#I mean we get along but also she's very fatphobic and not as liberal as she thinks she is and so privileged & unaware of it

[violetclarity]

in a ~fun~ turn of events I think this year I hate my job not because of the *gestures to conservative catholic institution* everything but because the ratio of direct coworkers whom I like vs. dislike has gone from 2:1 to 1:2 and I am LOSING IT

[5sosbitchfest]

Why Crusty is the Legit Worst: A Masterpost

So I mentioned a while ago in an ask that I could make an entire masterpost dedicated to why Crusty is the legit worst... and here it is. This is going to be a very long post, so bear with me.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

1. The racist/fatphobic/xenophobic tweets

Much before 5sos was involved, Crusty was one of those wannabe LA influencer/model people who tweeted shit like this:

Now, apparently she’s claimed that these tweets were faked and never apologized for them, but then again, when does she ever sincerely apologize? Oh wait, never. So, were these tweets faked or not? Well...

There are responses to the tweets on the left. Here are the responses to the top left one:

Jac Vanek was one of Crusty’s old friends. They’ve been photographed and tagged in the same photos together. So, sure, people could have found out they were friends and faked the tweet/response to the tweet. However, 1. how and why would anybody go that far, and 2. if you look closely, the screenshot with the other deleted tweets and the screenshot with the response look like they were on different phones (the emoji, font, spacing between the letters/lines). Two different phones, eh? It’s almost like the tweet was real and could be seen on multiple platforms! Wow!

In addition, the tweet was sent out on February 8, 2013. Here’s another response to the supposed fake tweet:

Same date, eh? And only less than an hour later! Who would go through so much trouble to fake the tweet, the responses, and even get it down to the dates that the responses were sent out?

Back to the first screenshot of all of her tweets:

The bottom left one had some responses too! Here they are:

Same date, a couple minutes later. Seriously, who would take the time to fake the responses down to the dates and times? It’s almost like... the tweet was real! *gasps*

Now, this response could possibly be one to the bottom right tweet:

The only reason why I’m unsure of this one is because the time the response was sent out was three hours prior to the actual tweet, not to mention the month of the tweet isn’t really distinguishable in the screenshot. Even so, the response looks pretty nasty, and I’m sure it was to an equally nasty tweet from Crusty.

Now, I can’t find proof of the top right tweet being fake or real, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, considering she has no problem saying “sleazy foreigners.” Of course, obviously, these tweets were deleted, which brings me to my next point.

2. She deletes tweets whenever she gets backlash, doesn’t apologize, and plays the victim card.

So back in September, she had a pretty epic Twitter meltdown (which is still up, she didn’t delete it), where she basically guilt tripped her entire audience, whether they “hated” on her or not.

Uhhh... sure. I agree that you never know what someone is going through, but 1. these “trolls” you see are usually fans with valid opinions and reasons as to why they don’t like you, 2. the constant use of ‘do you want to do this’ or ‘do you want to be that’ is playing the victim card so hard and blaming literally anyone who reads the tweet, making them feel guilty, otherwise known as guilt tripping. Y’know, something that emotional manipulators/abusers do? Yeah, that, and 3. she just HAS to make the whole thing about her. Notice how she says “your words affect me” and puts "and any other person you’re bullying” in parentheses. Notice how she says “you don’t know if I’m depressed, going through trauma, etc.” Notice how she says “do you actually want to inflict pain, hurt, tears, & hate onto me & others?” She tried so hard to be inclusive... and failed. The whole thing is about her, and she just kinda threw in some other terms to make it seem like some kind of positive message for everyone, when in reality, it’s just her being a whiny brat.

Not to mention she just threw Messy into the mix and shaded Arz. Which, lol. Arz was literally her PR client. It’s actually very likely that she was the one who put Arz and Luke together. Hm.

There was the time she pissed off a bunch of Kpop fans when she tweeted this and automatically tried to patch it up:

She probably saw how pissed people got and tried to fix it and make it seem like it was just a joke. Even still, people saw it as being quite fishy, and rightfully so. After all, it probably wasn’t a joke. And then shortly after, like a few weeks or something, she posted a link to a BLACKPINK song or something saying how good the song was. Ooookay.

Then we have the magazine fiasco:

Basically people were angry because a magazine cover came out that featured mostly Luke and the other boys were kinda off to the side. Colliscool is some weirdly famous 5sos fan who is another wannabe LA influencer chick, and of course Crusty is kissing her ass because it makes her look nice. Anyway, if complaining about a magazine cover is “standing up for what you believe in,” what about actually important issues, like racism or homophobia or poverty? It’s a fucking magazine cover. And while it’s hard to hear, Luke is the lead singer, so it only stands to reason why he would be the main feature, tbh. But once Crusty compared fans to Trump, she received backlash, deleted these tweets, and never spoke of it again.

Let’s not forget how a few days later, the whitewashed photo of Calum came out, and people were angrier about that and thought it more important than the magazine cover (which I agree with), and Crusty didn’t say anything on the matter. People were pissed that she complained about the magazine cover and not the whitewashed photo of Calum, but those fans gotta understand that unless it involves Michael, she doesn’t give a shit. I mean, with the past xenophobic/racist tweets... her not saying anything makes sense.

Then there’s the more recent ordeal with Cardi B:

She really thought her backlash was about Mac Miller not winning. And when a fan tried to explain why Cardi B is problematic, she went ahead and played the victim card again. For comparison, here’s how Debby Ryan, Josh Dun’s fiancee, responded:

Not only did she acknowledge her lack of knowledge, she handled the situation by engaging with the people who were educating her, asking them for more information, and thanking them for educating her. Meanwhile, you have Crusty, who’s all like “WELL HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW I’M ONLY HUMAN” and... yes, Crusty, we’re all fucking human, but not all of us are assholes. She likes to tweet, delete, and yeet, as I like to put it.

And I’m going to put this out there for people who might try to argue with me: yes, I spent a good hour scrolling through her twitter to try to find any ounce of proof that she’s a decent person. I did find some rt’s and threads of her talking about mental health and racism (she was talking about the movie the blackkklansman and how it’s revolutionary or something along the lines of that), and she took part in that whole campaign last year to get young people to vote. Here’s the thing: yeah, those are good causes. But it’s really easy to seem like a good person online. It’s so easy to say things and not mean them. Also, just because someone may have liberal viewpoints or morals doesn’t necessarily make them a good person, especially if they don’t outwardly show it, which brings me to my next point.

3. She’s an asshole to fans.

That’s kind of a well-known fact, at least, to the people who can see past her bullshit. She will literally enter group chats with fans, get the twitter names of people who talk bad about her, and block them on her and Michael’s accounts. But of course, because she’s interacting with the fans, she’s seen as a saint because she’s just so sweet!!! And whenever people don’t see that, well, they get blocked. She checks her indirects, obviously, so if you so much as mention her name in a negative way, she and “Michael” will block you. Which is so fucked.

Remember when she was rude to some fans in Bali a few years back? If not, here’s the video. When people saw the video, of course she played the victim card again:

Oh yes, because coming up with a bunch of excuses, mentioning the fact that you’re “crying in lax,” and using a thousand emojis really expresses how guilty you feel. Kiss my entire ass.

But that wasn’t the end of that! When Crusty went to Bali earlier this year, she met up with the very fan she was rude to after she sent the fan this DM:

And of course, the girl fell for her bullshit because she got to meet Michael. She just had to make herself look like such a sweetheart before the big engagement! And sadly, it worked, the fan was happy, and Crusty was seen as a saint once again:

She’s even a bitch from southy’s account:

Like... what that person said wasn’t even that bad. Them breaking up is a perfectly plausible situation (if they were actually dating, lol), and yet Crusty literally cussed them out for bringing that up. Oof yikes.

4. The nature of her “relationship” with Michael.

Their first public interaction on Twtiter was back in 2014, when Michael was 18.

This was right before Michael turned 19, so Crusty was 29-30ish (?) at this time (who the fuck knows, I’ll get to that later). It’s not exactly known if she was 5sos’ PR manager, but she was ATL’s, and since 5sos and ATL had worked together, it wouldn’t be surprising if she actually was/is 5sos’ PR manager.

So before Michael, Crusty had been dating a guy named Spencer. Crikey’s timeline starts in January of 2016, where Michael posted this photo of them:

They were “dating” at that time, but neither of them went public until January 2017. However, Crusty continued to consistently interact with her ex Spencer on ig, all the way from January 2016 to May/June 2016, and it started to slow down after that, though she still liked some of his posts here and there. There was even an instance where Spencer sent her flowers in April, which... why would your ex send you flowers???

My belief is that Crusty was still with Spencer at the time she started “dating” Michael, technically cheating on him, and I have an idea in my mind that he probably got sick of it and finally decided to drop her. Which, good for him. After all, she left to be with someone eleven years younger than her just to gain money and fame. Yikes. And apparently there were rumors of her sleeping with Jack from ATL (when she was still with Spencer) when she was their PR manager... she liked to fuck her way to the top and didn’t give a shit about cheating on her boyfriend, I guess.

Now, I know the age gap is a heavily-debated topic, but here’s my stance on it: if the younger party is a full grown adult (I’m talking late twenties/early-mid thirties) when they start dating a person several years older than them, then sure, whatever. They’re basically full-fledged adults who are capable of taking care of themselves and have matured enough to a point where they can make rational decisions for themselves. Michael was twenty years old when he started “dating” Crusty in 2016. People make the argument of “he’s a mature adult he can do whatever he wants!!!” Um... in legal terms, yes, Michael is an “adult,” but twenty is nowhere near the age of maturity. I’m 19, and I know several people around that age, younger and older, who can’t make rational decisions to save their lives. Early adulthood is still a time for growing and figuring things out, and just because Michael is a famous musician doesn’t mean he isn’t still figuring things out. Also... do people know how Michael acted when he was 20? Watch him in interviews, I dare you to call him mature. I’m sure he’s mature in some aspects, but overall, he’s still a young adult who is still in a stage of developing maturity-wise.

So what does this have to do with Crusty? Well, with Michael being 20 when they started “dating,” that would make her 31. A 31-year-old woman dumping/cheating on her boyfriend (who was actually within her age range) to chase after a barely-legal dork from a decently famous pop punk group. Doesn’t that sound sketchy? In my eyes, she took advantage of everything in that situation: the fact she was a PR manager, the fact that Michael was young and naive, the notion that she would get more money and notoriety, and that Modest was probably in need of a beard, well... I’m sure she didn’t hesitate. For her, it’s a win-win-win situation. Just look at her! It doesn’t even look like she has to work that hard anymore, like she’s gone full LA influencer who gets sponsors up the wazoo and gets paid to be a beard. Her fucking dog is a walking advertisement (just look at southy’s ig page, it’s pretty much all sponsors). And no, I’m not saying she doesn’t work, but it seems like social media has taken up most of her life. And she barely even uses it for good/actually important issues. So there’s that.

Fun tidbit: she’s been working in the whole PR/entertainment realm since 2002. Michael was 7. Let that sink in.

Anyway, yeah, my point is that her “relationship” with Michael is pretty creepy. If the roles were reversed, that the younger was female and older was male, people would see it as creepy rather than “they’re both mature adults who can make their own decisions!!” 1. No, that’s a huge double standard, and 2. any time an older person goes after someone who is several years younger, regardless of sex, will always be sketchy in my (and a lot of other people’s) eyes.

5. She is a massive hypocrite in pretty much every way.

Oh, the positivity and sunshine her stans claim she spreads is more like a nasty downpour of hypocrisy and bullshit. Let’s start with this whole ‘spreading positivity’ thing she’s all about.

Crusty stans always say she’s all about spreading positivity and loving yourself and fuck the haters and blah blah blah. I already showed an example above of how she guilt tripped the fuck out of her audience, whether they support her or not. It wasn’t her trying to prove a point, it was straight up guilt tripping, especially because of how much she inserted herself into such situations. She could’ve worded it much differently that shed light rather than guilt.

And this whole being positive/loving yourself thing... well, that brings me to the age thing.

No one seems to know how old Crusty is. 34 is the mostly-agreed upon age, so let’s roll with that. It’s no secret she gets treatments, I mean, just look at this post:

She literally admits to it. And unfortunately I can’t find screenshots of her raving about the intravenous vitamin treatments among other things, but I do remember seeing them (if anyone has them, let us know!)

And it’s been shown she loves to use photoshop (not just on herself either). I mean, how could you go from this:

to this:

She doesn’t even look like the same person! If anything, it looks like she’s gotten younger instead of older... oh wait.

And she always does that pouty-lip thing, and I have a friend who says she thinks she sees lip fillers, which wouldn’t be that surprising. I mean, just look at this old picture of her:

Yeah, keep telling yourself that those lips are all natural.

Seriously... in pretty much every photo of her on her ig, she’s jutting her bottom lip out like it’s some duck face selfie from like, 2011. Please.

And her ass, well.

Here’s what we see:

And here’s some reality:

Bruh even Luke has a bigger ass than she does.

She posted a video on her twitter of her in the first picture saying something like “to all the people who think it’s photoshopped,” but y’know, it’s like... videos can be edited. Camera angles and poses can make an ass look bigger. Okay sis.

Fun fact: she deleted that picture of her by the pool, probably because people were making fun of how she literally had her bathing suit stuck in her ass. I mean, that’s what she gets for trying to make it look like she has one when she doesn’t.

Aaaaand here’s the heavy hitter:

When my friend saw this photo, she said that if she didn’t know Crusty was Michael’s girlfriend, she would’ve thought she was his mom. Y I K E S.

You can see the age literally everywhere. Her entire face, neck, and even the skin on her elbow in the second pic (it’s one of the first things I noticed tbh). And this was literally back in Bali 2019. You know, not even four months ago? Like damn, the sun really did her dirty lol. These pics are why me and many others question her actual age. She seriously looks like she could be in her forties in these photos, which, if she is, then her “relationship” with Michael gets even more fucked up.

Oh and she doesn’t just photoshop herself. You have this monstrosity:

Like what the fuck? Who are they trying to fool here????

And then this:

That’s a really... interesting ear.

So yeah, what part of Crusty’s face/body/everything is real? Not much! So, if she’s all about positivity, loving yourself, embracing your flaws and "fuck the haters" and whatnot, why can’t she practice what she preaches? You’re getting older, get the fuck over it and start acting like it, maybe start accepting it and stop getting treatments that will probably eventually backfire (like in the Bali pic).

Moving on from her looks, her entire attitude is just extremely hypocritical. I saw how she tries to preach online about mental health and how important it is to take care of yourself, and then she does shit like this:

So you’re just going to make fun of someone who’s struggled with severe drug addiction and eating disorder like that? She’s said on her twitter that her father was an addict, yet she’s going to make fun of someone who struggled with the same issue?

She’s considered a role model because she speaks out about this kind of stuff, including feminism, but let’s examine this a bit. This is her pinned tweet, and has been for a while:

Good message, yeah? Oh, but then she interacts with disgusting trash like Musty Collins:

Musty Collins, who puts on this whole sad boi~ act and then name drops 5sos to prey on underage girls. If Crusty’s so keen on empowering women, WHY DOES SHE INTERACT WITH A LITERAL PEDOPHILE WHO PREYS ON YOUNG GIRLS. Literally two of the most emotionally manipulative people in the world of 5sos. I guess that’s how they get along so well. They should just get together, but they wouldn’t because they’re too old for each other.

And of course it circles back to her fatphobic tweets. So much for empowering women.

Considering that spreading positivity is what she’s known for (besides being with Michael, yikes), it surprises me that she say something like this that goes against her entire spiel:

Uhh... sis, you are a fake ass public figure trying to get people to like you by saying random regurgitated greeting card BS online. Her ig stories are always screenshots of positive~ messages that are usually found on pinterest or some shit (not shading pinterest, don’t worry lol). That’s some greeting card BS regurgitation right there. Basically what this comment is saying is that she’ll only be nice to people who she thinks worthy of being nice to. A “realist” my ass. I’ve already gone over how “real” she is.

And then you have these ridiculous tweets:

“People are people no matter who they love or how old they are” “When did I say I was all about positive vibes?” Alright then.

I love how these tweets just SHOW how much of a hypocrite she is. Her entire “relationship” with Michael is shown through photos. Literally any time there’s a camera, she will take advantage of it and come up with an excuse to show off her relationship. Where’s the “human connection” you’re going on about? Oh wait, it’s not there, because their relationship isn’t real. Oops.

The second tweet.... just oof. She’s just tweeting about herself lmao.

I love how her excuse for her fucking up is just “I’M A HUMAN BEING WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME!!!” Girl, in case you haven’t noticed, we are ALL human beings, just not all of us are assholes when we fuck up. And then she goes on about how “we are all just human beings and we should all love each other!!” Yeah, it all comes back full circle, one of hypocrisy.

And this isn’t really a reason why Crusty is the worst, just some tweets I saw that kinda made me laugh:

“Luke who?” Oh I don’t know, the guy that your fiance’s actually in love with? HA. She wishes she could be Luke. It’s hilarious how jealous she is of him, how, whenever Lemon content comes out or the spotlight falls on Luke somehow, Crusty has to post about her and Michael’s relationship/engagement to get the attention back on her. Let’s be real, she’ll never be as gorgeous as Luke is, and Michael will never love her like he loves Luke.

So, in conclusion, Crusty is just a fake lying hypocrite. No amount of “this was in the past!! she’s changed!!” excuses will ever change my mind. After all, a lot of things in this masterpost were fairly recent. She might not tweet those horrible things anymore, but her old self shines through sometimes in the form of “I’M HUMAN I MAKE MISTAKES!!!” If she’s really changed, why doesn’t she show it?It’s because she really hasn’t, she’s just gotten better at controlling her social media presence. And that, my friends, is why Crusty is the legit Worst™.

[sunshineinmyveins]

okay but my get down thoughts:

Because it’s almost Monday and I have seen NONE YET.

Behind a cut because spoilers abound (and that’s a sentence I don’t think I’ve written since 2009).

- First and to get this out of the way, it is DEEPLY troubling that in a show that’s supposed to be as diverse as it is and as representative of hip hop/disco culture as it is, The Get Down has positioned all of its darker skinned characters as the most morally corrupt (Fat Annie, some of her gangsters, Cadillac to a certain extent) or corruptible (Cadillac again, Shao, Boo Boo, Yolanda if you count her attack of morals as the disloyalty it’s presented as). 

Meanwhile, the lightest skinned characters - Zeke and Mylene - are about as incorruptible as it’s possible for them to be. Ra-Ra is also, without question or contest, Good. And while Dizzee sits in a similar space, his queerness also removed him from much of Part Two’s larger narrative in a way that was both magical and also did a huge disservice to his character.

- To continue in this vein, the fact that the only major Black female lead is Fat Annie is appalling. By her very nature and name, Fat Annie is a product of fatphobic stereotypes. Adding to that, she’s dark-skinned which perpetuates negative, colorist and anti-Black ideas that deliberately attack dark-skinned Black women and contribute to their continued oppression. She’s both positioned as kind of a mammy (with her creepy mommy schtick) and a hypersexualized predator (with her rape-y everything else), delivering a one-two punch that combines two of the most harmful stereotypes about Black women into one nasty character. And as one of, if not the ONLY, irredeemable villains of color on the show (one can argue that even Mylene’s father who we saw brutally beat both his wife AND daughter was positioned as empathetic in the end after the truth dropped and he killed himself), she’s aligned within the narrative with the likes of the Yale and Yuppie racists rather than being given the same nuance and empathetic treatment as the rest of the POC cast. 

- Last major complaint is also tied into something I really enjoyed about the series as a whole, and loved seeing played out again here: I needed more Dizzee and Thor and queerness in general. And I’m genuinely torn on this because I absolutely adored the comic book motif and the fact that Dizzee is the heart of the story - made sweeter by the fact that he, himself, thinks it’s Boo-Boo - means SO MUCH TO ME. I thought the exploration of this beautiful, bisexual alien was wonderfully done and minimalist in a way that worked but also edged along the line of “we’re too cowardly to actually explore non-heterosexuality in the same way we explore heterosexuality”. Dizzee and Thor’s relationship plays out in visual metaphors. And even the moment when Dizzee and Thor confess their love to each other happens in a drug-and-dream state that doesn’t actually exist. I don’t know that I needed a cut-to-black sex scene, but I wanted at least ONE concrete moment between the two of them that wasn’t just Dizzee painting a stripe down Thor’s face (which was STILL SO LOVELY). Also, you don’t get to make Dizzee the heart and soul of your story, give him a grand total of 30 minutes screentime (and that’s being GENEROUS) and leave us on that kind of cliffhanger. That’s just emotional manipulation.

- Speaking of queerness, though, I LOVE the motif of Queer Spaces as Safe Spaces in The Get Down. Though there are Black spaces that are safe, not all of them are. On the flip-side, I think all of the queer spaces we see in The Get Down are presented as welcoming, warm, restorative, and transformative. From the club Thor takes Dizzee to at the end of Part One, to Ruby Con - which is only made unsafe by Mylene’s militantly religious father’s invasion - to Jackie’s apartment in the finale, and even Thor and Dizzee’s crash pad/love nest, queer spaces are presented in a way that reminds me of how it feels every time I walk into a gay club or bar. I do wish we saw these spaces as more diverse because there’s something unsettling about how they seem predominately white, but there’s something so special about the fact that the two most open and supportive and magical environments our main characters find themselves in are The Get Down, and queer clubs/homes. It’s also historically important to the history of disco that these queer clubs are vital to the growth and development of Mylene’s career.

- MORE ON QUEERNESS BECAUSE CAN WE TALK ABOUT SHAOLIN FANTASTIC FOR A SECOND? So after Part One, we all were like “Shao, you’re obviously in love with Books, come on, son.” But Part Two leaned HEAVILY into this subtext. I wish we’d gotten something more resolute out of it (again, I don’t know if it was cowardice or what) but I will say the development of the subtext was still really emotional for me. First, there’s Shao’s obvious jealousy in the first episode. This isn’t anything new, but it’s blatant and almost uncomfortable to witness. And then, after the show at Les Inferno when shit hits the fan, things get real. Mylene confronts Shao and during their horrible, ugly fight she finally brings up what’s been lurking under the surface about Shao’s possible feelings for Zeke. Shao says “I ain’t no f****t” because of course he does, and she tells him to get his own man. And then he says more horrible things to her because Shao is kind of a terrible person and it turns out, queer or not, Zeke is basically the only person Shao loves or has probably ever loved.

But queer or not? That’s the question. WE DON’T KNOW. One super significant, absolutely beautiful scene to me was when Shao realized where they could find Dizzee and tracked him to the crash pad/love nest. This is where I think we could’ve at LEAST seen Dizzee and Thor in a more compromising position but either way, Shao walked in and knew exactly what was up. Even before the tag to the scene, I thought it was incredibly significant that of all the characters to find Dizzee alone (by entering not only a literal queer space but Dizzee’s very queer narrative), it was Shao. But the tag is lovely, with Shao essentially designating himself as a safe space for Dizzee and validating Dizzee’s sexuality. This from the one character who uses the f slur the most out of anyone other than, perhaps, Cadillac. Which may or may not be purposeful and significant (but is certainly as annoying and hurtful in Part Two as it was in Part One).

Also I have to say here that I don’t know if I’m mixing up Shao’s story with Todd Chavez in BoJack Horseman (which I also just binged) but I feel like there’s a moment in Part Two where Shao implies that his romantic/sexual life and/or understanding of sex/romance is stunted because of what Annie did to him. This obviously doesn’t mean he’s queer, but if this moment happened it does indicate that Shao’s never really had the chance to figure out what he is. Either way, we see exactly how much his trauma has affected his relationship with Zeke during their breakup. Later, when Annie threatens to kill Zeke she refers to him as Shao’s boyfriend. It’s an attempt to emasculate him, but Shao’s response now - rather than saying he’s not gay - is to say that Zeke’s not his “fucking boyfriend” in a tone that’s at least as defeated as it is defensive.

There’s something innately Other about the way that Shao’s feelings for Zeke are framed and that’s been the case from the beginning, but combined with some narrative play and the way third parties are starting to respond, it’s pretty clear the question of Shao’s sexuality hasn’t been answered. Whether he’s bisexual, gay, or homoromantic ace, I think the door  has at least been left open.

- And while we’re on Shao, I have to say I don’t remember if Part One really delved into his history of abuse. I think the implication was always that his relationship with Annie was toxic and abusive but in the way of a drug kingpin with a favored pet. So while I definitely read it for what it was, it wasn’t confirmed until Part Two. Shao comes as close as he can to admitting that he he’s been raped and brainwashed by Annie and the thread of his story that addresses the wounds he obviously still carries is subtle and powerful and PAINFUL. And the way that Cadillac is folded into that story was really moving, too. The show went from playing their jealousy as the trope of “inadequate son hates the favored adopted son” to really looking at the roots of abuse leading to that situation and to Cadillac’s codependency. And the moment between Shao and Cadillac when Shao lays it all out there and tells Cadillac he knows they both suffered the same abuse was HEARTBREAKING. And shocking in the best way. The fact that this show allowed this kind of vulnerability between two of the more hyper-masculine characters in the show is HUGE. And this is where yes, I’m probably reading too much into it, but I do find it really fascinating that these two men who were sexually abused and are still BEING abused use the f-slur the most liberally. It probably means nothing but it is really fascinating. 

- Though I think they did Yolanda dirty (and I get it, it made for great conflict, just really annoying) I DO appreciate Mylene’s loyalty to her girls. And their loyalty to, and belief in, her. Yeah, there’s some sketchy purity stuff involved with Mylene that contributes to this, but it’s also really refreshing to see a story where the most drama the girls had was because one of them wasn’t comfortable being half-naked and grinding on strangers in a club. The rest of the time they love and support each other and that’s awesome. 

- The love story between Mylene’s mom and her uncle-dad was SO BEAUTIFUL. I mean it was beautiful in Part One but other than Shao/Zeke and Dizzee/Thor, I think it’s probably my favorite. Just so well-written and well-acted and lovely and painful.

- Still love that The Whites are pretty much globally THE WORST on this show. And love that their proximity to queerness actually indicates how trustworthy they are. Thor? The best. Jackie? Troubled, possibly not to be trusted, but all-in for Mylene. The Australian director guy? Suss until he comes to Jackie’s apartment party. And everyone after that is pretty much trash.

- Honestly some great, shocking moments and zingers in the dialogue. The musical set-pieces were all FABULOUS. The use of music throughout was just top-notch. I was deep in my feelings and loved every minute of it.

- But mostly I LOVE MY PRECIOUS BRONX BABIES AND WANT THEM ALL TO BE SAFE AND HAPPY FOREVER.

. . . I think that’s it. A day has lapsed since I started this tbh so I think some of my thoughts have since drifted to the back of my mind and might yet come back.