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utterly obsessed with this midsommar review

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I can't believe they unfounded Found Family the movie.

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The full circle moment of ending You with Creep. I rejoiced.

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after finishing you and watching so many episodes without her, i have to say, to this day, i still miss love quinn and nobody will ever convince me that she wasn’t the best thing that’s ever happened in the show

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Anna Camp clocking Joe Goldberg in every scene is so healing girl get his ass

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KATE LOCKWOOD, NADIA FARRAN AND MARIENNE BELLAMY YOU SEASON 5

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victoria pedretti

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LOUISE FLANNERY AND GUINEVERE BECK YOU SEASON 5

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hozier, mitski, chappel roan, olivia rodrigo and taylor swift in you season 5…apparently i was in charge for the soundtrack

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YOU (2018—2025)

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New favorite scene dropped.

Don't you hate it when you get accused of killing people just because you canceled class early to disassociate (and also to stalk and kill people).

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Me when Joe Goldberg:

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“before we met, i thought i was making a big stupid mistake. like, moving here and doing creative writing and i really thought about quitting, but— you saw me. and, umm, i just want you to know that it means a lot.”

beck being so supportive of louise and believing in her, genuinely and honestly, all while the people “supporting” and “uplifting” beck only do it with ulterior motives just makes me so fucking sad

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okay i've been thinking more - and i wanna talk about Joe's mother wound in relation to his relationships throughout the season.

It really seems like the root of his mother wound is her getting him hurt and then giving him up which yes - true, of course. BUT i actually think the source of his mother wound is less about not being taken care of and more about not being thanked. He doesn't fault his father for abusing him or them, he faults his mother for cheating - abandoning him to do so and thereby "earning" maltreatment (see: candace stone) she is also at fault for "letting" his father come back and for "letting" him hurt them. (See: mother's are supposed to PROTECT their children from men like him). But the root of the issue is that Joe k*lled his dad for her to protect her, and she gave him up, making her ungrateful for his sacrifice. Which as a child, makes sense, but fuels his self righteous hatred of women in adulthood. He's a "good guy" a "feminist" so feminist that he "respects women more than they respect themselves." Why aren't they grateful?

So while yeah the abandonment and abuse is prevalent that aspect of gratitude is what I think is most influential in his treatment of women - specifically, women - in the words of Penn Badgley he'll put anyone in the cage but he only puts women in the bedroom. Not to mention, the last words Joe remembers his father saying (that we see) is verbatim "why can't you just do right by me and love me like you're supposed to." Giving Joe a clear obstacle and also shaping his thinking in relationships. But he gets rid of the problem and loses everything.

Enter Mooney - he also does horrible things to Joe but he learns to respect Mooney for the ways he hurts him and reinforces the deranged idea that sometimes we do terrible things to people and for people because we love them. He's earned Mooney's love through abuse - therefore, he's grateful for the abuse (plus the whole misogynistic mess of men being allowed to hurt and women only being allowed to be hurt and then "protected"). Because Joe would "never hurt a woman" unless of course that woman "forces" him to kill to "protect her" and she condemns him.

First, we see Candace. Joe's first attempt at healing this wound. Who was a free-spirit, entirely enrapturing and ultimately, a little reckless with other people's feelings but damaged enough that Joe could "love" her back to health. But she cheats on him, and he immediately blames and kills the man. Candace was still a damsel to be saved until she said she didn't love him - she was ungrateful for his love (violence) so he killed her. Or tried anyway.

Then Beck, Beck was honestly likely the perfect ideal in his eyes for attempting to fill that hole within him. She wanted to be saved, she wanted to be swept away, and she wanted someone to just give her a break and love her and she was inclined to be a touch naive and self-degrading (her 'friends,' her dad, benji, joe). But she was still stark in her morals, intelligence and writing and when she found out what Joe did she reasonably freaked. So Joe corrected his initial mistake with Candace - don't resort to violence first, put her in the cage until she "see's sense" and is grateful. Which only falls apart when she says she could never love him AND highlights that her mistakes and his mistakes are in NO WAY EQUAL. It fractured all of his justifications.

Realistically, if Joe was going to have a happy ending it should've been with Love. If his wounds were truly about needing someone to see him - all of him - and not only stay but accept him she was the one to do that. But it fell apart, because Joe not only needs acceptance, gratitude and validation, he needs it from a damsel, someone he can put on a pedestal but hold below himself physically and intellectually. Love Quinn, was Joe's equal, she could accept him because she would also kill to protect. But when women commit acts of violence themselves, it takes away from his control and self-righteousness, you can't save someone who's capable of saving you - not in Joe's mind. Love not only loved him but would protect him and knew who he was before he had to reveal himself and once he saw the violence she was capable of he stopped loving her. He is only interested in women he views as "good" women he can corrupt (see: this is my fault, this is not you) but he couldn't corrupt Love, she already had that danger in her. So she could love that within him, but Joe couldn't return that love because she was no longer what he wanted. He needed to be loved by "good but flawed" people so he could feel justified, because if he's loved by someone who would never do what he does, but gets past the fact that he's capable of it that means he is "good but flawed."

Enter Marienne Bellamy (i know natalie is there too but she's the same, needs to be saved but his guilt for her death evaporated as soon as he found out she wasnt falling in love with him) she was very similar to Beck. Vulnerable enough to need saving - until she says she doesn't to which Joe does not react well to - until he "redeems" himself and "saves" her anyway. She was flawed enough for Joe to feel he needs to forgive her the way felt he needed to forgive every woman in his life for the life they lived before him. He viewed her as good, virtuous but with enough flaws for him to exploit. He chases her because she represents a new life, and abandons everything to choose it (including his SON). But she rejects him, she's ungrateful, so she goes in the cage. "I accept you so you owe it to me to accept me."

Enter Kate - she deviates a little. And forgive me, I hate season four so I havent analyzed it as thoroughly but we see that he first see's her as someone who absolutely does not fit the mould, but he wants her anyway because half the fun for him is "winning them over." Then he finds out Kate has also done bad things, also killed, inadvertently but still. The inadvertently matters to Joe because he has a man to blame, the powerful man, corrupted the young girl, exploited her and made her do bad things. So he kills him and they live happily ever after because she accepts the only version of the truth he'll truly allow himself to believe. Plus, that is a good enough mirror for Joe to look into, "if she's good, then so am I." Her mistakes were also bad enough that Joe felt safe feeling like he was the only one who could "accept" that and so he'd always have something to weaponize. He needs to believe he is a victim and a tragic hero, he does bad things to protect people he loves and he is punished for it, and he needs his loved ones to believe that too. In season 5, Kate robs him of his power but remains virtuous enough in that she wants to be better but is a formidable enough opponent that he can't kill her. This is why he only really falls out of love with her when the tiktok is released and he's caught killing someone on camera, because now, Kate was condemning him but protecting him not for him but for her. He had to rely on her to get him out of this, before this, and before she said she despised that he wouldn't even try to control his murderous tendencies, he was still "trying" to love her. Because he loved the idea of a woman, the perfect mother to his son, not getting her hands dirty but being willing to turn to the man to "protect" the family. The big difference between Kate and Love is Kate didn't want to kill but Love was inclined to before Joe even got the chance. That line between "kill for me" and "i would absolutely kill for you" is very important in Joe's eyes.

Reagan, Peach, Maddie and Phoebe are interesting in showing women he wants to hurt (Reagan and Peach) and women he never wants to hurt but does not "fall in love with" (Maddie and Phoebe). Reagan is like Peach in that she is cruel, she is cunning, she is powerful and she is willing to hurt anybody to get her way and she does not show any softness for Joe to exploit. And in Joe's mind, that barely makes her a woman, instead, she's an opponent - which is probably part of why he doesn't even bother killing her himself in the end, because he did kill Peach but it was "self defence" she almost escaped him AND he almost got caught doing it, so why get his hands as dirty with Reagan? Whereas Maddie and Phoebe are virtuous and bubbly and feminine, but they don't have that edge all the other women have, they don't have that damage that Joe feels mirrors his own, so he doesn't see them as intelligent or depthful enough to fall in love with. This is also shown in who he's willing to let out of the cage versus who he isn't - Will, who was "logical" enough to "forgive" him for the cage, and Delilah, who really would've been killed immediately but she said she was willing to be bought (immoral in Joe's eyes) and she had Ellie making Joe more inclined to let her out.

Joe's profile for victims was very much a woman who was smart enough but still someone he held power over. With Love and Kate, he lost his power and so - fell out of love. Joe's relationship with all of those he views vulnerable in his life is interesting because while his initial intention is protection, love, whatever, even those he doesn't want to hurt, and doesn't hurt, he does ruin so much of their lives and calls it protection. Paco, Ellie, Maddie, Phoebe, Marienne, Juliet.

Enter Louise - she played every part perfectly because her and her friends figured out all of these things. And she so well fit the profile that she did start to believe his lies, until another woman got through to her. Joe trusted her so thoroughly that he offered her the illusion of control when he attacked her attacker, but he still got to scratch his itch when she let him out and he killed him anyway, under her nose. He says he wants acceptance, really he wants someone who can appreciate someone who will do anything for them ("what if it's enough for me that you want to") but never truly see it or fully accept it. And her ending, again, laid in her playing the game so well but also actively fighting against falling for his act internally, even in the finale "was this how good Beck felt before he killed her?" Joe finally thought he had someone who he could kill for, who could be his secondary character, who could let him "handle" things and be his pretty virtuous prop who forgives him each time she happens to catch him. She was book savvy, a writer, she needed to be saved, AND she was moral enough to need to be "persuaded" into an affair but she forgave and said thank you.

And his trust in thinking he finally had exactly what he craved, is why Louise won. Even the call to Henry, and his stupid "no one will love you like i do" were last ditch attempts. He fully believed he could still win her back, because she let him believe he had in the past successfully. But then, Louise says he's not the victim and brings up Beck and makes it seem like his words mean nothing and that he did nothing for Beck specifically. And he unravels.

The source of Joe's pattern is he wants to do these horrible things and be thanked by someone he see's as lesser because they're not "willing to get their hands dirty." When he doesn't get that, or when they show any kind of power over him - he kills them.

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VICTORIA PEDRETTI Photographed by Kolby Knight for Numéro Netherlands, June 2024 (2/2)

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Guinevere Beck wasn't the first person Joe had killed but she was the beginning of the show, the story. Why? For justice. For every gruesome murder to be avenged, Joe had to be behind bars, alone, as he is. But he didn't just steal Beck's life and power and autonomy. He rewrote her life's work and he did a shitty job of it and he did it without consent. He reveled in the knowledge that she'd be nothing without him and that at least she's remembered now. That was meant to be a fucking silver lining when the reality was that this another form of violence.

We knew he liked broken women he could save, we knew it but we bought the bullshit because Joe never showed us Beck's real person. Her sense of self was an utter mystery to him, to the point where it deluded him into thinking she'd relish in the murders he committed in her name. When we ses her through Bronte's eyes, she's kind and compassionate and generous. A true role model and friend.

And while she may be an unlikeable character, and perhaps she was written this way on purpose, this is why Bronte was necessary. Anyone could've shot Joe or put him in jail but she saw the twisted words among Beck's. She wanted justice for her life that he ruined and molded into what suited his peace best, the voice he stole when he killed her so early in life.