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The cast tries to unwind in the latest Adventuring Party, recapping the events of Neverafter episode 3…

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Maybe not the biggest culprit behind the Radioactive Bad Takes on this website, but the one that’s bugging me the most lately: Please, I am begging you, learn what genre conventions are and read the text accordingly.

Fiction is not reality and pretty much every genre of fiction has certain standard ways in which it deviates from reality. And I’m not just talking about how we shouldn’t nitpick the physics of how Superman is able to fly. There will be ways in which the characters’ behavior and relationships will be informed by the genre as well and it makes just as little sense to judge them by realistic standards as it does to complain about something in Star Wars being scientifically implausible.

For example, “Adults are Useless” is a well-recognized trope in children’s literature. But that’s not because children’s authors are all going around writing adult characters who are terrible parents or teachers. It’s because the protagonist of a story written for children is almost always going to be a child, and the protagonist of the story has to get into trouble and solve problems themselves for the story to be any good. Yes, in real life, teenagers shouldn’t be fighting in a war. But if the grown-ups stepped in and stopped the teenage protagonist of your action-adventure series from fighting, there would be no story.

Does that mean the grown-up characters in that series are evil people who use child soldiers? No, because we accept a child being in these kinds of situations as a conceit of the genre of children’s fiction, and we interpret the characters and their choices accordingly. We don’t apply a realistic standard because the very premise is unrealistic to start with.

Another example: An adult hitting a child in real life is horrible. But if the child is a superhero, and the adult is a super villain, and they are in a cartoon, then we can’t read it the same way. All cartoons with any kind of action or fighting in them use violence unrealistically, and if the child and adult characters are presented as equally matched adversaries then that’s how any violence between them has to be understood. The villain might be a real bad dude, since he’s, you know, a villain, but hitting a child superhero in the context of a super-fight does not make him a child abuser, specifically.

I’m focusing on children’s books and cartoons here because I think that’s where tumblr fandoms have the biggest trouble with this but it applies to everything. Characters in a romantic comedy won’t behave realistically, characters in fairy tales won’t behave realistically, characters in police procedurals won’t behave realistically, all of them will behave as characters within their specific genre have to in order to make that genre work. The second you start trying to scrutinize every single action a character takes by realistic standards, you miss the point.

Repeat to yourself: “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.”

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Sometimes, at work, the right moment happens and I can use memes. The narrator I am working with is slightly too old to get the humor of this, but the French pronunciation of Ermengarde is 

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Wednesday Thoughts

First first, I think I finally have new special interest that can replace HP for me. My brain has been v bored and longed for new media to dissect. I’ve already watched the entire series twice and it came out less than a week ago. 

I’ve seen a bunch of discourse on the Wednesday/Enid ship and the seemingly forced love triangle w/ Tyler and Xavier. I have some thoughts. Firstly, I think Enid, if anything, is bi. My evidence: her hair and nails throughout the series are pink, blue, and purple. Second, I actually find the love triangle to be a novel take on the trope. Sure, the guys are fighting over Wednesday and being zero communicative as to why they hate each other for like 4 episodes, however, Wednesday is not really conflicted in her feelings. I’ll get into the spoilery parts of that after the page break. Thirdly, Wednesday reminds me a lot of myself in middle and high school. I’m straight and absolutely OBLIVIOUS when women are hitting on me, but I also feel that my female (all iterations) relationships are the most important. Like besties before testies (of the cis varietal), know what I mean. Which was very confusing when I was a teen when girls gave me their numbers or asked for mine and I sincerely thought they just wanted to be friends. So regardless if they actually go the Wenid route, it’s ENTIRELY plausible Enid has a crush on Wednesday and Wednesday is like this is my friend and I will murder anyone who hurts her...

Oh wait, that happened in the show when Enid was going to meet Ajax. Now to the love triangle. Tyler and Xavier both read way too much into their interactions with Wednesday. Wednesday is firmly convinced Xavier is the murderer for the majority of the series and all of her interactions are to get the truth from him. I do think she genuinely likes Tyler which makes the betrayal all the more poignant. Especially because you aren’t sure, right up until the very end, if he was a willing participant or not. She will bounce back quickly because love and romantic relationships are not her priority, obvi. Maybe Wednesday and Xavier will become a thing if there is a season 2 but I don’t think it necessarily needs to happen. If Wednesday and Enid become a thing, that is also great, but again not necessary. Just keep giving me my goth Nancy Drew series. Thank you. 

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ITS THEM🖤💗

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I really like Wednesday's and Morticia's relationship in the netflix show. I know people were upset because their relationship was strained and the point of the aadams was to depict a loving unconventional family to mirror the usual hateful depictions of nuclear families in sitcoms. But I feel like their depiction really does flip the usual tropes of tv shows.

Sometimes parents and children dont click. Wednesday and Morticia are very different and can run eachother the wrong way, but they still love eachother and work within eachothers boundaries (or at least morticia works within boundaries, Wednesday is young and has a hard time with emotions so they're difficult for her).

A great example is the fact that morticia doesnt force her physical affection onto Wednesday. In most shows it would be a joke that wednesday hates it but cant escape it or she would just accept it after their argument is cleared up. But that didnt happen here. In the first episode she sees her off by caressing the sid instead of Wednesday's face, and after their issues are resolved she does the same. And its great.

And the thing that made me post this, "I'm sorry you felt like you couldn't come to me with this." No guilting, no offense taken, just a genuine apology. And it's so great to see depicted in media.

But anyway, not all relationships with people you love have to be extremely close and smooth. I feel like it's never depicted and the fact that Wednesday is makes me very happy.

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Netflix’s Wednesday (2022) | episode 04 | Woe What A Night

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Thing I forgot, Tumblr is a lot more into gifs than the blue bird site. Anyway, I should be asleep but instead I’m reposting nerd shit.

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#That’s it. #That’s the show 

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THE BATMAN (2022) dir. Matt Reeves

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The first look at Jane Foster aka The Mighty Thor in Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

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Guess I’m back on my bullshit

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Girls don’t want boys. Girls want a Harley Quinn solo movie where Natalie Dormer plays Poison Ivy.

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Yes. Please. Which god do I need to sacrifice what to to get this movie made?

I WANT THIS MOVIE: supervillian girlfriends, Poison Ivy (Natalie Dormer) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) break out of Arkham Asylum for a criminally fun “girls’ night out“ in the city –they are definitely up to no good.

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So apparently consuming blood is illegal in Louisiana

How much blood did people have to drink before it was banned?