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jenniboo311 · 3 years

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GQ: Spider-Man Goes Undercover on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter

GQ: Spider-Man Goes Undercover on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter by jenniboo311

Part 2 of the Social Butterfly Spidey series General | 4115 Words | Chapter 1/1

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The video opens with Spider-Man sitting at a table with only his torso visible, the set background a solid sky blue. He is wearing his signature mask and a simple white t-shirt, forearms bare and defined with lean muscle. He gives the camera a jaunty two fingered salute.

"Hey I'm Spider-Man," he begins in a friendly voice as he flips open the lid of the laptop in front of him decisively, "And I'm going undercover on the internet." The video cuts to a title screen as it types out "Actually Me with Spider-Man" as Spider-Man says off screen, "It's actually me!"

The screen then clears and types out a new message for its audience, "We had Spider-Man create real accounts and go undercover online."

"Let's begin!" He says as the camera cuts back to him typing into the laptop. The video shows his screen as he is typing his username and password into YouTube. Once the site logs in he selects his display picture, a cheeky shot a fan must have captured as Spider-Man swung past upside-down. "First up, let's take ourselves to YouTube."

A brief clip plays from a seven and a half minute humorous compilation of Spider-Man saves, cutting back and forth between impressive confrontations against dangerous criminals with firearms to sweetly helping older ladies with their groceries.

"From user SkepticalOfSpidey, she says," he narrates the comment as it is displayed on screen, "'Is this guy for real? How can a superhero go from dodging bullets to carrying groceries? Like how is this even on his radar? Does he actually care or is this some kind of PR stunt?'"

The video cuts to Spider-Man who replies vehemently, "I absolutely care! And I think it's hysterical people consider me "above" certain things, or they're not worthy of being on my "radar", as though I'm some hotshot. Look, the Avengers are great with the big world ending stuff, and sometimes I'm part of that too, but the little guys need help too, day to day. I'm the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and no matter who you are, your race, your age, your sexuality, your income, whether you're a victim of a mugging or a kitten in a tree, you all deserve help when you need it. That's my personal mission, just to help people. So as long as I'm doing that I'm not ashamed."

The video cuts to show the end of his response being typed out on screen and Spider-Man hits the "Comment" button to post his answer.

Another short clip plays of footage from the scene of a crime where Spider-Man is knocking out a hulking goon in one hit, displaying his super strength. The subsequent comment is displayed on screen as Spider-Man reads it aloud, "'oh great, just what we need: another brawny idiot that uses his fists to solve problems. What we really need is intelligence. Can we get more scientists please?'"

Spider-Man reels back in his chair a little, seemingly taken aback. "Wow! Why are you so angry-" he consults the laptop again for the username, "Chelsea?" He shifts in the chair to get comfortable before responding, "First of all, another? I'm offended on behalf of my teammates. All of the people I work with are very intelligent, so I'm not sure where she's getting that you have to be an idiot if you have muscles. Secondly, I am a scientist, actually. I specialize in biochemistry, though I also dabble in engineering, physics, and programming. I have an IQ upwards of 250, which if you want to compare to the likes of Tony Stark, is around 270, who also kicks ass by the way."

He straightens his shirt indignantly, "Though hopefully I didn't give too much away with that. My point is," he points at the camera, "you can have both brawn and brains. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise, people. Defy the societal norms."

The comment section displays on screen again and scrolls down the page until it hits another comment. "'How strong is Spider-Man?'" He lounges back in his chair and taps the fingers of his right hand on the table idly, "Well, last we checked I could bench press about ten tons. Tony and I ran some tests about eight months ago to find out, so it could have changed since then but likely not by a large amount. So I'm going to say ten tons, give or take."

Another video clip plays that shows Spider-Man swinging confidently on his web before suddenly taking a wrong turn and eating billboard. The jarring collision dislodges his grip and he falls several feet to land on a garbage bin, whose lid caves in immediately under his weight. He reads aloud, "'Ouch. I wonder how that felt.'" Spider-Man laughs quietly, not afraid to laugh at himself. "To be honest with you Joshua, it did not feel good. That billboard actually broke my nose, though the garbage bin helped break some of the fall. There's definitely worse things I could have landed on. I don't get distracted often but it still happens sometimes. Web slinging is hard, okay?!

"Wikipedia!" he says off screen, as the visual on screen shows Spider-Man logging in to the Wikipedia webpage with the username, '[email protected]'.

"Let's see here," Spider-Man says before devolving into mumbles as he reads the information supplied on the website about himself. "Wait wait wait!" He exclaims after a moment and quotes the offending fact, "'His signature weapon is his webbing, which is created biologically and dispensed from a gland in his wrists at the base of his palms.'" The text in question displays on screen and zooms in on the text, "biologically", and then, "gland in his wrists".

"First of all, gross." Spider-Man rests his forehead in his hand, propped on the table with his elbow in a perfect picture of disappointment. "Second of all," he sits up straight and addresses the camera full on, "have you all actually been thinking I've been spurting real webs out of my hands at everything for the past few years?!" After a beat he processes what he has just said and facepalms while mumbling, "Spurting, oh God I regret my word choice."

The video cuts to the text being backspaced as Spider-Man narrates offscreen, "This is incorrect, let's delete it!"

The video cuts back to Spider-Man reaching below the table, leaning slightly to the left to dig something out of his right pants pocket, sighing heavily. He pulls out two simple black bracelets which he pointedly holds up for the camera before slipping them on. "Web shooters: 101," he says before deliberately knocking his wrists together so the bracelets make contact and activate. "Now obviously Tony Stark has gotten his hands on these and they are a little different than the originals, as you can tell by the nano technology," he explains, black colored metal creeping up his forearms to encase them in a type of bracer, "but the base mechanism is still the same as what I designed from the beginning." The nano technology finishes covering his forearms, the device quite noticeable with the stark black of the metal covering the majority of his pale exposed forearms. He flicks his hands back, palms facing upwards to show the camera, as the motion triggers a small device to deploy in the center of his palms. He reaches into his pocket once more and retrieves a couple small cylindrical cartridges filled with a milky fluid which he then deftly loads into the devices at his wrists.

"In a nutshell: web shooter," he holds up his left forearm to present the whole device to the audience. "The trigger," he presents the small button resting in his palm, "and web fluid," he continues, indicating the cartridge now inserted below his wrist. He points to a spot at the base of his palm, "They got the location of the dispenser right, I guess, but it's not coming out of a gland of any kind!" He aims carefully just past the camera and shoots a quick burst by depressing the button at his palm that makes the viewer feel as though he is shooting it at them. "I developed this formula myself, in a lab, with chemicals!" He emphasizes. "It's completely synthetic, not biological by any means, and nobody had to milk me for it." He pauses, staring at the camera for a moment before looking down at the table and murmuring uncomfortably while shaking his head, "That was a strange sentence I never want to repeat." He huffs a quiet laugh.

"Quora!" Spider-Man says as the onscreen graphic shows Spider-Man logging into the website with his fake email. "What the heck is Quora? I have no idea but let's get into it.

"'How is Spider-Man such a darling? He's so sweet and wholesome and is a big, soft, cinnamon roll'," he narrates as the question displays on screen. He shifts around awkwardly and scratches the side of his head, "Aw, I dunno! But thanks Quora, you're my new favorite website.

"'How many people has Spider-Man killed?'" He narrates as the question displays on screen. "Wow guys, that's dark!" He leans forward and clasps his hands together to convey the seriousness of his response. "The answer is none. I haven't killed anyone nor do I intend to. Spider-Man is strictly nonlethal. I only use webs to detain, I don't use blades or guns of any kind. Except these guns." He lightens the mood by flexing his right arm and kissing his bicep. He holds it together for approximately two seconds before exploding in laughter. "Oh God, how do I have friends?" He mutters to himself.

"Next!" He exclaims, searching for the next question. "'Does Spider-Man wear a mask because he's disfigured?'" The question displays for the viewer to see. "Hmm, okay well the short answer is no. That's not why I wear a mask. I don't really know how to quantify my own attractiveness, that's just awkward. I think I'm perfectly average, though I've had people tell me I'm handsome. They were all terribly biased though, so take that with a grain of salt." Spider-Man's grin can be seen in the crinkling of the fabric around his mouth. "I have two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and completely normal teeth. No extra eyes or mandibles or anything. That may sound like a strange thing to say but you'd be surprised how many times I have to clarify that," He snorts. "I cover my face because dealing with so many street-level criminals puts me on the radar of a lot of people who want revenge against me and anybody I care about. So if my identity was known I'd have to constantly watch my back, and my loved ones would be in danger. Of course there are contingencies for if that happens but in the meantime I want as normal a life as possible for me and mine."

Spider-Man clicks away on the laptop until the next question displays on screen. "'Does Spider-Man give autographs and selfies?'" He narrates. "I do, but all I ask is that if you catch me out in the wild and I look busy or distracted, to please not bother me. Most times the people I save are a bit too traumatized to be thinking about getting my autograph at the moment, but if the night is slow or I'm taking a break I'm happy to give an autograph or take a photo with you if you ask. Your best bet is probably at fundraisers and charity events, if I am in attendance, since I'm not focused on crime fighting and am just interacting with people."

The next question displays on screen, "'Is Spider-Man single?'" The video cuts to Spider-Man shifting uncomfortably. "Uh, I'm not comfortable confirming that sort of thing. Like I said, people in my orbit are in danger so I don't want to bring any kind of attention to who I surround myself with, even if their names are as yet unknown. The less information going around about that the better. So all I'll say is that at the very least I am not looking for a relationship." He awkwardly clears his throat before moving on.

"'How strong are Spider-Man's webs?' Strong enough to restrain the Hulk. Seriously," he nods at the camera, "I know this for a fact. We, and by we I mean the Avengers and I, had a code green sometime last year and out of sheer desperation I let the webs fly. By the time I was done he was basically in a cocoon but hey, it worked! Hulk looked pretty cozy actually." His eye lenses squint in amusement.

"Now let's go to Facebook," he says as the video shows him logging into Facebook and selecting a new profile picture, a closeup of Spider-Man shooting the camera finger guns.

"'Who would win in a race between Spider-Man and Captain America?'" He claps his hands together once in excitement, "Me! Because I'm obviously superior to Cap in every way!" He barks out a laugh and mumbles, "He'll let me have it for that comment! No I'm joking, Cap is awesome. I'm actually not lying though. We had a race, because science, and I clocked in at about two hundred miles per hour while Steve maxed at about seventy. Nothing to sneeze at of course, but not quite up to Spidey's par!" He gives another cheesy arm flex, this time with both arms. The video cuts to Spider-Man typing out the last of his answer and finishes it with two flex emojis before submitting it.

"'Do you think Spider-Man has any hidden talents?'" He looks seriously into the camera. "Well if I told you, they wouldn't be secret talents anymore, now would they Gerald?" He cocks his head to the side in thought. "I guess I can tell you that I can dance? I took dance and gymnastics for awhile when I was a kid, which is probably why I'm so agile and acrobatic now. My enhancement made me even more agile and acrobatic, but it was already there to some degree to begin with." He gives a careless shrug.

"'Coffee or tea?' Well I try not to drink either of them to be honest. Caffeine and spiders don't mix! Sometimes I can't avoid it though, lots of late nights being Spider-Man, so in those cases I drink coffee. Funny trivia for you, but I used to love lemonade. I must have inherited some spidery traits because lemon is a deterrent and I can't tolerate it now. I mean it won't kill me, I just find it unpleasant. Don't want criminals thinking they can spray me with lemon juice or something. I'll just be annoyed and smell funky fresh while I kick your ass." His eye lenses squint as his mask crinkles around the mouth. "My beverage of choice is actually apple juice, because I'm twelve years old." He snickers and hits the submit button to post his answer, complete with a baby emoji.

"'How are you doing? Are you getting enough sleep? Do you need a hug?'" He shifts forward to prop his chin on his hand. "I'm doing good, thank you for asking. I am absolutely not getting enough sleep, but neither is anyone else I know so I'm in good company. And I absolutely need a hug. I love giving people hugs and will one hundred percent hug you if you ask me to and I'm not busy. There's lots of Spidey to go around, I love each and every one of you."

He reads the next question silently first and barks a laugh before narrating, "'What even is your life?' Dude, I have no idea. If you had told young Spidey that one day he'd be flipping all over the city fighting crime and battling aliens with a superpowered team of highly skilled famous individuals he'd probably check you for fever and then back away slowly.

"Up next, Instagram! I know all about Instagram, I use it all the time." The video shows him once again logging into the website

"'Does anyone else desperately want a reality TV show with Spidey and the other Avengers? I would kill to watch hours of Spidey being a sarcastic little shit to bank robbers and Tony Stark just being a mess.'" Spider-Man laughs. "Wellllll," he hedges, "you might not have to wait that long. I've been toying with the idea of creating a YouTube channel and posting some shenanigans on there. Now, mind you, it won't be expertly edited or anything, I really don't have the time for that, but it would be something. Keep an eye out for that soon."

The video next displays a picture on Instagram that a fan had posted of a young Spider-Man from his early days coming out of a porta-potty with a string of toilet paper streaming off the bottom of his boot. The comment reads, "'Check out this disaster. What is going on here?'" Spider-Man looks straight at the camera, unimpressed, and deadpans, "Everybody poops, Deborah."

He navigates to the next picture, which is of a kneeling Spider-Man getting mauled by an enthusiastic, fluffy golden retriever. "'Was he a good doggo?'" He reads aloud. "He was best boy. What a good doggo!" He grins big through his mask.

"Now here we go to Twitter," he says as he logs in and selects a profile picture. "This is probably the social media I use the most. I'm thinking about deleting the app off my phone for a little while though, it's starting to consume my life. It's nice being able to connect to the public with it but I'm starting to find it difficult because people get so disappointed when I have to step away. Saying no to people is hard! And I have an extremely busy life so I can't keep this up forever. I've got cats to cuddle and lives to save! Gonna have to dial it back a bit I think."

The screen displays a tweet from user EmmaRox as Spider-Man reads it aloud, "'Do you think the abs are real or does he pad his suit?'" Spider-Man snorts and slaps his chest in mirth. "Well I would think that the fact I can lift a bus is proof enough, but here you go," he says and lifts his shirt to expose his impressively sculpted abs for just a moment before dropping his shirt and shaking his head in embarrassment. "Not padded."

The video cuts to the next question as he reads, "'What do you do in your free time?'" He looks at the camera and his left eye lens shifts as though he has furrowed his eye brow. "Free time? What's that?" He snorts, "No seriously, there's not much of that to go around. If I'm not on patrol or sleeping or training, I'm trying to keep up with my personal relationships and trying not to spend all my remaining time in the lab, with or without Tony. Like I said before, I'm a scientist, so a lot of my downtime is devoted to developing better tech, and to research to advance in these areas." He dramatically sweeps his hand across the top of his head as though he is a diva flipping long hair over his shoulder as he announces, "I'm not just a pretty face, you know." The video cuts to Spidey typing out the end of his answer, finishing it off with a queen emoji.

"'What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?'" Displays the next question from user, David P. "That's a good question, David. Hmm," he strokes his chin thoughtfully, "I would have to say 'With great power, comes great responsibility'. It was advice given to me by one of the two most important people in my life, and I have carried that motto in my heart ever since. It was advice that ultimately lead to the creation of Spider-Man, actually. I have these fantastic powers, so I consider it my responsibility to do something good with them." He wrings his hands together at what looks to be an uncomfortable topic for him to speak about. After a beat he continues his answer, "The second best advice I've ever gotten, however, was 'It is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring', which you'll also notice I take very seriously in that I am incredibly ridiculous. I mean if there's a person out there who spouts more bad puns in the face of danger than me, I haven't heard of them." He quietly snickers to himself.

"'If you had to choose three adjectives to describe yourself what would they be?'" He doesn't hesitate when he rattles off, "Genius, witty, humble." He stares at the camera seriously for a moment before he cracks and laughs. "No seriously, uh, probably awkward, smartass, and nerdy." He shrugs for lack of a better answer.

"Reddit!" He says as he logs into the page and selects a display picture of Spider-Man facepalming.

"'Do you have any pets?'" Spider-Man reads. "No. My apartment doesn't allow pets, sadly, but I love animals. And actually I do hang out with Tony a lot and I have to constantly make sure he's fed and watered because he forgets, so I feel like that's close enough." He covers his mouth with a hand to hold in his snort but a strangled one escapes anyway.

The next post shows a piece of fan artwork that is poor quality and is obviously from an inexperienced child. It depicts a heroically posed Spider-Man saving a young boy from a burning apartment complex window. The young artist in question posted the caption, "'I know it's not any good but spiderman saved me and my mom from a fire. I really want to say thank you so I drew him this picture. If anyone gets the chance to talk to spiderman can you please show him this and tell him I love him?'" Spider-Man looks at the picture on the laptop for a long moment and audibly takes several loud swallows. He looks at the camera and says hoarsely, "I love you too, bud. And I'm glad you're doing okay. It was my absolute pleasure to help you that day and I'm so glad I was there. I love your drawing and I think you're so very talented. I'm going to print this out and post it on my fridge so I can see it everyday and think of you. Study hard in school and be good for your mom!" He looks down at his lap and clears his throat, filling with emotion. After a moment he looks up and clasps his hands.

"That's it! We're done!" He says as he shuts the laptop with a snap and his eye lenses squint in a smile. "I hope you enjoyed watching and learning a little bit about me. See you around!"

The video fades to the GQ logo before ending.

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Comments: ----------------

magicalbluecookies omg that last one killed me. Spidey got all choked up Friedfishcat I live for Spidey telling us he loves us. I stan a Spiderboi not afraid of his emotions. kitty22803 Am I the only one who took a screenshot of his abs? TeamIronDad Bahahaha subtly roasting cap and iron man. I wanna be a fly on the wall of their common room, I bet they're all hilarious to watch together lovelyjourneys Does this cinnamon roll ever rest? He needs a nap! And some milk or something! saucysquatch "Everybody poops, Deborah." Dumbledork I will die if he actually makes a youtube channel, please actually make this a thing! enchanted_nightingale Nooooooo dont delete twitter! kim_cc I once got a hug from spidey!! I was crying after he saved me from almost getting hit by a car and he asked if i needed a hug. It was the best hug of my life. Isi1dur Spidey is 12 years old confirmed, someone call the press xoxheartErin Spidey, post a video of you dancing!!! Proof or it didn't happen! Slyrocker Spiderman is asked how's he's such a soft cinnamon roll, proceeds to then prove he's a soft cinnamon roll Hi NOBODY HAD TO MILK ME FOR IT UselessDiamond19 Holy crap his web shooters are so cool! chrissyglikesbooks 250?! His IQ is 250?! Einstein was 160!!!! I feel faint. amillionmiles Spidey eating that billboard is about how my week is going honestly Mira Spidey is such a smart boi! He's going to make a great husband when I marry him.

TotallyNotDeadpool Well I guess this is all we have to live for now that you're out of the MCU

#fanfiction #spiderman fanfiction #spiderman #social butterfly Spidey #social media #jenniboo311 #GQ #Reddit #Twitter #Quora #funny #humor #ao3 fanfic #Marvel #instagram #wikipedia #facebook #interview

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canonicallysoulmates · 5 years

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My thoughts/views/opinions about Clif’s insta post....

Important Disclaimer: The following is just my opinion regarding Clif’s instagram post. I don’t speak in representation of anybody but myself. I don’t speak for my fellow j2 fans, and I don’t speak for my fellow tinhats. This is just my POV regarding this situation.

Warning in advance, I am going to do my best to keep this post cohesive and coherent but my brain is jumping from point to point so if I come off as scatter brained in some parts I apologize.

Before I get into this post, some of you might be wondering why I am dressing this in the first place when Clif’s post didn’t make mention of j2′s sexuality or of tinhats, it is because I am openly a tinhat and I am vocal one at that, and this is not my first rodeo I know even though he didn’t mention tinhats directly and he brought up things that are discussed by both tinhats and non tinhats alike I know, and I’ve already seen it, that we tinhats are gonna get the brunt of it from the het stans.

For those of you that don’t know what this post is about, earlier today (12.2.19) j2′s bodyguard Clif made an instagram post regarding j2 and their families and some theories/speculation that there have been regarding j2 and their families, I’m not going to link to the post, or share the post, or even quote the post - even though I will address contents of it - if you really want to know what the post said you can look it up yourself.

Before I talk about Clif’s post let me address the elephant in the room: Jensen’s comment. Or I should say “Jensen” because I don’t believe it was actually him who left a comment on the post. “Jensen” said that those who theorize about him and Jared’s lives are bullies. Well, he didn’t say exactly that what he actually said was that those who create the “false narratives” that Clif mentioned in his post are bullies.

I call bullshit. On both the statement and on Jensen being who commented.

Speculating/theorizing and pointing out what you see regarding a public figures life in your own accounts where you don’t tag anybody does not make you a bully or a hater. That is an idiotic thing to say, if you go by that then speculating that j2 are totally 100% happy in their hetero marriages makes you a bully and a hater too, or is there an exception to hetero positive things because it sells the narrative that they want 🤔

I personally don’t believe Jensen is the one who posted that comment because to me it doesn’t sound like him, I think it was somebody else on his account.

And I find it very...interesting and fitting that “he” commented on this post when on insta his and D’s bearding has been turned to 1,000x, they have reached Shawn Mendes Camilla Cabello levels of extra, even if I thought he was straight I would still think there were problems in that marriage because of how over the top they are lately; it reminds me a bit of a celeb couple from here in PR, for months they been saying they’re fine, that they’re in love, they’ve been going on trips together for all the world looking like a happy couple and then...about 2weeks ago they announced they were getting divorced.

Back on track, this whole thing is a mess and it’s stupid af, I don’t know what in the hell Clif was thinking when he made that post, I don’t know what he was trying to achieve; I don’t know why he found the need or thought it was a good idea to bring forth things that were being discussed in fandom on the DL and to insert himself into a narrative in which he plays no part, like not to be rude, he can say he’s family all he wants but he’s just a bodyguard and I feel like I should say an occasional one like don’t oversell your importance dude. And even if he was family, the things he brings up in his post are discussions concerning only Jensen, Jared, Genevieve and Danneel.

And I find it frustrating af funny that he’s so up in arms about what fans speculate in their accounts and he says he considers the boys family but he tends to be silent when j2 are being dragged through the mud and receiving actual death threats. I guess protecting the happy family image is more important.

Jared and Jensen are not the only celebrities to have their lives theorized about, they’re not the only ones who have fans that point out jewelry items like wedding bands or potential house moves, this is something every celebrity has gone through, it even happens to youtubers and instagram influencers. So chill tf down.

My best guess as to why this whole mess happened, because this is a mess of a situation, is that there’s something going on behind the scenes and either they don’t want us to focus on it- in which case good job idiots now fans are speculating like crazy- or they do want us to focus on it and they figured adding fuel to the long burning fire was the best way to make us follow the smoke.

When I say long burning fire I mean long burning fire, nothing that Clif brought up in his post is new, they’re all things that have been discussed in fandom by tinhats and non tinhats alike for years.

J2′s living situation, the wedding bands, criticism of the wives, these are all things that have been discussed in this fandom for years and they’re relatively small topics, I imagine that maybe back in the day when j2 first got married these were discussed more often but now a days not a lot of fans, at least that I have seen, talk much about j2′s houses/apartments, or about the wedding bands and when these topics are brought up it’s usually for a day or two tops and I’m being generous like it’s not a massive topic of discussion.

He brings up the lacking wedding ring and the selling of homes, the ring thing was barely discussed most of us were focused on bigger things, and let me tell you that home thing has been talked about so on the DL in this fandom that I have seen people that are active, way more active and in the know than I am in this fandom be confused af as to what he meant - it’s that apparently Jensen and D are gonna sell the house or something - I’ve barely seen people talk about the house thing and the talk I’ve seen has been facts it’s all about the property and if it appears listed and the like and yet he brings it up along with divorce/separation which has even me going 👀 because in the convos I’ve seen about this topic nobody has ever speculated about this meaning a divorce, I’m sure there’s people that have and I just haven’t seen it but still it’s like why bring this barely being talked about thing and do so while mentioning a separation/divorce like 🤦‍♀️ Now everybody knows about it and is going to be talking about because he brought it to attention. what an idiot.

Small thing, I take issue with him saying that for some people their passion is to build dream homes and sell and that we have no clue what hard work that is because I’m sure there are people in this fandom who work in real state or who flip houses for a living and they do those things while also speculating/theorizing about j2.

He talks about how one of the j’s gets criticized for not being home a lot, I will say I have seen these criticism go to both and as I have said in the past I don’t agree with this POV, but it’s a very small niche of fandom that makes comments like that like borderline you have to look for it; and on the wives being criticized/judged (<- his word not mine) for managing their careers and home life at the same time: yeah no, Daneel and Genevieve are not criticized for managing their careers and home life they’re criticized because they like to act as if they do these things without any help. They have nannies, G has people that help her with her blog, D didn’t start the brewery up by herself and she doesn’t work it by herself and one of her most recent acting gig was on spn a role everyone knows she only got cause she’s married to Jensen. They like to pretend they��re wonder woman and super relatable when in reality they’re privileged, and hey there’s nothing wrong with being privileged enough to be able to afford childcare but there is something wrong with pretending you don’t have that advantage and taking credit for work you don’t do ie. acting like you’re maintaining a home and taking care of the kids all by yourself, and then turning around and acting like your life is a struggle.

Unless there’s something going on behind the scenes I can’t think of a reason as to why he would bring this stuff up, if anything doing so is stupid because now fans that might not have known about any of these things will know about it and while there’s plenty of sheep who will clap their hands and say ‘those people are so horrible :(’ there are those who are going to get curious and look these things up and where do you think their search is going to land them? They’re gonna land at the anti blogs, and the hat blogs because we’re the ones that tend to discuss these things.

Honestly, if they actually wanted fans to stop speculating they have failed in an impressive way, they achieved the opposite.

I personally think there is something going on behind the scenes, I don’t know if it’s good or bad but I think something’s going on maybe it’s a divorce or a big project or even something related to spn like a movie but I feel like something is coming our way....

One last thing before I wrap this up, I said this in another post, and I said it on my twitter acc as well but I also wanted to put it here: Clif’s post changes nothing regarding my love and opinion of j2, my status as a tinhat, or the content of my blog. I still love j2 as much as I did before this mess, I’m still a tinhat, and I will continue making tinhat posts both here and on my twitter account.

This is all I have to say about this situation, I think, these are definitely the main points I hope everything I said came across clearly as I said in the beginning of this post my brain is jumping from spot to spot so it probably came across as a little scatter brained and ramble-y.

#j2 tinhat #tinhat things #i guess #mine #anti genevieve #anti daneel #sort of #this is a whole ass mess #if i have anything else to say it'll probably be said on my twitter #everything that he brought up was being quietly discussed the only reason i know abt some of these things is bc of snippets here and there #clif insta mess #clif messes

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romy350-romyakari · 4 years

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Since I'm okey with people calling me out here I will unleash my humble opinion on a matter that makes me roll on my seat because is so funny as it also is so... uhmmm "weird" to have in count.

Take it as the writers huge mistake what I'm going to point out in a bit.

I guess I'm still salty even after 5 years. Is confusing at best and I'm adding this after writing all of this. Is a lot to read so please just know is a huge ramble.

aka me rambling over what I feel on rewatch been no longer that young

Is part of our experience judge that to some degree.

Characterization is important, it defines who we see on a story and is better if there are consistend or if their inconsistent have a good reason to be.

Well I was young once and could miss mistake like the 180° not so justified turn of events on a main character. I realize some years later and can laugh about it because it makes no sense.

I'm going to explain the case of Angel's Friends cartoon and that huge mistake from their characters.

Like I am fond of the series because it was my first fandom. But still I can't unsee this as you can guess.

Let's begin with the nature of something they like to state early on the cartoon show which was really cliché but angels were the goodie two-shoes and devils were the bad guys im general. Simple but not so simple for them to keep in rule it seems.

I like to imagine they respect some of the calm and more expected nature of the angels and the chaotic and up to no good ways of the devils like the Original comics did for both of them but we wouldn't be here on my post if that was the case.

It was quite a mess how the cartoon take the character since the side character could be so plain that you forgot that they were doing something till they were support help to their own side been angels or devils.

But again with the stuff that make me roll off till now and nobody on the show says a thing about.

They freaking mess up with their own statment of Sulfus on the cartoon show and they can't tell me no they didn't. Is hillarious and let me tell you why.

They may say on that thing how "loves make you change" but this one could be taken for a fool and is really lot coming from me.

They present him lot more chaotic and really problematic on just chapter 1, it did give an impression but everthing goes down hill a bit from her and on.

As the plot of first season is the villianess doing hidding matchmaking and poison of love plan that seem to turn into a real love story for this chaotic case of the female lead Raf an angel and the male lead who is Sulfus a devil so she could scape limbo to the terrible consecuenses that bring over a trully huge rule on the series wich is part of a magic code of not interfering with each other party and less uhmm a kiss, you really see lot of stuff go on here and mark my word is not like "oh no this is not safe for the kids" but is not quite recomended for them peraphs.

This doesn't make sence but i think the villianess plan was an excuse to showcase the romantic tension and ovearlod or romantic takes.

I can't watch the series withouh some wather to pass the taste of "i thinks this is too much"

But this mention has a meaning behind since i need to state this and the huge overload on the romance we get because i believe is a guge thing that affecter how they write the characters on the cartoon show .

They really did bad to Sulfus uh? Like most of the show. You wouldn't qish to have to deal with chapter 1 Sulfus as asigned rival, he seem to be a big deal on the devils group because how remacable chaotic he was but that didn't last long.

The villianess plan was a match making one since he and Raf break a rule that is used to her advantage she would lead them to comith a sacrilege which would really shake that magical code that they should not mess with. It causes huge dissasters and mess btw.

There is s small time gap before the love poison the villianess send on a spider that she encomended her only servant with leaning it to find the pair of eternals she was targeting. On that gap we still retained normal characterization for Sulfus but the episode went down hills on characterization pretty quickly.

It was so uncalled for the way they set the situation of the bit from the spider tho... idk if blame the spider at all because actually the romance would no have a foot at all if the writers didn't bend Sulfus as a character like the extend they did.

There is this huge point they state that their romace was not because of the spider bit that later i think is kind of acknowledge but is quite confusing if they wat to justify some fated love.

Anyways from then on we see how literally did soften Sulfus character to the point he been devil makes me wonder why nobody call him out about it like there is this expectation they stated us the normal was been that troublesome chaotic for devils but they seem to just let it pass from then on. I am still laughing because he actually change so much that rewatch episode one you can just laugh because at that point you know he will became a softie later that is actually bad for him as a charcter since there is little to non struggle on why he is behaving that way or if he wants to undertand this changes at all.

There is near to non thinking on him since idk, it should peraphs feel more comflicting with all stated but he just misses the cue and goes for it on ocaccions?? Is quite weird he is so open to forget the only rules the devils respect. The no involve themselven with angels matters pr the angels themselves unless is about work.

Was is the spider? Who knows they smke it confusing after the trial episode and then the movie came and idk if laugh to the villaness of some fortune teller since wow she was lucky on that scape uh?

They literally make him datable material for the female lead and is a sad thing but well, the cartoon show itself could acomplish as the one with most romace scenes/moments of all time for a cartoon show, not well written but it has them. And maybe the one with an exclusive kissing sequence [no it was not just a few seconds for the kissing scene, there was a freaking sequece of it if i recall well and i recall it as something thar they put budge on it for some reasons since they did a 360° turn around on the sequence even] is impressive comoared to other european cartoons that claimed to have romace on the tags and give you a but here and there while this was like a full bag of the bread but questonable if is one you will like lol

You know the writer forgot many stuff when then Sulfus was the one trying to remind Raf the rules but follow behind her because who care love is a fool or so writers say on those chapter after the half of season 1

If you cringe is undestandable, I cannot rewatch in a full go as I used to when I was younger, i could because i let so many stuff pass.

Sometimes I wonder why even follow this plot idea when the Original comics had a great plot a great characters.

The most consistent Sulfus I know so far is Original Comic Sulfus, that is entretating to read and he does not change much from who he is, he may be a may character and this yime kind of falling in love with the Raf there but well, is not quite the deal since is explained this weird odds of the posibility of anglels and devils with training on 99% not be complete perfect and could end up with a crush or so but all is just momentary and will vanish once they reach 100%. Is onsided crush thing since the live interest for Raf is a human on the Original Comics and that, again, is a prohibited thing, the magic code is not applied between angels and devils but between humans and eternals here.

Back to Original comics Sulfus is quite funny how he figure out he is having a crush, btw they all pre-teen kiddos apearance wise except for the master of the school program while the cartoon show present them as teenager lookalike, and really he does struggle and bit on that whole process of realization. It seems Original comics Sulfus give hint of it but it was subtle changes that yeah it was nice details, maybe is even sad how he just decides to be subtle about it and do nothing big since is not something he would bother much aside there is bigger issues for angels and devils, that characters I like of that characterization is that he will still be who they state him to be but subtle changes mark that realization.

And the rest of the cast is just as cool on ther characterization, you see somtimes little on some of the characters but they don't lose thar cool characterization they had from the start and is so welcome from me as a reader.

A shame they cancelled the good comic because of the cartoon show, really a shame. I will be sad about that till the end of my days because iwanted the resolution of all major a smaller struggles were cool to read.

I have no idea how they funded a movie and a second season of the cartoon show and idk how their live action somewhat based on some fact of the cartoon show went.

But to make thing short here the resume:

Cartoon show mess it up big time with characterization and we lost cool orginial comics thanks tho the cartoon show, that would be all.

You fan cring or be sad about it and I will get it.

Yeah I"m still bit salty about that.

#Angel's Friends #AF #cartoon #comic mention #random rambles #I'm still quite salty #chapter 12 of the orginal comics will never be forgotten in my heart because it haunt me to this days nobody told knows a thing about it.#i will forever wonder what give the qriter the confidence to aprove what whent down on the cartoon show #i wonder how did the animators of that 360° turn around feel having to animate that thing #i doubt i will forget about his any time soon #there is the case of Gaby but oh that one hurts. they did so so much wrong Gaby. you deserved better that what cartoom show did #resume is original the teams where 5 angels 5 devils on the comics. on the cartoon show they have 4 on the angels and 4 the devils.#guess eho they take out of the angels group??? Gaby was out the group can come just for a few episodes as an extra character on season 1 #he is nothing like on the original comics and that hurts. also he was used as a plot device 😭🥺#THE AUDACITY I TELL YOU. i am bitter because the also take Ang-lee out of the hroup and he became backgroud extra. he didn't say much on th #orgimal.comics but habe some od the moments fro the groups that show some point like maybe angels and devils can get along sometimes.#little stuff but uhhh... maybe I'm salty to fill the hole on the angels group they created Sweet. that is how they angels were girl group.#Mefisto was the one taken out of the devils gamag and became backgroud extra.#even is Ang-lee and Mefisto didn't add much they were nice to have around on the comics #maybe feel more alive the groups.#i could rant abou this and mention what I love of the roiginal comics but this wil get long #uhmmm #don't kill me please?

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secretgamergirl · 4 years

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Abuse I’ve just had to sit with forever

Right now I can’t look anywhere without seeing people speaking up about abusive monsters in various positions of power and it’s really triggering a lot of PTSD for me about all the times I’ve been in positions like that where nobody has ever listened or tried to help so... I’m just going to rattle off all the ones that come to my head, anonymously, and I don’t know, if anyone who knows me wants to ask me about any of these and/or try to really do something to help, maybe come talk to me about it through whatever private channel we talk in sometimes.

Family stuff. There’s a lot, and there’s no real way to talk about any of it anonymously because I mean being members of my family it’s already narrowed down way too much.

Someone once put me in the temporary care of a woman who savagely beat me because her own children were making too much noise when they should have been asleep. Bad enough that when I went back to school I was almost ripped out of my home by child protective services on the assumption that’s where it happened. Oh and she also force-fed me rotten food with maggots in it. I ended up pretty sick as a result, lost a whole lot of weight, and ended up with a serious eating disorder that’s plagued me since. I did eventually get out of there but I don’t know that I’ve ever really conveyed the full extend of it.

One of that woman’s children had some sort of torture kink, very nearly killed me, did put me in the hospital from injuries, and might have raped me. Hard to say because I was like... 7? Hard to translate those memories now that I have the context and vocabulary. I tried to explain that to anyone who’d listen at the time but, again, I didn’t have the vocabulary and I don’t think it came across that like... ropes and tools were involved, not just fists. Never got into that with therapists, because the first one I had really loved playing gatekeeper with trans stuff and liked the “maybe you just think you’re a girl because of abuse as a child” line of thinking too much already. I think I heard he eventually landed in prison though, so that’s something?

The first job I ever had. Games website. I was too young to be working but nobody ever thought to ask about it, and my family needed the extra income to avoid homelessness besides. The owner of the site... was really into open sexual roleplay in workplace text chats. I was so young and weirdly sheltered that I didn’t even process that that was even a thing, and 90% of it went straight over my head, plus I was in a weird state at the time with the whole trans thing where oh yeah, if anyone’s doing any roleplaying stuff on the internet, I’ll be in the character of me-but-a-girl but everything is pretend here right? So... there was a whole lot of mounting and thrusting being described and it took a few years to sink in that that was not in fact about him pretending to be a knight with me as a horse or something. And there was also a lot of... failing to pay me for years of backbreaking work, outright stealing from me, and I mean, I was up until like 4 AM every night working while still in high school. So, yeah. that was a lot. Never told anybody about any of this. So far as I know he still runs the site and nobody’s ever confronted him about anything.

Used to try to play various RPGs with some people in this extra niche-y game space. Sort of the first place I was ever read as a woman without offering anyone “corrections.” And... there was just this one guy who whenever he was GMing had some weird creative excuse for my character (usually the only woman in the party) to... be raped and/or impregnated just all of the sudden and totally out of left field. Which everyone was OK with somehow. And when he wasn’t GMing he was all over my character of course. Never really spoke up to anyone. I just left one day.

Ended up... in the inner circle of someone very famous. Mostly famous for being a victim of abuse. Which is why I ignored... every single red flag there is that someone is an abusive person and taking advantage of everyone around them. They controlled every aspect of my life for years. Had me do a whole lot of work for them, place myself in real physical and psychological danger, regularly. Directly asked me to severe ties with most people in my life. Install kill-switch sortware on my laptop for their piece of mind that none of our conversations would ever be seen by anyone, while also making me talk only in privately managed chat services where they logged everything and my screen wiped at regular intervals, and insisting I use an untraceable alias in it. All of this I was constantly assured was for my own safety as much as theirs, somehow, and that I was their most valued friend who they would keep safe, start paying a huge salary to soon, as well as help secure me a safe place to live and get properly started on medical transition stuff that I was unable to do in the increasingly unsafe place I was living at the time. I could keep going with this, but again, I don’t want anyone playing guessing games. Eventually, as serial abusers do, this person got sick of me, cast me out, and said presumably unspeakable things about me to everyone in that social circle, because everyone quite promptly cut all ties to me without a word. I once mentioned some small fraction of this publicly in defense of... multiple people attempting suicide as a result of this person’s abuse, and it was made very, very clear to me that this is not someone I will ever be able to safely speak about in public.

Another person who is very famous, with ties to abuse prevention stuff, added me to a blacklist to kill my career prospects and then kinda put a hit out on me on a neo-nazi website, but I’ve written about that incident. Nothing happened as a result of speaking out aside from the violence I was already being subjected to ramping up and more people cutting ties with me. Oh and those who didn’t are still quite friendly with her.

Several women with ties to... dangerous people randomly got it into their heads several years ago that I posed some sort of threat to someone I am told they “feel very protective towards” and... unleashed a hell on me unlike anything I have ever seen. I have spent the past 6 years now dealing with death threats from far right terrorist organizations who in some cases have very sizeable body counts, and those groups don’t scare me anywhere near as much as these people. Anyone else I have seen them paint a target on completely withdrew from the internet their careers and any sort of public life to try and stay off their radar. I have had multiple people privately confide in me that they had been threatened never to speak to me again before proceeding to make good on that. I have individually thrown myself at the mercy of every single one of them, explained that I have absolutely no ill will towards any of them, and had never even heard of this person they’re “protecting” before they started coming after me. Nothing has worked. They’ve never stopped. I’m legitimately afraid someone connected to them is going to murder me some day, and I don’t know what to do. I’ve confided in all of maybe 3 people about this. One might be dead, one is a total hermit, the third briefly tried supporting me, received threats, and promptly retracted everything, replacing it with a fire and brimstone speech about how I am an evil monster who tricked them. I have regular nightmares about this, and collapse into a shivering heap just seeing any of their names mentioned.

I... spent a good deal of time in social contact with a person I have been told I need to be friends with to advance in a career I would like to pursue. While doing so, he sabotaged a project that was fairly important to me, and I saw some him mistreat someone else in ways I find quite disturbing, but that’s her story to tell and not mine. I don’t feel comfortable around him, and have no real choice but to give up on those dreams. Haven’t really discussed this anywhere. The sort of work I can get would definitely vanish completely if I did.

The sort of work I can get also involves working for a variety of companies with people very high up the ranks who have seriously harmed a number of people I consider to be very good friends, in ways that in some cases include sexual abuse, and I... really would prefer not to ever work for anyone employing such people now that I am aware of this.

Yet another famous person, but one who I feel perfectly comfortable naming, Graham Linehan, used to follow me on social media with a level of enthusiasm that could arguably be better referred to as stalking. Then later he joined some extremist anti-trans hate group and rose to the top pretty quickly. And some years after that, it finally sank in that worshiping a trans woman while also leading a group of people bent on killing us all, so he has been very loudly and very publicly rambling about his hatred for me specifically. I don’t really have to speak up about this one because he’s doing plenty of that on his end, but I do have to note that while this famous person terrorizing me hasn’t really earned me any sort of public defense or sympathy, it has encouraged a whole lot of people to invent an alternate timeline of events where I am directly responsible for him being a bigot, leading to me getting dangerous threats from both horrible bigots and people who claim to hate horrible bigots but have suspiciously poor aim.

Hey speaking of celebrities, one of the stars of Firefly used to regularly send me photos of violently distended testicles. One of the stars of Star Trek once posted something encouraging millions of social media followers to attack me and left it up for a weekend. One of the producers of World of WarCraft once threatened to sue me for libel and went on a big PR tour about it, speaking on podcasts and such, and so many fascists pretending to be journalists have dumped so much crap on me...

And not to long ago in something of a wacky mixup, someone ELSE rather famous, who does diversity consulting no less, confused me for someone else and cut loose with a horrific bit of hate and gossip and throwing me under the bus, and misgendering me, saying random harassers baselessly calling me a pedophile were probably onto something. Privately told a handful of people about that, because I thought she was a friend and that was so heartbreaking, but anyone I told is just pretending not to have seen it.

Someone was once offering me help because I was in a dangerous situation, financially. I explained that things had been extra hard since coming out as trans. Suddenly he goes from helpful and concerned to just... violent. Screaming a me, openly trying to chase me out of the space we were both in. I reported this to the proper people. They tried talking, he left. The whole community mourned the loss and wondered who could have driven him off. Still doesn’t feel like a safe place for me.

I don’t really know why I’m bothering with all of this. Nobody is actually going to help. I’d say nobody is actually going to read this, but I’m sure plenty of people who hate me will to see if I’m talking about them and use it as justification to make things worse. Plus some people I’m not talking about I’m sure. I get plenty of that all the time.

Nothing ever helps and you can’t ever win. If you try to keep the abusers appeased by not outing them, the abuse never stops. If you try to speak up, their fans and friends treat it like declarations of war and pile on. If you just try to be there for other people when they’re being abused, you get singled out as a “troublemaker” and added to hit lists and black lists and... nothing works.

I don’t want a lot out of life. I want to know I have enough food, and have a place to live where I’m not at risk of dying from either temperature extreme, a bathroom, enough room for my book shelves, a bed, a couch, a dinner table, and a yoga mat. Maybe a space where my cats can run around a little enclosed semi-outdoor area for the fresh air and sun. I want to be able to deal with my medical problems. I want to see and talk to friends sometimes. If I’m really greedy, I’d like to have all that for a particular friend too who I’m constantly worrying about dying of poverty. And I’d like to be able to work on games. Maybe play them sometimes. Maybe watch things.

And that’s the really messed up part. Because abusive people and people supporting the structures of abuse always say they just want to focus on getting work done, or having fun, and it’s a lie. What’s most important for them is perpetuating abuse. They could just stop, or get rid of the people doing it, and the rest of us could live our lives and everything would be fine. But no instead we have to drop everything and make sure no woman anywhere feels safe enough to even breath.

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justapayneaway · 5 years

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Hi! First of all, I’m a big fan of your account! Thank you for all that you’re doing! I have a question: Do you have a post/ multiple posts proving that the PR relationship with MH is indeed a stunt? (If you don’t have the time/energy to find anything could you tell me who else I could ask?) I am already aware of the bs but I’m trying to show it to others as well!

Hi :) thank you so much for the support!

Listen I don’t think I ever did like a post with all that’s adding up or I don’t think I've ever saw one... So I'm gonna give you a tiny crash course on this mess so maybe you can show others. This will be discussed in 10 long points under the cut:

1. The teenager met all the 1D boys in 2015. At that time meet & greets were a bit selective and mainly for people with money or for people going through charities. So knowing the teenager’s family you can see exactly why she had access *cof daddy has money cof*.

2. Fast forward to 2018: Liam became recently single after the whole sham thing ended publicly. Two weeks later he went to Italy and was invited by D&G to do a performance there for their fashion show. There he met a lot of people and the teenager was included in that gang. After a few weeks of this encounter we got a lot of articles saying they’re together and going on dates. As you can see from that time we had many articles from the usual suspects: (x, x - just a few examples).

3. But a few days later, we got a different story! Liam was seen with another model Cairo and he followed her on IG & started liking her posts. Again we got a wave of articles and even some pics of Liam trying to kiss her in front of our salad! Then out of nowhere in a John Mayer live (mind you like a few weeks later), Liam confirms he is single!

4. Again passing through the Naomi thing and him being single, we got to this last month and a half. So for his birthday, Liam went to Ibiza and oddly we didn’t get any new content besides the things he posted himself. On the day of his birthday, he tweets this:

Fans started to side-eye everything and then on the next day we got the 1st pap walk between Liam and the teenager on a Friday. The pap walk was awkward as fuck, she looked bored and Liam gave his fake smile to her. It was very weird, but of course we had an explanation a few days later.

5. Liam went through the same strategy and started following the teenager on IG and liking her posts. Then on the next Monday (2nd September) we got buzz and promo tour for Stack It Up started! Coincidence?! I think the fuck not. Over the next few days Liam was papped in London alone doing promo and then he went to Manchester. There he was seen at a restaurant, but we got no reports with who (I think his own team was there at the restaurant too). Again, next day we got articles on the tabloids saying that Liam’s parents met the teenager on a private dinner and that Karen liked the kid, but was worried blah blah blah.

6. We got basically a weird radio silence on that week (probably because UK promo was done), but it all came crashing down when they were seen arriving at the airport in Madrid ahead of Liam’s concert. Again nobody cared about her or knew who she was... so his team had to film her at the concert trying to dance to Familiar and even include her on the background of the Lilo pic.

7. After that it was like all hell broke loose! We got the 2nd pap walk where they were all “giggly” and “so in love” (thanks JoJo pics for always warning us of new pics!). She went to NY with him for Stack It Up promo and they’re papped again having a dinner date with Steve Finan too! She was there for basically two days: to get papped and to take that pic Liam’s team decided was the best pic to appear 1st when you’re saying thank you to your team and fans for the release of your new single. All the UK interviews basically mention her or he mentions her and they all say how happy they’re on the pics... Mind you these were the 1st pap walk pics that were cringie as fuck!

8. Then the IG comments appeared and it was the cringiest Wattpad Y/N flick ever! After they reunited “home” we got a sneaky pic of Liam eating alone at a restaurant. What happens the next day? We get the “making out” pics and after date it has been some solid every two/three days where we get some content. She goes wherever Liam goes! First, Liam posts something on his IG story of him going out or something music related. Then we get either something on her IG or on Liam’s. To end it perfectly we get pap pics. We usually get first a Just Jared article with the pics and then it spreads over night to all the tabloids. Ah btw Liam is always a pulling a “do you know my girlfriend” on IG stories by tagging her with the biggest letter ever!

9. Fun fact: HMV concert in Birmingham. So to be expected she goes again because the these two are just so ride or die since they first looked into each others eyes. His parents and his sister Ruth also attend. Most hilarious moment that I caught by accident: some dude was doing a facebook live and saw her leaving the backstage before Liam started to perform. She saw nobody was following her so she went back inside. A minute later she comes out with Liam’s team and Liam’s parents/Ruth. His parents pulled a “I don’t know her” and went to see Liam’s performance leaving her alone. Ruth stood next to her but didn’t talked or looked at her. Sad I know lmao.

10. Which brings me to the Table Manners podcast that came out this week. In that podcast Liam expressed how happy he was and that they were so serious. He talked how they met and used Greg Yuna as an excuse. How she was so cool and didn’t mind to be papped (of course) but that he worried about her image (then tell your team not to make you do so many pap walks). Later in the interview he said that “hey this has been going on for a while”, Jessie’s mom asks him how long have they been dating and he says and I quote “one month and a half”. If it’s already this serious, I don’t even want to imagine how will it be in the next few months! Then he mentioned that she is living in London and that he is going to Texas for thanksgiving with her family... Like already?! You just started going out!?

So in conclusion it’s basically this the timeline of Sham 2.0!

(This got super long and I know I didn’t link some stuff, but it’s late and some of the things you can easily find on the latest articles. Sorry!)

#Liam Payne #sham 2.0 #hope this helps #if not then ignore it #Anonymous

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migleefulmoments · 5 years

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The ccers are just like the gop

Watching the Impeachment testimony today it’s a nightmare for the gop and Trump. Ambassador Sondland has admitted everything we knew was true using the words “Quid Pro Quo” and admitting that everyone in Trump’s administration knew. Watching the gop then try to defend Trump is a disaster or outrageous lies, conspiracy theories, and distraction.

Reading this thread from the cc coven, I’m reminded of how similar their tactics are to the gop’s. This thread is full of lies and conspiracy theories that have been duped and yet these people- like Nunes, Jordan, and Stipanik- clearly believe the lies they share. The two groups have built their knowledge bases on these lies. These faulty foundations don’t hold up to even the smallest of scrutiny. People living in reality can see the faults, but sadly ccers and the gop don’t see reality and live in an imaginary world where they are always right.

ajw720 answered:

It is hard to me to select the one thing that i find the most offensive, there are just so many. They have also named at least 2 drinks based on breast size, Good Rak (I forget the exact name) and R2DD2. you know reducing women to their body parts. And of course the one called C3PHO that is implying that women should be called whores if they decide to exercise their sexual freedom. And we are even touching on the innuendo which maybe isn’t offensive, but is extraordinarily immature. Or the fact that they have naked women gyrating on the bar and simulating sex with teddy bears in a PIANO BAR where on a different night you can sing d/isney tunes! (Abby refuses to understand that the drink names are NOT to belittle women but to take ownership of the words away from those who use them against us. She has been told this but she needs to be angry at Mia so she refuses to even think about it=faulty foundation)

But hey, according to her stans, I am closed minded and they are progressive. (yep! That’s true). You know what it reminds me of? The individuals watching the impeachment trials and daring to say that these upstanding, career public servants, many of whom serve both democrats and republicans, are liars because they refuse to admit the bigot in the WH is a criminal. (Nice try but no, you honey, you are those people. Faulty foundations)

D looked really drained to me last night, and we know he is PBB free in NYC. I have to imagine the way the are smearing his name constantly is weighing heavily on his soul. My heart hurts for him. (In fact, 3 of the 6 people in at least one of the photos has the same neutral face. Other photos, released later that night show a gleefully happy Darren=faulty foundations. Photos at the end.)

ajw720 Can I just add one thing? The “marriage” was forced by D’s team, and this includes his extremely powerful PR agency. (NOT TRUE= faulty foundations) Why are they not reading and reviewing everything posted by that offensive institute prior to its release? (Because Darren controls his own life and his business is not part of what Sunshine Sachs does for Darren). That would be working FOR THEIR CLIENT. Instead, they are allowing that bar to actively harm his character. (Such a stupid argument. Why would Darren continue to pay them if they were actively harming him? Abby this one is so stupid you need to stop=faulty foundations)

I hope that there is a time D can sue them for defamation, I really do, because to me, this is an absolute outrage. (Well we are a decade in, when you believe that could happen, Abby? Ya know ....using your legal knowledge?)

This flannel shirt theme stunt has made my blood boil more than most. (This just pisses me off. My daughter read this post, called herself a dyke and said.“I just wish I could go.” She was wearing a flannel shirt)

notes-from-nowhere My question is: why M has been forced to drop “s/unsetstrippa” (and f/etus but, let’s leave one of the sock account behind for a moment)? (Fetus IS NOT MIA. OMG THIS IS SO STUPID=Faulty Foundations) That was not her decision.(WTF? Of course, it is=faulty foundations) So, why? I’ll tell you why: given that the plan was to make her relevant for everybody besides for her nanny, it was embarrassing for D (and his team) to have her tagged by colleagues and various celebrities with that childish nickname. Do not even try to tell me this is not the reason (Faulty Foundations).

So why isn’t the same level of “courtesy” reserved for your establishment? Quite frankly “s/unsetstrippa” was far less offensive than what happens constantly in&out of that place. When will we see day D will be treated with the respect that a man in his position should have by default? And above all, when his team will accept that they are no longer managing a teenage dream? Controversy as a way to make someone famous it doesn’t work as a shortcut if there is nothing behind that people might like. (I honestly don’t understand this sentence so I have no good debunk...Darren was never marketed as “teenage dream” and he certainly currently isn’t= Faulty Foundations)

It’s time to remove D from the TS/G narrative once and for all. M dropped this place a long time ago and it has no meaning for D’s career, let alone finantial reasons since he is just the piano man and not the owner. (Well “finantial” reasons aside, Darren and Mia own the bar. They don’t work there. -=Faulty Foundations).

ajw720

Sadly she dropped that for another made up name that they have used to mock D. It is unfathomable the way D is being treated.

And honestly, I don’t know why more people aren’t screaming about this bar and how people don’t see or ignore how offensive it is. (Because only someone who refuses to live in reality actually sees the bar as problematic. It’s a queer-safe space that celebrates the LGBTQ community in ways that MAKE SENSE TO THE LGBTQ Community. Just because Abby doesn’t understand it doesn’t make it wrong= Faulty Foundations). D does his best to distance himself, but it is his name front and certain in every article about the place and he is the one on TV naming it repeatedly (I love this nonsense..so is he distancing himself or is he the name that is connected often?)

Where are the people protecting the actual marketable commodity’s interest? The person with talent that is at the top of his game? I have never seen anything like this. (Its all made up in your head=Faulty Foundations)

notes-from-nowhere You know one of the reason his team keeps ignoring things like this bar is because people bring gifts to M. (OMG...this is just a stupid thing to say) Because even if these people know everything about t his place, how rude the staff is, how undrinkable and overpriced the drinks are, how annoying and out of place “certain activities” inside of it are, they swallow their beliefs and words to go there and have a picture with D to post on their social media (This is all conspiracy theory and absolutely Faulty Foundations. This is exactly like Nunes repeating all the conspiracy theories tied to Trump this morning. I’ve looked at these and most -if not all- of these are not real.)

As long as there will be people that put their interests ahead of D’s wellbeing and public image, his team will keep to ignore how hurtful behaviors and bar are. They will buy an article on a random magazine that will praise the bar, D will be forced to publicly say the its name and so on. (Faulty Foundations)

D’s team is not protecting an investment, they are making money out of people. And people is allowing them to do so.

leka-1998 Yesterday someone asked me why I keep being angry at the things they do or don’t do, at what’s going on at that bar that screams M. Why I even had to point out that flannel theme. Because I shouldn’t be surprised at all. And I’m really not, but the way they are destroying D’s character really gets me. He’s currently getting more attention due to M/idway and AB, two great projects. Both are/will be seen by a new audience. I’m sure HW will be big too. A competent and well-meaning team would care how D looks, what he’s associated with. They don’t. And no one can tell me that’s not wrong. (The idea that Darren can’t take control of his own life is pretty gross. Nobody lives this life they imagine- it’s outrageous. Faulty Foundations)

ajw720 Obviously everything annoys me about the circus that surrounds him. But I can mostly laugh about the Halloween BS or and the excessive praise she receives as none of that ultimately affects D’s character and his reputation. But this bar, it is so harmful and it potentially could be so damaging. Imagine a theater goer looking up D after AB and finding their IG full of discriminatory themes/drinks and extremely immature innuendo. And D’s name is what that bar is associate with, not his “bride” as she doesn’t do anything, but D who is the one promoting it the media regularly. He has not promoted anything in his life more than the bar over the past 2 years. Not even his fake nuptials. (Yes, Imagine what it looks like that Darren’s bar is a queer safe space. OMG How horrific!!!!!!! How doe he live with himself? The ONLY People who are upset that TSG has LGBTQ programming most nights but Disney on other nights are those who are homophobic!!!!!!!!!!!)

And I truly do not understand how anyone dismisses this stuff or says we are the ones who are wrong. Some of the marketing ploys are blatantly and clearly offensive. And yet it continues and no one seems to care that D is the only one that could potentially be hurt by this as it is his career that they are jeopardizing. And M is praised as a role model for disparaging women and members of the LGBT+ community. (YOU are literally claiming that the gay women who runs Dyke Night doesn’t know anything about-or respect - her own community... but YOU do. SHUT THE FUCK UP ABBY)

It is revolting (yes you are) and it is really important that we document it and discuss it and continue to highlight it and I don’t care how much hate i get for doing so, people need to realize what they are doing. (The “hate” should be a HUGE WARNING SIGN Abby. But you see EVERYTHING as proof you are right and it doesn’t matter how hard it is to get to “I’m right”, how much you have to twist the truth or makeup stories about Darren's lack of personal agency, it’s all confirmation bias for you. YOU ARE WRONG and these comments are homophobic). And maybe it won’t be today, but at some point he will get free from his tormentors who are hell bent on destroying him and we will have the public record of everything they did to actively harm him. Faulty Foundations).

klaineownsmysoul This is precisely the kind of place that a real pr/management team would work overtime to keep their client away from instead of pushing it relentlessly as a point of pride. There’s nothing remotely redeeming about it and like that farce of a wedding, nothing that reflects D’s personality. It’s beyond tacky and juvenile and straight out of the wheelhouse of a 20 year old frat boy. You expect me to believe that the same person who wrote beautiful songs like “Not Alone” or “TDTDIO” also decided to name a drink period sex? (Yes!!!!!! because people are complex animals. But also because that same person wrote “Me and MY Dick” =Faulty Foundations). the words of Trevor Noah, get the fuck out of here. But I’d expect nothing less from his team at this point: a group of people who think class and notoriety are equal. I live for the day when he gets a team to actually support him instead of trying to further themselves through him. (His team by law has to support him but also WHY THE FUCK WOULD HE STICK WIT HTHEM If they weren’t helping him? He’s not a moron=Faulty Foundations) No one goes to events hoping to see D’s manager on the drums. There are actual musicians out there who are more than qualified. (And yet Darren chose Ricky to play drums for him=Faulty Foundations). Go do your actual job for a change.

#cc #ccer #cc fandom #crisscolfer #darren criss #tsg #mia swier #mia criss #debunking cc lies #homophobia #Responding to Dyke Night

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slowlyeverchanging · 5 years

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FMLS90 week one catchup

I was sick earlier this week, so I’m finally getting around to doing any FMLS90 post since last Sunday

10/7 - Tell us about your expierence with goal setting. What works best for you? Have you used the SMART goal setting process or any other method?

I had never heard about SMART before, which is probably logical since I’m not from the US. In the past I’ve set goals and not always hit them because things keep coming up. Most of what really works for me is setting a date I must absolutely be able to do the thing, which translates mostly to signing up for a specific race and using that pressure to get me there.

10/8 - If you are comfortable with it, share some of your goals with the team.

Getting to the crossfit box at least twice a week Not having more than one snackcident a week (I can snack, just not go wild on it) Running at least twice a week Drinking enough water/tea

So far the snackcident one is the hardest one to stick to. Last weekend I visited friends and family on the other side of the country and had a lot of cake, and then I got sick which led me to eat a lot of junk food because my digestive system prefers that (I have IBS so especially when it’s flaring up fiber is a thing I try to avoid, instead having small amounts of junk food which tend to have high calories in small pieces and just about zero fiber).

10/9 - If you have more than one goal, which is the most important to you and why? If you chose to stay with one goal, tell us why you are focused on that specific goal.

The most important one for me is going to crossfit, not in the least because I’m paying a small fortune for it, and also because it makes me sweat like nothing else and because lifting weights makes me feel strong and I can see steady progress with it. 3 weeks ago I couldn’t lift 15kg overhead unless I did a split jerk, now I did 50 (10x5) reps of 15kg shoulder to overhead with only a minor push from my legs.

10/10 - Share something that motivates you. It can be a person, a movie, a song, a quote - anything that speaks to you. Tell us about it and why it is important to you.

“They told me I couldn’t, so I did” - no clue who said it It’s important to me because since I was young nobody believed I could do anything physical. I was terrible at PE even as a kid, so bad they made me do remedial PE after school when I was 8 (the teachers were volunteers and awesome, I did never learn some things like a handstand, but I do know how to make a flying rug out of some rings and bars and a mat). Then high school came, along with tentative diagnoses of my body being a disaster. Which eventually led to my high school declaring me too sick to participate in PE (which is normally a mandatory class). Doctors told me I shouldn’t run, that I should be careful, that I shouldn’t lift weights, that I shouldn’t do stuff like go skiing, or do yoga, or basically do anything but very low impact exercise like swimming (but only certain strokes), or walking (but only on flat roads with sturdy shoes protecting my ankles). Luckily my physio thought that was bullshit and sent me out into the world with an attitude of “find out what you can and can’t do, and when you mess up your body I’ll fix you back up”.

Nobody has any clue what people with ehlers danlos syndrome should be doing. Everything is contradictory, I shouldn’t exercise, but I need to have a lot of muscle to keep my joints stable at the same time. So I decided to say fuck it and started running, and now am starting to lift weights and maybe in a year or so finally for the first time in my life learn how to do a handstand.

I’m committed to showing to people who just got diagnosed or who have been scared to try new things, that with modification a lot of things are possible to do if you just listen to your body and get good coaches and medical professionals in your corner.

Also I’m just a very stubborn person, if you tell me I can’t do something I’m immediately a thousand times more committed to it than before. Even when it isn’t about physical things. I’m dyslexic and they said I probably couldn’t learn a second language properly. Now I’m bilingual and working on adding two more languages to it. They said I had no insight for maths at all, they were right, but I did take a college class in maths and passed it (just barely but still). My PR deadlift is 30kg, but tell me I can’t pick something up irl and I’ll happily lift a 100kg bag just to prove that I can.

#fmls90 #fmls90 week one

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starberry-cupcake · 5 years

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Overall thoughts on Les Mis BBC

I decided, after all those summaries I made, to write what I hope can be a more coherent opinion on what I thought of the adaptation as a whole. I wanted to make sure to state that my critical reactions weren’t for entertainment purposes only or exaggerated for the fun of it but based on real concerns I’ll expand in this post. This is like the “serious companion”, if you will.

I don’t know if anyone cares about it at this point, but I feel that even though my summaries helped me go through the immediate frustrations in a (mostly) lighthearted way, it’s the distance from having watched it all what gave me a little bit more clarity to order my thoughts.

I’ve established my opinion isn’t worth a damn, I’m not smart or knowledgeable enough for this fandom and, needless to say, these are all my personal opinions, take them with a grain of salt or a bathtub of it. I’m a worthless nobody and my words have no value, but the internet is still (sort of) free, so here I go.

Introduction: the initial news, Andrew Davies & the PR mess

BBC announced the adaptations of 2 media phenomenons which started as books that I love so much I’m considering tattoos of both. And, for both of them, my main concerns were on the person adapting the script.

On the one hand, there’s His Dark Materials, a book series that made me the person I am today, pretty much. One of the directors is none other than Tom Hooper (what are the odds) and the script adaptation was in the hands of Jack Thorne. Cursed Child Jack Thorne. Yeah, not thrilled about that.

Surprisingly enough, His Dark Materials was given a projection of 3 possible seasons, rather than just one, the 3rd hasn’t been yet confirmed but the fact that the script was made thinking on one season per major book on the series, and that each season has 8 episodes planned, at least gives me a bit of hope, even if the person adapting it isn’t in my favorites list.

Les Mis, on the other hand, went to the hands of Andrew Davies, another person I don’t trust.

I’m one of those folk who was never too fond of the ‘95 version of Pride and Prejudice, mainly because of how Darcy was made into a sort of sex symbol, where his flaws were seen as “attractive marks of broody character” rather than vulnerability and with gratuitous sexualizing fanservice. I know a lot of people love it for that and that’s cool, you do you, but it’s not for me.

Then, when he adapted War and Peace, he talked about adding more sex to it and had the Kuragin siblings shown explicitly sleeping together from the get-go in episode 1 and that’s when I stopped watching (there were other things I didn’t like but that one was my limit).

To make matters worse, it made me weary that Les Mis was getting an overall amount of only 6 episodes whereas HDM was getting a potential 24-ish. That was an odd choice.

So, as you can guess, I knew coming in that Davies writing the script, a script with a limited time-frame for the story, was a huge risk.

But, on the other hand, as the cast was announced, I got excited. Especially for people like Archie Madekwe, Turlough Convery, Erin Kellyman and some famous actors like David Oyelowo. Their filming logs on social media, how nice they all were and how much fun they had filming made me happy. I felt that maybe these great folks could turn around whatever the scrip had to disappoint me.

But then came all the PR stuff.

The more I read Davies & co. talking about the show, the less hope I had for it. Talking very badly about the musical and the 2012 movie, calling female characters “not complicated”, insulting Cosette, saying that Javert’s lack of explicit heterosexual sex in the brick was reason enough to push a homosexual narrative centered on an unhealthy behavior, patting themselves on the back for having a diverse cast as if no other adaptation of Les Mis had ever done it before...even their talks about Fantine’s make up made me weary. And, let’s not forget their ridiculous insistence on not having songs.

By the time the show premiered, my hopes had dwindled. The excitement I had upon knowing there would be another Les Mis adaptation so soon, a BBC one at that, and with a cast I had hopes for, was blurred by all the nonsense of PR and I was more afraid than hopeful.

In the end, after having watched it completely, and as you can see for my summaries, I was heavily disappointed. I’ll try to list some of my biggest concerns, in no particular order.

I can’t be super extensive about it, because there are a lot of points to go over, but there are a lot of amazing opinion pieces out there about specific issues, so you don’t need me for that.

Anyway, let’s delve into some of my biggest problems with BBC Les Mis.

Problem #1: The portrayal of femininity

Solely by the fact that Davies stated that women on Les Mis “are not terribly complicated” you know that things are not going to go all too well on that front.

I’m going to pick 3 characters to showcase how badly women were portrayed in this: Fantine, Cosette and Éponine. I’ll leave other characters for another section.

1. Fantine

I’ve talked about Fantine before, upon receiving some questions on my summaries, but I’ll try to explain it all in a more understandable way.

The lens in which Fantine was seen was sexist from the get-go. The way in which the story was framed made the audience complicit in the choices she was making, choices that were negatively regarded by the narrative perspective alone. Her “fall to disgrace” was framed as her own decisions being incorrect, silly mistakes that were easily avoidable, and never regarded as the result of living in a society that was unable to contain her and see her as a valid human being. But we’ll get to that when we talk about the politics (or lack thereof) on this show.

Like I said in my response before, the way in which Fantine is portrayed, even in the musical itself, varies greatly performance to performance. Patti LuPone performing I Dreamed a Dream after Fantine gets dismissed isn’t like Anne Hathaway performing it after she has become a prostitute and neither carry the same implications as Allison Blackwell in the Liesl Tommy’s Dallas modern production, influenced by her experience in apartheid South Africa.

Still, the key element to developing Fantine’s portrayal, when it comes to sexism and the showcasing of her environment, has two layers: the actual oppression showcased in the source material and the contemporary interpretation or lens in which an adaptation will view it.

In this version, Fantine’s character was toned down in her attitude. She was less reactive than in the brick, a lot more passive, a lot more of a tragic figure, which paired up with the fact that this adaptation covered her entire “fall to ruin”, from meeting Tholomyès onward, made her a victim of everything that happened to her.

A victim of her own bad decisions, though, not of a social context that was failing her.

But the worst part is in how the focus of the show is placed. You can have Fantine being a summarized version of herself, with less spunk, and still showcase through her that the circumstances she was in were permeated by an escalating force of social disadvantage and oppression.

This adaptation made, like I said, the audience complicit in Fantine’s decisions as if she was a princess in a movie, unaware of the threats she was getting herself into by her own naive foolishness.

Tholomyès is blatantly shady, clearly dishonest, not at all charming or in any way trustworthy and Fantine gets a “voice of reason” on a friend who tells her various times that he will eventually leave. There are a lot of red flags, blatant for the audience, that Fantine chooses to dismiss. The show focuses less on why Fantine trusted Tholomyès and more on her making a clear bad choice we all knew was doomed from the start.

This becomes a problem once again when she chooses to leave Cosette with the Thénardiers. They are very clearly shady, very blatantly aggressive and ready to take advantage of her, visibly manhandling Cosette in front of her and asking for more money on the spot, and Fantine again naively ignores all of this.

They do it again when she enters employment in Montreuil. She talks to Valjean himself in this version, and is asked repeatedly and with kindness if she has a family. The scene makes it seem as if she could have easily told the truth, especially because we were previously given a scene in which Fantine hears a speech talking about how Valjean is the Best Person Ever and could potentially help her. Still, she chooses to repeatedly lie and the show makes it seem less for necessity and more for a sense of pride of some sort.

(Also, as a foreshadowing of creepy Valjean to come, there are some insinuations from her co-workers that she could seduce Valjean, which is confusingly placed and awkwardly added where it is.)

Then, after she’s dismissed, there’s a man in a post office who asks her, after receiving letters from the Thénardiers (to which she reacts a lot more passively than in the brick), why she doesn’t bring Cosette to live with her, in a condescending tone, as if he was stating the obvious. Fantine responds again as if she was doing it out of pride. The same man is the one to suggest her to start selling her body and then tell her she should have done it before selling her hair and teeth because “nobody would pay for her after that”.

Every turn we’re met with ways in which Fantine’s decisions are seen as foolish in the eyes of the viewer. It’s like Blue’s Clues or Dora the Explorer when they ask stuff to the audience for the kids to say they shouldn’t do something. It’s patronizing as fuck, is what it is. And, yes, sexist.

These narrative choices are sexist because they erase most of the social and political situation which made Fantine vulnerable in the first place, to push the tragic drama as if she was a victim of being “too naive”. It’s sexist because it makes the audience know from the get go that what Fantine is doing is a “bad choice”, easily avoidable mistakes that whoever writes is smart enough to sense are bad but poor naive Fantine can’t understand.

It isn’t just that she’s called a whore a lot of times, that she’s smashed against walls and the ground hard enough that Lily Collins was actually hurt, that she’s shown explicitly being used by a patron on the street. It’s that all of it is done with the added layer of her having “chosen wrong”. That everything is framed as the consequences of actions that the narrative voice, as well as the audience, are smart enough to know are wrong, but poor little Fantine can’t handle.

Like many things in this adaptation we’ll see later, Fantine’s journey is framed more like the tragic end of a woman who didn’t know how to choose right and was punished for said choices rather than the result of an unfair society which didn’t allow women any freedom to choose and didn’t see them as worthy human beings.

2. Cosette

When Andrew Davies called Cosette a “pretty nauseating character” in need of change, I knew I was up against one of those people.

Cosette is probably one of the most underestimated female characters in literature, and adaptations tend to do her dirty very often. I’m not even fond of her interpretation in the musical all that much, which goes in tow with the interpretation of Éponine. I’ve seen my fair share of men on youtube claiming Gavroche should be the face of Les Mis rather than Cosette, I’ve received my fair amount of messages claiming she’s The Worst, I’ve seen it all.

This adaptation does with Cosette something that, out of context, I would have thought impossible. They manage to somehow attempt to make her more “active” (they would call it “strong” but I have problems with that denomination) while making her even more of a helpless victim. It’s a pretty impressive oxymoron.

Let’s begin with little Cosette.

This adaptation does something very weird in that it only showcases Cosette’s storyline as a child when it serves other characters, but then intends to build upon the abuse by mentioning it or making it clear that adult Cosette remembers it well.

So we see Cosette when she’s important to Fantine’s storyline, the Thénardiers’s storyline or Valjean’s storyline, but not much about her on her own, aside from one time she’s looking at dolls and another time when she’s being beaten up by Madame Thénardier, which could be also a moment for the Thénardiers and not solely for Cosette’s narrative.

What I mean with this is that the view on her is reduced to a side character rather than a main one and, with that, her perspective on her own abuse isn’t taken into account. You don’t know how Cosette feels about things, you don’t see her perspective on it, you only see what others do to her but never get to see her side of it. For all the musical erases of her narrative, at least they give her Castle on a Cloud.

It’s with little Cosette where we start to see this weird sense of sexually charged perception towards her relationship with Valjean.

For some inexplicable and highly alarming reason, it’s implied by various witnesses in different occasions that Valjean’s intentions with Cosette may be inappropriate, and I would have let it slide as just people thinking The Worst out of living in a social context in which The Worst is most often the truth, hadn’t that perception carried throughout the series and mixed with Valjean’s erratic and possessive characterization.

When Cosette grows up, she gains a bit more focus, but she also starts to be charged a lot more sexually.

Both Cosette and Éponine are sexualized and objectivized in this adaptation. This will be addressed later, but most often than not this sexualization acts as an accessory to a narrative about masculinity.

Cosette’s virtue, beauty and body are talked about and even exposed in various moments. They tell her she can’t be a nun because that would be “a waste of her beauty”. In that dreadful scene in the dress shop I talked about in summary 4, the shop assistant again implies that Cosette is Valjean’s lover and lets him see her in undergarments through the curtain, with clear intentions. Valjean’s erratic persona is intent on separating her from Marius, explicitly telling her he’s worried that she will be taken advantage of by men, bringing up Fantine’s history to her with that in mind, while putting her in danger and in the company of the Thénardiers again, in more than one occasion.

Adult Cosette has visible signs of the trauma she suffered, which is an interesting direction to go. I haven’t seen an adaptation taking such a big route on her remembering her past abuse, and is a change that worked in performance, Ellie did some great visible responses like covering herself when Valjean wakes her up or going fight or flight every time she sees Thénardier. She is visibly upset when Marius gives him money and looks both angry yet still hesitant when she sees the man for the last time.

But all that kind of loses its importance when the men around her not only don’t give a shit but also do their worst.

Valjean manhandles her, harms her even, pushes her to the limits of her emotional state by taking her to see the prisoners intentionally after she mentioned prison, acting more possessive than caring and more erratically violent than conflicted and concerned.

Marius has a somewhat wet dream about her and then again dreams with her in confusing ways when he’s out of the barricade, with his grandfather talking about her as if she’s a piece of meat even after he meets her and she’s right in front of him.

They tried to make Cosette more aggressive, I think, more reactive, which in some moments worked. But when the lens in which she’s viewed is objectivizing, when she’s being commented on, offered and treated as an object, then it isn’t enough. It makes it worse, actually.

I’m sorry for Ellie, though, she did good.

3. Éponine

Much like Cosette, Éponine’s childhood was all but a few cameos. It’s very often that adaptations try to “tone down” Éponine in order to pull a narrative of her as an underdog in a love triangle, the “friendzoned” girl who tragically dies. The musical does that, for example.

Some of Éponine’s most controversial actions in the brick tend to be most often deleted or changed, except for adaptations in which she’s an “enemy” to Cosette’s narrative of a classic heroine.

It isn’t easy to find adaptations that are able to make Éponine showcase the complexity of her canon character not as a problem but as what makes her character so good and important in the overall story. Hey, even fandom sometimes tends to romanticize Éponine as if she had to be “redeemed” in order to be seen as a worthy character (but that happens a lot with female characters in general).

Éponine doesn’t exist for Marius’s narrative, as the other girl in a love triangle, or for Cosette’s narrative, as an enemy, she’s her own character with her own reason for existing and complex human dynamics that are extremely permeated by the social circumstances she’s immersed in and represents.

I’d say this adaptation is on the group that uses her for Marius’s storyline.

Added to that, it’s one of the worst I’ve seen on that case, because in this one, Marius is complicit of Éponine’s intentions, which are sexualized to a degree I don’t feel comfortable with.

We’ll talk a bit more about the Marius side of things later, but for Éponine, it meant she was reduced to a character that exists to sexually awaken Marius rather than a tragic figure on her own or even a piece of a love triangle. So, basically, this is the worst I’ve seen in a while.

This is clearly seen in that interview when Davies explained why he added that “wet dream” scene, saying:

“One of the best things Hugo does is to have Eponine tease Marius with her sexiness because he is a bit of a prig. So I have introduced a scene where Marius, even though he is in love with Cosette, has a wet dream about Eponine and feels rather guilty about it. I think it fits into the psychology of the book.” Source

Let’s leave out the part where he considers that to be “one of the best things Hugo does” because I cannot deal with that right now. Let’s focus on the other bit.

Like this quote suggests and I said before, Éponine was rather reduced to a tool for Marius’s sexual awakening. In this version, it isn’t only the “wet dream” which precedes more crucial interactions between Marius and Éponine, there’s also a scene where she strips for him through the hole in the wall and another where Courfeyrac is commenting on her and Azelma as Marius moves into the building for the first time.

By the time Marius gives her his money and any sort of bond can occur, it’s evidently clear in this version that Éponine has been teasing Marius and he is fully aware of it. He looks at her through the peep hole licking his lips and then has that disturbing dream where she’s kind of forcing him onto her in a very questionable way.

So, this Marius is by no means unaware of the fact that Éponine was attracted to him in some capacity and has played along her seduction, which makes his dismissal of her and his request for her to find Cosette a lot like he is using her for his own gain and replacing her for another girl.

Éponine’s attitude, much like Cosette’s, tries to be more active at times. She’s confrontational to her parents, seems protective of Azelma and is pleased to see her mother stuck in jail.

However, much like with Cosette, any kind of agency is compromised for having her narrative be serving a male character’s development rather than her own. Her involvement in the barricade is also somewhat modified but, by that time, her journey has already been substantially affected.

Much like Ellie, Erin was a very good Éponine when she was allowed to perform at her best and I wish she had been involved in an adaptation that was able to portray Éponine with more justice.

I’ll talk a bit more about women on the show in general in problem #3 but, for now, let’s move on.

Problem #2: The portrayal of masculinity

1. Javert

I am not the best person to write an essay on Javert, there are a lot of people more capable than me for that, and I may be called out for this and mess everything up, but I can’t write overall opinions without mentioning my issues with his characterization, at least summarized.

Javert is a complicated character. He is, as much as everyone else, affected by the circumstances and a man who goes through a huge emotional impact and sees his values questioned and compromised. His and Valjean’s journeys have a lot in common, in different ways and with different outcomes.

Sadly, Javert tends to be seen as a villain in a lot of adaptations. It’s a way to simplify the plot in the way movies tend to do: something is defined by what the other isn’t, if Valjean is the protagonist, then Javert must be his antagonist. I was worried that this version was going to fall into that trap, because of time restraint and Davies’s tendencies of simplifying complex characters.

Javert’s characterization was erratic, much like Valjean’s. His attitude was blurred by fits of rage and moments of confusing violence, followed by charged pauses in strange cadences which tended to fluctuate. I don’t think his attitude was as all-over-the-place as Valjean’s, but it was certainly not as well defined as other Javerts I’ve seen through the years.

This Javert, however, had a choice made for him that separates him from other versions:

Over tea in central London, Davies tells me that he was surprised to discover that, in Hugo’s 1862 novel, neither character [Javert or Valjean] mentions any sort of sexual experience, leaving the 82-year-old screenwriter wondering, at least in the case of Javert, whether it was indicative of a latent homosexuality. Source

There is a lot to unpack there.

First, there’s this idea of masculinity in which the lack of explicit heterosexual intercourse in canon is directly representative of homosexuality. I’m not gonna delve a lot in the brick but there are a good bunch of characters you can easily read as gay. Hell, there’s that whole thing going on with comparing Enjolras and Grantaire to greek couples. And if you want to write Javert as gay, go ahead, there’s a lot of fanfiction out there who is with you on that and I’m here for all interpretations, no problem at all.

But if you’re going to take that route, you need to be careful with your optics.

This Javert is, at the end of the day, in this adaptation, a gay man of color. He is also explicitly obsessed with Valjean in a way that exceeds his sense of justice. He looks at him undress in prison, is all over his personal space while he’s in chains and later interrogates him believing Marius is his lover, clearly attempting Valjean to confess to him if he was. He receives a lot of comments from an officer who touches him and looks at him strangely in the last episode, prompting an immediate rejection from him.

Everything points to Javert’s homosexuality being in the plot only as a further motivator for his need to capture Valjean, which makes for both a problematic portrayal of predatory homosexuality and a subsequent narrative of police abuse, both very problematic aspects to portray through a gay man of color. The way he acts and the way in which people act around him make it seem like his obsession with capturing him is fueled by the fact that Valjean represents his closeted feelings and that is all kinds of messed up.

He is also clearly not as involved in other aspects of the law as he is in capturing Valjean, since Thénardier ends up being a secondary worry to him, even explicitly knowing he has been mistreating and abusing a child, and he also explicitly doesn’t care about his achievements or the ones of his other officers as long as Valjean is on the loose. He lets Thénardier escape prison on his watch and doesn’t take care of it himself, prioritizing Valjean.

It isn’t about what happens in canon or not but in how all of this, in this version, is framed under this idea that Javert is also gay and has an obsession with Valjean that seems predatory in part, rather than fueled by his beliefs. And that is a dangerous optic to write a gay character under. Especially a police officer who is also a man of color.

I’m not the one to talk about that, it’s not my experience to tell and I’m not going to speak over those whose experience this is, but as a content creator, I’d question if my need to diversify is stepping over the lines of problematic aspects that may ill represent the identities I’m trying to integrate. Just saying.

David’s performance hits some very good moments, especially when Javert starts contemplating suicide. That is a very important scene in every adaptation and a very amazing chapter in canon and David does well in performing the turmoil in Javert’s decision. They also add, as a voice in off, the notes he left to improve the service, which is a great touch.

But, much like the other characters I mentioned, his performance is blurred by these writing choices in which Javert has been added this sort of predatory sense in which Valjean in jail symbolizes also keeping his identity hidden away. Davies would probably say his “desires” because that’s the kind of guy he is.

I hope my opinion isn’t overstepping anyone’s voice and I’ll leave the further of this discussion to someone more appropriate, but I felt it was an important matter to include and something we all, as media consumers, must pay attention to.

2. Marius

I had higher hopes for this boy, I really did.

The good thing this adaptation does for Marius is give him a bit more room than others do. They touch more on his relationship with his father and his grandfather, they bring up the Thénardier connection to his dad, they introduce Mabeuf, and they bring him on as a kid in the beginning, which even though questionable in comparison to him having more development as a child than Cosette and Éponine, at least helped to introduce him as another key character of the whole story.

I had hopes that this earlier introduction, albeit unfairly unbalanced with Cosette’s and Éponine’s, would allow for his character to develop more strongly, especially since politics were very present in his conversations with his grandfather and the ideals of his dad. I thought that by introducing politics through Marius that would allow his connection to Les Amis de l’ABC be more profound when the moment for revolution came.

Yeah, no, that didn’t happen.

Les Mis is a book where people are the heart and soul of it. With that in mind, characters aren’t like each other, they aren’t repetitions of the other’s attitude, they are diverse reflections of the complexity of humanity. The portrayal of masculinity in characters like Javert, Valjean, Gavroche or each individual member of Les Amis aren’t the same between each other, and neither are the same as Marius’s.

Marius represents a very wide emotional spectrum. He’s sensitive and vulnerable, passionate and driven, but at the same time can take action into his own hands when he has to and fight, even at the cost of his own life. There are layers in Marius. Like a Rogel cake.

I don’t want to generalize but a problem I have often with older male writers is that they see emotional complexity as weakness, especially when it comes to the portrayal of masculinity. There’s this idea in which something that is undefined or conflicting isn’t “strong” enough and therefore requires forcing.

Remember that quote I brought up for Éponine’s characterization? we’re going back to that. To Davies calling Marius “a prig” in need of being seduced.

Like I said, this version made Marius complicit in Éponine’s advances and aware of her sexually charged intentions, and this was made in an attempt to “upgrade” Marius’s masculinity and make him “less of a prig”. Because in order to be a Man, Marius needs to objectivize women. Apparently.

Like I mentioned, the gesture of Marius giving Éponine the little money he had ended up being a lot less effective by the fact that he had already fantasized about her more than once, and with her knowing that. He is taken to a brothel by Courfeyrac and Grantaire in which women pretty much throw themselves at him while he looks for Cosette. The “wet dream” he has is a very eerie combination of idealization and assault, in which Éponine, taking Cosette’s place, forces him onto her (much like Davies is forcing this onto Marius).

It isn’t about sex or eroticism being introduced to Marius’s storyline, is that they appear forced and almost violently thrust upon him in order to validate him in this idea of masculinity the adaptation seems to have, which seems to be very narrow.

And, with that in mind, we’ll move on to the last bit of this section.

3. Valjean

I am unable to write a piece about how many layers of wrong this Valjean embodied.

There are a lot of good tumblr scholars and Les Mis experts talking about it already, they can explain better than I ever could, but we need to, at least, try to glimpse at the mess this was, because this is a post on problems and this was a major one.

There are a lot of interpretations of Valjean, some of which are astronomically awful. He’s a character that can be easily fucked up, maybe because he also represents a very complex range of emotions, a very wide spectrum of masculinity, and is inserted in a wide variety of social contexts and spheres during his lifetime, which permeate his way of living as well as his agency to do things.

Any adaptation of Les Mis from the get go starts with the challenge of representing all of this in a limited time frame and with a limited perspective. It’s very difficult to translate not only all of this complexity but also all the thoughts the narrator can rely, all the feelings and conflicts and internal turmoil that we can get from the book because it’s written.

The musical, in that sense, has some elements from its medium that help, like the soliloquies, the changes of key, the ability for characters to bear their souls through song without interrupting the believability of the story.

Representing Valjean without a medium that allows a peek inside his head is a big challenge. He is a character whose turmoil is most often interior, so showcasing that externally poses difficulty.

Still, you can’t fuck up this much, my dude.

I’ve seen bad Valjeans in my life, this one is...complicated. He’s not good, don’t get me wrong, but he isn’t as clear-cut godawful as others I’ve seen, he’s too erratic to be easily described.

I think this adaptation tried to showcase complexity through visible emotional distress and physical violence. Instead of having a soliloquy or symbolism, we have Valjean shouting or screaming or burning his hand with a coin and staring at it for a while or shouting at nuns or carrying Cosette by force so hard her arm is in pain.

Everything gets even more confusing when everyone around him treats him weirdly.

You get years of exposition clumsily thrown at you via a speech Fantine hears when she arrives at Montreuil and he’s been elected. You get girls looking at him naughtily and suggesting Fantine to try to seduce him. You get inkeepers and Thénardier suggesting his intentions with child Cosette aren’t appropriate. You get women in dress shops thinking his intentions with young adult Cosette aren’t appropriate. You get Javert thinking his intentions with Marius aren’t appropriate. Everyone wants to talk about Valjean’s sex life or something, I don’t know.

His attitude towards Cosette is also muddled by this erratic behavior and the very strange way in which he sees her and Fantine.

He is visibly more worried about men taking advantage of her, of “defiling” her, than other dangers she could be in, like his identity being found out by the police or her falling in the hands of the Thénardiers again. He forcibly removes her from Marius’s presence and has a fight with her about it that ends on him taking her to see the prisoners. He knows she still, as an adult, visibly flinches when she’s approached harshly yet manhandles her when he wants to keep her locked up.

There’s something possessive about this Valjean that ties in to how Cosette is portrayed as an object. He talks about Cosette as if she was something he needs to keep, says Marius will “rob” her, not because he wants to be a good father or see her happy but because she is his to have.

This Valjean feels as if Cosette was his attempt to get rid of the guilt he feels for having failed Fantine more so than anything else. She’s less of a person and more an object he needs to keep for himself like a third candlestick. That’s the impression I got of their relationship with his characterization.

By the time the series ended, I felt upset with Valjean.

I didn’t care if he died, I didn’t care if he suffered. And that’s pretty shitty for a Les Mis adaptation to prompt. He made me feel uncomfortable, uneasy, as if he was the last person I would trust to take care of a young girl. And whatever internal journey he was going on wasn’t developed well enough to understand any of these choices.

I don’t know, like I said, I’m not an expert of the subject of Jean Valjean, but I’m pretty sure this is not how you adapt him.

Problem #3: Diversity without optics

This show hadn’t even started and it was already patting itself on the back for being diverse.

Now, if you haven’t been in the world of Les Mis for too long, let me tell you there are a lot of adaptations which are diverse, and not only of the musical. In itself, it wasn’t a pioneer move, but I was nonetheless happy that they were going to pay attention to that. At the end of the day, Les Mis is about society, about oppression, and adaptations of it should represent the diversity of the social landscape of the time and place they’re created in.

That being said, diversity in a highly political storyline needs to be carefully worked through, because without optics you can make questionable choices. And, you guessed it, questionable choices were made here.

I can’t and won’t go over all of the issues with this that there are, but I can give a few examples.

There is, of course, the always present argument of casting Fantine and Cosette white and the majority of the Thénardiers and Éponine as poc. And of casting the majority of Les Amis as white and the majority or most visible part of Patron Minette as poc. People have discussed this at length so I won’t go over that.

There is also how constantly woc were cast in roles of service, some of which were questionable given the context. Simplice, for example, is cast this way, which I overlooked at the time but as it kept escalating with other characters like Matelote and eventually Toussaint, it grew a bit more complex.

Toussaint was...a very problematic choice.

When you present the character of a “housekeeper” in a period series which is meant to represent France in the 1800s, and she is a woman of color, some alarms start ringing. I don’t specialize in French history, but my instincts were proven correct when I checked various sources on dates, after seeing the episode, and I’m quoting wiki for easier access here:

Slavery was first abolished by the French Republic in 1794, but Napoleon revoked that decree in 1802. In 1815, the Republic abolished the slave trade but the decree did not come into effect until 1826. France re-abolished slavery in her colonies in 1848 with a general and unconditional emancipation.

This series has a weirdly set timeline in comparison to the book but, for all intents and purposes, we’re in the early 1830s at the time she’s first introduced, correct? There was still an unstable situation regarding abolition at the time. The general emancipation hadn’t been yet stated in the colonies and the decree had just been starting to hold effect.

I know this show is casting in a general way as a suspension of disbelief of some historical facts and I’m all for diversity in casting in period dramas, regardless of anything else, if it’s allowing for representation in media.

But, at the same time, you need to be careful with your optics. She could have been cast as anyone else.

I don’t wanna go over this a lot because I don’t know enough about these parts of French history nor is it my story to tell, but the problem is in the erasure of conflicts or racism altogether as a way to prompt a shallow sense of diversity in a story that is directly linked with the subject of oppression.

Let’s continue with another similar optics problem involving “diversity” to exemplify this issue further, so that I can clarify.

This barricade had women on it and didn’t have Combeferre.

Now, here is the thing about that. In the barricade my man Combeferre gives an amazing speech about women and children.

In case you weren’t aware, the 1800s were the moment when European women and children barely started to be seen as separate members of society and not only “men but worse” and “men but small”. There are a lot of good articles about that, including one by Martyn Lyons about the new readers of the 19th Century, which changed the course of the editorial market, those being women, children and working class men, who didn’t have access to literature or literacy before that. The idea of childhood as we know it started then, and the later editions of the Grimm fairy tales was one of the first published books of fairy tales explicitly aimed at children’s education. And since a lot of us, in other places of the world that aren’t Europe, were colonized af or barely getting free from colonial governments in the 1800s, we kinda had to go with the flow, regardless of the social structure of native peoples, because colonialism sucks.

But you all came here for Les Mis so, let’s get back to that.

As this terrible and summarized dive into history implies, women and children were vulnerable to the fucked up state of social strife. Education was scarce and only accessible to some, employment was scarce and only accessible to some, food was scarce and only accessible to some. Most often than not, “some” did not include women and children.

In comes the the sun to my moon, Combeferre, with his speech.

He talks about all of this. Basically he talks to men who are the main providers of families, providers of women and children who depend on them and goes (I’ll paraphrase) “it’s our fault as a society that women can’t be here now, it’s our fault they don’t have the same possibilities and education we do, so at least do them a solid and don’t die today here if they depend on you to live, because the only possibility they have without your support is prostitution”. It was a fucking power move to include that on Les Mis. I mean, the entire book is a call out to the social and political situation, but damn.

So yes, there aren’t women there but the reason for it is that patriarchy sucks and the consequences would be disastrous for them.

Davies & co. pretty much didn’t give a shit about this. But, at this point, considering Problem #1, who’s surprised.

They removed Combeferre, his speech and placed random women on the barricade, as if nothing of that was going on and the patriarchy didn’t exist. Because ~diversity~.

The fact that they thought more woke to put some random women there on the barricade to die fighting instead of acknowledging the existence of sexism altogether pretty much sums up what this whole show thought diversity was.

For them, diversity wasn’t a political and social standpoint born from reality, a way to represent the dynamics of oppression that are at stake even on this day, but an aesthetic.

And, talking about speeches, let’s move on to the next bit.

Problem #4: Where are the politics?

1. The social and political landscape

Les Mis adaptations have a fluctuating balance with politics and social conflicts.

That is, at the end of the day, the very core of the existence of this story, the reason why still, to this very day, it is relevant and quoted, adapted and regarded is the fact that we still need it.

All of us, as human beings living as members of society, are always immersed in political decisions. It’s not only unavoidable, it’s part of our lives as people living together.

In the same way, the personal narratives of the characters of Les Mis are intrinsically linked to this landscape. They are set in different places of the social spectrum and hold different power dynamics and actions that relate to political standpoints.

Adaptations tend to work this in very different ways.

Some focus less on the politics and more on the social strife, with a greater focus on the characters. Others re-insert the characters in other different historical moments with the same levels of social and political strife. Others just copy-paste the situations and put them in another context, without really explaining what revolution it is, what they’re fighting for and why they’re being killed. The focus varies.

It seems, for how this adaptation starts, with Waterloo and a subsequent argument between Gillenormand and Baron Pontmercy about Napoleon, that politics are going to be important. This doesn’t last very long.

My biggest issue with the introduction of these circumstances is that they don’t bother on them but then attempt to use them for gratuitous self righteousness. It isn’t that they abandon them altogether, they overlook them but then attempt to use them for shock value.

There is a constant use of exaggerated, almost cartoon-y, stagings of social depiction:

- You have Gillenormand dining with his boys, in a luxurious and incredibly flamboyant scenery, while dissing political views in an almost comical fashion

- You have beggars downright assaulting Valjean and Cosette on the street right outside the convent, as a means of shock to Cosette’s expectations of the world outside of it

- You have Fantine’s entire sequences as a prostitute with higher and higher degrees of abuse

- You have the streets before the barricades, in some sort of confusing clamor that loses focus in favor of Valjean’s storyline

- You have a god awful last scene which attempts to say something socially compromising by showcasing the kids Gavroche was helping (I don’t think they’re siblings in this version), as a means to say “the revolution wasn’t successful and social strife will always continue” I guess, I don’t know, because it’s not like they gave a shit about it all before, so this kind of Perrault-ish moral of the story at the end makes no goddamn sense

They are exaggerated snippets of things without context, with very little exposition, that are used more as props to shock than they are to actually take a stand on what the original story is trying to tell.

Even the reality Fantine has to suffer is blurred by the fact that the social situation isn’t seen as much as a reality in itself but a combination of Fantine’s “choices” and Valjean’s “guilt”.

But, in order to delve more into the non-political aspect of this adaptation, let’s focus on some specific characters.

2. Enjolras

Well, I’ve seen a lot of Enjolrai in my life (is that be the plural of Enjolras? yes? no? can it be?).

Enjolras has very different characterizations, even within fandom itself, but we can all agree that he’s a) highly political, b) highly committed to the cause and c) extremely charismatic.

And when I say “charismatic” I mean it in the sense that his speeches are so beautifully crafted, so certain and commanding, that you just wanna listen to what he has to say, regardless of your views. They’re political discourse but also very poetic, which is a very interesting literary opposite to Grantaire’s voice, but I digress.

Still, Enjolras doesn’t stand on his own.

He represents a part of a whole, an important part, but a part nonetheless. Les Amis are a very diverse mixture of individuals, and the main triumvirate represents different stances on the same political action that coexist together.

Without others to stand with, Enjolras loses context. Not because he can’t support himself as a character, but because his biggest value is within other people.

This Enjolras is confusing, angry and loses a lot of steam when most of the people who should be around him aren’t really paying attention.

Courfeyrac, although performed really well, doesn’t really get a chance to show his political ideas without Enjolras around, and that makes it seem like he’s being convinced to participate rather than doing it for his own reasons and being one key part of the group.

In the barricade, Enjolras acts as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, and the other half he doesn’t give a shit about killing soldiers, smiling and laughing while shooting people.

It isn’t just that the scene with Le Cabuc doesn’t exist, Enjolras doesn’t seem to have empathy, which is all given to Grantaire instead.

By taking away Enjolras’s vulnerability, his complexity, they make him seem more shallow overall, and in tow, make his cause lose importance.

And without a clear political standpoint, because his expositions about the situation are very shout-y and unclear, and his speeches are summarized with some actual quotes but without their meaning and true feeling, he seems to be fighting just because, rather than having strong ideals.

Enjolras in the brick is eloquent enough, humane enough, that you understand what he’s doing and why. This Enjolras is a mess that I couldn’t understand at all.

I don’t think people who have never seen, read or heard of Les Mis before will understand Enjolras as a character through this. He’s just a very angry student with weird facial hair (why?) who rants in a cafe while his friends are playing games and making jokes, who is friends with some workers and is the leader because he shouts the loudest but doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing.

And, worst of all, doesn’t seem to care for human life. Which brings me to the next bit...

3. Grantaire

Man, was I excited with this casting choice.

When I heard Turlough was playing Grantaire, I was delighted. And, at the end of the day, his performance was very good, but for a character who wasn’t quite Grantaire at times.

I mean, he wasn’t as off as Enjolras, but he was also so erratically written.

They decided to make Grantaire hesitant rather than a cynic. He didn’t get to express his cynicism or his attachment to his friends (what friends though? only Bossuet had a name other than Courfeyrac and Enjolras) and his involvement with the fight was shown as insecure rather than questioning of ideals.

He is shown conflicted when he decides to fight with them, he doesn’t have any of his long speeches, the Barrière du Maine scene or anything of the sort. He is just...hesitant about death, I guess. About dying and killing people. That’s his conflict.

This has, to me, two big problems attached to it.

First, it’s a simplification of the entirety of Grantaire’s thoughts. It’s taking the cornucopia of drunken philosophy that Grantaire’s voice in the brick represents and replacing it with a single fear, which while very valid doesn’t reflect Grantaire’s true extensive complexities.

Second, it takes away from Enjolras’s humanity. Enjolras is showcased as an indiscriminate machine of shooting soldiers while Grantaire is conflicted about having to do this and, in tow, makes Enjolras’s rejection of him when he leaves and gets drunk like a jerk move of an insensitive asshole.

There isn’t a clear instance of Enjolras giving Grantaire a chance to do something before the barricade and Grantaire failing at it, with all the dominoes symbolism and all the stuff it implies. There isn’t a complementary set of complexities between each other. Grantaire seems to care about human life more than Enjolras does in this version, at the end of the day, because Enjolras’s speeches, even if carrying canon quotes, are inserted in a context in which he laughs while shooting people, knowingly sends Gavroche into danger and chastises Grantaire for being conflicted about human lives at stake.

So, instead of representing Grantaire’s true complexity as a character, they chose to give him something else that they think makes him more dimensional, when, in reality, takes away from his (and Enjolras’s) worth as a character.

All of this is very weirdly intersected with drunken jokes. Sometimes, the jokes and the behavior pays off and is inserted in good moments, sometimes they just don’t know when to stop and they kind of ruin their death scene with them, which is even worse considering it’s one of the few where they’re actually holding hands.

Overall, I think this was a simplification of Grantaire, in a way, a simplification which falls apart without a solid context to exist in. And it’s a pity, because Turlough was good.

4. Gavroche

The only reason I’d want an immediate new adaptation of Les Mis is so we can cast this same Gavroche in a decent one. He’s one of the best Gavroches I’ve ever seen, hands down.

In this case, the problem isn’t with his interpretation or how he was written, necessarily, and all time frame and socio-political simplifications aside, the problem is in how the context reacts to him.

A lot of Gavroche’s agency is deleted in this version.

For starters, his age is kind of all over the place at the beginning. He’s fine by the time of the barricade, but before it’s kind of a mess. As a result, he lives with his parents for a bit longer than necessary and the few times we see him on his own, being his independent self, are in conflict with how his involvement in the main events come to happen.

It feels as if he’s been used in the barricade. When he’s off to find bullets, only Marius tries to get him back to safety, while the rest cheer him and laugh.

His character is well performed and we get to see his personality and his situation when he’s allowed to act on his own, but within the context he’s inserted in, he seems more like a prop than a character.

This makes it so that when he dies, you’re upset more so than sad. It doesn’t feel like a tragic circumstance born out of a lot of layers of social strife which culminate in a dead end for a kid who deserved a better life. It feels like every adult around him, every person he encounters, either neglects him, mistreats him or sends him into danger. It feels, much like with Fantine, like an easily avoidable situation.

And things get worse with this guy:

Like I said in my summary, this David Harbour-ish soldier is the one who is shown to mercilessly kill both Gavroche and execute Enjolras and Grantaire.

This is another layer in the modus operandi of an adaptation who uses social oppression and political strife as shock value rather than commentary and discourse.

By personalizing “evil” in one stern, mean, unreasonable, power-hungry soldier, they’re villanizing (and trivializing) the social context as a whole. It isn’t about how Gavroche got to that point, how we as a society failed so hard that he has to die in that way. It’s just one bad guy.

But then, they try to be fake deep about it, by doing that last scene with his brothers or by placing him alongside Mabeuf and Éponine but not explaining what that means, why those juxtapositions are socially relevant and important to the plot (maybe they don’t know why).

Overall, this was such a waste of a great Gavroche that I just feel really bad. Reece deserved so much better.

5. The barricade

Needless to say, this barricade was more of a mess than you would have expected.

The lack of proper introduction to the political landscape, the clumsy exposition, the out of context shout-y speeches and the erratic behavior of its characters, paired together with the fact that it ends about 1/4 into the last episode, giving more time to personal drama than any of what happens in it, makes it one confusing mess.

It’s also in the barricade where it’s super clear how visually similar this series is to the 2012 movie. A lot of visual choices are extremely similar, even when they didn’t need to be (Fantine’s and Cosette’s hair choices? the shots in the hulks? the scaled down yet very similar camera angles and movements during the entire fight? the color schemes of some particular scenes?), and it’s pretty heightened in this barricade.

Which I wouldn’t care about hadn’t they talked crap about the movie during their entire PR campaign.

Like I said, there were so many issues within the people involved in the barricade. With the women, with the characters, with the soldiers. There was also a very strangely set line between workers and students that they were very clumsy about setting yet didn’t get to do much aside from having the leader of the working class men leave when Enjolras prompted it.

By the way, Enjolras was a lot less convinced about the whole ordeal in this version, which made his characterization even more confusing.

The barricade had a lot of messed up ingredients and not enough time to even simmer. At least the musical, which doesn’t have a lot of time dedicated to the students either, has Drink With Me, which doesn’t only serve as a way to characterize different students and their beliefs and personalities (“Is your life just one more lie?”) but also brings some melancholic change of pace, a pause between the action.

The highlight of this barricade, though, is Marius going apeshit with the torch.

But, all in all, there’s no much we can expect from a barricade born of confused ideas and even more confusing characterizations. This barricade feels less like a climax and more like a thing they had to do because it was in the book.

And don’t even make me talk about how they butchered my favorite speech. I’d rather not have it there at all, tbh.

Conclusion: A writer’s ego

We arrive to the end of this long and boring trip through my thoughts. If you’re reached this point, thank you for your time.

All in all, I feel like a lot of the issues of this adaptation stem from the fact that Davies thinks he’s better than everyone else and other men around him agree so much that they let him do as he pleases, without questioning anything.

I can’t really understand how you’re going through the script of this and see some of these choices (like the dress shop scene, the carriage scene and let’s not even mention the peeing in the park scene) and you go, and I’m quoting Shankland here:

“Andrew’s scripts made these characters feel modern. That was nothing to do with having them speak in a very modern way or changing their behaviour, he just found the humanity and earthiness of it,” Shankland says, recalling a scene in which Fantine and her companions urinate in a Paris park. “I thought, ‘Oh god, they’re going to pee in Les Misérables, that’s exciting.’” Source

That just sums it all up, doesn’t it?

After I watched this, I let some time pass. I watched all 3 fanmade adaptations that are currently out at this moment (back to back), revisited some of the ones I had seen before, read fics, read people’s articles and rants, looked into other adaptations on stage, from the classic ones to the more interpretative versions, and other current tv adaptations being done in other countries.

All of those things are vastly different. Some are more similar to each other, some are widely different, but they’re all different points of view on the same canon.

This is a canon that has some of the wildest possible interpretations coexisting. You can have a play centered on one specific character told through the songs of a specific album, a tv drama in modern times with a lawyer Valjean, a coffee shop au starring Les Amis, a parody comedy set in 1832, all happening at the same exact time.

And that’s great. That’s fascinating. That means this book is still alive because we need it still today.

Some days you’re in the mood for a heavily political adaptation which gives you goosebumps for setting canon in a context that is closer to your everyday reality, other days you just want all the Amis to live and have movie marathons cuddled together. It’s all valid.

But what all of those adaptations have in common is that they aren’t trying to be more than they are. They aren’t acting brand new, they aren’t pretending they’re re-inventing the wheel or that they are smarter than Victor Hugo himself because what Hugo didn’t know he needed in the “psychology of the book” was a soulmate au or a documentary series.

This adaptation, through what they said and how it was written, acted as if it was going to be the ultimate Les Mis adaptation to end them all. It presented itself as smarter than us all, as holding the keys to the meaning of Victor Hugo’s thoughts, as being able to fix his “mistakes”, fix other adaptation’s “mistakes” and deliver the best interpretation of canon possible.

And it managed to be a sexist, socially insensitive, problematic, un-political, homophobic mess.

Which, is a problem in itself, but even more so when the canon you’re adapting should be, first and foremost, against all that. It isn’t about how many brick quotes you use, it’s about channeling the soul of the story.

#les mis #les miserables #les mis bbc #les mis bbc a summary #jean valjean #cosette #fantine #eponine #marius pontmercy #enjolras #grantaire #gavroche #death cw #long post when expanded #luly rambles #bbc les mis

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unexpectedreylo · 6 years

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Warning: boring vent post coming your way.

I’m thinking of quitting writing fan fiction. I’ve written almost exclusively Star Wars fan fic off and on (mostly on) for 26 years. That’s going back to the fanzine age, when there were just three flicks and everybody we’re watching now was in diapers or elementary school. Between 2014 and 2018 I didn’t write as much because of mixed feelings about TFA and because I was trying to get original stuff written and published. Then Reylo in TLJ came along and I wanted to write fan fic again.

What I came across was a very crowded field (almost 9000 Reylo fics just on AO3) and really, it feels it’s just as competitive to get attention for your stuff as it is to shop an original work to some publisher’s slush pile. At least with the latter there’s coffee/tea/beer money or a free copy at stake! But while I have some good numbers on a few of my stories (the NC-17 rated ones), it’s deflating to see other stories with hundreds of thousands of hits, thousands of kudos, and hundreds of comments. I don’t have PR or followers. I’m not a covert professional moonlighting for fun. No one’s going to write spinoffs of my stuff and fan artists aren’t just for the hell of it drawing things based on my work. I don’t have the skills to do a fancy mood board. Nobody ever recommends my stuff. I had a lot of ideas for things even beyond Reylo but my sense is readers aren’t into it. I’m not inclined to nor do I have the time to write a 75-chapter epic. Writing anything, even a short one shot, is a lot of work and why put in the work if there’s no reward? There’s a game and I don’t know how to play it.

I hear a lot that you should just write for yourself. Let me just say this...writing for yourself is as valuable as listening to your own farts. You write to communicate and that requires another person who cares enough to respond to your work. Nobody tells an actor or a musician to just perform for yourself. Why do it then?

I do not want those who have read any of my fics to feel that I’m ungrateful for your eyeballs. I really am grateful for anyone who reads my stuff. But everything in life, especially as you get older, is a cost-benefit analysis and that includes time.

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holytheoristtastemaker · 4 years

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We need to have some real talk around what we are calling Developer Experience (DX) at developer-focused companies.

It's not well defined, although Chris Coyier has done a good survey of what people think of when they hear the term.

Here are some things that companies traditionally think of when they "work on DX":

Replacing many with few: Replacing many lines of code with few lines of code. Replacing many logos with one logo. Replacing many steps with one click (signup, deploy). Generating code so you don't have to handwrite it. Providing great value and plenty of functionality as a first-party, out of the box, or with zero config.

Extensive Documentation: Getting Started. Example Demos. Interactive Examples. Full API Docs. Guides and Recipes. Good Search. Versioning. (appropriate to project maturity)

More tooling: CLIs, Editor Extensions, Code Snippets, Playgrounds, Language Servers.

I'm not at all saying these things aren't important. They're even hard to do well, and fully deserve specialists in their own right. These foundational pieces of developer experience should also be fast and intuitive to the point of guessable.

But I'm also saying that developers, when they use our products, experience manyother things which aren't traditionally the domain of "DX people":

Downtime: When your service goes down, does your status page lie? Do you post prompt, no-bullshit post-mortems? Do you provide good fallback options for when your service is down? Do you practice disaster recovery?

Response times: Are you not just meeting your SLAs, but actually clearly answering customer questions? What are you doing for users not yet covered by SLAs? For your open source footprint, do users have confidence that their issues will be addressed and appropriate PRs reviewed, or are you asking people to do free work for you that you then ignore?

Missing/Incomplete Features: No product launches feature complete. Nobody expects you to. The true test is whether you address it up front or hide it like a dirty secret. As developers explore your offering, they will find things they want, that you don't have, and will tell you about it. How long do you make developers dig to find known holes in your product? Do developers have confidence you will ship or reject these features promptly, or are they for a "v2" that will never come?

Uncertainty over roadmap: Do your most avid users know what's coming so they can plan around your plan? If that's too high a bar, do your own employees know what's coming so they can coordinate nicely? Do you have "perma-beta" products? How do you communicate when users ask if they should use "orphan" products? (don't be ashamed, everyone has them)

Uncertainty over costs: Is your pricing predictable or do your users need a spreadsheet to figure out what you are going to charge them? If charges are unexpectedly high, can developers use your software to figure out why or do they have to beg for help? Are good defaults in place to get advance warning? Have your employees ever paid for your own product (or had to justify doing so to their own employers)?

Deprecation/Lock-in/Portability: Do you constantly deprecate APIs and products, causing additional work for no gain? Some amount of lock-in is unavoidable, but are you conscious of how much proprietary API you are foisting on your user? Should your user want to leave someday for whatever reason, have you documented that and made that easy, or are they on their own?

Debugging: Are your errors informative or scary? Have you designed them to be searchable or do they only make sense to maintainers? When things go wrong, how quickly does your service surface common issues and offer resolution steps? What about enabling users to answer questions they don't yet know they have? If developers are constantly making mistakes and "holding the phone wrong", is it their fault or yours?

Audit Logs & Access Control: Many products start life in single-player mode, and then execute a very clumsy transition to multi-player when they start serving teams and enterprise. When something that shouldn't have been done has been done, do you offer trustworthy sources of truth, and ways to prevent repeats (or, of course, make them impossible in the first place)?

Of course, none of these are new problems, and well known to product management. The problem is mostly organizational - as "developer advocacy" as a discipline evolved from "developer evangelism" (going from a "1 way street" to a "2 way street"), it is now evolving to "developer experience". I see a troubling organizational limitation of DX folks, defining DX to the stuff that focuses on increasing "top of funnel" growth (reducing friction, growing awareness, an endless parade of copycat short term growth hacks) - and having comparatively a lot less impact on the "bottom of funnel" stuff (logo churn, satisfaction scores, account expansion/customer success). There's little sense making more rain when faced with a leaky bucket.

Conway's Law is an eponymous law that states that "organizations design systems that mirror their own communication structure". Steven Sinofsky's snappier definition is "don't ship your org chart". We need to be careful about the consequences of letting Conway's Law apply to Developer Experience.

To be clear, I don't really know how to do this yet. I am just thinking out loud. But my intuition is that in order to design exceptional developer experiences, we should pay more attention to developer exceptions. As DX people, we've focused a lot on try, perhaps we should take a good look at catch.

The first thing to fix is organizational incentives. DX work must not just feel welcome, it must be demanded and good results rewarded. Nobody wants to feel like they are adding weight onto an already overloaded backlog. Most orgs are set up in a way that lack of feedback isn't noticed when it isn't given, and feedback when given feels like additional burden. This is, unsurprisingly, not conducive to feedback.

The second thing is to establish invariants around your core developer experience and automate monitoring and reporting of these to the fullest extent possible. Tools that hold the line are incredibly powerful. To progress, you need to first stop regressing.

My last thought is around helping PMs and EMs create DX, rather than taking primary responsibility. If you're sending in PRs and design docs yourself, you are probably doing too much of someone else's job and will be ineffective and/or resented. Better to provide them the information they need to make decisions and be available for opinions and instant feedback since you represent the end user. It is common for there to be an infinite list of small things to do - and that is very hard to sell internally - so how can you bundle these up into thematic projects, motivate engineers, and carefully communicate progress to the wider world?

It's time we look beyond the easy questions in developer experience, and start addressing the uncomfortable ones.

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movietvtechgeeks · 7 years

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/carrie-genzel-talks-supernatural-fans-state-slay/

Carrie Genzel talks 'Supernatural' fans and her State of Slay

This is part 2 of the Carrie Genzel interview where she gets very indepth on Supernatural, acting and her amazing site State of Slay. You can read part 1 here where she talks about her fun experiences on the set and those pranks she went through with Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. Carrie Genzel is one of those lovely actresses that thought being in Supernatural was so nice she did it twice – she was in Bugs, one of the earlier episodes in Season 1, and in Just My Imagination, one of my personal favorite episodes, in Season 11. Many fans will remember Carrie’s character, Linda Berman, being the one with “Sparkle on her face!” Definitely one of the more iconic moments in Supernatural, for sure. Since Supernatural, Carrie has appeared in Max 2, They’re Watching and Season’s Greetings. Carrie is also the author of State of Slay, a blog about “the state of living in self-love as your authentic self.” Carrie explains further about her blog and her journey to writing it below. Who would you want to work with the most, that you haven’t worked with yet? My gosh … the list is long! Carol, I’ve had a huge long, long-term crush on Harrison Ford. Since American Graffiti. Like … way back. I would love to work with him, but it would really hard for me to keep my cool. There’s so many people whose work that I adore. Cate Blanchett, apparently I like all the Kates, Kate Winslet … Honestly my mind is spinning. It’s like ahhh, who? There are so many people. I go to the movies at least once I week. I still love to go sit in a dark theatre and escape … go to that faraway land, and connect with a story or connect with the characters, or just run away with the circus. I’m constantly watching people doing what they do. Working their craft. The list is long. So how has being Canadian affected you as an actor? I don’t know how it’s affected me. I think that there’s so much work in Canada, it’s affected me in a good way. They need Canadians … so that’s good. In terms of working in the United States, or abroad, I don’t really know. I think that’s really nice, that I’m really proud of, is that around the world, Canadians are regarded as good, honest people, and it’s nice to feel that you’re welcome wherever you are. That’s really nice. When I first moved to the U.S. in the early 90s, people really didn’t know anything about Canada and asked me weird questions, like: Do we live in igloos? Do we have electricity? These are all real questions that I was asked … this is my favourite: Do you hunt for your food? I’m not kidding. Yeah, just strange questions. I have to say, since the 2010 Olympics, a lot of people went, oh wow, there’s a whole city there! Mmm, there’s many! Although I still get the question – I did recently get the question – are you in the Canada that’s near Seattle or the Canada that’s near New York? Well, it’s all one Canada, first off … it’s like, what? I find that there is a lot more awareness to what we have; it’s not just snow and bison. We have cities, and people, and things going on … One of the things that I really love is that when I’m working in Vancouver and the American cast is here, or the international cast – a lot of Americans are here shooting – is how much they love working in Canada. How excited they are to be there and the great experience they are having. It makes me really proud. When I get to work in Vancouver, it is a smaller community and whenever I’m on set I know people, in the crew, or in the cast … So it feels like a family. I don’t feel that when I’m down in LA … it’s much more spread out and bigger, and it’s a little bit of a different experience … it’s nice to be able to walk in and be like hey, how are you, haven’t seen you, what’s going on, how are the kids … that feels really nice. You don’t have so much of that weird first day of school feeling, like okay, how does this work, is everyone going to like me, who do I sit with at lunch. It does kind of feel like that. It’s a nice feeling. I think being Canadian … with the way the market is right now, it’s great. They like us because we’re a tax break. And we’re cheap. And we’re cheaper, typically … but hey, not too cheap. I talk to my agent. I’ll let him take care of that. I think it has changed, it has definitely changed since I first started. For sure. How did you come up with the idea for State of Slay and what are your goals for it? State of Slay is a blog that started probably just over a month ago. It was a long time coming. I actually just wrote a blog about what kind of inspired State of Slay on Sunday [June 2], called A Power Greater than Myself. I had an experience where I should have died. By all accounts, I should not be here. I had a hard time with that, was struggling with that. Why did I survive, why am I here … what am I offering the world … what makes me enough to still be here when I really shouldn’t be. It took a lot of counseling, a lot of journaling, meditation, for me to come up with the reason why I ended up here was to be of service and to give back. There’s a lot of things that I’ve gone through in my life that I’ve never talked about in the press. Typically we’re instructed by PR to talk about the show and how great it was, and how awesome everyone was to work with … yadi, yadi, yada … some funny stories, and that’s the end. I never really kind of talked about the things that I struggle with or have struggled with, or the things that I’ve overcome. I’ve noticed that on social media because we all like to post the shiny happy pictures, that people would make comments thinking that the implication was that I have this wonderful fabulous life and that it’s all rainbows and unicorns, and premieres, and private jets and mansions, and that’s just not the truth and the reality of my life. I would say, Well no, I understand what you’re saying, because I myself went through that. You did? There was this, what? You’re a real person? I made a conscious decision to really put out positive messages within my personal social media. People really started to respond to that. I started to get messages from people that would reach out to me to say thank you so much for posting what you did today; it really helped me because this is what I’m going through, and they would write me this lovely message. It would happen a lot. It got me thinking of being of service. How can I be of service and how can I give back? It’s one of those things, which I’ve also talked about in my blog, when you’re living as your authentic self and you’re on the right path, there’s constantly signs are given to you about where you’re supposed to go next. I kept getting these signs from different places and different people, about writing. It was the beginning of the year and I thought okay, new year. Fresh start. What am I going to do to challenge myself this year. It came to me – start a blog, and talk about me. Talk about all of the struggles and the things that I go through and how I overcome them. How I live my life today in a positive light. Learn to love myself and accept myself, and in turn I’m able to share that light with others. Off I went. I thought, well, what the heck do I call it? Because I wanted it separate from my name, as me, as an actor … even though it’s me writing it, and I don’t hide that it’s me writing it, and there’s a lot of crossover … especially on social media. I just wanted to have something separate, so that it felt like a safe place where people could go and share. It wasn’t necessarily a place where people would go and be like, Oh, let’s see what Carrie’s writing about, the actor, and maybe read things that they might not be comfortable with. This is where this stuff happens, and the actor stuff happens over here. It was important to me that it be a safe place for people to share. I played around with different names and it just kinda came to me. State of Slay – Slay in this case being an acronym for Self Love Appreciate You. I also just liked the image of slaying, you know … of warriors. And I think I took a lot of inspiration from a lot of all of you – the #SPNfamily, and just the image of all of you warriors slaying your day. Because you do every day. That’s kind of how it happened. So I’m like, nobody else has this, the domain’s available, this is it! We’re going with it. It just kind of blossomed from there, which told me that it was right, that I was in the right place. The goal with it really is just to do really what I’ve been saying … to bring some light to mental health, to depression, to struggles that people go through. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, we all have struggles; we all go through times that are difficult. What I found is there’s strength in talking about what’s happening. That we are only as sick as our secrets. If we are harbouring all of those things, and we’re not talking about them, we’re just getting sicker. If we tell somebody about it, it’s out there – it’s gone. It’s not necessarily gone like you don’t have to deal with it, but it’s not weighing you down any more, as this embarrassing horrible thing. It’s out there. There’s really nothing that can’t be worked through. I’ve seen that in myself, I’ve seen that in other people I know that live their life the way I do. Incredible things can happen when we live in our truth and we live in the light … and we share that, and we talk about it with others. Which I think that you all know because there’s so much strength in every day, in even just saying I’m having a tough day … it takes this weight off of you, that really makes a huge difference. You get the support of all of these people that come around you and go you can do it, I know you can, I love you … there’s this whole group of people that circle around you to give you the strength that you might not have in that moment. And that’s really what the intention behind State of Slay was and is. That’s really what’s been happening … which is really incredible. It’s been really wonderful to see the response to it and I’m touched every day by the brave men and women who reach out and tell their stories and their struggles, and their victories. We all get to celebrate with them. It’s been really wonderful. I’ve been literally in tears almost every day, because I’m so touched with what’s been going on. It’s been a lot of work, and some times it’s tough to juggle in with my day, but it’s so worth every minute; it’s really been an incredible journey so far. And it’s just starting. It’s been wonderful reading your blogs … I can definitely tell you that you’ve found your tribe. That’s exactly what the Supernatural family is. You’ve got not just the fans who are open and sharing and always available to help each other; you’ve got the cast, above all you’ve got Jared who’s always so open about his struggles, and you’ve got Misha with Random Acts and the I’m Alive with Jensen … it’s just … I love our cast. It’s incredible, and as I said, I took a lot of inspiration from all of them, just in seeing how open that they all are with their lives and things that are important to them, and what they struggle with. I was just like, it’s time to kind of tear down this false image of perfection, or I don’t know what … it’s bullshit. We’re all real people … just because I have a job that might be more in the public eye, that doesn’t mean … I don’t get a pass from life. Because I have a job in the public eye, I have a bit of a platform where I can share things and people will look at it, so why not use that for something good, and give back …. Connect with people like me, who may be struggling or have struggled, or who knows. Life ebbs and flows, so even though I may be having a good day, I might be struggling tomorrow. And that’s okay, because I know it’ll pass. I’ll get through it, I’ve gotten through so much … I managed to survive a night on the beach, unconscious … I can certainly overcome a bad day. I’ve done a lot of work on myself and continue to, so I’ve picked up a bunch of tools over the years, and it’s all things that I’ve done and still do when I’m with friends, or with people that have reached out to me that I know that are struggling, and I’ll sit with them and really talk things through with them. But it’s now really me just sharing all of those things in a broader sense. It feels really good to kind of let all of that out. It’s very freeing to go this is it, this is who I am … It’s interesting, because I’ve had a few people that I know who are actors that I’ve worked with and I see around a lot, send me messages and go there’s a whole other life to you that I don’t know about … I’m like yeah, because I don’t roll into work this in the hair and makeup trailer … it’s just not appropriate. Unless somebody’s like Carrie, can I talk to you … I’m having a bad day … I’m like hey, yeah, let’s talk. It’s not like I’m rolling in with this stuff. We’re talking about silly, goofy things … It’s fun that people have gotten to know me in a different way, or have gotten to know me at all – because they’ve had a preconceived notion of who they thought I was. It feels really good just to have it out there. And to see that it’s helping people is the best gift ever. There’s nothing that I could ever receive in life that could be greater than that. It really was by the kindness of another person in my life, as to why I am still even here. There was someone in my life, when I was at my bottom, who never judged me, never pointed fingers at me, and just asked me how I felt, what was going on. In the moment when I could have gone left, I somehow mustered the courage to call him and say I need help. So I’ll always just remember that. Because that’s why I’m still here. If I can do that for somebody else, that’s just me paying it forward. Carrie currently has a fun comedy called The Layover coming out on Direct TV on August 3 and in theaters in September 1. It stars Kate Upton and Alexandra Daddario, and was directed by William H. Macy. In addition, fans can see Carrie at Modesto’s Classic Comic Con, Oct. 27 to Oct. 29 in Lake Tahoe California.

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#Carrie Genzel #Featured #Interviews #Jared Padalecki #Jensen Ackles #Supernatural

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