#Qwerty deserves a bigger fishbowl

[freebooter4ever]

Ok this is for the few who maybe have never heard about mr robot! ^_^ its a show about programmer/hacker elliot alderson (rami) who wants to change the world and challenge the power of the top 1%. It's smart, its clever, its very exciting to watch, and rami's voiceover is very soothing. A HUGE warning because this is my blog and yall know me - as good as this show is it also exhibits sexism and misogyny typical of computer scientists in the 2010's - its why it took me so long to finally watch the show. When you're in the middle of all that crap and experiencing asshole male programmers in real time the last thing you want to do is watch TV shows about them.

The tag on my blog is: freebooter4ever.tumblr.com/tagged/qwerty%20deserves%20a%20bigger%20fishbowl

@s-k-y-w-a-l-k-e-r is like the best mr robot gif artist, she captures all those artistic angles beautifully AND fixes the lighting - its magic.

[freebooter4ever]

we are watching season four of mr robot and everybody is LOVING sad santa, i think we have a new favorite character for the house

[freebooter4ever]

side note, my white priviledge showing again, i totally and completely forgot about the weirdness surrounding the chinese characters on this show

 like im not saying blatant racism but at the same time not a single asian character on the show is not dark army, except for that annoying all safe dude who got five seconds of screen time. anyway it wasnt as bad as Firefly where i totally spaced about the vague fake chinese language and didnt think about it till watching the show with my bff and she started cracking up and we couldnt even make it through the second episode she hated the show so much due to the shitty otherness despite being in a world where supposedly china half took over or some shit. And i felt really really bad for introducing it to her without stopping to think that, hey, someone who actually is half chinese and grew up in shitty midwestern america where she got stuck in esl classes till middle school and was treated as unintelligent until she and her mom moved to washinton state instead, miiiiight just hate the fucked up use of a fake chinese english lingo without any actual chinese representation. 

 And yet the same thing happened again with mr robot, i totally spaced until my one roommate asked the other roommate “how bad is it, are they saying total nonsense?” when whiterose and her partner were talking and the other roommate reaponded with “its perfect, they’re native speakers”. And then in a panic, i started running through my memory of the show trying to figure out if there were any trigger warnings or shit representation i needed to maybe point out before they happened. i dont think there is anything horrendous other than the whole 'all the main asian characters are lumped into one othered group of hackers' thing, but honestly as hard as i try to pay attention to this stuff, obviously i still miss things. i guess what im saying is that despite having almost the exact same experience a decade earlier of forgetting that someone else's veiwing of a show might come from a different perspective than my own, i STILL didnt think about it all the way through :/ 

in between these two instances was 2016 when another buddy of mine was trying to decide what to be for halloween and getting frustrated at the lack of asian characters in mainstream media, and i suggested glenn and maggie since my hair is her colorish, BUT with the extreme huge caveat that my friend should be aware that while glenn is a pretty awesome character for the first few seasons of the walking dead, his death is horrific, uneccessary, and extremely questionable due to glenn being literally the only asian character to have appeared on the entire show. My friend, ulitmately, decided he didnt want to go as glenn or watch the walking dead so we ended up doing kato and harley quinn instead.

i dunno, i think this is why it is so so important to listen to minority voices when viewing western mainstream media, especially in terms of representation. And fandom as a whole can be so quick to silence anybody who has critique, that sometimes its easy to just go with the flow and not rock the boat and it really makes it hard for our community to be inclusive. Not just because of any racism or othering in the show itself, but because fandom corroborates it.

So yeah, this is a reminder to myself to not forget to pay closer attention

[freebooter4ever]

my roommates and i mostly watch mr robot on weekends bc post work im usually in a state of collapsed mental exhaustion but on days when its especially infuriating and nothing but shitty grunt work and i hate everything i message my roommates: 'mr robot time tonight?' and today after i did this one of the roommates came down and announced that "this has set up an interesting rewards system where i wake up in the morning and think 'gee i hope laura has a bad day at work today'", so basically im blaming him for all my bad days from now on

[freebooter4ever]

everybody went "awwwwwwwwwwww" over flipper, the real star of this show :P

[freebooter4ever]

we've hit season two and motorcycle roommate has officially deemed it "too artsy" but everyone is hooked so we're still watching lol

[freebooter4ever]

“wtf did he just litter????!”

"of all the things [elliot's] done so far THAT is what you notice???"

[freebooter4ever]

the dream sequence “i feel like he should set his expectations more realistically” - my roommate is right :P also the motorcycle ‘too artsy’ roommate totally figured out the prison thing by episode 5

[freebooter4ever]

one of the roommates was trying to theorize on what happens next and he came up with this complicated (wrong) thing and then was like 'or maybe its just the main actor's resting bitch face', and i immediately was like 'THATS HIS CHARACTER! uwu' so yeah pretty sure they're gonna figure out why i ended up watching this show all the way through now

[freebooter4ever]

the mr robot watch is commencing, of the four of us two haven’t seen it yet AT ALL and there is a heated debate over whether it will be too ‘artsy’ for motorcycle guy, meanwhile one of the kids came downstairs like ‘IM READY TO GET MISERABLE’ so i have noooo idea what he’s expecting, we shall see if this lasts more than one night \o/

[freebooter4ever]

i've said before my favorite mr robot episode, like the FULL episode, was season three episode 8, it's softer it's more character than plot it deals with elliot's clinical depression in a fairly satisfying way AND it featured the most adorable kid on the show with elliot learning to relate to someone who was almost at the same emotional maturity level he was (makes more sense given season four i guess). anyway, i mentioned this to my roommates before we started watching and they got excited, and then five minutes into trenton's little brother following elliot to the beach my one roommate was like 'THIS IS WHY I HATE KIDS'. so if i was ever in doubt that i am not one of those 'i dont want kids bc i hate them' people, that reaction was proof enough lol! mine is the opposite, i watch this episode and i miss chez terribly (speaking of people i didnt get to see this summer), and it makes me wistful about not ever having kids of my own. all my roommates on the other hand were the exact opposite, ha! there is so much pressure if you dont want kids to think that therefore you must hate kids OR you must love kids and want kids...like no one seems to believe a grey area exists. at the end of the show my roommate goes 'is that really what kids are like?' and im like 'yeah?' and he shudders in horror

[freebooter4ever]

"Console goes br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r": my totally serious software engineer / v r developer roommate while watching a very serious programming scene in mr robot

[freebooter4ever]

"oh the next episode is the weird episode" i say unthinking, and all my roommates start roaring with laughter - "you mean the other episodes weren't already weird?"

[freebooter4ever]

“it’s below the bar of tolerance for artsy but i dont know what that bar is” - we have success!! all are in favor and we’ll be continuing our mr robot weekend watch parties :D

[freebooter4ever]

we already have one tyrell elliot shipper "he sent out all the lawyers cause he just really wants to smooch elliot doesnt he?"