show to watch, especially if you think of David Tennant as the consummate 'good guy'. He's got range!)

HBO Max (Just 'Max' now, I guess):

Ghosts (2019-2023) - Petty roommate squabbles don't stop just because you're dead! Alison and her husband Mike inherit a house, then a near-death experience allows Alison to see its ghostly inhabitants. Chaos and humor ensue as the ghosts try to adjust to the house's new owners. Genre: Humor. Ghosts is a British sitcom, but since the writers are comedians (writing and performing in Horrible Histories), the show is done in a style that feels more natural to American viewers. Hint: watch the BBC version, not the American one. They're fairly similar, but definitely not the same!

Pushing Daisies (2007-2009) - A pie-maker with the ability to bring back the dead helps to solve murders. He's helped by his once-dead childhood sweetheart. Genre: Comedy with some dramatic elements. Some of the CGI-heavy moments haven't aged particularly well, but the show has a unique premise and an incredibly talented cast!

Hulu:

Abbott Elementary (2021-?) - This mockumentary series showcases an inner-city elementary school in Philadelphia. The teachers and administration do their best for the kids, but they're constrained by budgets and the limitations of the educational system itself. Genre: Comedy mockumentary. Though Abbott Elementary is fictional, some of the issues brought up are all too real. This is a funny and incisive look at the American public school system.

Amazon Prime:

Fleabag (2016-2019) - The unnamed protagonist of the show struggles through life on her own with limited support from her alienated family and the memories of her recently deceased best friend. Genre: Comedy with lots of dramatic elements. Lots of sexual content and references, some language, breaking the fourth-wall, and several characters you just long to hit. I watched the second season in a single day, that's how good this was.

Unknown Streaming Service:

Black Sails (2014-2017) - This prequel to Treasure Island features elements from the book, original characters, and real pirates from history in a setting that emphasizes realism. Captain Flint and his crew search for a legendary prize... one that might allow them to claim Nassau for their own. Genre: Action and adventure. Think Game of Thrones, but with pirates. Incredibly well-written and well-acted with gorgeous scenery, LGBTQ representation, and just enough historical accuracy to keep things grounded. Black Sails also boasts one of the best endings ever given for a television show.

Like I said, please feel free to reblog and add your own television show recommendations onto this list! There are plenty of things to watch and plenty of ways to support the WGA strike that don't involve giving in to big studios.

#the good place #russian doll #narcos #derry girls #arcane #star wars the clone wars #star wars rebels #gravity falls #daredevil #ghosts #bbc ghosts #pushing daisies #abbott elementary #fleabag #black sails #television #television show #tv shows #tv recommendations #wga strike #recommendations #ink's life

[wp-blaze]

Seeds

At first they return as softness, whispers in the wind, barely making their presence known The nostalgia is just the beginning, until the memories of you start aching in my bones They always come but are never welcome, intrusive, manipulative, controlling everything you always were, so discreetly So much so, I tried to tell my […]

[imagitory]

Do you think Wish would have been better if they kept the concept of romance between Asha and the star boy, and the kind and queen being a villainous couple?

TL;DR...maybe.

I admit, I do really like human!Star and Magnifico/Amaya being a villainous couple as concepts -- but I don't think adding those ideas alone would've fixed Wish's shortcomings. Because I strongly believe the main reason so much of the Wish fandom has latched onto the idea of a romance for Asha in particular comes down to people feeling more for their mental AU concepts of Asha and Star than for Asha and the rest of her canon cast in the real finished product. There are no relationships in Wish -- ones featuring Asha or otherwise -- that I feel really prompt much investment or emotion in the audience.

Asha's mom and grandpa really don't have much time devoted to them, especially early on when we could establish some real history and pathos in their relationships with Asha. (Positive examples of this would be Ember and her dad in Elemental, Tiana and James and Eudora in The Princess and the Frog, or Mama Coco and Miguel in Coco.) We never even learn Asha's mom's dream even though it's picked up multiple times and the narrative makes such a big deal about Magnifico crushing it. The few lines discussing Asha's deceased father could've been cut from the story altogether and we would've lost nothing. Asha's friend group gets so little focus as individuals that it's hard to even remember most of their names. They were clearly envisioned as just "the Seven Dwarves but as teens," and honestly, them being vaguely like the Dwarfs is the only real impact they leave on a lot of people by the end. Or did a bunch of kids that went to go see the movie beg their parents for dolls of Simon and Bazeema after the movie was over? Asha and Star's dynamic can't be that interesting because Star doesn't spark any real character growth or change in Asha, nor does Asha really bond emotionally with Star. Star honestly just floats around looking cute for most of the movie, rather than doing that much of consequence. Valentino doesn't provide any significant emotional support for Asha, the way that even other cute Disney "pets" like Pascal or Pua do for isolated characters like Rapunzel and Moana. He also doesn't advance her journey in any meaningful way like Sebastian or Jacques and Gus do for Ariel and Cinderella, respectively. Asha and Magnifico's hero-villain relationship has no teeth because they have no real history prior to the events of the story (unlike Ursula using Ariel as a way to get back at her father Triton or Mother Gothel raising Rapunzel in isolation in an attempt to use her hair's magic to keep her young) and they don't serve as any kind of narrative foil to each other (unlike Jafar, who like Aladdin also uses magic and deception to try to advance his own goals, or Scar, who like Simba at the beginning of the movie "just can't wait to be king" and is focused way more on the perks of kingship rather than the responsibilities). Even Amaya and Asha can't have much of a relationship because there's no time set aside for it, and even if Amaya put in a good word for Asha with Magnifico, she didn't speak out on Asha's behalf after Magnifico vindictively cast her aside and really only decided to fight alongside Asha after Magnifico "went too far" by threatening Amaya herself (as opposed to, say, anyone else).

When my mum and I went to go see Wish, we came out of the theater feeling oddly blase about the whole story. My mum even -- upon me asking her about her thoughts on this topic before I sat down to write this -- admitted that although she "wanted to see evil defeated," and all that, she honestly just hadn't cared about any of the characters that much. She wanted Magnifico to lose because it was justice for Magnifico to lose -- not because she was actively rooting for Asha, her friends, or Rosas overall. She wanted good to triumph and evil to fail, but none of the characters and their relationships had made her that invested in seeing how that came about. And considering that every single character in every story ever written is largely shaped by the relationships they have with other characters, that means that Wish's primary failing is not a lack of romance, either for its main lead or its villains --

It's a lack of love.

Any kind of sincere, selfless, development-inducing, chemistry-fueled love. Not necessarily romantic love -- Disney's Revival work has actually shown just how diverse love can be through films like Zootopia, Encanto, and Frozen -- but real love between the characters, built on the back of history and camaraderie and meaningful screen time. Love that adds layers to their personality, fuels their choices and actions, and ultimately helps them bloom into better, more complete people. Instead I would argue that the only "love" in Wish is with ideas from past Disney projects -- that's why there are more Easter eggs and overt meta references to other projects in this movie than there are scenes that actively stir your emotions. You know -- the way Mulan does when she decides to steal her father's armor, or Marlin does when he gingerly picks up Nemo's cracked egg in his flippers and cradles it, or Cinderella's stepsisters do when they rip apart the dress the mice made for Cinderella, or Pinocchio does when he watches in horror as Lampwick turns into a donkey, or Tarzan does when he comforts Kala after he comes out dressed in his biological father's old clothes and she starts to cry.

The reason a lot of fans love these two ideas -- villain!Magnifico/Amaya and human!Star/Asha -- so much is because these two relationships, even just in concept art, prompted more emotion out of them than any relationship in the entire finished film.

Perhaps if that same level of emotion was brought out in these relationships in a real movie, that would've helped, but only if the rest of the film had also been trimmed down and edited so as to help tell a story with those two elements. Slim down the overstuffed cast. Have Asha's family actually have a point, or cut them. Give Asha and Magnifico some sort of real history and/or compare-contrast dynamic. Develop Star as a character. Give both Star and Asha character arcs. Make the music more essential to telling the story.

Without a lot of additional changes on top of those two concepts being used, I think the ideas of a hero and villain couple would've only just made the list of ideas that were only half-baked in the final product longer. After all, if Star was Asha's love interest, you'd still really have to have good writing and a lot of chemistry between the two characters in order to sell your audience on a love story between them. Not saying it can't be done -- Tangled and Elemental both did it quite well -- but just throwing the two characters together as is (namely, rather underdeveloped) and making them romantic partners by itself isn't enough. Honestly, I think a platonic or even familial-esque relationship between Star and Asha could've been just as powerful, if that love between them really came through. Just look at the bonds between characters like Judy and Nick from Zootopia or Miguel and Hector in Coco. Even keeping Star as less explicitly human could've been fine, if the relationship between them and Asha was strong enough. Stitch and Lilo's relationship is rock-solid in Lilo and Stitch, and Stitch isn't even remotely human. Even Soul did something kind of interesting with Joe Gardner and his relationship with 22 by giving them something of a mentor-student bond. Maybe a quasi-"young parent/child" relationship between Asha and Star could've even been interesting, if it was written well!

I do think both ideas had great potential in giving Wish more of an identity that could help set it apart from its predecessors -- I mean, we've never had a human character have a romance with a supernatural being or a villainous couple in a Disney animated film before -- but including them wouldn't have fixed Wish by itself.

#disney #wish #disney wish #wish (2023) #opinion #analysis #ask me #writing #oh boy here i go

[ninjamelissajulien]

a barbie essay that no one asked for or will even care about but I'm gonna write it anyway :)

I hate the Barbie Movie (2023) Ken. It completely missed the point of Ken and his connection to Barbie. I get that it is a societal commentary on men/toxic masculinity/the patriarchy but the fact that the movie makes a huge deal over "women don't need to solve men's problems for them" then has Barbie (Robbie) solve Ken's problem kind of ruined the message. A lot of what the movie was going for went way too heavy-handed in social commentary while also trying to be silly creating a mix of oil and water. There was no reason for the businessmen to go to Barbieland, or even have them leave the building as they offered nothing after Barbie escaped. The poppy radio music, for the most part, distracts from the story. Having a woman as beautiful as Margot Robbie said that she wasn't beautiful anymore while having her look normal, and the narrator poking at that fact was a bit too tongue-in-cheek. Barbie is beautiful, no matter what doll she is because she sees herself as beautiful. It's self-confidence, not narcissism.

Ken, in the movie, is a selfish prick who can only see himself in Barbie's shadow. He only sees himself in terms of Barbie's boyfriend/love. Barbie never reciprocates that idea. Barbie doesn't owe him anything. She never leads him on or teases him, she doesn't even truly flirt with him. She's just friends with all of the Ken's and Allen. Ken is the one who tries to kiss her, then gets miffed when she doesn't respond. He's the one constantly pushing the idea of being with her. He becomes a misogynistic jerk who spreads the patriarchal idea to the other Kens, forcing toxic masculinity into an area that was a safe haven for women and Allen. Again, I understand that it's a social commentary, but I think it went way too far into it to the point that it lost its own messages.

I absolutely despise the fact that the teen daughter called Barbie a "fascist". Are you serious? I get that the term "Bimbo" has been connotated to Barbie (the dumb blonde stereotype, the 'perfect body' with no brain, only focusing on fashion/beauty rather than empowering women stereotypes) but that in no way deserves a term meant for white supremacy/Nazis. Society changed its view on Barbie, connotating it with negative terms rather than the empowerment of girls/women/even young boys. Yes, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism and it is still under the brand of Mattel. Still, the ideals of what Barbie is should be finding yourself, seeing yourself in new ways, and believing in what you can become without restraints. Barbie dolls, in recent years, have become exceptionally diverse in appearance and ethnicities, even having a Down syndrome girl, amputee Barbies, Vitiligo, and so many more.

In terms of spreading a positive message to young girls, the original Barbie Movies (2001-Present) have better visuals on showing strength while having male Kens that support the Barbie protagonist without forcing relationships. In later years, the movies even drop the idea of Barbie ending up in a relationship by the end of the movie (i.e. Starlight Adventures, Three Musketeers, Diamond Castle [this one, arguably is Queer implied], Mermaid Tales 1/2, and Princess Charm School just to name a few).

In my personal opinion, the early Barbie Movies (Barbie in the Nutcracker [2001], Barbie as Rapunzel [2002], Barbie Swan Lake [2003], and Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper [2004]) have the best feminist messages as well as Nutcracker/Princess and the Pauper having the best versions of Ken.

Barbie in the Nutcracker: Clara is a responsible teenager (approx. 16-18) who still shows outbursts of being angry, upset, cautious, and caring. She is caring and protective of the Nutcracker from the moment she is gifted him by Aunt Elizabeth, even to the point of talking gently to him and fixing his arm after Tommy accidentally breaks it. Eric sees this and, in turn, becomes protective over her but not obsessively. He cares for her, is gentle around her, even the way he talks softens.

Clara is willing to do what it takes to save him, even facing her fear and allowing the fairies to take her to the Palace of Sweets to save Eric. She has a moment of doubt, she could always just leave Parthenia using the locket, but "I'm their only hope." She chooses bravery. She chooses to stand between Eric and the Mouse King, protecting him and standing up against the tyrant. She even holds her ground as the Mouse King is about to hit her with a spell. Clara is brave, but also kind.

Eric is loyal but also fearful. He knows of the sorrows of his people, but because of his curse, he doesn't want to reveal himself as the missing Prince. The people of Parthenia blamed Eric for the pain and suffering, thinking that he abandoned them in their time of need when Eric was always searching for the one thing that could not only break the curse upon him but save the people of Parthenia- the Sugar Plum Princess. So much of Eric's dialogue, especially with Clara, is gentle but also somber. He cares for his people, he spends his whole time trying to repair the damage that the Mouse King caused.

"I... I didn’t want to be the prince when I had the chance… now I don’t deserve to be…" [...] "But my subjects think less of me than they do the Mouse King!... My only hope is to find the Sugar Plum Princess so she can help me restore my people’s happiness… I owe them that."

"Heh, least I could do for an old friend." [Here, he still shows respect for someone he grew up beside, not only in saving his life but seeing him as an equal].

"I’m only half the reason." [Eric is being humble, sharing respect and honor with Clara in terms of the group finding the island across the Sea of Storms.]

"There’s more to being a king than having a crown! ... You’ll never gain their loyalty until you’ve earned their respect!" [...] "Well... that’s for the people to decide." [Throughout his journey, Eric learned how to earn respect rather than take it by being royal. He proved himself in front of his people, who, in turn, accepted him as their King].

~you might notice I'm a bit biased toward BitN~

Alternatively, Julian/Dominick in PatP are just as respectful toward Anneliese and Erika. Julian knows that in his place as a tutor, he would never be able to marry Anneliese since she is a princess. Anneliese knows, just as well, that it is her birthright and duty to tend to the kingdom in any way she can- even if that means sacrificing her own happiness for her people. Anneliese would rather be studying science with Julian, but instead, she was to be wed off to the mysterious king Dominick. Julian knew Anneliese better than anyone [minus Seraphina], to the point that he knew something was wrong just by the scent of the stationary. Lilac, not rose. He risks his life to save her.

Dominick doesn't force himself onto "Anneliese" [Erika] but rather takes the time to get to know her and earn her trust. The song "If You Love Me For Me" is meant to show that their hearts yearn for the true sense of the self, rather than the facade and royal titles. Dominick knows that Erika wouldn't mean harm, and in turn, trusts her and helps her break out of prison. Dominick even promises to wait for Erika as she travels the world as a singer, allowing Erika the chance to find herself and enjoy her dream before she chooses to return to him. Even if she hadn't come back, he knew that his love would be for her and her alone.

Eric, Dominick, and Julian are fantastic representations of a loving Ken. All three are smart, memorable, independent male characters who can stand on their own, but also are caring towards Clara, Anneliese, and Erika. Even Barbie in the Three Musketeers goes after the idea of the patriarchy, and even hypocritical ideology. That the Prince would rather believe that a man could fly before a woman could be a musketeer.

TLDR; if you want positive Barbie role models, watch the OG Films.

*Quotes copied from Barbie Movies Wiki- Barbie in the Nutcracker transcript*

@lovely-english-rose , my Barbie bestie, feel free to add your thoughts as well

#barbie #barbie (2023) #Barbie Movie (2023) #Barbie Movies #Barbie in the Nutcracker #Barbie princess and the pauper #NMJ Analyzes

[soleminisanction]

I forget.. how exactly did Tim become Robin again? Was it only because Damian left? Or something else?

There wasn't really a reason given for it in-universe. It was a gradual transition that played out over the course of a few different story lines and like five years.

What really happened, I think, is that the New52 attempted revision of Tim Drake was violently rejected by the fan-base, one of the clearest and most obvious reactions of "fuck no that's not our boy" in that whole mess of an attempted universe reset. And a big part of that stemmed from their total re-haul of his personality, motivations, backstory, and superhero career to insist that he was never Robin, he'd only ever been Red Robin, supposedly to "honor" Jason, because frankly somebody behind the scenes was sucking Jason's dick hardcore and dragging other characters under the bus to do it.

Thing is, DC always has a tendency to underestimate how popular Robin actually is because there's a certain mindset of straight white male comic book creator who's under the delusion belief that only straight white men like him read superhero comics. But Robin has always been popular with women and queer people. It's why Dick Grayson is the most sexualized man in comics, why Jason Todd exploded in popularity after they hired one of the Supernatural guys to voice him in the animated movie, why New Teen Titans could save DC in the 80s by being an unapologetic teen soap opera, heck, it's even the origin of the infamous Seduction of the Innocent "Batman and Robin are gay" claims, but that's another post.

Point is, New 52!Tim got a lot of backlash, so he was one of the things they focused on when they started dialing that back. To compound things, while Damian does have a fandom, he's not really popular as Robin, not Bruce's Robin anyway. Most of his popularity comes either from his relationship with Dick, or from Super Sons, which calls him Robin but treats him narratively as only "The Son of Batman" -- he could be called literally anything else and it wouldn't change the dynamic. And the thing is that you really kinda need a proper Robin to tell good long-term Batman stories. Even the animate series only kept him solo for a single season.

So they gradually nudged Tim back into his place. First came Rebirth with Batman Eternal where they were still calling him "Red Robin" but the only non-Robin thing about him was the extra "R" on his costume, he still looked and acted and filled the role of Robin in every other extent. And, more importantly, they had some measure of his original personality coming back.

Then he encountered with an explicit version of his pre-Flashpoint self (Titans Tomorrow!Batman) that starting bringing back memories of the timeline that everybody preferred, including all the Young Justice friends that people who'd rejected the New 52 Teen Titans were desperately missing, and he went off into Bendis's YJ run and just, started calling himself Robin again.

And then it just, stuck. Because it works, because they were bringing back the old status quo that the fandom preferred, because Tim is well-suited to the role they needed in the narrative, and because he's just the kind of guy who would go, "Huh, that very important job is not being done and nobody seems to see how important it is, somebody should take care of that" and then just, do it.

It's kinda how he got the gig in the first place.

#dc comics asks #tim drake #robin #batman #bat family #I think I've answered this before so it got a little rambly #longish post #meta #also! when Tim got his coming out story it was a big freaking deal SPECIFICALLY because he was Robin #they got a LOT of free press from that story and I mean A LOT #It was Men's Health Magazine. It was on NPR. #that's a lot of good word of mouth right there they weren't going to waste it by changing his codename and confusing people

[captainshadowgirllostfan]

As much as I liked Terra in Teen Titans, I don't think they made her turn into a villain, and her trusting Slade is realistic or even...understandable.

In Young Justice and the Teen Titans movie, you get why. You can see clearly that she's been groomed, and Slade playing with her bad experiences and the betrayal she went through with her previous family.

In Teen Titans, Terra gets angry at Beast Boy because she thinks he betrayed her trust by telling the others she hasn't gotten good control of her powers when to them it's pretty obvious anyway...and for some reason, she's insecure about it. The narrative tells us if the reason is that she hurt people. With Raven, it's clear she focuses a lot on meditation because she's afraid of losing control and hurting people. In one scene, we see Raven almost lose control of a villain. We never see that with Terra in Teen Titans. We don't even see why she's always traveling or whether or not she's running. It seems she is...but we don't know why.

Terra is...her personality is great. She's likable enough...but she has no substance. She's shallow and vapid and frankly, I am not sympathetic to what happened to her much because everything really is her fault. She's just frankly no offense to any Terra fans, stupid. Like how dare she act like a victim to the Teen Titans when all they've done is welcome her, accept her, and tried to be her friend. They helped her out and she stabbed them in the back and for what? Because they were angry she betrayed them? And why did she betray them...all because of an impression she got that Beast Boy told her...pfft ugh

In Teen Titans: Judas Contract, at least it's clear Terra's motivations are based on grooming she went through before even meeting the Teen Titans, and we see the conflict in her in betraying them...which she ultimately does because of her fucked up attachment with Slade.

In Young Justice, they also do a good job showing Terra as a character whose abused and manipulated. She is trafficked for her meta gene and is gaslighted and abused into thinking that her kidnappers are her saviors (well I don't think she knows that Deathstroke is part of the meta-trafficking). What Young Justice fails with, is showing her as a villain and showing that conflict, as well as Judas Contract, does...so in the end, for me, her character was just a disappointment

Never mind the fact that they skipped over her relationship with Beast Boy which I think is very important as in almost most media (IDK about the comics) he plays a big part in her turning back to being good.

I guess that's what saves Terra in Teen Titans. It's her relationship with Beast Boy. Seeing their dynamic and through Beast Boy, we get a bit of what kind of person Terra is (though I heard in the comics it was all a lie?). I guess that's what's great about Beast Boy, he's a great character to play off and help the audience understand others because of his open nature. It's why he and Raven have such a great dynamic because Raven is generally closed off and mysterious but with Beast Boy, she's hilarious and we see this great dry humor she has haha. I think Beast Boy helped a lot with making Raven popular with the audience.

#Terra rant #anti Terra #sorry I really do love her though #tara markov #Terra #terra dc #Teen Titans #teen titans: the judas contract #Young Justice #young justice: outsiders #Deathstroke #Stade Wilson #Beast Boy #Garfield Logan #Raven #Raven dc #Rachel Roth

[ecoamerica]

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

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#ACLA24 #ACLA24Leaders #youtube #youtube video #climate leaders #climate solutions #climate action #climate and environment #climate #climate change #climate and health #climate blog #climate justice #climate news #weather and climate #environmental news #environment #environmental awareness #environment and health #environmental #environmental issues #environmental justice #environment protection #environmental health #Youtube

[lacrimosathedark]

I have made some DC posts that people actually show interest in (and most of them seem to like with...one exception) but I know a not insubstantial portion of DC fandom watches the Young Justice cartoon, and I don’t. I have no intention to change that in the near future. But because I Have A Problem and constantly feel the need to explain myself for things, I’m going to do that.

Before that, DISCLAIMER: I am NOT saying the show is inherently bad, nor do I think anyone is dumb or wrong for liking it or even preferring it to the comics. It’s just not MY thing.

If you are sensitive to people not liking things you enjoy, seriously, don’t read this. I’m not attacking anyone, this is all my personal opinion and preferences.

So!

Reasons I Don’t Watch Young Justice

1. I suck at watching things.

Honestly my biggest reason. I was that kid in school that everyone was like “you haven’t seen [supposedly culturally iconic or currently popular movie]?! Seriously!?! That’s insane! You HAVE to!”

AND THEN I DIDN’T

A big part of that is my brain is Dumb. I have Inattentive-Type ADHD. This means my brain is very bad at focusing, especially on things I’m not like, super fixated on (and even then, I often overwhelm myself). So I’m not good at sitting down and watching things, even when I AM interest.

People have been telling me to watch and/or read Lord of the Rings for pretty much ever. GUESS WHAT I’VE NEVER SEEN

I loved Supernatural, as shitty as it could be. I haven’t watched every episode in any season past season 6.

I have had lists of anime and video games I want to watch. Still haven’t.

I’ve been recommended books (and I’m generally better at reading than watching) that sound awesome that I STILL have not picked up.

I have been intending to watch Moon Knight, which I actually really want to watch. Guess what I haven’t done.

2. My brain seems to like comic books more.

I didn’t get to have comic books as a kid just because it wasn’t a big thing where I lived so my exposure was limited. However, there’s a crossover exposure that my brain liked.

I grew up loving anime, and read a lot of manga. I also grew up playing Spider-Man video games. And then, I also grew up watching the old Teen Titans cartoon.

All these kind of combine into a certain predisposition towards consuming media in a certain way.

3. It doesn’t mesh with my comic experience.

I, like I presume a good chunk of other tumblr users, got into comics because of ThePandaRedd from TikTok. He is just so fucking funny and it drew me in. And if you don’t know, a lot of his content is Bat family related. So, that’s what I was drawn to. Growing up with the Teen Titans show, I was also lowkey predisposed to an interest in Robin anyway.

I quickly learned all I could about all of Batman’s many kids (because wtf my guy). To do that, I started watching comic videos on youtube, reading wikis, finding comic book pages on tumblr. I eventually grew to love all of them.

But I learned about and almost immediately fell in love with Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Cassandra Cain.

Why does this matter to my point? Well...

4. That’s not Young Justice.

The show is called Young Justice, but like...that’s not Young Justice. That’s basically the Teen Titans.

I have seen clips of the first episode. I don’t remember all of it, but three characters I distinctly remember being present for the formation of that Young Justice was Dick Grayson, Wally West, and Roy Harper. In comics, they were never Young Justice. Those three specifically founded the Teen Titans with Garth and Donna Troy. Like???

Young Justice in the comics is formed by Tim Drake, Superboy (later named Kon-El and Conner Kent), and Bart Allen. Not long after they add Greta Hayes and Cassie Sandsmark and on and on but like, those three boys are at the center. So much so that them, along with Cassie Sandsmark, are known as the Core Four among the fandom. And they are all intimately close friends and those relationships actually mean a lot to me.

Just a glance at the wiki makes me just...my skin is crawling. Kon joins the team with Dick, long before Tim is on the team. Ugh.

Kon dates Miss Martian, which...I don’t know much about the Martians and Kon is a flirt but like...the other characters he’s usually closer with--ugh.

Tim dates Cassie??? Without the influence of losing Conner??? And also idk does he date Stephanie? Because Tim and Steph are like, a big thing and tbh the only more intimate relationship Tim has is with Conner effin Kent, and I know Steph is in the show. (Also for a show that has a bunch of queer stuff, why does my duck boy not have a boyfriend of any kind? I know Bernard is super recent but he’s been like queercoded forever so like where is it?)

Speaking of that relationship, where is it? Even in a platonic sense, because Kon is consistently borderline obsessed with being Tim’s friend. Tim is probably the most important person to him; throughout especially the Teen Titans run Kon relied on Tim for emotional support and put a lot of faith in him. Tim literally lost his goddamn mind when Conner died. Like, he tried to bring Steph back with a Lazarus Pit. Okay, kinda fucked, but it’s happened. But when Kon died, Tim changed his costume to match Kon’s colors, tried to clone him, and “dated” his ex-girlfriend (who had, at the time, literally joined a cult who had hoped to bring Conner back). Um??? And then when Kon came back, Kon’s support made a huge difference in Tim’s shitty mental health. And the second time they met after Kon came back, Tim threw himself at Kon to hug him. And Conner refused to accept anyone but Tim (Damian specifically, but also Steph) as Robin. To him, Tim will always be Robin (and he will always be Tim’s clone boy <3). These two are a pair, platonic or otherwise, and that they aren’t so close in this show is upsetting to me.

Bart at least doesn’t appear before Tim does but he’s still seemingly not close to the rest of the “Core Four” and that just makes me so incredibly sad. I mean, points for making him not straight I guess but like...those friendships are really important to him. Like, Kon has historically been almost like his mom-friend, making sure he’s taken care of even when Bart is doing everything to avoid his issues (not that Conner’s much better at that, but yknow). The newer Young Justice comics, Conner totally mom’s Bart. He full names him (”Bartholomew Allen the Second! Don’t run away from me!” literally all that’s missing is his middle name and a scolding “young man”), and grabs some of his favorite snacks for when he wakes up after he passes out. And he also immediately called Tim because from the beginning there’s been the joke of the co-parenting Bart. And another point to Conner relying on Tim and just UGH.

And y’know, if they’re just gonna do Teen Titans, where are Vic and Raven and Kory? Like, I’m glad they had lesser known Titans like Karen Beecher and Mal Duncan but like...idk. I personally grew up with them, and if you’re gonna have Beast Boy, I feel like Cyborg and Raven kinda come with that package. And Starfire comes with the Raven package. Just my personal feelings there.

Small note since I mentioned my other beloved Bats: I know very little about what’s happening with them, but Cass is Cassandra Wu-San and Jason seems to still be brain-dead. Like, pre-Lazarus Pit brain-dead. Like I just...don’t know.

5. Artemis unreasonably pisses me off.

Prefacing this with, she’s not necessarily a bad character (I honestly can’t judge that with what little I know). This is honestly mostly because my brain is dumb.

First of all, it takes my brain several jumps to figure out who someone’s talking about when they talk about her.

“Y’know, Artemis.”

“You mean Artemis Grace of Bana-Mighdall, badass redhead Amazon, archer and ax-wielder,  and Jason Todd’s bestie/former girlfriend?”

“No, the blonde archer, in Young Justice.”

“...You mean Cissie King-Jones, Arrowette?”

“No, from the show.”

“...Oh.”

And then she’s paired up with Wally West apparently. Which unnecessarily gets under my skin.

Look, the only person I can see Wally with other than his wife Linda is Dick Grayson, and that is really because he seems just as obsessively protective about both of them. I cannot imagine Wally without either of them, and tbh the idea of him not have Jai and Irey makes me so fucking sad. Man would do literally anything for his children. I know he’s dated other girls before Linda, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

In that same vein...

6. Zatanna

I know she’s implied to have...been with Dick Grayson in the show. In general, who can blame her, it’s Dick Grayson.

However, in the show, she’s around Dick’s age.

In the comics, she was childhood friends with Bruce Wayne. Those two are best friends. They sort of almost dated for a while. I may be wrong, but I think Z may even be a little older than Bruce.

And that just really freaks me out, okay? It puts me off. My brain doesn’t want to compute that her age is different than it is in the comics.

(Also I’m a fan off her on-off relationship with the lovable chaotic fuckboy that is John Constantine.)

7. What the FUCK is going on with Roy Harper? Also Cheshire and Lian.

Like, there’s like, three different versions of him or something? And the “real” Roy isn’t even Lian’s father? Like, this is things I’ve just learned from vague clips and they make me irrationally frustrated.

As for Cheshire, I know she’s played to be sympathetic in the show, to at least some extent. Which isn’t a problem.

But I don’t like her.

She did, at one point, truly love Roy. She genuinely loves her daughter probably more than anything in the world. She is, arguably, the best mother she could be given the circumstances.

That being said, this is a woman who loves what she does. She revels in her job as an assassin. She enjoys the taunting, the fighting, the killing. She finds amusement in seeing people fall to her poisons. And as much as she loves her daughter, she would not give up being an assassin to raise her.

Jade Nguyen is an awful person in my eyes and that cartoon won’t change that.

I’m also not invested in that Lian.

Every clip I’ve seen of cartoon Lian looks nothing like any version of Lian I know and love. Like, the closest is Kingdom Come Red Hood with her long red hair, but her hair was distinctly curly and she looked like Jade, according to little Lian. Then there’s little Lian, black haired, clearly Asian girl, being raised with numerous superheroes and knowing Navajo traditions, sweet and clever and brilliant and whose favorite color is red. And then there’s Shoes, who while many don’t like her mostly due to her amnesia, I do. Blue hair and usually blue lipstick, seemingly temporary (or at least inconsistent) tattoos on her neck and arms, one of Catwoman’s Alleytown Strays and upcoming vigilante Cheshire Cat. Clearly clever, already a hacker, wears a red baseball hat (like Roy!) and fishnets (like Dinah!) and all around a ‘fuck you’ attitude while still being a sweetheart, very much like Selina.

The overall white-looking brown-haired girl in pink I keep seeing doesn’t click as Lian to me. That’s not the girl I adore. And as of late, Lian has been really important to me.

I don’t know if that’s even everything, but I felt I had to get it out of my system. Particularly about Artemis. I really don’t know why that makes me so upset but I don’t like it. At All.

Sorry, my content, aside from maybe a jokey reblog, will never be about the Young Justice cartoon. I don’t intend to bash it, but I’m not gonna watch it, and comment much on it either. If that’s content you want, you won’t find it here.

#Young Justice #Young Justice cartoon #Young Justice comics #Teen Titans #my rambles #Artemis #Lian Harper #Tim Drake #Conner Kent #Kon-El #Bart Allen #Cassie Sandsmark #Dick Grayson #Stephanie Brown #Zatanna Zatara #Roy Harper #Jade Nguyen #my brain is dumb #Jason Todd #Cassandra Cain #Cassandra Wu-San

[not-close-to-straight]

I can totally understand everything you are saying right now. Not being able to be picked up or carried around.

I always feel like the 'big spoon'. I guess it's a huge part of why I don't date and haven't dated a lot. I just am convinced that people don't want someone with the body like I have. I know, it's so fucked up!

What you told me about your childhood made me think of the character Carmen from the sisterhood of the traveling pants. It deals with issues like that too and it always makes me cry when she then sees her dad and his 'new family ' at the dinner table and she throws a rock at the window. (Guess that's a sideway.)

Oh! You talked about Andrew as Spiderman and just today I saw photos of him here on Tumblr and OMG!!! OMG, have you seen him?! He looks amazing and stunning and sexy and I'm like 'when did this happen? This is not how I remember you?'

Other question; Why do you prefer to write Spiderpool with Andrew in mind? Do you think they just fit better together then Tom's version?

I have seen the new pictures of AG. Seen them, saved them, pic bombed all my friends with them, screeched at the top of my lungs about them...yeah.

Okay so here's something most people? Probably don't know about me and Spideypool. I didn't know it was a thing until I saw RR and AG kiss at the one awards show. I heard a rumor, went "nah, really? isn't RR Married?" so I googled the kiss, side stepped into the Spidey/Deadpool kiss search results, ended up on AO3 in the Spideypool tag and my life was quite literally, never the same.

So. My Spideypool is AG/RR partly because that's literally how I found out about the ship, but also and honestly mainly, because I am exactly old enough to have not been attracted to Tobey Maguire at all but to be 100% obsessed with AG's Spidey and then to look at TH Spidey and go "oh, him baby".

So like. Ten? Maybe? When TM Spidey came out. Didn't care. But I was teens when AG Spidey showed up and let me tell you. Poor teenage Kara who still didn't know if she liked boys or girls (surprise twist, I like everyone) saw that movie and basically died. He was so pretty. Emma Stone as Gwen was so pretty. Couldn't handle it. Changed my life. The scene where he's shirtless and cut up bleeding and kisses her all desperate? Soul altering. Look at what I write. Look at how many scenes I write where the character is beat half to hell, bruised up bloody but still so focused on getting a kiss from the person they love.

Anyway. Spideypool is AG mostly because he was the current spidey at a time in my life when I was like "oh my" regarding AG. The awards show kiss cemented it.

My issue with Tom is mostly the age thing, not only do we meet his character at 15 but he LOOKS very young and even IRL I look at him and think "baby" so no. Can't write Spideypool with him, it makes me feel just a little bit icky. It's very easy to age up AG's Spidey cos in the movies he was 18/19 at the end of the second movie he was technically through what would have been his first year in college so arguable, 20. And thanks to NWH, we see him even older than that? But TH is sort of consistently highschool age, like they refuse to let him grow up and that bugs me.

I probably wont' ever switch to writing TH Spidey even once he's grown up, I just love the AG and RR chemistry too much

[the-hype-dragon]

Books I read in April

I started the month strong but an unfortunate decision put me into a bit of a reading slump about halfway through.

Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman - 4/5

It was a weird book, felt kind of like it ran on David Lynch logic but that's not a bad thing imo. Sort of a coming of age story for a young boy, his divorced mom, and a cop (yes, for all three of them). The divorced mom and her son have a strained relationship and they don't reconcile by the end, but neither is really portrayed as being wrong for doing this. I kind of liked that. The whole book is full of messy relationships like this. I ended up really enjoying it, definite recommend.

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin - 4/5

I never read the Earthsea books as a kid and the first time I tried to read A Wizard of Earthsea, I kind of hated it lmao. So I just decided to go ahead and read this. Luckily you don't really need to have read AWoE to understand what's going on here, this book is all about Tenar. This is the sort of fantasy I like, the worldbuilding is excellent and very rarely dipped into the "show and tell" kind of thing I see (and hate) in a lot of fantasy fiction. I also liked that in spite of being a book for younger readers Le Guin does not condescend to the audience. This was her usual dry kind of prose, and the characterizations were for the most part relatively nuanced for how short the book is.

Sabriel by Garth Nix (reread) - 2/5

This was it, this was the unfortunate decision. I feel really bad saying this because I like Garth Nix's books, but Sabriel isn't very good. (I first read it when I was in middle school and am 99% sure I felt the same way back then.) It has interesting concepts that you don't see much of in YA lit but the fact that the protagonist is a female necromancer is literally the only outstanding thing about it. Otherwise it's a pretty standard heroic fantasy tale of a paragon of good defeating a dark lord, with a mysterious mentor figure and secret prince and everything. Fine for older teens imo but boring for adults. My least favorite thing about it was for being ostensibly about Sabriel, it really focused more on the male characters... which is a complaint I have about a lot of fantasy fiction in general, that's a rant for another time lmao.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (reread) - 4/5

I am a little biased because this was adapted into one of my absolute favorite movies lmao but I really like this book and think everyone should give it a chance. It's interesting because it's a fairly standard narrative with nonstandard characters: the protagonist is a unicorn, her magical companion is a (goodhearted but vain) buffoon, the voice of reason is a cynical peasant woman everyone dismisses out of hand, and the prince's romance with the unicorn in the second half is tragic not because they cannot be together, but because the world would be worse off for her fully becoming a human and loving him. Unfortunately, while the story itself is great, the writing is sometimes not great: every good simile Beagle came up with is matched by one that is silly and distracting. But I don't think that detracts too much from the story.

I also started but did not finish Tehanu (Le Guin) and Sabriel's sequel Lirael (Nix), and I'm not sure I'll finish either in May. Tehanu is written well but was dealing with too many heavy topics all at once for my tastes (I do not mind reading books with heavy topics but I have to be in the right mood for it), and Lirael is better written than Sabriel but far more whimsical and I think suffers for it. That said I don't think either book is bad but I didn't read enough of either to have a whole opinion of them lmao

And anyway that was how my April went :v

#reading roundup

[maggiesmediastudythoughts]

Scary Movies commentary on horror medias stereotypes

The 2000s hit Scary Movie was a comedy horror that poked fun at the constant cliches found within the genre while delivering it in a comedic and entertaining way that allowed for certain conversations to be had about the cliches found in our favourite spooky movies. In specific it mainly focuses in on the exaggerated stereo typing that non-white character’s face, as well as the over sexualization of young teens within the genre. It brings these topics to light by displaying them in an extreme and often comical way that initially comes across as a simple joke or a funny nod to a past horror movie classic. But when further analyzed, it really showcases what topics the horror genre and media as a whole has fallen short with displaying.

Although racial stereotypes are no stranger to film, horror movies are notoriously bad for having the token black character that commonly meets a less than fortunate fate. Actor Regina Hall plays the character of Brenda Meeks in Scary Movie, and her character really embodies the stereotypes often put on the token black character. Especially in recent years there has been lots of conversation specifically regarding the way that the media portrays the “agressive black woman.” Brenda's character as a whole is sassy and very outspoken when it comes to her opinions on what's going around her. During the film there are multiple occasions where she becomes the butt of a joke as she makes comments or questionable decisions such as the extreme way she acts in the movie theatre as she goes to see a movie. A scene in specific really exaggerate the stereotypes placed on her as she is “sassy” and “disruptive” during the film. Clearly her character is written in a very exaggerated and satirical way that really showcases and brings to light the way that people of colour specifically black women are often portrayed in film media. Often being boiled down to the sassy best friend or comedic relief character. The way she’s written in Scary Movie gets people thinking and talking about how although sometimes characters being exaggerated can be great comedic relief, it's important to ensure that you are not negatively stereotyping them as that just ends up causing more harm. 

The scary movie films also poke fun and help bring up the conversation surrounding the over sexualization of teenagers (specifically teenage girls) in horror films. Often horror films portray young hypersexual teenagers whose own desire ends up blinding them towards the oncoming danger and Scary Movie is no different from this. When looking at Cindy and bobby's relationship it's very clear that they have different views as Bobby is portrayed as a mysterious bad boy in Cindy is a young, naive and clueless girl who trusts blindly. Once Bobby sneaks into Cindy’s room the scene that follows is anything but PG13. This strange fascination with over sexualization can be seen so often in horror even during violent death scenes and Scary Movie pokes fun at this as well with its opening scene that shows a woman being actively pursued by a murderer as she is stripped of her clothes and stabbed in the breast. Both of these scenes in the movie are satirical and downright outrageous but they bring up a good point about how this over sexualization of women in characters as a whole often does go too far and scary movies usage of crude jokes and uncomfortable teenage interactions really show that. 

Overall, in my opinion I definitely feel like not only the 1st Scary Movie but the whole Scary Movie franchise does a great job at exaggerating and bringing to light the stereotypes found within the horror genre. This allows for conversations to be had about what is and isn't acceptable to be portrayed in the horror genre. It allows for conversations to be had on proper ways to display diversity, as well as the harmful effects that negative stereotypes have on communities, alongside the conversation surrounding the over sexualization of women and people in general within media. I believe that these are very important topics that need to be discussed in the Scary Movie franchise opens up these discussions in a comedic and less confrontational way. Although sometimes uncomfortable these conversations need to be had as they are what drive change.

[dianagj-art]

i love your fem! hiccup art!!! could you talk more about the betrothal au?? (specifically hiccup and asher)

THANK YOU!! And YES!! What haven't I got to say about these two idiots

Basically the two had have a crush on eachother since they were young teens, so like on the first httyd movie events. None said anything. Asher was the one who tried to mave a move later on (aka. The kiss at the end of the movie, the kiss on Snoggletog, and the kiss on one of the riders of Berk/defenders of Berk episode, I don't remember whitch one) but Hiccup never did anything else but blush bc basically she just thought Asher was being cocky. He was not.

As time passed and they grew to be friends, their crushes got kinda forgoten until rtte events. Asher is the first one to relize his feelings, Hiccup is too oblivious to notice her own feelings. And Asher is now trapped in your typical "I don't want to say anything bc it would ruin our friendship" situation, except he does tries a few times pre-events of the fanfic. But Hiccup either gets distracted by a dragon or just Asher's words goes over her head and doesn't get is an actual confession.

For the games, Berkians are going to introduce Dragon Racing to the other tribes atending, and to a new-ish way to play it, where instead of 5 dragons it's 5 teams playing, so it's more riders on the sky, more dangerous, and also more fun. The gang were going to compete, and Asher had already made up his mind to tell Hiccup how he feels and ask her out after they win.

But this never happens, bc since her hand is being "offered" on the games, she is not allowed to play. And she tells her friends she is not going to participate in any game and gives no other explanation. Its not until Stoick anounces that her hand is being played for that they know why she had been acting strange the last few days.

And Asher enters in a panic. A few of other Hooligans apoint themselves for her hand, (from a group that's a few years older than them), they had already been told that the other tribes are bringing their own suitors and my boy Asher raises up to win her hand too. (that's pretty much how the fic starts)

But Hiccup is too mad with the whole situation to notice "huh, maybe those things he had said where we are alone had a deeper meanng to it" or "wait, he likes me?" and instead just thinks that every single person that is going to play for her hand is just an oportunist who wants an status bust. After all, she is the next chief of Berk, and whoever maries her, will get that title too.

And some of them are doind it just for the status it'll give them, but some other are acutally people who like her. But we are not talking about them.

With Asher, things are a little more complicated, and her anger goes stronger. Because he is her friend and how dares him doing this??? To her!!! He knewher feelings to an agranged maridge like this!! All the gang did! And now he's doing one of the things she spites the most!!!

Anyways Hiccup is pissed, Asher thinks he fucked up and she'll be mad with him for life.

Things happen and Hiccup, the other heirs of the tribes, the gang and the rest of the suitors are strandled alone on a broken ship, without dragons, on the Ship Graveyard. All courtesy of Viggo.

As they try to get out of there and have their dragons back, Hiccup finally gets to actually spend time with the suitors and to know them. She realices she was wrong about some of them, and even when the time was short, she got to know A LOT about them.

Then the adults show up, and they gater to make a better plan to get the dragons. Hiccup and Stoick have a talk alone, Hiccup tells him some of the boys aren't actually so bad and spends some time just talking about them, some good things some bad things then…

Hiccup rants about how in the last day he keept her focused on what was important, and supported her on her desitions, but didn't shy away to argue. But when everyone started to see who was in charge (since the other heirs of the other tribes were also there) he stood at her side with no hessitation, even when she was the younger of the heirs and with less training.

And with that is when realization finaly hits her. "It has to be Asher" she tells Stoick and he tries to calm her, bc now she is ranting on how good Asher could be for the "spot" but also bc she starts to realice Asher probably had feelings for her since before. And she gets very insistent on why it has to be him

And the rest is a surprise for when i actually get to write the fic :3

#fem hiccup #fem hiccup au #httyd genderbend #httyd fanart #httyd fanfic #betrothal au #httyd au #hiccup haddock #stoick the vast #asher hofferson #male astrid #astrid hofferson #asks #SORRY IF THERE'S ANY TYPOS OR MISTAKES I WROTE THIS ON MY PHONE AT 3 AM #dg asks #dg art #dg fanart #dg comics

[junko-and-riri-domain]

jayla’s cafe | sjy

↬ series: cameras & caffeine | chapter one ↬ overall pairing: cafe owner!jake x ceo!reader (all members will be featured at some point throughout the series, some are in it more than others !!) ↬ overall series genres: fluff, slight angst, jake also bakes, reader is a single mom, we fell in love when we were kids but life happened so we broke up and now we’re reconnecting because we’re adults and i don’t think i ever truly got over you au, love triangle if you squint really really hard ↬ navi: next | series masterlist ↬ warnings: none ↬ word count: 1.3k

[ series synopsis ]

↱ You were young when you fell in love with Sim Jake. How could you not when he had a smile that could light up the darkest of nights, eyes that seemed to look deep into your soul, and a bubble of happiness around him that you wanted to be a part of? He was young when he fell in love with you. How could he not when you had a warmth that could never be replicated, a spark in your eyes that he loved to see, and your own special way of calming him down? But life had other plans for you two. After high school, he wanted to move back to Australia and start a new life with you but you wanted to stay in the country and continue the life already established for you. Things changed, your views no longer aligned, and before either of you two had broken up.

Now, a few years have passed and due to medical issues, your father has decided to temporarily step down from his position as Hybe Entertainment’s CEO, leaving the position to you. Despite all the eyes watching and waiting for you to fall since you’re so young and a single mother, you’re determined to prove them all wrong. You’ve been doing fine so far, working in such a high position and stressful environment while simultaneously being able to take the time and effort to take care of your son, Heeseung. But when you get news of your ex, Jake coming back to the country and opening up a cafe you decide to pay a visit. One visit turns to two which turns to three and before you know it, Jayla’s Cafe suddenly becomes a part of your regular routine. Jake meets Heeseung, the two instantly taking a liking to each other but unbeknownst to any of you, cameras lurk in the bushes and flash when you’re unaware. What happens when photos are revealed to the public and connections are made? Connections… that might not just be baseless rumors after all.  ↲

You let out a sigh as your eyes stay settled on your laptop screen in front of you, too focused on work to be able to glance at the time and too busy to hear your office door opening. It’s only when you feel a presence next to you, a slight tug at your hand, and the sound of your son’s voice that you’re finally brought back to reality and out of the trance that work had put you in. You smile as you smoothen out Heeseung’s hair, move the chair back a little to allow him to settle on your lap. You look up at Sunghoon and smile,

“Thanks for taking care of Hee today,” you say gratefully. Of all the billions of people in the world, you couldn’t be more thankful to have Sunghoon as your best friend. He was there for you when you were pregnant, a constant source of comfort when you needed it, and now was one of the closest things that Heeseung had as a father.

“Mhm,” is all Sunghoon replies as he takes your coat for you. While the three of you head into the elevator

“Hoonie?” you say. Sunghoon stays quiet at the nickname, simply looking at you and you continue, “I’m thankful for all that you’ve done for me but you really don’t have to any of this. After all, you’re the co-CEO of Park Enterprises with Jay and you have your own life. Maybe you should go on a few dates here and there instead of always being with me and Hee, I can set you up,” you offered. Sunghoon was hurt at your implication that there were better places to be than with you but didn’t show it. Instead,

“I don’t have time to go on dates, you know this.”

“But you have time to take care of a kid for half a day?” you countered. In all the years that you’ve known Sunghoon and have been best friends, you never could really get a read on him. You wondered what he was thinking about and the thoughts running through his mind but when the elevator finally reaches the parking lot below your building,

“It’s different because you and Heeseung are actually worth spending my time on,” he replied as you got into your car. The car ride to your house was spent in silence, a normal occurrence with Sunghoon but it felt normal and was a type of silence that didn’t need to be filled. Spending time with Sunghoon was something that you did so often that it was almost a part of your routine. Like tonight, there were times when Sunghoon would pick up Heeseung and bring him to your office and the three of you would then have dinner together. Other times, you picked up Heeseung and headed to Sunghoon’s office for dinner. Occasionally, Sunghoon’s half-brother and co-CEO of Park Enterprises, Jay would eat out with you guys too. Growing up, you were all a group of five who were stuck together like glue, Jay, Sunghoon, Yeji, you, and Jake. The Park Brothers ran the family business together while Yeji chose to travel the world, much like Jake did. You hear your name being called, causing you to look at Sunghoon next to you,

“Huh?”

“You ok? You looked so deep in thought.” You glanced behind you, looking at Heeseung now asleep in the backseat,

“Just thinking about some things is all.”

When you got to your house and started eating dinner, you couldn’t help yourself from glancing at Sunghoon every so often. You couldn’t deny that it felt nice to have a constant source of stability and comfort through him, but it wasn’t fair to him since he was spending so much time and taking so much effort to help you out given that you were a single mother and he had grown to become your best friend. The two of you were on your living room couch since he was spending the night and were watching a movie while Heeseung was asleep in his room. Suddenly, Sunghoon brought up a topic that you weren’t quite expecting him to but you weren’t surprised about it earlier.

“Jake’s back from Australia.” You set your cup of hot chocolate on the table and wrap the blanket tighter around you and lean your head on Sunghoon’s shoulder,

“I know.” It comes out mumbled as you keep your eyes on the screen, not quite wanting to talk about it but you knowing that you were going to have to face it eventually, nervousness now filled you.

“He opened up a cafe downtown, Jayla’s Cafe.”

“I know.”

“I’m going with Jay tomorrow.”

“Jake invited me too but I said I couldn’t go because of work.” It was a lie since tomorrow was your day off but Jake didn’t need to know that. Honestly, you weren’t ready to face Jake and you didn’t think you’d ever be. When you and Jake were younger, you fell in love but after high school, life happened and Jake chose to go to Australia while you decided to stay since you were learning how to take over Hybe Industries.

“You gotta tell him.”

“It’s not like I keep it a secret, like, people know I have a kid.” It was a dumb response and you knew it. Sunghoon called you out on it by saying,

“You don’t keep it a secret but you don’t actively acknowledge it either.” Sighing,

“Can we not talk about this today?” Or ever, you wanted to say.

“I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do. But he’s back now.”

The opening day of Jayla’s Cafe went way better than Jake expected if he was being honest with himself. Whether it was due to good marketing, pure luck, or Layla’s presence in the cafe that drew in so many customers, he wasn’t going to complain about it. He was more nervous now than he was in the morning because Jay and Sunghoon would be dropping by in a few minutes. It had been years since he had seen his old friends or been a part of “high society” as most would call it due to the status and wealth you all grew up with. He missed you the most and kind of hoped that you would’ve dropped by today. But things were different now, he knew. You two weren’t the little kids who fell in love and acted on that love in your teens. You were no longer the girl who’d yell at Jake for teasing you over something dumb, you were now the CEO of Hybe Entertainment and someone that young kids could look up to and aspire to be like. He was no longer the guy who’d hold your hand or give you a hug when you cried because you didn’t need that-- him anymore.

“I was the one who decided to head back to Australia,” Jake muttered to himself in an effort to somewhat justify the years that he hadn’t seen you or anyone else except for the few times Jay would come to Australia. The bell chiming signals to Jake that someone had walked in, confirmed at the sight of Jay and Sunghoon entering inside the cafe. While you had already told him that you wouldn’t be coming, his heart still sank a little at the lack of your presence here. Greeting the guys and setting out some pastries and drinks, the three talked and caught up on things. Somewhere down the line,

“Jake, can you connect my phone to the Wi-Fi real quick?” Sunghoon asked, handing Jake his phone,

“Yeah, sure man.” Taking Sunghoon’s phone, the phone screen was still open, a mistake Sunghoon was unaware he had made. Looking at the phone screen, Jake saw a photo of you and Sunghoon which wasn’t something that was surprising to him. What did surprise him was the sight of a little boy in between you and Sunghoon, Sunghoon’s smile the brightest he’s ever seen it before. As Jake hands Sunghoon his phone back after connecting it to the Wi-Fi, he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had happened in the years he’d been gone. But throughout the night and as the conversation went on… he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

↬ a/n:

now that tatts & cupcakes is over, meet cameras & caffeine !!

❦ written by riri ( @enhykkul​​ ) | main blog masterlist | blog navi

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[kcrabb88]

Queer Movies/Books/TV Shows for Pride Month!

Happy Pride everyone!! For your viewing/reading pleasure I have made a (non-exhaustive) list of queer media that I have enjoyed! 

Movies/Documentaries

Pride (2014): An old tried and true favorite, which meets at the intersection of queer and workers’ rights. A group of queer activists support the 1985 miners’ strike in Wales (complete with a sing-through of Bread and Roses + Power in a Union)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire: On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman (or, two young lesbians fall in love by the sea, and you cry)

God’s Own Country: Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path (Seriously this movie is GREAT and doesn’t get enough love, watch it! It’s rough but ends happily)

The Half of It:  When smart but cash-strapped teen Ellie Chu agrees to write a love letter for a jock, she doesn't expect to become his friend - or fall for his crush (as in she falls for his crush who is another girl. This movie was so good, and really friendship focused!) 

Saving Face:  A Chinese-American lesbian and her traditionalist mother are reluctant to go public with secret loves that clash against cultural expectations (this is an oldie and a goodie, with a happy ending!)

Moonlight:  A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood (featuring gay men of color!)

Carol:  An aspiring photographer develops an intimate relationship with an older woman in 1950s New York (everyone’s seen this I think, but I couldn’t not have it here)

Milk: The story of Harvey Milk and his struggles as an American gay activist who fought for gay rights and became California's first openly gay elected official (the speech at the end of this made me cry. Warning, of course, for death, if you don’t know about Harvey Milk)

Pride (Hulu Documentary):  A six-part documentary series chronicling the fight for LGBTQ civil rights in America (they go by decade from the 50s-2000s, and there is a lot of great trans inclusion in this)

Paris is Burning (Documentary): A 1990s documentary about the African American and Latinx ballroom scene. Available on Youtube!

A New York Christmas Wedding:  As her Christmas Eve wedding draws near, Jennifer is visited by an angel and shown what could have been if she hadn't denied her true feelings for her childhood best friend (this movie is SO CUTE. It’s really only nominally a Christmas movie and easily watched anytime. Features an interracial sapphic couple!) 

TV Shows 

Love, Victor: Victor is a new student at Creekwood High School on his own journey of self-discovery, facing challenges at home, adjusting to a new city, and struggling with his sexual orientation (this is a spin-off of Love, Simon, and it’s very sweet and well done! Featuring a young gay man of color)

Sex Education:  A teenage boy with a sex therapist mother teams up with a high school classmate to set up an underground sex therapy clinic at school (this has multiple queer characters, including a featured young Black gay man and also in season 2 there is a side ace character!) 

Black Sails: I mean, do I even need to put a summary here? If you follow me you know that Black Sails is full of queer pirates, just queers everywhere.

Gentleman Jack:  A dramatization of the life of LGBTQ+ trailblazer, voracious learner and cryptic diarist Anne Lister, who returns to Halifax, West Yorkshire in 1832, determined to transform the fate of her faded ancestral home Shibden Hall (Period drama lesbians!!! A title sequence  that will make you gay just by watching!) 

Tales of the City (2019):  A middle-aged Mary Ann returns to San Francisco and reunites with the eccentric friends she left behind. "Tales of the City" focuses primarily on the people who live in a boardinghouse turned apartment complex owned by Anna Madrigal at 28 Barbary Lane, all of whom quickly become part of what Maupin coined a "logical family". It's no longer a secret that Mrs. Madrigal is transgender. Instead, she is haunted by something from her past that has long been too painful to share (this is based on a book series and it’s got lots of great inter-generational queer relationships!) 

The Haunting of Bly Manor:  After an au pair’s tragic death, Henry hires a young American nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew who reside at Bly Manor with the chef Owen, groundskeeper Jamie and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (sweet, tender, wonderful lesbians. A bittersweet ending but this show is so so wonderful)

Sense8: A group of people around the world are suddenly linked mentally, and must find a way to survive being hunted by those who see them as a threat to the world's order (queers just EVERYWHERE in this show, of all kinds)

Books

Loveless by Alice Oseman:  Georgia has never been in love, never kissed anyone, never even had a crush – but as a fanfic-obsessed romantic she’s sure she’ll find her person one day. This wise, warm and witty story of identity and self-acceptance sees Alice Oseman on towering form as Georgia and her friends discover that true love isn’t limited to romance (don’t be turned off by this title, it’s tongue-in-cheek. This is a book about an aroace college girl discovering herself and centers the importance and power of platonic relationships! I have it on my TBR and have heard great things)

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters: Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel (again, don’t be thrown off by the title, it too, is tongue-in-cheek. This book was GREAT, and written by a trans women with a queer-and especially trans--audience in mind)

A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein: A gay Christopher Marlowe, at Cambridge and trying to become England’s best new playwright, finds himself wrapped up in royal espionage schemes while also falling in love (this book is by a Twitter friend of mine, and it is a wonderful historical thriller with a gay man at the center).

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer: a very very queer remix of The Picture of Dorian Gray (which was already quite queer), featuring amazing female characters, a gay Basil, and a much happier ending than the original. 

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston: The gay prince of England and the bisexual, biracial first son of the president fall in love (think an AU of 2016 where a woman becomes president). Featuring a fantastic discovery of bisexuality, ruminations on grief, and just a truly astonishing book. One of my favorites!

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston:  For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures. But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train (This is Casey McQuiston’s brand new novel featuring time-travel, queer women, and I absolutely cannot WAIT to read it)

The Heiress by Molly Greely: Set in the Pride and Prejudice universe, this takes on Anne de Bourg (Lady Catherine’s daughter), and makes her queer! 

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters:  Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins (Sarah Waters is the queen of historical lesbians. All of her books are good, and they’re all gay! The Paying Guests is another great one)

(On a side note re: queer books, there are MANY, these are just ones I’ve read more recently. Also there are a lot of indie/self-published writers doing great work writing queer books, so definitely support your local indie authors!) 

#I am inevitably forgetting things!!! #These are just ones that came to mind #Long post #Pride

[batboyblog]

Genuinely asking (no hate whatsoever I'm just curious) what were your issues with heartstopper?

I have a few

Alice Oseman and Netflix marketing have talked about Heartstopper being "wholesome" and the lack of "wholesome" or "age appropriate" shows/media for LGBT teens. And like right now there's a movement in America to ban LGBT books from schools, libraries, book stores even, to declare that we shouldn't be talked about in schools and tv shows/movies with LGBT themes should get special ratings or warnings. So it feels... questionable to have a Queer show kinda declare that past media like Love Victor, Young Royals, The Real O'Neils were in some way not "wholesome" and wholesome here seems to mean no one does anything past kissing, on the lips only, no hands below the shoulders, no lustful eyes, or passion etc that somehow all of that is, not okay.

which kinda leads me into this: Oseman said in an interview "'There’s a lot on TV now that has queer content, but it’s definitely for adults,” they say. And even now, they add, “a lot of queer stories are still very serious or focused on trauma.'” 

The Show literally has a sexual assault in it? Charlie is pushed up against the wall and is being kissed as he starts to cry and begs Ben to get off him, but thats not "trauma"? and thats kinda a part of what I mean by the messaging behind the show? like the show says it's one thing and people act like thats true but like... its not and thats weirdly jarring?

Really everything about Ben is bad on 3 different counts. 1) I don't think Oseman really understands what being a gay boy in the closet is like or she doesn't wish to handle it, so it plays into a homophobic narrative that closeted gay boys are selfish liars rather than scared of real and serious (and dangerous) consequences gay people can face coming out. I'm not saying Ben needs to be a good person but that leads into 2) I guess Oseman is a OG Tumblr kid which kinda explains the morality of Heartstopper, Tumblr in its fandom heyday loved to rip down characters for a totally bad faith reading of their actions "oh so and so didn't think about X's feelings! and so he's an abuser!" etc and also people used to get VERY angry (and still do) about people shipping the "wrong" ship "If I see anyone shipping Ben and Charlie I'll throw hands!" a post I've seen. So as such Ben has to be turned into a very black and white monster, we never see any reason Charlie may have liked him, Ben openly declares they were never boyfriends and he very bluntly and shockingly out of the blue assaults Charlie with no mixed signals at all. And it feels clear to me its in there not so much for the narrative, Charlie never addresses his assault or seems to really have feelings about it, but to foreclose any very on-line criticism of Charlie being a "cheater" for falling for Nick while he's with Ben and to foreclose anyone daring to ship the "wrong" thing.

The 3rd thing is... Ben is played by an actor who has dark hair and eyes, a rather large nose, a traditionally Jewish first name, who's a sneak and a liar who forces himself onto a very white character in a darkened corner only to be pulled off by Nick the blond cartoon viking with the nordic last name to go scuttling off. Indeed Ben never directly confronts the strapping blond boy warrior Nick only praying on weaker Charlie... I don't this was intentional... but once I saw it... it was a little hard to unsee

There also seemed to be very clear masculine feminine gendered roles for Nick and Charlie, for example both boys get a bully to deal with, Nick deals with Harry by hitting him, but Charlie just tells Ben off, even though Ben is a sex pest so should face more punishment? Charlie just quits the team without a fight.

a friend pointed out the magic black teacher who's there just to be a sounding board but not to really do anything or offer advice really, he also pointed out how he missed that Elle was trans and thought she was just bullied for her natural hair, common for black students particularly in largely white schools. And I think that was an issue A lot of people have been for example cheering Isaac as "ace representation" but like Isaac is a barely there character so it'd be weird to declare that being a side character with no story at all in other people's love stories is "ace rep" and likewise Elle other then mentioning being bullied has nothing to say about being trans, nothing, nothing, while she's trying to figure out how to date a boy who knew her before she transitioned. If you can change a trans character into a cis character and nothing changes you're not telling a trans story?

I'm sure I'm missing something and this has clearly gotten away from me. And like If I mentally remove Ben, and really the side characters and what people say about it, it's a very cute little story, it's popularity is just uh odd.

#Heartstopper

[captainshadowgirllostfan]

I love Teen Titans Beast Boy but now that I know that Beast Boy is actually really really smart, as much as I love his comedic potential, or how he played the comedic relief in the Teen Titans comics...I feel like dumbing him down was really...idk lazy writing

I mean okay if the rest of the cast thinks Beast Boy is dumb because he plays class clown all the time and generally people don't equate humor with intelligence (which is wrong because intelligent people do have a sense of humor. You gotta be pretty witty to be able to make people laugh. Idk why we think like this) that would be okay but it's pretty clear in the original Teen Titans show with the many puns of how Beast Boy doesn't have a brain and how he was easily brainwashed by Mad Mod that...it's not him acting dumb, it's really the show making fun of his lack of intelligence compared to the rest of the cast...and that ain't cool

I still have an affection for Teen Titans show Beast Boy, but I actually want to see Beast Boy being used at his fullest potential with his comedy and his intelligence.

It seems Young Justice and Titans might be doing that. I love the personality that Garfield shows in DC Titans. How he's so into vintage things, old games, and movies. Ugh, I love that! He's so cool and rad!

And I love how Young Justice really showcases him as a leader (though Idk doesn't his character try to avoid that because of the abuse he went through with Mento and his earlier guardians. Young Justice focuses a lot on Beast Boy's trauma over the losses in his life but there's no mention of the fact that Garfield was also a victim of abuse as a child and how much that affected him. Either way, it's great they're exploring his depression. I think that's awesome! Along with how he created the Outsiders instead of having Batman do that...of course, it's later revealed that Batman and co. have been manipulating events to make the Outsiders prominent to the public but...I still think in YJ, the Outsiders was Beast Boy's invention and I love how much of a major role he plays in YJ. I hope if they renew another season we see more of him instead of just focusing on the old cast members, just focus on more of the newer generation like Beast Boy, Blue Beetle, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Robin (Tim Drake), El Dorado, Halo, and Forager.

Anyway, I'm ranting...if these mediums don't satisfy me, I'm just gonna go look for the Garfield Logan comics because I mean I think he's so underrated and he must be a lot more considering all the versions I see of him. Just wish someone would focus on both the comedy and the intelligence he has. YJ does show a more intelligent and serious Gar, but where's the comedy? Hopefully, in the future we'll see it... and I haven't finished Titans to give a good diagnosis of what my final thoughts on Gar is just yet in that show. Teen Titans cartoon though, as much as I love him as a comedic relief, it's unfair that they keep making jokes about his intelligence. He's actually a very smart kid.

I mean I think I read a post that said his IQ was 143, both his biological parents were genius scientists and he was experimented on in order to be smarter...just like Cyborg actually. I mean, of course, Garfield is smart! Unless I'm confusing him with someone else?

#why did i make this an essay? #idk. #I saw a post that his IQ is 143 #he was experimented on in order to be smarter #Garfield Logan #Beast Boy #give us some smart jokes man #Beast Boy is freaking funny #but he's also freaking smart

[lesbianrobin]

What do you think are the good and bad aspects of each season of ST?

ok 1. thank u for this question omg and 2. this answer may or may not be a mess, but either way it’s long (almost 7k words lmao) bc i’m insane, which is why it’s under a cut. it’s still by no means an exhaustive list but these are the things that just kinda came to mind.

also i realize you asked “good and bad” and i wrote this whole post as “strengths and weaknesses” which um. is not Exactly what you asked. but close enough <3 i also ended up including a lot of au ideas ksjdckmn bc like i personally hate when people say a certain plot or whatever was bad without suggesting anything that could have improved it yknow so whenever possible i tried to provide Some idea for fixing the issues i had with the show!!

season 1

strengths (this is probably gonna be the longest section but that’s because a lot of these strengths also apply to s2/s3 by default)

nostalgia and authenticity

this one’s pretty simple, but i think that season one did a good job of blending classic eighties media homages (such as the many many e.t./el parallels) with explicit pop culture references (such as mike’s yoda impression, mentions of the x-men, etc) to create a show that’s essentially dripping in early eighties nostalgia without it feeling too forced. before st, i think the most popular depiction of the eighties in mainstream media was that overly exaggerated neon scrunchie aesthetic from the mid to late eighties, and it was usually done in a comedic sense first and foremost. st took a different approach, instead focusing on the early eighties, a time that’s often ignored in favor of going either Full Seventies or Full Eighties, and i think that this choice likely resonated with adults who lived through the eighties and hadn’t yet seen something that felt quite so accurate to their own adolescence. a lot of young people who watched st were totally unfamiliar with this period of time, unfamiliar with books/movies like “stand by me” that st borrows from heavily, and i think st lent more seriousness to the eighties than most young people had experienced so far, and this was refreshing and interesting!

the use of dnd in the show is also quite genius in a way i’m not sure i can articulate?? it isn’t something Everyone would have played at the time, but it’s something that existed within a different context back in the eighties than it does today, and it really lent a sort of authenticity to the naming of the show’s sci-fi elements. like, of course these kids would name parallel dimensions and monsters and superpowers after these similar things in their favorite game! it just feels so real and it grounds st in our reality moreso than you might expect from the typical sci-fi or horror universe.

utilization of existing tropes

almost every single character in st clearly originates from some popular trope. the plot itself is riddled with classic eighties movie tropes. almost every single element of stranger things can be clearly traced back to some iconic eighties film or just to, like, overused horror/sci-fi/mystery/coming-of-age movie tropes in general. this might sound like a bad thing, but it really works in st’s favor! starting off with familiar tropes gives st the ability to easily create a lot of complexity and make a big impact by selectively deviating from those familiar, comfortable tropes!! while el’s whole plot, hopper’s character, etc, are all examples of this in action, i think the steve/nancy/jonathan plot is the greatest example. even from the start, the fact that good girl barb dies while nancy is off having sex with her asshole boyfriend is an incredibly thorough inversion of the most well-known horror movie trope in the book. how often do girls in horror movies have sex for the first time, walk home alone in the dark of night, and live to tell the tale? nancy and jonathan’s dynamic at first glance is a sort of classic “good girl meets boy from the wrong side of the tracks, discovers he’s actually got a heart of gold” thing, but instead of following this well-trodden path, st diverged. nancy is brash, impulsive, and at times downright insensitive. jonathan is angry, bitter, and actually a bit of a creep at first. while they have the capacity to emotionally connect and support one another, they can also bring out each other’s darker side, which is not what we’ve come to expect from that initial tropey dynamic.

in addition, steve, the popular rich asshole boyfriend, is actually... a human being! unlike the cartoonishly evil jocks that we’ve come to expect (especially from eighties movies), steve has complexity. despite his initial immaturity and selfishness, he’s also kind to barb, he backs off when nancy says no, he’s gentle and sweet when they sleep together, his first big Dick Move of the season is in defense of nancy, he realizes the error of his ways after the fight and does what he can to fix it, he’s worried about nancy when he sees that she’s hurt at jonathan’s house, and to top it all off, he ends up saving both nancy and jonathan’s lives when he could have just walked away, and the three of them all work together to fight the demogorgon. like... steve began as the most stereotypical character of all time, and by the end of the season, he had one of the most compelling and unique arcs among the whole cast!

finally, at the very end of the season, instead of dumping steve for jonathan as expected, nancy ends up getting back together with steve, and they’re both on friendly terms with jonathan. i realize that i just kinda. summarized s1. but my POINT is that i don’t think the dynamics between the monster hunting trio would be nearly as fun and interesting had the characters of nancy, steve, and jonathan not been set up to follow certain paths that we already had charted in our own heads. like, within the first couple episodes of s1, it’s pretty obvious that nancy and steve are gonna break up, nancy will get with jonathan, and steve will either die or go full evil or just never be seen again. like, duh! you’ve seen this story a million times! you know that’s how it’s gonna go! so, when the story DOESN’T go that way, the impact of each character’s arc and the relationship dynamics become stronger due to their unexpected complexity and authenticity. 

distinct plotlines separated by age group

this one’s rather obvious, but the way that the adults in s1 were essentially in a conspiracy thriller while the teens were in a horror flick and the kids were in a sci fi power-of-friendship story and all three converged at the end... wow. brilliant showstopping etc. not only was it just really well done and unique, it also gave stranger things near-universal appeal. like, there’s genuinely something for pretty much everyone in season one!

casting

obviously this applies to every season sorta by default, but when i think about what made season one So successful, i always think about the cast, and not just winona ryder. yes, she’s absolutely amazing in the show and it’s very doubtful that st would be as big as it is today without her name being attached to it from the start!! however, i think the greatest determining factor in st’s success is the casting of the kids, particularly millie bobby brown. like... el is just absolutely incredible. she’s amazing. this has all been said many times before so i won’t harp on it, but millie and the other kids are all So talented and charismatic and i think their casting has been instrumental to the show’s success.

strong visuals

the way that multicolored christmas lights which have been around for decades are now kinda like. a Stranger Things thing. jesus christ. those lights are probably the biggest stroke of stylistic genius on the show.

atmosphere and setting

this is probably like. the least important one here for me sdjncdsc because i think s2 and s3 both had like Even Better atmospheres and shit but s1 was good too and it laid the groundwork!! i know a lot of people would have preferred st be set somewhere more Spooky with lots of fog or giant forests or whatnot, and while i do enjoy thinking about alternate st settings and how they might alter the vibe, i think hawkins indiana was a good choice. as the duffers have said, placing stranger things in a fictional town allows them more flexibility than if they’d gone with their original plan of using montauk, new york. besides that, i think the plainness and like... flatness... of small-town indiana just Works. like, the fact that hawkins is never really scary on the surface is a big part of the horror in the lab’s actions and their impact. hawkins isn’t somewhere that people just disappear all the time. it isn’t somewhere known for strange occurrences (prior to s1, that is). it isn’t somewhere shrouded in mist and secrecy. hawkins on its surface seems like the sort of place with no secrets and nothing to fear, and that’s the point! the lab is out in the open! it’s right there! everything is so close to the surface, yet so far out of the public eye, and i think that really works.

the byers family’s whole deal (specifically the joyce/jonathan dynamic)

this is going here bc i miss it so bad in s2 and s3. i’m not one of those people who believe The Byers Are The Whole Point of the show, because st is and always has been an ensemble, and el, hopper, and the wheelers are just as instrumental to the plot as the byers, but ANYWAY, i do think the byers were one of the most interesting aspects of s1. joyce’s difficulties with supporting her sons as a poor and (implied mentally ill) single mother, jonathan’s stress as a result of having to earn money, care for his brother, and keep the house in order when his mother is unable to do so, and the resulting tension between them when will’s disappearance and supposed “death” brings the situation to a tipping point? holy shit! it’s so good! that argument after they see will’s “body” is just incredible and gut-wrenching. their relationship feels so real and messy and i think it’s just... good. also winona ryder REALLY acted her heart out and she carried a lot of s1 which i think people often forget to mention so i’m saying it here.

weaknesses

pacing/timing

ok so pacing is probably going to go in each season’s weaknesses, to be honest, because i think they all had a blend of some good and some bad pacing. good pacing is invisible pacing, though, so i probably won’t be putting it in any of the strengths sections and will only be focusing on it in the weaknesses. i’m also probably not going to talk about weird day/night cycle things, just because i don’t want to get nitpicky on timelines because that would require going back and rewatching things to double check timing which i don’t wanna do at the moment lmao. anyway, when i think of bad pacing in season one, i primarily think of two things: nancy’s little trip into the upside down and subsequent sleepover with jonathan, and the sort of staggered nature of the climax in the final episode. the latter is simple so i’ll explain it first: while i understand that each group’s respective climax is like part of a chain reaction and that’s why each big moment happens separately and at different times, i think that st is strongest when the whole group is together, and i think that makes the stakes feel higher too, so i’m not In Love with the way s1 separated everyone and gave each group their own climax. 

okay, now on to the nancy/upside down thing! idk if i’ve ever talked about it before, but i think the worst decision made in s1 by far is the inclusion of nancy’s brief trip into the upside down, wherein she dives headfirst into another dimension with absolutely no backup, watches the demogorgon chow down, freaks out and runs around for a minute, and then leaves. like... what the fuck? even putting aside what an idiotic decision this was (because i do think nancy’s tendency to rush into things headfirst is an intentional and consistent character trait), it just kind of destroys any remaining suspense surrounding the demogorgon and the upside down, and it accomplishes basically nothing besides scaring nancy enough to have jonathan sleep over, which is lame. i will break it down.

like, first of all, nancy just getting to waltz in and out of the upside down and get a good, long look at the demogorgon makes the entire thing far less mysterious, and by extension far less scary. like... before this scene, we the audience haven’t got a good look at the demogorgon. we’ve seen its silhouette briefly and we’ve seen a blurry picture of it, but nothing more, and i think that is far more effective at building fear than this jaunt nancy goes on which gives us a full view of the thing and makes it into less of a horrifying nightmare and into more of a humanoid animal. like, maybe this is just me, but i found the demogorgon far less intimidating after that scene than before. it also lets nancy and jonathan know For Sure that they’re right without providing any crucial information that they need to fight the demogorgon (aka it’s unnecessary to the plot), which removes a very compelling story element (the faith nancy and jonathan need to have in order to keep going against a vague and poorly understood enemy, the doubt they might have about each other and their own sanity, the possibility that they might be wrong, the trust they need to have in each other) a bit earlier in the plot than i believe is ideal. at the end of episode 5, nancy goes into the upside down and jonathan doesn’t know where she is and it’s intense!!! you’re thinking like, oh fuck, not only is nancy missing and fighting for her life now too, jonathan might be implicated in her disappearance!! some people already think he’s the one who killed will and people know that he took creepy pictures of barb and nancy before they both disappeared, maybe this is gonna cause some serious problems for him!! maybe nancy will find will in the upside down and she’ll help him survive!! fuck, maybe she’ll actually die!! this is huge!! and then episode 6 starts and they’re immediately like oh nevermind jonathan found the tree and got nancy out and she’s fine. my point with all of this is that nancy entering the upside down could have done A Lot in the grand scheme of the plot, but all it did was just... get jonathan to sleep over so he and nancy could have some awkward romance moments and steve could see them together and pick a fight. which could have honestly happened at Any point while nancy and jonathan were working together to hunt down the demogorgon, without ruining the demogorgon’s and the upside down’s mystique. so yeah <3

weird behavior and dumbass decisions that make no sense (aka the whole camera thing)

gonna go off about the teen plot again sorry but: why was nancy so unbothered and quick to forgive jonathan for taking those pictures? girl what the fuck are you doing? why wasn’t that a bigger deal? why was jonathan’s motivation for doing it so weak and why did they just kind of forget about the whole thing? why did nancy TRACK HIM DOWN AT THE FUNERAL HOME while he was PICKING OUT HIS BABY BROTHER’S CASKET to be like hey can you tell me what’s in this creepshot you took? it’s insane. it’s so insane. i mean i think the funeral home thing is hilarious and i don’t mind it being in the show necessarily but like my point here is that i think a lot of character decisions in s1 just kind of.. happened because they Needed to happen for the plot. like, they wrote this plot that required jonathan to be secretly taking pictures of the party and required him and nancy to work together after seeing something odd in the pictures, but they didn’t like... really consider what that event would mean for their characterization and relationship. the whole thing was sort of just dropped with minimal discussion and i think it did both nancy and jonathan’s characters a disservice and was really mishandled.

lighting and saturation/color grading

i am literally begging horror/sci-fi shows to let me see shit. i GET IT okay i understand that when you’re doing cgi effects it helps to keep the lights down and i’m not mad at any of the lighting in the demogorgon/upside down scenes!! i’m really not i think the demogorgon scenes in s1 all look sick!! but like... dude. the colors. where are they. why does everyone look like a vampire. i know blah blah this was probably an intentional stylistic choice intended to mimic film at the time blah blah but dude a lot of old movies are very colorful!! please just let people have color in their faces so everyone doesn’t look like a sheet of paper!!! also i’m white and not a professional lighting designer so yknow grain of salt but i think lucas was kinda poorly served by the lighting sometimes in s1. not Hugely so, not to the degree that i’ve seen poc be poorly served by lighting in other shows, but there were some times where it felt kinda like the lighting setup was just not designed with darker skin in mind. 

horror

i just personally don’t find s1 very scary like... ever. i don’t think they were really Trying to be extremely scary yknow so i’m not counting this as a big deal, but i do think that each season has improved on the horror aspects. i think s1′s horror lies more in the mystery and the unknown than in what’s seen onscreen, and as i’ve said already, i think s1 kind of fumbled that suspense ball.

season 2

strengths

the possession plot

i’ll warn u rn this whole s2 strengths section is probably gonna be really short bc idk like. how much there is to really say i feel like it’s all so self-explanatory skjncmn. anyway yeah the possession plot!! eerie as fuck, and noah OWNED. so did winona tbh and finn and sean etc but like. noah. wow! i think the possession plot helped the show maintain a good amount of tension and suspense throughout the season, and a lot of scenes with possessed!will are flatout disturbing to watch. in a good way. i think the mindflayer and will’s possession were far more genuinely frightening than s1′s demogorgon, and it provided a new layer of depth and intrigue to the antagonist besides just “bad monster want eat people.”

tone and aesthetics

halloween season... literally halloween season. halloween season. that is all.

actually i will elaborate a bit and just say that i think s2 did a good job of having the sort of foreboding vibe that s1 was often going for, but without the annoying darkness and desaturation. so points for that.

also st2 is like one of the best Autumn pieces of media ever like it just. like steve and dustin on those train tracks with the fallen leaves all around them.... god. god the vibes are unparalleled. all of the halloween stuff also really contributes to the nostalgia st runs on yknow it makes you think about childhood and trick-or-treating and you kind of get transported like damn... i remember going to the rich neighborhoods to score the good candy..... idk i just think the whole thing is incredibly effective. 

“babysitter” steve

by sending nancy and jonathan off together, the show created a problem: what to do with steve? this problem pushed them to create the unconventional and unexpected duo of steve and dustin, and the world is so much brighter for it. seriously though we all know steve and dustin are great i don’t need to argue that point. all i’ll add is that i think allowing steve to grow in this way, serving as a mentor figure and becoming genuine friends with someone so unexpected, really took the originality of his character to the next level. no longer content just to defy his archetype, in s2 steve begins branching out in ways that never would have been considered in s1, creating an incredibly complex and interesting person from the sort of character that most shows would have simply written out or killed off for convenience’s sake. and it works and steve and dustin are such a joy to watch and i love them. <3

the lucas/max plot

so first of all max mayfield is the most perfect baby girl on god’s green earth and idk what i would do without her but anyway. i think lumax is the best romantic relationship in the show and not just because they’re the only ones with like an age-appropriate approach to the whole thing. it’s also because their relationship accomplishes more than just putting the two of them in a relationship!! lucas and max spending time together motivates billy to do his evil shit, providing more conflict in the narrative, and it also helps establish max as part of the group in a relatively natural way while giving both her and lucas a great subplot. lucas (and dustin) has a crush on the new girl, they start spending some time together, and lucas ends up needing to decide whether he’ll keep the secret of the upside down and lose her, or risk both of their lives by telling her the truth. that’s a pretty big, character-defining decision that he gets to make!! max has to choose whether to trust this boy she barely knows and endanger herself, or to walk away and stay safe, yet another great character-defining choice that also contributes to the sense we get as an audience of max as somebody who’s incredibly lonely and desperate for love and connection. this post is way too long already and i have a ton more to say so i’ll stop now but yeah i think lumax really Works in the show without ever distracting or detracting from the overall plot and narrative in the way that some other ships (coughjancycough) often do.

balance between the normal and abnormal

s2 i think did a pretty solid job of melding daily life with more fantastical sci-fi horror elements. i enjoyed seeing so much of the kids at school in the first few episodes!! you really get a strong sense of where they’re at in life, what their daily lives are like, and you get a sort of gradual shift into madness that makes everything feel more grounded than i think it would if they had just leapt straight into the horror shit, yknow? 

the el and hopper dynamic

go back and rewatch s2 and tell me that’s not one of the most moving portrayals of parenthood and trauma and growing up that you’ve ever seen. you can’t. or well you can but i won’t listen. i really can’t imagine stranger things without el and hopper’s relationship, and it’s my absolute favorite part of s2. their whole dynamic is so beautiful and complex, and gives them each amazing personal arcs in addition! the black hole scene is literally one of the show’s greatest moments of all time. any given scene between the two of them in s2 is just guaranteed to be heartwarming as well as heartbreaking, and i think that makes for an incredible show.

weaknesses

flashbacks

okay this applies to Every season they All have too many flashbacks but in s2 specifically... please stop showing me shit from season one. i watched it. i know what happened. you don’t need to spoon feed everything to me!! flashbacks can be a really helpful way of delivering information to an audience, but st has a bad habit of not only being kinda demeaning in how often they flash back to shit that the audience already knows, but they also have a bad habit of using flashbacks almost as a crutch to avoid having to deliver information subtly and naturally. 

you know i gotta say it... the lost sister

this is so sad. the lost sister really is like a great concept for an st episode, and i’m not mad about the idea of st taking a break from the normal action to focus on one story for a full episode, but the execution of it was just dreadful. kali and her crew feel very over-the-top and stereotypical, and its placement in the season totally kills the tension and excitement that was built in “the spy.” 

i think the lost sister honestly could have gone over far better, even with the stereotypical fake-feeling gang kali has, if they had just swapped it with “the spy” like... ok, the end of episode five has el setting off to find kali and will collapsing on the ground seizing. right? imagine if, instead of immediately following will to the lab, we’d followed el. we don’t know what’s happening with will, but it’s a very simple cliffhanger that leaves us on edge without making us feel cheated by the show cutting away. we follow el on her little journey, everything happens much the same as canon, and then at the end, el sees hopper in scrubs. she sees mike, screaming, sees that they’re both in danger. holy shit!!! what the fuck!!! what’s happened since we left will seizing on the ground??? we feel el’s fear and confusion. she decides to go home. and then... boom. “the lost sister” is over. now, we rewind, right back to will seizing on the ground, and “the spy” commences. we learn how they got into the danger that el saw in the end of “the lost sister,” and we sit on the edge of our seats all through “the spy” and “the mind flayer,�� KNOWING that el is on her way back to save them but not knowing when she’ll arrive!! idk i don’t think that would have necessarily saved lost sister but i think it may have alleviated some of the issues that i and many others have with it, timing-wise.

the nancy/jonathan sidequest

once again, the idea of nancy going off on her own little mission to find justice for barb after s1 is like. amazing. genuinely i love that plot for her and i can’t imagine anything better for her to have focused on in s2. unfortunately though i think her and jonathan’s little trip to see murray was just kind of... lame. the whole thing just felt like an excuse to get the two of them alone together, yknow? which is fine i guess people contrive all sorts of situations to get characters alone together for romance reasons but in this case i think it just really doesn’t work for me because of what it’s juxtaposed with. like, will is POSSESSED, and jonathan is just off on a mini road trip and sleeping with his bestie, and jonathan never seems to communicate to joyce/will that he left town, and joyce never like... thinks to tell him that will is like sick and fucked up and they’re looking at him in the lab??? like it’s so weird i know joyce always forgets about jonathan when shit’s happening with will but jfc you’d think at some point in that like... 72-ish-hour period where jonathan was out of town she would have thought about him. like at least once. maybe i’m forgetting something and she mentioned him sometime and i missed it but even still, i hate the juxtaposition of nancy and jonathan just like cheers-ing at murray’s place and sleeping together and whatnot while everyone else is dealing with possession or trying to hunt down dart yknow? it feels really boring in comparison and i think it could have been done far better. like it was SO insanely easy for them to get into the lab and get an admission of guilt and escape with it!! i think it might have been a lot more engaging if maybe someone from the lab tailed them to murray’s place and they had to like lose the tail and race to get the recording out to as many news outlets as possible before they got caught, or something like that. the tension in their plotline is completely resolved in episode four!! episodes five and six are just them screwing around and addressing envelopes. while there were a lot of strong ideas in this plotline (i really enjoy nancy going out of her way to get justice, and the fact that they have to water down the story to make it believable), i just think the focus on nancy and jonathan getting together hindered it a lot without adding a ton to the plot or their individual characters.

season 3

strengths

starcourt mall as a setting

while i don’t think the mall was utilized quite to its full potential (something i could make a separate post about if anyone’s interested), i do think that starcourt was a genius addition to the series. i’ve said this before, but building a new mall is a literal Perfect in-universe justification for a significant leap forward in fashion and aesthetics, and it provides a great location for characters to just... be characters. idk how else to articulate this i just think that the mall is a great setting to let people interact with each other and to bring people together who may not have been otherwise (i.e. scoops troop). not to mention how sick it was to see the mall get wrecked toward the end kdjncdkm like they were able to do so much more with the mall in terms of like The Finale than they could with just the byers house or the cabin or the school or even the lab. i love all the back tunnels they run through it’s such a fun like acknowledgement of how this glitzy eighties mall is just a real place where employees get shipments and take out the trash and shit idk it’s all about the perfect facade and what’s hidden what’s underneath what’s hiding in plain sight etc etc i’m just saying words now. anyway. 

willingness to experiment and go against expectations

gay robin. neon aesthetics. giant fucking meat monster. i know some people hate both the neon and the meat monster but i personally think they were kind of amazing and like. yknow regardless of personal tastes i think it’s impossible to deny that s3 had a lot of incredible visuals, and they’re all visuals that just wouldn’t have been possible if the show were too afraid to stray from its s1 aesthetic. robin being canonically gay (and her resulting friendship with steve) and the season’s striking visuals are two things that most everyone (besides like homophobes skjncdknm) can agree were great, right? and they were both departures from where the show began and what we all expected!! so yeah i think while some of the experimentation in s3 wasn’t ideal it was also that experimentation that allowed for some of the season’s strongest elements to come about.

the hospital sequence (and the season’s action/horror scenes in general)

this one is fairly self-explanatory. while they may have underutilized the “body snatching” element of the season, the hospital sequence with nancy and jonathan fighting off their possessed bosses did an amazing job of building tension and creating a genuine sense of really intense and personal danger.

in general i think that s3 melded action and horror rather well, particularly in the sauna test, the hospital, and when the mindflayer busts through the roof of hop’s cabin. horror can come from many things, and in this case, st elicited horror largely from the feeling of helplessness, and it was really effective for me personally. i think it worked better for me than s1′s brand of horror because it doesn’t rely so much on a lack of knowledge or a sense of suspense that inevitable disappears upon a second viewing.

the body horror we got in s3 was also really fun! that’s it i just think all the blood and guts and slime were fun and i would like more of them. once again, the impacts of body horror are less dependent upon the viewer being in the dark or unsure as to what’s happening, and as such i think it tends to be a little more effective at eliciting reaction in the long term.

timing and mechanics of the battle of starcourt/finale

i think the battle of starcourt is just fucking awesome, and beyond that personal opinion, i think it’s the most high-stakes and intense finale of all three seasons, and this is for two main reasons! 1. el is out of commission, and 2. (almost) everyone is in the same cental location. this means that (almost) everyone is in danger all at once, and they are all working together at the same time to fight the same threat. s1/s2 have their groups more fragmented for the finales, and while i understand why in each case and i wouldn’t call either season’s finale necessarily weak, i do think the centralized nature of the s3 finale just Works on another level. in s1 and s2, large segments of the cast are already perfectly safe by the time el dispatches the primary threat. in s3, however, everybody save for dustin and erica is still in danger up until the last moment, and el is seemingly (you can def debate how much power she still had in her when she peeked into billy’s mind and whether the memory broke the mindflayer’s hold on him or if she was actually controlling him to some degree) completely vulnerable. this increases the tension and raises the stakes, making the finale a real crescendo to fortissimo as opposed to a series of little mezzo forte moments. i hope everyone reading this knows music idk how else to phrase that my brain is stupid.

emphasis on friendship and adolescence (but in a different way than s1/2)

this is definitely a controversial one but i think that s3 really did like... show a side of friendship that had been more or less unexplored thus far in the show. el and max were amazing, and i think it’s really nice that we got an opportunity to see the kids have some growing pains as well as see them support each other through Normal Adolescent Stuff like boyfriends and breakups instead of just like. death and trauma. this is maybe just a personal preference, but i think it can be really enlightening and provide a lot of depth when you get to see how characters respond to normal everyday conflict and not just how they respond to giant world-ending conflict!! letting el use her powers for goofy teenage shit like spying on boys and messing with mean girls at the mall is not only fun for her and the audience, but it also really emphasizes just how much those powers are a part of el, making it that much more devastating when she loses them at the end of the season. 

weaknesses

tonal dissonance

so this is like. obvious. but it must still be said! i won’t go on and on about it since we all know this so i’ll try to like talk about it from an angle people don’t usually? anyway. it seems to me like they were maybe a little worried about s3 being too dark. while the choice to really lean into humor was definitely driven by the sorts of eighties teen films from which s3 drew inspiration (like fast times at ridgemont high), i think it was also done in an attempt to alleviate the more troubling implications of some events in the season, particularly the russian bunker plot. like, yeah, st can be incredibly dark, but if they’d played the whole “children being stuck inside of a foreign military base, tied up, tortured, and drugged” thing completely straight without the humorous elements that exist in canon, it had the potential to be like... disturbing on a new level. steve and robin don’t have powers like el yknow their kidnapping/torture doesn’t have any sci-fi elements to sorta soften the blow. they’re just innocent teenagers being brutalized and traumatized by grown men. so anyway yeah i think maybe the writers were concerned about this storyline coming off as too dark and they wanted it to be a little more whimsical but they ended up pushing way too hard in that direction and creating extreme dissonance at times. this goes for joyce/hopper/murray/alexei too, but to a lesser extent. i think the ridiculousness in that group felt a lot more like... realistic. but still. 

newspaper plot

once again i feel like i don’t even need to say this skjdncmn we all know it was insane how the show basically ended up delivering the message “while misogyny is a serious problem poverty and classism are not” and i’ve said it on this blog a million times so i don’t need to repeat myself. i’ll focus on another weak point of this plot: the fact that it completely separates nancy and jonathan from everyone else. once again, the show’s preoccupation with j/ancy held them back! like... can you imagine a version of s3 where nancy and jonathan both worked in the mall? i have a lot of ideas about this possible au and like how the plot could play out differently if they worked in the mall but first of all it’s just more realistic, second of all it further utilizes the mall as a central setting, and third of all, it would bring everyone together. as it is in canon, nancy and jonathan were unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the group, and this isolation was detrimental to both of their characters. like, they only ever get to interact with each other! if they’d gotten summer jobs in the mall, they could have had more interactions with the kids/steve/robin, and they absolutely still could have had a similar argument! maybe in this case, nancy notices the rat thing (or something else odd) herself when taking out the trash behind the mall, and she wants jonathan to ditch work with her to check it out bc she thinks it may be related to the lab. jonathan doesn’t want to ditch work because he needs his job, nancy argues that they’re working shitty mall jobs anyway and who cares if they get fired, and we get more or less the same thing as s3 without the cartoonishly over-the-top misogyny. i mean honestly i think the rat shit could have been cut entirely it didn’t rly... accomplish much of anything. in my opinion. like imagine s3 without the rat plot you literally would not be missing anything except it would be more surprising when the dudes melted into goo at the hospital. so yeah i think it would have been better if nancy and jonathan had jobs at the mall, weren’t isolated from everybody else, and were maybe absorbed into the party’s plot or the scoops troop’s plot from very early on, allowing them to interact with more characters and have a less... dumb.... plot. like god splitting up nancy and jonathan between the party/scoops troop would have been So Much better i just. sdkjcnksdmn anyway yeah.

briefness of group reunion/separation of groups

remember in s2 at the beginning of “the gate,” where mike and hopper had a confrontation and max and el met for the first time and el hugged everyone and steve and nancy had their sad little moment together outside... where’s that energy? obviously the s2 reunion wasn’t that long either, but it made space for some significant emotional moments to take place. s3′s reunion had some hopper/el/mike resolution, but besides that... there was nothing, really. i just think that the whole group getting together in s3 was SO exciting and powerful the way they did it (with both the scoops troop and the adults having their own Big Moment reconnecting with team griswold family), but the emotional potential was more or less squandered. 

i also think in s3 at times they were really stretching to keep everybody separated even though it made no sense. and like... in s1 the separation worked bc nobody else knew that (x group) was experiencing weird shit too, and beyond that, each group (as i mentioned in the s1 section) was sort of operating within their own genre and bringing something unique to the season. they’ve stopped doing that though! now, the groups aren’t separate bc each plot is tonally/structurally different, the groups are just separate bc... they need to be, because it’s a big ensemble cast and you can’t just have them all be together for a whole season or it would be way too difficult to coordinate things and keep the show dynamic. all this is to say that i’m excited for s4 because the location differences make it so there’s a Reason for each plot to be separate at the beginning, and i think that’ll work better.

general ridiculousness

i dont mean like i think it’s bad that they made jokes this is just me lumping in all the dumb shit like hopper not worrying about el and not wanting to check on the kids, him and joyce bickering long after they both know they and their children are in danger, max seemingly forgetting that billy is a racist abuser, etc etc. i think many of these are just a symptom of the show 1. trying desperately to keep the groups split up a certain way even though it may not make any sense, and 2. trying to fit into a certain genre/trope mold when their actual characters are more complex than the tropes they’re imitating. this is so fucking long already i am not gonna elaborate further rn but i trust u all know what i mean.

soooo... yeah, that’s about all! i mean it’s not all there are definitely many more things i could talk about and i know i focused sorta disproportionately on the teens which is my bad :/ but i’m done for now. thank you for asking, and apologies for the delay in responding!! i’m sure some people reading (if anyone read this far) will disagree with some of what i’ve said and that’s alright like i’m not The Authority on st or anything i’m just trying to talk about like my own thoughts yknow? so yeah luv u all i hope someone enjoyed reading this!!

#asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things #if u actually read all this i love u and im sorry #these r just my opinions!! and im sure i misremembered some shit my brain is swiss cheese #i did my best tho