opiaa

[opiaa]

I haven't seen it talked about (as there seems to be only a little discussion of it on here so far) but one of the things I love love love about The Residence is that she gives up on the investigation.

Cordelia Cupp, world's best detective, who solves the unsolvable, gives up... because she prioritizes the reputation and livelihood of a man she respects and who respects and supports her in turn. Chief Dokes knows that continuing to pursue the case will mean the end of his career, but he says nothing... until she asks. She asks. She knows that there are consequences to her dogged pursuit of the truth, she asks about them, and despite the fact that Chief Dokes is willing to accept those consequences, she says "I'm not."

In a genre that is often characterized by detectives who keep pursuing the case to the ends of the earth - consequences and fallout be damned - I am desperately in love with this character who is blunt and clever and justifiably arrogant and still shows such compassion to those who support her to say "I will not ask this price of you, even if you're willing to pay it, because what you built your life around is not more important than finding my answer."

We have multiple anecdotes through the series about her obsessiveness and indefatigable pursuit of her goals and unwillingness to give up until they're achieved, and yet she will not throw over Chief Dokes for the sake of seeing this thing through.

[opiaa]

THE RESIDENCE - OPENING CREDITS artwork by Maira Kalman

BONUS:

[opiaa]

I LOVE YOU CORDELIA CUPP!! I LOVE YOU!! SHE IS EVERYTHING TO ME!!

[opiaa]

obsessed with the universe that the residence is set in. president is gay but that's not why everyone hates him. first gentleman has anxiety and comes with a mom that's homophobic to one person and it's the president. social secretary moves like a south korean president (personal shaman and all). terror attacks in dc that somehow are just happening without being intercepted. kylie minogue respected and revered by an american audience...

[opiaa]

I hate googling shit like "why am I still sad and tired when I ate and slept and have been walked and watered" and it's always some shit like "your brain is fried because your parents sucked at handling kids when you were a kid". Like can it be literally anything else sometime, just for the sake of variety.

[opiaa]

Straight dudes who think women are some sort of a terrifying incomprehensible alien life force are both funny and kind of sad. Like bruh women are just people who have tits. Except the ones that don't.

Sometimes women are just people with tits, but without tits.

[opiaa]

Honestly, I’m feeling disgusted by this world. Mind you, the few trucks that are coming in keep getting looted by gangs, and GHF/IOF has been relentlessly continuing this cycle of massacring aid seekers. None of the countries mentioned above are doing anything to break the siege and send aids to Gaza!

With all this going on, this is a shoddy attempt to wash their hands of any responsibility.

Don't fall for it.

[opiaa]

[opiaa]

Call your man "rock bottom" the way so many losers consider hitting him up to be the absolute lowest point of their entire lives.

[opiaa]

Things I’m obsessed with after coming out of the Superman 2025 film:

- our introduction to this superman being him getting dragged across the tundra on his face by his dog

- green lantern’s use of the ‘big blue’ nickname

- Perry white and the daily planet core group not gaf about the mandatory evacuation and going over their newest story nonchalantly as people flee around them

- the rasp in David’s voice when he yelled the “People Were Going To DIE—“ line

- Lex Luther being pushed to TEARS at the end due to the intensity of his hatred for Superman

- the scene where Superman rising out of the dust and debris to make sure the lady got away okay (the visuals combined with the musical score gave me actual goosebumps)

- the clone reveal (I.e. the subtle nod to a Connor Kent storyline in the future hopefully and how this superman is going to deal with it)

- Lois’s apartment, just in general - also the fact that we got to see her apartment and not Clark’s

- just, everything time mr. Terrific was on screen to be honest but ESPECIALLY his ‘I’m goddamn Mr. Terrific” line

- the scene with the three kids holding up the flag, goosebumps again instantly

- the choice to make pa Kent and Clark’s relationship be the emotionally charged dynamic (we love to see male vulnerability not used as the butt of a joke)

- the score during the moment of eye contact between Lois and Metamorpho after they escape the pocket universe

- jimmy’s rizz factor being the technical reason they won the battle in the end

[opiaa]

also something black sails does that a great majority of shows do not is that it has this like, extremely efficient character economy. it always annoys me when shows keep bringing in characters that serve a purpose for a couple of episodes and are then disposed of (in recent memory the americans would not stop doing this); in black sails minor roles are fulfilled by the same tertiary characters... dufresne, idelle, de groot, mrs mapelton, featherstone... in a lesser show i think none of them would've made it past season 2 and their roles would've been filled in by a new rando. it just makes everyone feel like a fully rounded human being; and the repetition of the familiar makes the writing feel more (for a lack of a better way to explain this) intricate? complex? epic, in the old school sense, than it otherwise would have if "guy whose head silver stomps on to show us that he means business now, no matter the cost" was just a new character we've known for half a season

[opiaa]

In other words: If the ghosts in the stories are the ghosts in our dreams are the ghosts in our closets, we cannot put them behind a placard, inside a glass box. The farther we get from the origin, the looser the narrative becomes. But perhaps what it loses in precision, it gains in expansiveness. The story is a different story. The story is the same story. So maybe this isn't a story about ghosts, but a story about telling a story about ghosts. About how to remember while moving forward. You are drawn to these myths because they change. Unlike static texts, folklore, legends, and oral histories are living tales that transmogrify with each subsequent retelling. […] The texts and the contexts mutually transform. The stories stay alive only as long we keep telling them.

— Jami Nakamura Lin, The Night Parade

[opiaa]

max & silver // facing the camera / facing away from the camera

[opiaa]

i've always found the scene where anne dismisses mrs mapleton who was being too rough with max so that she (anne) can take over tending to max both very erotic and romantic... i remember reading a post a while back critiquing it for being too phallic-centered, i guess because we get this shot of anne lubbing up the metal hose that goes up inside max to wash out her cervix, that somehow that detail in and off itself is male-gaze-y - which seems to me like such an obtuse, bad faith reading. not even getting into the fact that lesbian women penetrate each other for pleasure you know lol like it's not a sexual scene. no one is getting off. but it is a sensual scene and it does so much in such a short simple moment - from answering the questions we've had about the experience of being a woman pirate (unaddressed until now (!)) the brutality anne has had to grow into to be respected by the dangerous men around her, to the logistics of 1700s birth control (which shows attention to detail - max magically not getting pregnant would have been unaddressed in a lesser show, i think), to the understanding between two women who know the specific physical pain of sexual violence, not because of the magic essence of womanhood but because of class (that it is a woman who is initially tending to max like cattle, dismissive of her pain, accustomed to profiting off the sexual labor of other women is, i think, not an accident), to like the bodice-ripper-esque erotic fantasy of being treated gently in one's most vulnerable places by what up until them had been presented as a brute - when anne says "i only thought they'd kill you" it tells max two things: that she is both barbarous and kind. like it's not erotic because it's about penetrating a pussy, it's erotic because it's about the power anne has to hurt max like the other pirates have done and how she chooses not to when she touches max's pussy. there's a difference. read a romance novel for crying out loud

[opiaa]

There is no Love on that island

[opiaa]

Thinking again about the scene where the little asshole kid is throwing rocks at Miranda and the fascists of Charlestown throw refuse at her body and how London society and her father-in-law treated her and how the loves of her life ignored her warnings and how she couldn't catch a break for a single fucking second and her story was never her own and she never even made a serious mistake she was just screwed by the world and the narrative and I'm weeping and wailing all over again.

[opiaa]

Superman & Batman scene redraw