#the emotional whiplash of getting lesbians and then having both of them dead in literally the next panel... bruh

[elderkale]

Do you think Sergey and Oleg's arc have any parallels?

gonna be honest bestie, i had literally never considered this before today, but now that i have i SO many thoughts.

(sorry, not entirely sure if you mean if sergey and oleg's individual arcs have any parallels to each other or if their shared arc has any parallels so i'm gonna blab about both)

comicverse only, as oleg does not pass the sexy lamp test in the movie.

i don't think there are many parallels between sergey and oleg's individual character arcs (maybe because they're willingly apart for approximately half a second in most of the comics), but the main one that i do think about is that they both go back to their "destruction" for the sake of each other: oleg consistently breaks sergey out of prison (the game, time of the raven), even after he shoots him, and sergey takes on the characteristics of the bird to save oleg from altan.

as for parallels between their shared arc and any other character pairings, i think the biggest one i can pick out is yulia and igor. aside from the fact that oleg is literally meant to be as important to sergey as yulia is to igor during the game, there's also a sort of parallel during time of the raven, with both oleg and yulia being catalysts for their respective partner's kuthk decisions. igor rejects kuthk because he used yulia; sergey accepts kuthk because, with oleg "dead," he has nothing left (yeah ik it's not completely canon but come on).

AND if we take the epilogue into account, you could maybe argue that oleg leaving sergey in the cell parallels igor's vision of yulia, with both being their ways of coming to terms with the game (this one's a bit of a stretch though).

a popular comparison for serovolk is vadim and altan, but honestly it's not really my favourite? surface-level, yeah, they're both rich villain/mercenary combos with things about vengeance, but i personally see them as having very different dynamics. we've only had altan and vadim together for, like, three volumes thought, so maybe this'll change lol.

one more, because i'm on a roll: i think there's a surprising amount of parallels between sergey/oleg and anna/olga from just like a fairytale (major grom). gay criminality aside, both pairs are made up of a rich mastermind hell-bent on revenge and someone willing to do anything to make it happen for them, and both revenge plots are theatrical and personal (sergey fighting igor intellectually, olga taking away her father's wealth). and, in the end, both anna and oleg are fatally shot because of the plots except anna doesn't have the luxury of being besties with local italian politicians

(bonus both get fucked up by igor lmao)

and i know i wasn't going to talk about the movie, but i think it's pretty interesting that both comic!olga and film!sergey get rid of suspicion on themselves by "falling victim" to their own crimes (olga being "kidnapped," sergey getting his shit wrecked by that dude at the casino), even if sergey's not doing it on purpose.

in conclusion: crime is forgivable when it's gayi

[hauntedfalcon]

Happy Christmas, Star Wars Is Over

that was a thing I saw with my own two eyes 

“we have to End the Saga! ... but also leave ourselves opportunities to make more money” you really clearly cannot have it both ways 

there was... so much about that movie that I would have been able to tolerate... if the trio had been together the whole time 

but the instant Rey left the group, it became a terrible movie where stupid things happened for no reason, and there was nothing good going on to balance that out 

the trio interactions were, give or take one uppity Poe, everything I wanted 

they were so good together 

literally I yearned for two whole movies and I finally got what I wanted for a little while 

anyway as for the rest of the movie, you know the trolley problem? 

they had a couple options for tracks to follow after TFA and TLJ 

and instead they just... steered the trolley off a cliff 

what hit me hardest was the moments where Rey had the helmet on in Luke’s X-wing, and the moment where she sleds down into the Lars homestead 

cute moments! recognizable moments! music cues that helped us recognize them 

but the actual takeaway was that she had received absolutely no development since the first time we saw her put on an X-wing pilot’s helmet or sled down a sand hill 

none of them did 

when people kept asking her in TFA who she was, I never took that to mean “tell us your family name” or “which extremely powerful being gave you your powers” but what is your identity and how do you find it for yourself 

which is a theme that could have been explored if they weren’t busy driving the fucking trolley off the cliff 

what did any of it really mean? what’s the plan for the future? in thirty years does it all start over again when another Sith lord turns out to still be debatably alive? 

also everybody saying “we have to do this or the General died for nothing” like by that point? she had already? died? for nothing??? 

she projected herself through space to distract her shitty son long enough for Rey to stab him! that was the point!!! 

that was the death of her son that she foresaw at the end of her Jedi path! coming to terms with that and making it happen herself for the good of the galaxy could have been a thing!!!

all of these plot points are stupid, but there was a coherent way to connect them, and the movie just kept trying to contradict itself instead

disrespectful honestly 

keeping her corpse under a sheet until Kyle faded away was extremely disrespectful 

also not a fan of how they tried to build scenes around the scraps of extra Carrie Fisher footage they had to work with 

I maintain Leia should have been the one to do the jump at the end of TLJ, and then we wouldn’t have had to deal with this bullshit 

Rey should have been a Kenobi

Rey Should Have Been A Kenobi 

but moreover, Rey Should Have Been Able to Forge Her Own Identity Independently of a Lineage

which would have done wonders for the trilogy and put her on equal footing with Finn’s character concept 

if, let’s say, Palpatine was not a thing in this movie, and let’s say she ended up in Transport Tug of War with Kyle anyway, and she still accidentally Force-lightninged the ship and had to deal with that afterward? 

that would have been interesting! grappling with your own capacity for doing evil is interesting! “you have a capacity for doing evil because of your wrinkly granddad” is NOT 

imagine the conversation in the ship after the lightning where Finn says he gets it and Rey says he doesn’t, and Finn says yes, yes he does, because everyone has the capacity to cause harm regardless of the scale of it, but it’s the choosing that counts 

imagine if these characters got to say things to each other that actually mattered to the plot 

what a waste of Jodie Comer

why hire Jodie Comer and only put her onscreen for five seconds 

that’s like hiring Thandie Newton and killing her off after twenty minutes, or hiring Ming-Na Wen and killing her off after one epis--oh wait 

I was listening hard during the Every Jedi Talks At Once bit and it did my heart good to hear Qui-Gon again 

no Chirrut Îmwe though. see? disrespectful 

my beloved Finn 

my beloved Finn 

my beloved Finn is finally confirmed Force sensitive, and there is no time to build on that afterward 

my beloved Finn meets more people who broke First Order conditioning and refused to fire on civilians, who escaped and lived free, and we get a thirty-second conversation about it and it’s never mentioned again 

that should have been the A-plot 

my beloved Finn held. Poe’s. hand. and it was clearly a thing they do regularly 

my beloved Finn was so competent 

my beloved Finn was a GENERAL 

and that’s it. that’s all I’ll ever get of my beloved Finn 

Lucasfilm is not going to mention him ever again 

I am getting emotional now, back to things that made me angry  

what the fuck are they trying to pull with Poe 

a spice runner? a spice runner??? 

no nope no you’re not making him the Han of the sequel trilogy Abrams 

and then the whiplash of him being given command and wishing he had Leia’s guidance again and getting guidance from Lando instead and immediately acting on it? there’s actual Poe! right there! 

I don’t understand who it is they keep trying to convince us he is, but the real Poe always comes through in the end, thank you Oscar Isaac 

the hug 

the hug and the focus on Finn holding both of them and crying with relief 

I sure did miss Rose 

introducing just enough new characters for everyone to have a ~safe~ potential love interest was so transparent

there’ll be a comic book or a novel set decades down the line where some background character will be mentioned in passing as Finn and Jannah’s kid, and that will be that 

that being said now that we have Jannah you can pry her from my cold dead hands 

the fact that they didn’t even talk about why Lando left the fight??? 

the leaks I read were from an earlier cut of the movie where Lando told them he had a young child who was kidnapped by the First Order

he didn’t get to say anything about it this time??? it was implied to have been Jannah but they didn’t even get that much? they want us to believe he’s been hanging out on One Party Every Forty-Two Years Planet just because?????

hyperspace gets more and more watered down with every consecutive movie

it’s to the point where even the purrgils don’t seem that special anymore

the disposability of all the ships was almost as irritating as all the planet-hopping 

ships, just like lightsabers, are entirely renewable resources, there is one around every corner  

my “the Force is really just the ghosts of dead Jedi intervening for the living” theory is still going strong, especially now that Luke could lift his X-wing 

Yoda had to do it in ESB because Yoda had more dead Jedi friends  than Luke :) 

I legit squealed “WEDGE” when he appeared for 1.9 seconds

afterwards my best friend was like “what’s a Wedge? was it that Mike Pence guy” and I lost it 

Leia’s lightsaber was so pretty but I’m sad the blade wasn’t red in this canon 

Disney hopes you enjoyed 1.5 seconds of lesbian representation in a Star Wars movie, now never ask for anything again 

Dominic Monaghan was also there for some reason 

I’m running out of things to say, everything else in this movie was too fucking stupid to even talk about 

especially That 

we’re not talking about That 

at least we’ll always have The Mandalorian (pending any fuckery in the finale) 

[spotlightsaga]

Kevin Cage of @spotlightsaga reviews… I Love Dick (S01E02) The Conceptual Fuck Airdate: May 12, 2017 @amazonvideo Ratings: @amazon streaming only Score: 8.25/10

***********SPOILERS BELOW**********

Just like the first episode of ‘I Love Dick’, the second is over in a flash. It happens so quickly, so ferociously fast, with these seemingly large events that have a heavy significance on these characters, that they are almost too fast to catch. There’s irony in there somewhere because I can see someone easily professing that not much is happening, but in its characterization so much is transpiring I can almost feel my neck break from the whiplash. The episode opens with who I am assuming to be the two head honchos of the Venice Film Festival where Chris’ film had to be pulled because of music rights. They are attempting to watch the film and it looks straight up awful. It’s a lot like the French-Belgian film referenced in this very episode, Chantal Akerman’s 1974 black and white, supposedly charged with raw feminism ‘Je, Tu, Il, Elle’, just without any kind of hypnotic beat, sensuality, or weird lesbian sex scene where two women wrestle around in the bed, looking like an early WWF Women’s Wrestling Match during Post-Attitude Era when women with actual talent and showmanship were actually in the ring. Sorry, I have really weird, repressed, mixed feelings towards that film. Anyway, the two Italian Men toss it because they can’t take it anymore and then we cut back to Marfa, TX. Prepare for lots of cuts, I am very well aware of the presence of editors Julie Cohen & Christal Khatib.

Again there are some really strange, very human moments in this episode. I personally haven’t read the book, but my bestie in Brooklyn raves about it, even calling it her favorite. I keep going back to three big moments in the episode and I’m running them through my mind trying to figure out where these people are coming from. The first is when Chris shows up and interrupts Dick’s seminar, much to the chagrin of Sylvere, who believes that Chris attempting to attend Dick’s seminar is crossing a line in their fantasy that he’s just not comfortable with. Chris could give two shits, obviously this isn’t really a two way street, and shows up anyway… Later lying to Sylvere about being able to get in, claiming that it was full.

She brings a laptop with her terrible film on it and she’s literally a hot mess, once again a possible reference to 'Je, Tu, Il, Elle’… Her phone goes off, she’s bumbling all over the place, Dick dismisses his class and watches a few seconds of her horrible, horrible film and she legit, *and I can’t get over it*, but she legit strokes his head as he’s bent over watching the film. The gesture, the moment, his response to immediately shut the laptop and tells Chris, 'Its not my thing,’ It all sent me into a sort-of paralyzing shock. WTF just happened? Chris freaks out and points out that he hasn’t made art in 7 years and that brick he had set out as an art piece wasn’t art at all… To which he affirmed his love for straight lines. The rich metaphor isn’t lost on me, I died laughing and am chuckling as I’m writing this but I think it’s a combination of that comment and everything that happened so fast in that scene. My love for it increases with repeat views.

Meanwhile, Sylvere is having his own awkward encounters with the woman he met in the first episode, Toby (India Menuez)… This one I had to watch twice as well. Both Sylvere and Chris might have reinvigorated their sex life with this weird sexual fantasy about the mysterious, straight line loving 'Dick’, but they are tanking in the Marfa social scene. Sylvere questions Toby’s taste in art, finding out that her project is about 'looking at hardcore porn without judgement’, and verbatim, 'So I reduce it to its shapes.’ He takes the judgement further and calls her a child and asks her why she’s obsessed with porn, then reduces her to her beauty. The ironic and stunningly ignorant comment is met with the long pause from Toby, striking facial emotional-responding realization and then she simply tells Sylvere, 'You’re awful.’ And again the scene cuts fast, it’s almost dizzying, like I don’t have time to react. The cut is to a red screen with Chris’ words appearing large in and in charge on the screen, 'Dear Dick, I will not be muzzled.’ Only later when I’m sorting out my feelings on the episode, I find myself laughing at the quick edits, and just slightly tonally jarring direction led by the great Kimberly Pierce (a woman who literally burst on to the scene in '99 with the Oscar Winning 'Boys Don’t Cry’). I don’t even know what to think.

Chris returns home after her disastrous meeting with Dick, finding Devon (Roberta Colindrez) installing a water heater or some sort of handy-woman work (see what I did there?), and after the initial shock that someone is in her house, Chris goes right to ranting. Asking her if she knows who the director Maya Deren is, saying that Maya is supposed to be the most important female director of all time. Devon replies No, which I’m guessing most people wouldn’t know her either. Deren was big in the way Indy Bands are big now, but in the 40’s. I know film pretty well, but Meren is mainly a mystery, and while I’m familiar with a lot of films in the 50’s, they are more of Monster Movie in taste (I love classic, iconic trash 50’s cinema, like 'The Blob’, 'Alligator Man’, 'Them’). Trancey, experimental avant-garde types… No the 40’s would be far too early for me to consume that type of genre, despite its cultural importance.

It’s just hilarious to me to see Chris go on and on about how she likes mainstream directors and hates Sofia Coppola, who I’ve always loved btw… Chris cites Sofia’s 'perfect chestnuts highlights’ as another reason she hates her, 'Ooh, hey, how’d you get that brunette? A lotta money!’ I’m literally dead. 😂 Devon starts to follow her around, she’s literally mesmerized by Chris’ unhinged rant. Chris is now just asking rhetorical questions and ranting on as Devon almost salivates at Chris’ crazy as a pure inhibited spectator, 'It is a wonder that any woman could think of herself as an artist.’ Devon actually responds here… 'Uhm, I’m an artist too, so…’ Chris barely recognizes she spoke, muttering back, 'Oh, I didn’t realize’, like that has any bearing on the conversation that could’ve blossomed from there. I’m usually pretty empathetic but if I wasn’t laughing so hard from her rant and the Sofia Coppola comments, who once again I’ve always been fond of, I probably would have reached through the tv and pulled Chris’ hair a bit. I wonder what kind of rant Chris would produce about the cultural cancer of Oxygen’s 'Bad Girls Club’. In a perfect world, there would be an extra scene that Amazon would allow subscribers to see an outtake of this very scenario.

I guess Chris’ interaction with Dick is so jarring that she starts to rip down all the letters she wrote to Dick from the lines strung across her bedroom. And it appears Chris’ visit to Dick’s class was so jarring we see him sitting on his porch staring intently into the Great wide Texan open, clearly annunciating her name in full, 'Chris Kraus’. The editing is fantastic in these final moments (tho to be fair it’s great the whole way through). We see Devon shirtless, confidently writing as if a lightbulb is literally shining bright above her head. Sylvere somberly mopes back through town to his home. This is when we cut to 'Je, Tu, Il, Elle’ where the protagonist speaks about taking everything she had written and spreading it out, then just laying in bed. Cut to Chris laying in bed looking up at the empty wire dawned with clothespins that once held all the letters to Dick, the same letters that had Sylvere and Chris fucking like they had just met each other. Sylvere walks in professing that he hates the town and tries to sit next to Chris and touch her, but without the letters there is no longer warmth and a red pulsing glow in their bedroom. She jerks away from him and claims her 'skin is tight’. Yeesh.

Suki & Geoff arrive at Devon’s trailer and she reveals what she was fervently writing about… A play… About a couple from New York… A woman… She wants to 'become somebody’… 'But she hates herself’… Another quick cut, God I’m in love with these editors… Chris is packing up all her letters to Dick. Cut to Dick who sees a snake, slithering in the very opposite manner of the straight lines he claims to love so much. He arranges multiple rocks in the shape of the slithering, wavy snake and runs along side of them. Is this Dick beginning to let go of his rigid nature? Cut back to Chris who is walking into Dick Jarrett’s office and drops off a box containing all the letters she had written Dick, and so passionately made love to her husband under. The box is tied with a single ribbon, and there’s a dead moth at one corner of the box with a card… 'To: Dick Jarrett / From: Chris Kraus’… Cut to RED. That’s the perfect color alright.