#She being a badass brutal masculine woman

[cutielatias]

People drawing/liking the woman mc wearing pretty and delicate dress/things give me the ick, argh i don't like it...to don't say that i HATE IT!💢🔥

[rayshippouuchiha]

Yu Yu Hakusho offers one of the best portrayals of Feminine Based Badassery. You cannot change my mind.

Like they may not be as physically/spiritually/magically as powerful as the main male team.

Shiori treated her child with such love and kindness that she literally had a Millenia old Trickster Demon willing to give his life for her. She was so generally human and good to other people that she made a demon renouned for his self preservation to willingly give it all up for her…. And she didn’t even have ulterior motives.

Keiko can have some questionable moments (i dislike how anime makes female physical violence against their male love interest seem normal)…. But for the 90’s, she was a rather unique female love interest, she didn’t just wave her boy off to war and wait around at home. She tried.

Shizuru was one of my first female crushes. Her smoky English voice dub was urgh. Her willing to defend her girls at the Dark Tournament despite only just meeting some of them? Amazing. Just a generally awesome woman.

Yukina might seem sort of Damsel ish. But she is still recovering from an extended amount of trauma soo

Yu Yu Hakusho is one of those rare shows where there's not a single female character I hate.

Even Atsuko, Yusuke's mom, doesn't garner my outright hatred like so many shounen parents do. She's an 28 year old alcoholic (who gave birth to Yusuke at 14 so there's a lot being implied there) and is not the best of mothers but she legit loves Yusuke and wants the best for him and it's obvious. She rags on Yusuke but it's because she wants him to be better than her, not because she thinks he's worthless. The way she absolutely breaks down at his funeral? Perfect. She's also much more present in the manga unlike in the anime which ended up being her true saving grace in my eyes.

Botan is delightful and bubbly but also strong in her own way. She shows her determination and strength over the series as well as her pride in her job.

And like, yeah Keiko has her issues but most of them can be legit chalked up to her being young and overwhelmed and even then she's still a little badass with the way she sticks with Yusuke and accepts him and what his life has become.

And Shizuru? Ooohhhh Shizuru. Love her so much and seeing her character honestly explains so much about Kuwabara. She's a beautician who wears traditionally masculine clothes but is still feminine. She smokes, she's a bit rough around the edges and cynical, but she's also protective and willing to fight for others and what she believes in.

Yukina? Baby girl was just as strong as Hiei but in the opposite direction. She left her home to find her twin brother, endured brutal torture, and still stayed so kind and helpful.

Just, there's a reason YYH is one of the greats.

[buttherainbowhadabeard]

Promising Young Woman (2021)

*contains spoilers*

Revenge is a dish best served stone-cold sober…

Delightful and dimpled British star Carey Mulligan has had a successful career to date, playing alongside leading men such as Leonardo DiCaprio (‘The Great Gatsby’), Ryan Gosling (‘Drive’) and Michael Fassbender (‘Shame’). Despite not always being centre stage, many of Mulligan’s film choices have been eclectic in terms of genre, and it seems this winning combination of offbeat and orthodox have all led to her explosive lead role in the indie assault on the senses that is ‘Promising Young Woman’.

Carey is Cassandra Thomas, a 30-year-old whose promising career as a doctor went into a tailspin when she dropped out of medical school following the rape of her best friend Nina Fisher at the rough hands of their classmates. It’s implied that Nina – overwhelmed by what happened to her and the lack of support or investigative interference – committed suicide, and in the years since, Cassie has dedicated her life to avenging her friend’s death. Rather than continuing to try to take the claims up with police, Cassie turns unconventional vigilante and offers herself up as hot-mess boy bait, spending her nights fake falling-down drunk in bars and clubs to see and document how many men attempt to take advantage of her. Going so far – arguably stupidly so – as to let them take her home, Cassie abruptly reveals her sobriety to shock them into acknowledging and lamenting their predatory behaviour.

These scenes in particular are deliciously satisfying – that moment the self-proclaimed “nice guy” realises his unwilling date is more than aware of her surroundings and is going to confront him about them. The genius of these moments is in the power of Mulligan’s swift and drastic transformations. She doesn’t need to threaten or produce a weapon to take control, her stark sobriety is enough.

Making her feature filmmaking debut, director Emerald Fennell has had her fair share of femme fatale experience as head writer on Season 2 of TV’s addictive ‘Killing Eve’. Her love of strong, clever but chaotic women are all bundled into one with the creation of Cassie. She’s a Villanelle-esque sexy sociopath with a skewed moral compass, complimented by a noughties heavy soundtrack featuring a screechy orchestral remix of Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’, a rom-com inspired routine to Paris Hilton’s ‘Stars Are Blind’, and DeathbyRomy’s cover of the Weather Girls’ ‘It’s Raining Men’.

‘Promising Young Woman’ could just as easily be called Privileged Young Men. With a narrative that draws on #MeToo, toxic masculinity and on campus rape culture and rituals, this is a film that is unapologetic about its subject matter and in your face about its opinions on it. There are not-so-subtle traces of trends that are played out in real life today, like dismissing women’s allegations to protect men’s reputations. Whilst Nina’s life was destroyed and her credibility doubted, male peers like perpetrator Al Monroe (Chris Lowell) and his sleazy friend Joe (Max Greenfield) were given glowing references, advanced to the top of their fields and became popular pillars of their communities, industries and social circles.

Although predictable for me, the eventual reveal of the one good man from Cassie’s past being complicit in Nina’s rape (her happy-to-take-it-slow boyfriend Ryan played by a charmingly goofy Bo Burnham), is a gasp out loud moment. Her world is once again shattered beyond repair when she realises the relationship that has made her happy for the first time in a long time was built on a lie (or to give him the benefit of the doubt, a very bad mistake). He is the first man she felt she could trust, be herself around, and fall in love with, but she discovers that underneath he was at worst, another one of the guys, and at best, an indefensible bystander.

You’d be forgiven for thinking ‘Promising Young Woman’ is all anti-men. Everything about it - on the surface and in the trailer - screams angry, bra burning feminist. However, it’s more nuanced than that and takes more of an anti-bad men, anti-bad women and anti-bad behaviour stance, as many of the movie’s female characters also have to confront the fact that their refusal or disinterest to speak up and call out abuse has enabled criminal conduct to set in, rot and spread. Cassie - an anti-hero herself - holds a grubby mirror up to the faces of the women from her college days with varying degrees of cunning and callousness, from feigning the abduction and pimping out of the University Dean Elizabeth Walker’s daughter, to tricking an inebriated former classmate (Alison Brie) into thinking she was unfaithful, or worse, sexually assaulted, in a hotel room.

Cassie’s methods are extreme and quite frankly mad, but her motives are steeped in an obsessive desire to do right by her friend and seek justice whatever the cost (the latter playing out in tragic but successful fashion in the finale). She is an intentionally entangled fly, luring spiders of all shapes and sizes to the centre of the web, daring them to do their worst. Most times she is well prepared, and even when it seems like she’s bitten off more than she can chew, another dose of vigorous vengeance is plunged in (even if it has to be done posthumously!)

Physically too, she’s a calculating chameleon. From pigtails, flowery blouses and flats for a girl-next-door look, to blow-job blotted lips, tight dresses and skyscraper stilettos to give off a late-night pick-up vibe, every element of her outfit is deliberate and devious. Dressed up in a wig the colour of a Rainbow Paddle Pop and sexy stripper nurse outfit in the film’s final act, Cassie is the literal sexual objectification of the promising young medical practitioner she could have been. Instead, she’s a practitioner of pain, turning Monroe’s bachelor party into her plastered patients.

Handcuffing Al to the bed upstairs, it looks like she’s reeled in her biggest fish to date. “It's every man's worst nightmare, getting accused of something like that,” Al cries, to which a deadpan Cassie replies “can guess what every woman's worst nightmare is?” But soon the tables turn when he breaks free, overpowers her and smothers her to death with a pillow. It’s a brutal and distressingly drawn-out scene, and it takes a while before it hits you that she really is dead and this is where her sad story ends. Joe and Al burn her body. It’s all over. Or so you think.

We cut to Al’s wedding, and as Juice Newton’s ‘Angel of the Morning’ plays, Ryan begins to receive scheduled texts from Cassie, taunting him from beyond the grave with a juicy contingency plan. Using Al’s ex-attorney Jordan Green (Alfred Molina) and his regret and grief over representing the wrong party to her advantage, Cassie had sent him incriminating evidence about Nina’s assault and her own demise in advance. “You didn't think this was the end, did you? It is now” the first texts read, as police sirens wail and officers emerge from the woods to arrest Al for murder. “Enjoy the wedding! Love, Cassie & Nina” the final messages say, followed by a perfectly placed winky face emoticon as Fletcher’s ‘Last Laugh’ cues the end credits. It’s a gratifying water cooler moment, bona fide badass yet bittersweet, but you’re still left wondering if it was all worth it.

‘Promising Young Woman’ could be cut from the same tortured heroine cloth as ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, with Nina and Cassie’s friendship rivalling ‘Thelma & Louise’. It covers a lot of taboo territories and topics, from slut shaming to consent and coercion, and evokes the harrowing Margaret Atwood quote “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them”.

‘Promising Young Woman’ is not for the faint hearted, and anyone who fears the film may be triggering should stay well clear. It’s not always easy viewing and it’s not always fair, however it’s more than just a pitch-black comedy or clear-cut tale of rape-revenge. It’s a brave, bold and original satire with bite and brains.

4/5 stars.

[you-cant-spell-subtext-without]

Sigh. It’s quiet today, so I guess it’s about time to talk about 12x06: Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox.  

This is an episode without Cas, so clearly it revolves entirely around Cas (I'm kidding, but only a little bit).  It’s also a bottle episode and a meta writer’s wet dream, so excuse me while I nerd out - this is a long one to unpack, and I have spent too much time doing it for you.  That’s ok because, as Sam says:

DIVE IN AFTER THE CUT BUDDIES!

The Asa montage is where we start.

Asa is a Dean mirror. The parallels are pretty clear - he’s a scruffy rough around the edges hunter, Mary is the reason he got into hunting, he wears a ton of flannel, etc.  If you remain unsure, the writers throw this in at the very beginning in the montage of Asa’s life as a hunter So That You Know:

Bucky: Hey, you know they make new cars, right? Asa: I don’t want a new car. This is my lucky car. 

***Canadian!Dean confirmed.

Shaine Jones may also be the Canadian Jensen Ackles.

I don’t make the rules ok?

Back in the US, the boys surprise Jody with a visit. 

In case you forgot the episode prior to this one:

Side note: domestic Jody gives me life. 

We’re clearly supposed to see how Jody is a mom figure for the boys, and it feels nice for them to have that, especially since Mary is Taking Some Space.  Their entire dynamic warms even my cold black soul.

[romantic scene of a couple silhouetted against a sunset while sweeping music plays on Jody’s TV. The couple kisses.] 

DEAN

[his mouth full of pizza] Jody, you watching some kind of chick flick here?

JODY

Well, Dean. I’m a chick. 

Kim Rhodes YOU ARE A DELIGHT.  A side note - I know this exchange is supposed to be funny, but I feel sad for Dean (who clearly is a rom com chick).  This is a perfect example of Dean struggling to present some fabricated image of heteronormative masculinity that’s not the heart of who he actually is.  His surprise that a “badass sheriff chick” can also enjoy rom coms makes me fucking upset.  

ALSO:

Anyway, Asa has passed on and the boys tag along with Jody to the wake in support.  

SAM

Yeah, no, Jody. We… we know you’ll be fine, but… you know, we never go to hunter gatherings, outside of bars. Dad always said they were trouble, so…

DEAN

Yes, you’d be doing us a favor if you let us tag along.

***more receipts that John Winchester was an isolating abuser.  They could have at least had a normal HUNTER life and friends who hunted.

SAM  

That is a big house. [Music continues playing, coming from inside the house now]

***We now establish one “theme” of the episode.

JODY

Family home. Asa was just a guy. 

AKA pretty brutal implication that Asa didn’t have a family of his own.

Speaking of implications:

[Jody removes her coat and the three of them begin mingling. Dean finds his way to the kitchen and a cooler full of beer] DEAN

No label. Well, that’s a red flag. 

****LOL WHAT THE FUCK IS THE REASON****

....

....

....

GIRL SEND HELP

Enter Bucky, who is actually (SPOILER!) the villain of the episode.

Do all hunters just walk around with this manly flannel/weird symbolic necklace combo?  Looking at you Bucky and Dean.  

Dean is surprised to find that people know who he is:

But doesn’t seem to have an issue with it until -

***Someone who just bragged the entire five hour car ride about killing Hitler shouldn’t be this concerned about what people are saying about him right? 

Or is he thinking it may involve something he isn’t comfortable sharing - since apparently there are things Dean doesn’t feel comfortable sharing as established by the prior couch conversation with Jody?  Hmmmmmm...

***Compare the expressions.  The “you’ve died four times” response is the same as the smug/proud “I killed Hitler” face.  The reaction to the “stories” is the “hey this is my personal business” reaction Dean had to Sam’s Japanese erotica art form comment. He is thinking specifically about something personal.

I wonder what it could be.

I don’t think any one had to teach Max Banes the art of seduction, but also thank you.

Also, manifesting Dean being raised by Max and Alicia’s Cool Witch Mom instead of John Trash Winchester.  Because that’s what we’re supposed to think here, correct?  Two sibling hunters usually present a brother mirror.

Worth noting Sam’s surprise that witches can also be hunters.  The John Winchester Bigotry Brain Rot runs deep.  (GOD the Sam-witch thing would have driven him crazy I LIVE FOR THAT).

Dean escapes to Asa’s office/room and proceeds to go through his things.

[Dean is in Asa’s office and finds an angel blade mounted on blue velvet inside an ornate glass-lidded box. He opens it, reaches in and pulls out the angel blade, comfortably spinning it in his hand when Sam walks in.]

SAM

Hey.

DEAN

Oh, hi. This is a real Angel Blade. I mean, this guy was legit. 

***that’s weird, why does Canadian!Dean have an angel blade?  We haven’t heard anything about angels yet, and it wasn’t in the opening montage.  Hmmmmmm, I say. Hmmmmmmm...

***Sam is also concerned about The Stories They Tell 

This one particularly:

Honestly I don’t know why he’s THAT surprised that people know he was possessed by Lucifer?  Didn’t he start like multiple apocalypses?  That’s something people tend to be in the know about. Anyhoo.

DEAN

Yeah. Apparently we’re a little bit legendary. 

SAM 

Yeah, but, I mean, so was Asa. Then a hunt went bad, and he ended up hanging from a tree, alone in the woods.

DEAN

He died on the job. No better way to go. 

SAM

You really believe that? 

DEAN

Yeah. What, you don’t? I mean, come on, Sam, it's not like we're in the “live till you're 90, die in your sleep” business. This? [Dean points at Asa’s hunting wall] This only ends one way. 

***Insert deep internal screaming about 15x20 here***

It’s Jody’s turn to be uncomfortable as we find out she and Asa were more than just friends and everyone knew it and Said Things About It and Told Stories About It.

HMMMMMMM...

Dean is surprised that Jody not only enjoys rom coms, but ruggedly hot men. Another thing they have in common.

As Dean comes to terms with the idea that Jody can be a mother figure and also a human person with a life and her own feelings and needs and thoughts, enter the person whom said lesson is actually about:

This is a Kim Rhodes Facial Expression stan account now.

So cute how Jody knows immediately that Dean is not okay.  Time to reach:

JODY

Huh. Is that why you spent the entire ride up here telling me in extreme, excruciating detail how you killed Hitler, but, uh, you neglected to mention the fact that your mom is back from the dead? 

***look, it’s another Dean doesn’t like others knowing personal information parallel!***

DEAN 

Yeah, no big deal. 

JODY

That’s a lie.

DEAN

JODY …

JODY

Look, maybe this isn't my place, and this is epic stuff, but

JODY

Yeah. Because what if I’ve changed. What if they changed? What if it just didn’t work out the way I wanted?  If you wanna talk about anything

***Killing Hitler used yet again to show Dean doesn’t care about oversharing hunting stories, but he doesn’t like for people to know personal ones.  Also, Jody mentions her son and her husband.  Her family and her romantic partner.  

Dean wasn’t just reunited with Mary this season. He was also reunited with Cas, after saying goodbye to him at the end of Season 11 when he headed to what he thought was going to be his death as the Amara-bomb.

So, this conversation isn't just about Mary (the “anything”).  It’s also about Cas (the”...absolutely anything”).

Mary chats with Mama Fox and more Points Are Made about hunters not getting to have a “normal life” or family:

MARY

I saved his life. 

LORRAINE

[scoffing] What am I supposed to say to that? After you, Asa got so… Hunting was his whole life. He never married. Never had a family, kids. And now… enjoy the wake. 

***sending Mary on a guilt spiral about Asa (mirroring her other guilt spiral about hunting as a life for her own sons)

Speaking of mirrors:

BUCKY

And Asa loved that Jeep. Fuses were shorted, fuel line was busted. Ah, he didn’t care. He’d just roll up his sleeves, he’d get right to work. 

Time to learn about today’s Big Bad.

BUCKY

Jael. He’s a crossroads demon. And he hangs people. It’s his thing. Snaps their neck, slits their throat. He’s a real piece of work. 

***Wait a second.  Jael is a demon?  Don’t...angel’s names usually end in “el” in SPNverse?

Samandriel.

Uriel.

Gabriel.

Raphael.

Gadreel.

Castiel.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.

Anyways the demon [questionable] killed Asa and now everyone  is trapped and also In Grave Danger.  

BUCKY

Exactly. Right, so five years later, Jael– he came back, and he came for Asa. 

JODY

How so? 

BUCKY

Asa was seeing this woman, right? She had a kid. 

LORRAINE

Marlene. 

BUCKY

Yeah, Marlene. Jael got into her. It didn’t matter that he was killing people, he wanted Asa to know it was personal. He gets off on it. 

***that’s so weird, didn’t someone else in the show start seeing a woman with a kid - 

what a sexy little coincidence.

oh and didnt  a supernatural being come back right around that time too - 

HMMMMMMMM.  No killing though.  That’s the difference between angels and demons, I guess.

(meanwhile Dean has been drinking alone outside - as he does, and is realizing he can’t get back in)

HI QUEEN

Also, this immediately took me to 

this show isn’t fair.

****sob break****

Jael Posession 1:

So curious how there are two siblings and then one gets possessed by something Satanic and the other one is good at seducing men.

SO FUCKING CURIOUS.

Jael Possession 2:

Elvis. Random.  Though he was the guy who brought up the Stories Sam Was Surprised Were Circulating -

He was also oddly interested in it.  Methinks Elvis thoroughly enjoyed the Jael possession.

Bilie gets Dean back in the house.  The words “one-time deal” are said a lot of times.

BONUS: Jensen why are you so pretty:

The hunters get to work, and I live for Max Bane’s pentagram aesthetic.

MAX

I like a Fifth Pentacle of Mars. It’s got more character. 

***TBH, same.

Jael possession 3:

****Kim Rhodes is even better when she is playing evil.

JODY/JAEL:

I had so hoped you’d kill your mom. Wouldn’t that be a riot? 

[Mary draws the angel blade and charges at Jody. She cuts Jody’s arm before Sam wrestles her away.] 

SAM

No! Mom!

MARY

What are you doing?! She’s a demon. We kill demons. 

******WOOF MARY - I REPEAT TO YOU THAT THE JOHN TRASH WINCHESTER BRAIN ROT RUNS DEEP.

Also did you immediately flash back to this with me?

Gets me thinking that Dean’s feelings for Cas are made twice as complicated by the fact that he is also a supernatural creature.  Another Reason Why John Winchester Would Disapprove.

****Just as he would Disapprove of Sam Being Possessed By the Devil and all that (never forget he told Dean to kill him because of the whole made unclean by demon blood thing). 

Right on cue:

JODY/JAEL

Oh, I have heard so many stories about you Winchesters. And I desperately want the Lucifer thing to be true.  

***Stories again. Jael proceeds to go into Stories That Are Dark Personal Shameful Secrets:

JAEL

As for the rest of you, I have been inside your heads. I know all about you. For example, the twins. Too frightened to tell anyone that they actually came to say goodbye to their daddy. Or the grieving mother who hated the fact that her son was a hunter so much she’d hide his gear, she’d sabotage his Jeep, anything to keep him from hunting. Not that it worked. Could’ve tried harder, huh? 

[She gestures at her own face] And this meatsuit you all seem to care so much about. She actually fantasized about a life with Asa. Can you believe that? Like that worthless man– 

***HMMMMMMMMM

[Bucky gets off the floor and sneaks up behind Jody/Jael] 

BUCKY 

Shut your filthy mouth. 

[Jody/Jael grabs Bucky by the neck and forces him to his knees] 

JODY/JAEL

And you. Bucky. Brave, brave Bucky. I was there that night. Tell these nice, stupid people what you did. Tell them what you took from me. Asa was mine. 

***Excuse me? THIS IS GETTING VERY...subtextual.  A dark timeline supernatural being/hunter relationship [ending badly because demons only know how to take, consume and possess]? ...Asael?  CURIOUS. 

They chant the exorcism, a different hunter doing each iteration (beautifully done) 

and send Jael back to hell, but not before Bucky shares his Shameful Story - he’s the one who killed Asa.

Elaboration:

BUCKY

Asa, he was just all– he was just always so stubborn. Look, we were in the woods. [We see the scene play out as Bucky describes it] Jael, he… he was taunting him. Asa wanted to chase him, but he didn’t have the angel blade. I said, “Let’s go back.” He called me a coward, and he shoved me, so I shoved him back, and he fell. He hit his head. Asa? I didn’t mean to do it. But it was a mistake. Asa. Asa? An accident. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do. Asa hated that damn demon so much that I just…

DEAN

Oh, you thought people would buy that Jael killed him? So you hung your best friend to cover your own ass. 

BUCKY

What are you gonna do to me? 

ALICIA:

Tell everyone, every hunter we meet. They’re gonna know your name, Bucky. Know what you did. 

MAX

You like stories. This is the story everyone’s gonna tell about you. Forever. 

***Shameful Stories that Define You, what a theme.  Also, definitely a supernatural being potentially having some subtextual feelings for Canadian!Dean.  Hmmm.

***Funeral pyre and side discussion about how Asa did have a family, and children, and a potential supernatural sidepiece.

In conclusion, Supernatural is a love story.  Thank you for watching this dark timeline/Canadian dub.  You’re dismissed for the day.  Go eat bacon.

[imonlyhereformyclass]

Sin City Bombshells

For this post, I am going to be analyzing the following female characters: Nancy, Wendy, Gail, Miho, and Shellie. I am going to be going in depth about Lucille in another post, when I discuss lesbians. I know it’s a lot, but each of these characters represent a different spectrum of female sexuality, and to a certain extent, objectification. Most of the significant female characters are in the sex industry, as prostitutes or strippers, respectively. 

First, we have Nancy Callahan, played by Jessica Alba. Her story is brought by Bruce Willis’ character, John Hartigan, saving her when she was a child from a child predator. They part for several years and meet again in the future when Hartigan gets out of jail. He sees her as a 19 year old working as a stripper. She tells him that she never stopped thinking about him and has fallen in love with him. It is implied that they start dating afterwards. I don’t mind an age gap in relationships but this one rubbed me the wrong way. Hartigan met her as an 11 year old and he was grown. Now that she is older, she is viewed as a sexual object. I think that this represents the barely legal fetish that a lot of men carry. Along with this, Nancy is the perfect example of the stereotypical image of a stripper. She is a young woman (college age, fresh out of high school) with a heavy baggage of childhood trauma mixed with potential daddy issues. I think she fell in love with Hartigan because he saved her as her lowest. A savior, of sorts. I expected her to have a bigger role in the story because she is a huge name and is even on the cover. She only appears for a small bit and was only accompanied by Hartigan. She is constantly sexualized by her now stripper job and her kidnapping. I think it would have been a cool idea if Hartigan and her teamed up, like a Batman and Robin situation. Her role as a film noir trope is the ��The good-bad girl stands in between the girl-next-door and the femme fatale, which highlights her moral ambiguity” (Barroso). Nancy has an innocent image (as we remember her from the beginning of the movie as a child), however, is now grown and had a darker moral code. Her becoming a sex worker also ruptures her moral ambiguity. Some still believe that being involved in the sex industry is immoral and evil. 

Next is Wendy. She is played by Jamie King. Wendy is the twin sister of Goldie, Marv’s prostitute lover. The reason she is given that name is the striking image of her soft golden billowing hair. Goldie was killed, hence Marv (Mickey Rourke) going on the hunt to find her killer. He blames himself for her murder and goes on a revenge spree to avenge her as he couldn’t save her previously. Since the beginning, she is framed in a sexual lens. She is described as an angel sent from heaven. She is naked the second the audience sees her in a passionate lovemaking scene. She is enveloped in light. Dana Leventhal observes, “The men idealize, romanticize, pine for the women by placing them on impossible pedestals (circumscribed by sexuality and desire) as cherished imaginings and visions, and through this possession make it their duty to guard and safekeeping them, especially since the women are jeopardized or victimized by brutal crime and injustice” (Leventhal). He finds out that Goldie has a twin, Wendy. Wendy is hardened and dead set on revenge, as she should be. She is a no nonsense type of woman. Wendy is tough and willing to bring the murderers to justice. She is still sexualized, nonetheless, as Marv always compared her to her sister, and viewed her the same way. Donaldson writes, “The women of classic noir are often alluring, moral ambiguous, and two steps ahead of the men in the story” (Donaldson). Wendy is alluring, as she starkly resembles her prostitute twin sister. She is morally ambiguous as she is dark and calculating, yet she joins Marv (the anti-hero) on avenging the wrongful murder of her sister. Wendy is one of my favorite characters as I liked how merciless she was. 

Gail, played by Rosario Dawson, serves as one of two women of color characters. That is a discussion for another day, as I am going to be analyzing her character. She is the femme fatale. Barroso defines the trope as, “The femme fatale...is mysterious and seductive, known for using her charms to ensnare men and get them into dangerous, and most often, deadly situations. Her main characteristic is using her feminine sexual traits as a way to achieve hidden purposes” (Barroso). She is tough and isn’t going down without a fight. She is the epitome of female empowerment in the eyes of men: tough and battle ready, and looks good doing it. From the picture alone, she is scantily clad. She looks great and I like her outfit but I know the reason why she is dressed like this. She is cunning and commanding. She resembles and reminds me of a dominatrix. Sexually dangerous and isn’t afraid to beat down men. She has masculine traits like being the leader of the gang and she is gritty and domineering. She kills men in a severely violent manner and is strong and self sufficient. 

I freaking love Miho. She is, by far, my favorite character in the film. The movies that Devon Aoki appears in, her characters always reign supreme. There is a reason Suki from 2 Fast 2 Furious is still so popular and raved about. However, there is something I hated about her character. She didn't say a word. Her character is the epitome of age old Asian stereotypes: the silent ninja. Miho would strike her sword on her opponents in the same “badass” manner as a ninja would. Her character had so much potential and I feel like it was a waste to have her be silent the entire time. Both her and Gail are the tough girls in the film. Leventhal writes, “The women are not helpless, powerless, or weak; rather, they are cunning and battle-ready. Not only do they refrain from asking for help from the male protagonists, but they either resist or fight to save themselves from their enemies” (Leventhal). Miho is presented differently from the other girls of the film. Her, along with Gail, are not the average damsel in distress, which I like. Laura Woodhouse rants, “Miho...initially appears to be the only truly powerful woman in Sin City. She is not possessed by a man, she is not a victim, she is certainly not physically passive as she goes on to kill many more men and can easily win a fight with any man...It is almost as though Miho is a different creature, a member of a race of silent killers that exist only to perform acts of violence. Quite simply, she cannot be presented as a ‘normal’ female because she has superior killing skills to a man and this threatens the patriarchal nature of Sin City. The creators of Sin City rob Miho of a voice in order to justify her power” (”The F Word”). 

Last, but not least, there is Shellie. Played by the late Brittany Murphy, she is a prostitute. Her costume in her major story arc is a black underwear set with a white oversized button down shirt. Given that she was in her own home and she is allowed to wear what she wants, but it rectifies the stereotype that women walk around their home scantily clad, sexually available for overnight guests. Along with that, it fits her day job of being eyed on by the voyeuristic audience. Shellie is conceived as the victim character; she needs the help of her boyfriend to save her from her deranged pimp of a boss. Leventhal notes, “the traditional formulations or projections of femininity as sexuality are retained, as are the concomitant age-old misogynistic conceits of male domination/paternalism in the guise of safety and defense of women, i.e., the cliche that women are weak and need rescuing by men from other men” (Leventhal). Shellie mirrors the poor princess locked up in a tower, needing her Prince Charming to come and save her. 

Barroso, Malu, et al. “The Representation of Women in Film Noir.” High On Films, 10 Oct. 2019, www.highonfilms.com/women-in-film-noir/.

Donaldson, Kayleigh. “Problematic Faves: Sin City.” SYFY WIRE, SYFY WIRE, 24 Apr. 2020, www.syfy.com/syfywire/problematic-faves-sin-city.

Leventhal, Dana. “Superwomen? The Bad-Ass Babes of Sin City – or Are They?” Bright Lights Film Journal, 28 Apr. 2019, brightlightsfilm.com/superwomen-bad-ass-babes-sin-city/.

Woodhouse, Laura, et al. “Sin City.” Word, 18 June 2005, thefword.org.uk/2005/06/sin_city/.

[boog-shitposting-edition]

So I been playing a ton of Kenshi and watched all of the Mandalorian in a single day shortly before and it’s got me thinking about what makes what I consider a good action hero, because there was definitely a time where I thought the phrase “good action hero” was an oxymoron.

I grew up around some angry, unstable dudes who had that bad habit of watching horror movies and opining that in the same situation they would simply shoot the monster with the gun the character was holding. I got some views on the model of masculinity that sees the male ideal as functionally a tool for performing violence, condescension and occasional reddit-approved banter with all other emotional responses pared away or suppressed. This seems like a good way to manufacture a product for performing labor rather than developing a whole functional human being. So I generally veer away from that sort of thing pretty hard.

So I’m resistant to the Mandalorian at first, right? All the ads are basically star wars apocryphica and a power armored fighty gun boy. The last star wars thing I’d seen was The Rise Of Skywalker and my faith in the franchise is low. But it’s been a hot minute, the hype dies down, and my girlfriend is a better and more patient fan than I’ll ever be so we give it a go. And the first thing that really nails it for me is what a DORK the mando is. I’m delighted, his life is violence interdispersed with being an absolute buttfumble disaster. He slips and falls over things he could never have predicted, he burns his life down for a baby he finds in the desert. Pedro Pascal references Boba Fetts stiff menace and plays it off as someone who has no social skills other than stiff menace and it’s FASCINATING. Him explaining to the village woman who is obviously into him that he hasn’t taken the armor off since he was thirteen isn’t a badass declaration of martial devotion, it is the single saddest and most awkward interaction I have ever seen filmed and it hits all the harder for the fact that this is a character I’ve mostly ever seen as an action figure with a spring loaded missile backpack. Instead of being a faceless emotionless action-cudgel, Pedro amps up the body language in his acting to really sell you this heavily psychologically damaged, desperate, viking-space-catholic mess with no life skills other than violence and a devotion to his people’s creed that borders on obsession. Rather than paring himself down making him a psychological fortress, the Mando is an incredibly obvious walking raw nerve (”I’m not sad-” “Yes you are.”) So, Kenshi.

I’ve heard about this game on and off a few years and finally got it a few days ago. It’s been in early access since 2012, appears to be mostly getting finished by its modding community, and glitches like absolute woah. There’s no core storyline, just a post-apocalyptic setting with some surprisingly detailed autogenerated NPC interactions with some options for starting conditions and the sole goal of surviving. It’s essentially a rapid sequence of story prompts hidden underneath a closely interlocked system of XP grinding, survival mechanics and dismemberment algorithms, and is appallingly my shit.

My first run at the game got pretty far, went from a lone confused desert wanderer to a 13 man village running a tidy copper-mining operation to trade with the ant people. In the early game, fight mechanics are basically a death sentence; my first character immediately got her leg torn off by a goat and I had to restart. All skills grow only by excersizing them; you have to fight to get better at fighting, you have to LOSE fights to gain toughness, and when you lose a fight the consequences can range from “these bandits are stealing all your food” to “this monster is eating your leg/heart/head” to “these slavers are taking your character away and your game experience is Different now.” And while I was proud of myself for finding a way to survive, grow and thrive with a low-combat squad, once I tried the basebuilding mechanics that basically just meant my town was a source of free food and money for local bandits while my squad starved to death, unable to abandon our locale. So I got fed up and restarted.

As mentioned the game gives you different start positions; wanderer gives you 1 character, some money and pants. Guy and his dog gives you a dog, which is fun. Exiled officer starts you with good skills and the hatred of your former commander, which complicates things. Cannibal Hunters starts you already in a fistfight with 30 cannibals. It’s exciting times. But I figure this time I’d like to start my squad a LITTLE more capable of defending themselves, so I look at the Holy Sword start; you’re a bandit who starts with a stolen holy weapon, minuses in most skills, no money and a 20,000 bounty on your head from both major factions.

So I proceed to character creation and notice I can pick whatever I want for player species/subspecies with this start. There’s robot people and warriors made of stone and baseline humans and all sorts of fun options, but you remember those ant people I mentioned before? In game they’re called the Hivers, you find ‘em in 3 recruitable varieties (prince, worker drone and soldier) and they have an interesting in-universe quirk; ones that grow up in the hive are pheramone-addicted, chemically wired into the needs and wants of all of their fellows, but if you’re away from your kin for over a fortnight this addiction dries out incredibly fast and cannot be reinstated. Hivers who ever spend any time away from the hive are declared “lost ones,” and are often taken advantage of in the outside world as they long for a new community.

In survival sims I dont often play dedicated fighters, I always feel like being a brutal fight-beast isn’t really in the spirit of finding a niche to exploit and growing from a fumbling plebian to a major power. But I was already starting this game with my ONLY advantage being a nice sword. And the soldier hivers gain a buff to experience gained for melee attack and toughness, and a debuff to literally all else.

Manual labor. Science. Engineering. Farming. Cooking. First aide. In a setting that heavily prioritized your ability to survive using multiple vital skill sets, my character would start with negatives in his skills for putting on band-aids and FEEDING himself. So I gave it a go.

Getting more wild here, it turns out the Holy Sword opening also takes place in a time in the setting with more recent warfare, so a bunch of the starting villages are destroyed and it appears that more of the nearby cities are controlled by the factions that have a bounty on me. So my character CAN’T rely on other people or meet anyone to recruit at first. He can run, he can scrounge and scavenge, and as mentioned above starting characters can take lethal damage from GOATS so he can’t even hunt for food; the only way I was getting a meal was if I robbed someone or ran into merchants on the road I could hawk my salvage to for a scrap of bread.

He eventually finds someone willing to join him on his travels in spite of being flat broke, a shek named Ruka running from a dishonerable loss on the battlefield, and comparing their skills he’s so useless for everything besides combat that I assign him to bodyguard her. And again, this game’s appeal is that the survival mechanics make good story prompts, so imagine that in character.

“Fine, I need a change. I’ll join you.” “Thank god. Lead the way boss.” “What?”

Things regarding my characters bounty are starting to heat up in town, so we head north into hiver territory. We get attacked by bandits and heavily injured, my soldier gets knocked out, so Ruka picks him up and carries him until we find a hive town. I saw these guys all the time in my last playthrough, I survived by selling to them, they’re super friendly, should be fine. Ruka walks into the local shop and before I can have her ask for directions and a medikit the shopkeeper is already shouting- “SKREEE! LOST ONE! GET OUT! LOST ONES BRING MADNESS”

Apparently, my protagonist being a hiveless hiver means there’s a THIRD faction that’s hostile to him; his own goddamn people. Ruka has to leave him under a tree not just outside but like 50 feet from the edge of town, and just has  to hope none of the local wild megafauna eats him while she rushes back in to buy things from the now abruptly friendlier shopkeep.

I’m finally sitting there, having Ruka watch my soldier hiver sleep while she cooks scavanged meat and waits for him to finish healing, that I realize what the story being generated here is and it’s a good one; a Hive soldier whose only skills are violence, frantically scavenging and stealing to survive until he can find the one circumstance where he’s comfortable, sacrificing himself to protect others. He steals a sword that’s obviously important to two major governments, just because he knows it’s powerful and thinks that power will justify his continued existence as a hiveless soldier drone, essentially buying his way back into his people’s good graces by performing his function. Literally wandering the world until he found a single person who was willing to boss him around again and devoting himself to their defense to a state of pathological damage just to feel like he has a hive again. It’s sad. It’s badass. It’s deeply, unsettlingly pathetic.

But I also think it’s what makes a really really good gruff action hero!

Hypercompetence in violence is really interesting when you acknowledge the damage it can do to your humanity in the storytelling! The Mandalorian is unsuccessful in repressing his empathy response so he just tries to tough through the pain it causes him as best he can, until he meets The Child and it snaps. The Hiver is essentially playing pretend at being still valued as a product for committing violence, even in the face of being openly rejected for his previously esteemed role. This stuff is INTERESTING.

TL;DR version, a lot of these “supersoldier raised by the military/fight wizards/karate” characters are super boring and obnoxious when they’re put forward as power fantasies, and really interesting when you realize that being raised by Fight Wizards is why they’ve never had a girlfriend and called their handgun “mom” once.

[sammybuckyy]

IRON MAN ONE COMMENTS

Iron man one notes

Tony:

- Sexist

- Arrogant

- He doesn’t respect others but especially the lead driver.

- Assumes people aren’t allowed to talk before assuming they wouldn’t want to talk to him.

- Instantly the privileged person

- He alienates the people and someone sticks up for them and he alienates her.

So far unlikeable character established (1:46) into the movie

- The scene was a little self aware but now they’re all like is it true this accomplishment thingy.

- People around him admiring him having a lot sex with women...

- Terrence Howard likes Tony

- BY THIS POINT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO LIKE AND BE ROOTING FOR TONY

No one calls Tony out!! How are we supposed to like him?!

There is an extremely prestigious award he decides to gamble instead. Why do girls throw themselves at him?

The one person who calls him out for his bullshit SLEEPS with him (WTF)

The angle they’re going for is: he is a douchebag but *smooth*

Maybe this is a Social Commentary about how the wealthy only surround themselves with people who validate their opinions?

He has no respect for the woman who called him out.

People let him get away with not respecting anything.

Pepper is condescending and judgy 

The double standard Pepper has!!! (ughhh I really wanted to like Pepper)

Allow me to explain: Pepper was being super condescending and having no respect for this woman, and meanwhile practically warships Tony doing everything for him, and protecting him when he treats her horribly. The woman didn’t do anything wrong. She was just a woman who was wearing less clothes and who had a one night stand. and Tony literally had the one night stand with her. DOUBLE STANDARD!!!

Pepper implying “Oh I hate you!! you had sex with Tony Stark you gold digger”

PEPPER LITERALLY SAID: “I do everything and anything tony stark requires”. (in a cold condescending tone)

And we’re supposed to be rooting for Pepper now.

#Pepper is not like other girls

Pepper is doing all the work but she is also validating Tony. 

The girl wearing the masculine outfit is the one we’re supposed to be respecting. <— THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

Tony is a lazy playboy?

TONY SAID “I don’t like it when you have plans” ITS HER BIRTHDAY (11:57) he didn’t know her birthday 

He’s all annoying and she’s all like smiling ‘oh Tony’!!

 Pepper likes Tony BEFORE HIS REDEMPTION ARC?!? ← (afterwards note: I realize that Tony may not have had a full redemption arc, I’d just assumed he did, a lot of things were unclear)

This means their relationship does NOT work!!!!!

The world revolves around Tony, that’s what he thinks and the world is proving that to be true -.-

Terrence Howard said “you don’t respect yourself so you don’t respect me?” <— Tony doesn’t respect himself? I- THIS MOVIE IS CONFUSING ME SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME TONY’S CHARACTER

Terrence Howards is calling him out (confusedly), good for him. And obviously Tony is changing the subject and stuff 

So the NEXT person who calls Tony out also gets wooed by Tony and is drinking← I think is to be “humorous.” 

Takeaways from this:

Everyone deep down is who Tony wants them to be!! 

People who try to call out Tony for his bullshit are actually stupid :)

This is a funny joke because Tony is always right

This is a funny joke because people who say Tony isn’t always right, are wrong :)

Making Terrence Howard’s lower than Tony to be like anyone who insults Tony is not as good as Tony. (14:09 approx)

Maybe he’s lacking in the common sense 20:16.

Maybe he is supposed to be brave and good?

Maybe no one has told him what to do so he doesn’t understand this concept.

We are obviously supposed to feel sympathy for him.

There are so many other people who are more extreme than Tony which makes the audience supposed to root for him, cause at least he isn’t “evil”. 

Having Arabs make Tony make weapons invalidated the American mass murderer thing.

American military is the greatest thing ever, the Arabs are bad, how dare they use our weapons.

You can’t just give a pep talk and after words play cool pay off music, and have them organize we’re never gonna make it out- we are gonna make it out.

They are your loyal customers sir 23:35

So many foreign antagonists. Ugh 

Are you gonna tell me the plan

MORAL OF STORY: Everyone is incompetent excempt for Tony Stark (26:22)

Oh no this guy is evil monologuing about how he wants to take America’s power omg horrors

Tony is willing to advocate for human  31:00

TONY REFUSING TO BUILD WEAPONS:

I don’t think this was a development for Tony that he refused to build the weapons. 

Because they never established Tony being self preservative. He does seem like a good assistant so maybe it isn’t character development. This is supposed to be selfless. 

“I’m a macho man who steps in to save my underlings.” Is more of the vibe it gives off

33:17 perfectly shaved beard lol

33- Stark always telling the incompetent underlings what to do.

37:05 furthering the idea that everyone is stupid except Tony and Tony is so much more cooler and power fuller than others

You realize scientist guy had a dead family Iron Man doesn’t listen to people do this why do we find out now? 38:12

39- cool cinematography 

Intended reaction from audience- wow so badass so funny everyone is so incompetent compared to thee Tony Stark (all hail)

Justification FOR TONY STARK BRUTALLY MURDERING A BUNCH OF DEFENSELESS PEOPLE- anger from a dead friend?? But the “my turn” line was so like a JOKE

40:34 made Tony an unsmooth landing!! Yayyyyyyy

“Not bad” is what he says! HE IS APATHETIC

We don’t get to see his reaction to grief 

I just kinda feel like he is back... but like not changed.

He is back- using his social power to make everyone sit down, “we sit down because we’re all the same” vibes

He’s like wow my weapons are being used by non Americans- the injustice!!! These weapons are actually killing AMERICANS! (National anthem plays in background)

He is like- damn you guys for not noticing what an asshole I was (45:32)

Tony: I have changed I am leaving thousands of people unemployed :) (45:45)

He thinks he knows best, he is arrogant and egocentric. He doesn’t listen to anyone’s opinions.

PEPPER obviously uncomfortable with doing Tony heart surgery don’t make people do stuff they aren’t comfortable with!!!! (especially people who are going to be love interests!!!)

Pepper is also ~incompetent~ Tony blamed her for not being able to do something- SHE LIITERALLY SAID SHE COULDN’T!!!!

1:03 “further Jarvis” (flying into the sky too high)- Tony is doing reckless endangerment?

Overworking? -porque

1:05 To Why does Pepper like Tony? Has Tony been anything other than lazy?

People do NOT need to tell Tony that he is good, they need to tell Tony that he sucks.

The story is like “don’t hate yourself Tony” and Tony had never shown any signs of this.

Pepper SO FRIECKEN OBSESSED AND SUPPORTING HIM AND FOLLOWING HIM. Pepper is a stupid love interest. (I’m sorry I really wanted to like her but I hate her character so much for this story)

Pepper is nothing but a love interest. She should have pushed Tony to be a better person. The only people Tony kept in his life are the ones that boosted his own ego. (back to the social commentary I’m SURE Marvel intended)

This movie could have benefitted from enemies to lovers trope.

1:05 no consequences for intending to obliterate everyone

Yas Jarvis-love you vision!!!

-.- everyone in love with Tony -.- (1:08 girls squealing)

1:09 Tony makes her dance and she looks uncomfortable REALLY TONY?!??

“I could fire you”-Tony Stark to his love interest

He forces her to do things and he is her boss. And then she laughs -.-

1:15 he didn’t want refugees to get hurt? He wants to help people now, what was his turning point? What was the moment when he decided to help people? THIS IS A CONFUSING MOVIE

He was locked out and he is my company!! So not actually character development.

Why did Tony Stark start caring about innocent people?

- because the tv was explaining it and he was all like I shall help now

- The time in Afghanistan 

- No impact?

- Let’s stop doing weapons to protect the innocent people? 

- Because he gained empathy, but that contradicts

- Okay strong black and white morality 

- America good every other country bad.

- He had complete apathy because he deemed everyone bad but then he deems some people innocent 

The people he deems good he also deems incompetent. 

1:21 Tony’s not telling the war machine that they shouldn’t kill him because he is Iron Man.

Is Tony not happy? Why is a smart dude like himself be so stupid?

1:25 another classic joke of Tony knowing best and Terrence Howards being wrong 

OKAY THATS ALL I GOT SRY I DIDN’T FINISH I WAS BORED DURING THE CLIMAX

[arsnovacadenza]

So I finally played The Wolf Among Us

 Being the big bad wolf fan that I am, I’d been dying to get my hands on the game after seeing images of Bigby floating around pinterest. Then I found out it was discounted around 50% yesterday and I knew I GOTTA have it.

Here’s a not-so-short rundown of my thoughts since no one’d read my full review anyway. Also, bear in mind that I never read the graphic novels so I’ll be judging the characters and plot solely on the first and (currently) only game. Spoilers under the cut!

The good:

Bigby. God I ENJOYED playing as him. There was great satisfaction being able to play this rough, potentially dangerous character and see him grow into this person that Fabletown finally grows to accept. During my first playthrough, I wasn’t able to play him as a brutal, full blown anti-hero because I need to keep him on the community’s good side. I’m definitely gonna replay the chapters and choose the more violent options and see him go full badass wolf on everyone. Speaking of badass, I constantly kept thinking to myself “Wow, I’d LOVE to play as him in an action game.” That one big fight scene against Bloody Mary made me go “You’re doing great, sweetie! Keep it up!” 

The story definitely got me hooked. There wasn’t a time when I wished a speed button was available unlike Hashihime in the Old Book Town where I got bored during a sex scene.

It didn’t remind me of Happily N’ever After and its forced self-awareness that borders on annoying. Mini rant: I love when stories are set in a world where fairy tale characters meet and interact with each other, but that doesn’t mean every work that does it interests me because the handling of  the theme may not quite work (for me at least). I haven’t rewatched Shrek, but I never rolled my eyes every time they make a joke about a fairytale character. I never watched Once Upon a Time but I feel it’s gonna be a pretty mixed bag? It’s just weird seeing all these adult characters taking the whole thing seriously and not in an endearingly self-aware kind of way. The Wolf Among Us kinda did it nicely in that yeah, these were fairy tale characters. Let’s see them work their way as poor people living in New York. I like how they take on the poverty angle because it kinda reminds me of my country, sorta. 

To my surprise, the fight scenes DID IT for me. It’s satisfying to be able to beat the shit outta people I wanted to punch from the very beginning of the game (the Tweedles and Mary. Boy I wanted to see them banged up real badly). To be honest, I never played these Telltale games and I had my doubts about the combat mechanics. Turns out they were done pretty well. Also, I can’t shut up about the final brawl against Mary because....Big Bad Boi.

The meh:

Most of the character designs didn’t wow me. I could name the characters whose design I liked: Bigby, Georgie, Flycatcher, Bluebeard. The rest? Not so much. Some characters like Nerissa were a hit-or-miss while the rest are predictable (Bufkin, Crane, etc) or completely forgettable (Faith and Vivian’s design. Faith’s was at least memorable because her introduction was). The worst one, to me, was Bloody freakin’ Mary. Her design was simply underwhelming. I absolutely adored her true form, but her glamored form was simply...not there. I understand they don’t  want to play the edgy up to eleven which was probably why they didn’t make her tattoo-ed up like Georgie (which is a shame because her emblem has a cool design. Imagine the cool tattoos she could’ve had), but her design was just half-assed (to me anyway). Not gonna lie, I actually was hooked up by her first appearance  —a tough looking enemy with big butch energy  —and then she opened her mouth and she sounds like fucking Bayonetta. This is probably just my personal taste, but I hate the femme fatale villain trope to death and I hate seeing this masculine lady sounding like a generic seductive villainess. Plus, I didn’t see her much during my playthrough so she ended up NOT coming across a real threat or a worthy opponent to Bigby, just a violent bully I need to get through. 

The love interest character’s development was a mixed bag. I didn’t hate Snow White (like some people seem to do), but I was disappointed that she drifted away from Bigby before she gets the chance to solidify herself as his equal and partner. I know she marries him in the graphic novels, but I didn’t quite root for them to be together in the game. Mostly because of the boss-employee dynamic they had towards the end of the game, but it’s also because I also started to see how she didn’t grow to be somebody who understands Bigby and the plight of the non-human characters of Fabletown (case in point being Mr. Toad and TJ). She keeps saying that she does understand what life is like for people like Holly and I did sympathize with her when she talks to Bigby about her wanting to make Fabletown a better place, but the plot cuts her development once she has to act as Deputy Major in Crane’s place. She eventually becomes affixed as a cog in the machine. Sure, she’s needed to keep the system running, but her insisting on going by the (outdated) book just didn’t work I kept getting reminded of Louis from Beastars and how got his character development was. In Louis’ case, he started out as an covert bigot who strongarms his way to obtain authority, thinking he’d be able to make the world a better place. He does make good out of it, but we also see him coming to terms with his vulnerability which leads him to reach out towards other people with the same goals. Simply put, he changed from a know-it-all who wants to change the world so they’d suit his own views better to someone who genuinely wants to make a difference for other people. This....kinda doesn’t happen with Snow White. It’s probably because the POV (who stays on Bigby the entire time) or they’re saving  her character development for the sequel; we can’t really tell until Season 2 comes out.

Speaking of which, how does being a giant, fearsome wolf in disguise reflect on Bigby’s relationship with other animal characters like Mr. Toad? I thought there was some potential in contrasting Mr Toad’s inability to afford glamor and Bigby having his lycantrophy knife handed to him by Snow. I imagine the animal townsfolk would take jabs at him having the privilege to remain constantly human without having to constantly return to the 13th floor but it never happened. 

The resolution of the Crooked Man’s plot felt rushed and I was disappointed with how they handled the organized crime plot. It was built to be a grand scheme beyond Crane and the murder of the girls, but they resolved it way too quickly. It’s probably just me, but when you have organized crime and financial exploitation by (persumedly) a mafia, do you expect the villain to have their ass handed back to them in two chapters after their buildup?I  mean, during Bigby and Crooked Man’s confrontation at the factory,  I kept expecting the  Crooked Man to make his escape after the battle against Mary  — him being immediately dragged to court was anti-climatic. Does it really take that short a time to take down a big, magical mafia boss? Shouldn’t he have other witches at his beck and call (the secret lab at Johann’s place definitely hinted at that!)

I won’t refute if somebody brings up the lack of diversity in the entire cast. As far as I know, there was only one black person and they didn’t do anything with her character. I thought It would be nice if we get to see POC characters like Aladdin or Yeh-Shen (or replace Aladdin with Sinbad or Ali Baba if we want to go for total accuracy). It doesn’t help that the predominantly white characters look generic. Heck, some of the girls could have some variety in body shapes. For example, why not make Holly be a big beautiful woman? If you don’t want to make her morbidly obese, at least make her look heavier. You know, because she’s a troll. No, her wanting to look beautiful by concealing her troll form doesn’t work. Her wanting to be her own kind of beautiful (especially according to Troll standards) can be contrasted nicely to Lily having to wear her human skin because she needs to cater to her clientele, thus further emphasizing her lack of choice in her employment to Guido (and by extent the Crooked Man). 

How long has it been since the exodus? Why is the Fabletown government still this terrible? I really want to be able to see the demographic at a bigger scope. For example, I’d like to see more of the dynamic between people like Bluebeard and the people at the Business Office. Also, what’s up with people with various problems going straight up to the Business Office? Do they not have accountants? How do they handle the legal stuff with the mundies? Who’s handling legal? The organization at the Business Office is just...weird. I thought they’d have some sort of higher council since I thought they’d need a bigger power to keep more powerful magic beings (like the witches) in place. Are things done better in the graphic novel?

Some of the animation lagged/look really janky on my Envy 13 laptop. Also, I encountered a bug at the beginning of some chapters where choices show up when they don’t need to, as well as some weird cuts during scene. Had to exit and reboot the game to proceed. 

That’s all I can think of now. Feel free to send an ask so we can gush about the husbando material that is Bigby Wolf if you have other opinions!

[tyrantisterror]

I have to disagree with your post regarding the "bad girl" characters. An anti-social, rough and rude woman with hidden soft side seem actually incredibly common to me? Maybe I just watch too many superhero movies, but at least half of those have them as leads, even when they weren't that way at all in the original, always being the snarky straight men to the wacky male leads.

Ah!  I can see the confusion.  Superhero movies star The Badass Woman, not a Bad Girl.  They’re tropes that are very similar on the surface, but it’s all about the flavor of the execution and presentation.

Black Widow is sort of the triumphant example of The Badass Woman, so I’m gonna focus on her.

Black Widow isn’t rude - she’s actually pretty polite, albeit occasionally sarcastic in a safe Hollywood snarky way.  She’s occasionally blunt, but she’s never outright abusive to the people around her - teasing Captain America by calling him a “fossil” is just that, teasing, not an outright insult.

Black Widow is tough, but also elegant.  Look at her fighting style in the movies - she practically dances around her opponents, fighting in a gymnastic display that is perfectly coordinated and as graceful as it is deadly.

Black Widow is anti-social, yes, but a very specific variety of anti-social - she’s withdrawn, cold.  Her social barriers are those of stoicism.  And even then, that’s kind of light - she cracks jokes, she smiles, she teases.

Black Widow’s masculine qualities are all ones you’d find in a heroic character.  They’re not that different from the usual movie action hero - your Bruce Willises, your Arnolds, etc.  Black Widow is actually just the most recent in a long line of Badass Women who are, essentially, just the Hollywood Action Hero formula rejiggered for a supporting character - you have predecessors for her in Van Helsing, the Pirates of the Carribean sequels, Tauriel from the Herbit movies, and plenty of others.  It was even parodied in The Lego Movie!

But it’s not the Bad Girl.  The Bad Girl isn’t a collection of heroic traits.  She is, as the name implies, a collection of what are primarily flaws, much like the more common trope she’s a copy of - the Bad Boy.  And since that’s important, let’s focus on the Bad Boy for a second in how he contrasts with the Badass Hero.

The Badass Hero is terse - he doesn’t talk much, and when he does it tends to be in short, to-the-point sentences.  He’s often polite but blunt.  The Bad Boy, by contrast, is rude.  He’s often loud and talkative - he has to quickly establish that he’s a bit of a punk, after all, and it’s hard to do that without a little posturing.  He may do some brooding later on in the story, but that’s the difference - the Badass Hero is brooding to begin with, because we have to know early on that he’s deep but also mysterious.  But the Bad Boy’s depth has to be discovered in spite of our preconception of him - he has to appear shallow at first, and reveal his layers later.

We are supposed to wonder why the Badass Hero is how they are from the start - we are supposed to be surprised the Bad Boy has depth when it is revealed.  Similar, yes, but the presentation is different.

The Badass Hero’s fighting style will generally be impressive - he might be brutal (much more than the Badass Heroine is allowed to be, I should note), but his skill will still be present.  The Bad Boy, by contrast, is sloppy and chaotic - they’re a punk, a thug, a wild animal, not a honed artist of violence.  The Badass Hero saves you from a bar brawl  - the Bad Boy probably starts it, and he fights dirty.

(sometimes the Badass Hero will have a little of the Bad Boy’s dirty-ness bleed into him, but this is generally reserved for Badass Heroes that are meant to be subversive - your Badass Anti-Heroes if you will).

The Badass Hero is distant because life, man, it’s so hard, his wife is probably dead or something, you don’t know.  The Bad Boy isn’t distant - he’s not hidden behind a wall.  He’s aggressive.  He’s the dog that barks and snarls when you approach, his fur standing on end because he’s secretly terrified.  The Bad Boy doesn’t sullenly say “I want to be alone” - he tells you to get the fuck away from him.  There’s a level of aggression to his defenses that the Badass Hero won’t have - sometimes it’s TOO aggressive and the relationship that forms ends up having abusive undertones, which is the big issue of the Bad Boy trope.

Our intended reaction to the Badass Hero is that WOW, he’s fucking awesome!  All of his personality is intended to be taken as noble and inspiring - even his social issues are meant to be a sign that he’s super heroic, sacrificing intimacy and his attachments to others to fight for the greater good.

Our intended reaction to the Bad Boy is that he’s a fuckup, but a fuckup who could sort his shit out - a fuckup who has a good heart and just needs to be redeemed with a little, well, ok, a lot of compassion.

You can find plenty of heroines in the Badass Hero mold.  There are lots of Black Widows out there.  But women in the Bad Boy role - proper Bad Girls?  They are a rarity.

Or in short: Black Widow isn’t a Bad Girl.  Jessie from Pokemon is.

[daxolotl]

Ellie, Queercoding, and the rare denial of the Male Gaze

@nanocyte and I were talking last night about Ellie's character design in the Last of Us 2. Because I realised that....this is the first and only time I can think of where I've seen a butch lesbian in a piece of media who seems completely designed around a queer audience, with nothing about her being male gaze-y.

Almost every butch lesbian you see in media (and seeing butch lesbians in media is super-rare ALREADY, since so much media decides that having a butch lesbian would be too "stereotypical" so none of them ever include one. They’re all so progressive, making sure butch lesbians are never, ever in any piece of media) has nice hair and makeup and perfect clear skin, and tight, form-fitting "butch" clothes - sleeveless undershirts that show off a bunch of cleavage, tight plaid shirts unbuttoned one button too low, skinny jeans that don't have pockets, and maybe a pair of nice leather boots to show how "totes masculine" she is. A butch lesbian designed for the male gaze.

But Ellie? Ellie doesn’t look anything like that.

Ellie isn't wearing makeup. Her skin isn't clear (and you can see in the first trailer that her hands are dry and cracked and calloused, not The Softest Hands Ever). The pants she's wearing have many pockets. Her hair is cut short messily, clearly out of practicality. Her tattoo isn't Colourful And Dramatic, or Quirky And Manic Pixie Dream Girl, it's dark ink lines that are simple. And the shirts she wears are tough men's shirts, one or two sizes too big for her, that conceal the shape of her body rather than emphasising it. All things that the Male Gaze finds unattractive - if they see a butch lesbian, they usually want her to be basically a femme lesbian except wearing skinny jeans and with her hair cut short. But her whole aesthetic, with how rough she looks, reminds me of how queer women endlessly thirst after butch farmer and butch mechanic AUs. AUs where her hands are calloused and her clothes are rough and she smells of oil and petrol and wears men’s clothes.

When she smiles, it's a big, full, giddy smile. Not some Polite Pretty Smile.  And, let's be honest, media doesn’t know how to handle women being actually happy. But queer women love to see women being happy, unashamed and unrestrained.

In terms of personality, at the party she's nervous and obviously feels out-of-place, and is clearly pining after her best friend from afar, and doesn't have any of the confidence to even imagine that those feelings could be reciprocated, and is totally surprised when they are. And "pining after your best friend from afar but hiding your feelings" is a Mood for a LOT of lesbians - straight male narratives don't get that because so many feel entitled to women's time or entitled to “a chance” because they’re a Nice Guy; they can't possibly imagine keeping quiet about their feelings out of respect and worry and valuing a friendship over a relationship.

But when Ellie looks at Dina, the girl she's crushing on, dancing with a man, she smiles - and when Jesse approaches her, Ellie says Dina and him will probably get back together within a couple of weeks. She wants Dina to be happy, even if that's without her. How many Nice Guys do you know that could say that?

And then you've got her in combat. She's violent and angry and ferocious. She slits a Seraphite's throat slowly and violently and mutters "Fucker" as she finishes, then cleans the blood off her hand by rubbing it on the back of her pants. She's not some femme fatale killing elegantly with neat sneak attacks and perfect shots. She's brutal and scary, covered in dirt and gore, hitting people in the head with a claw hammer and shooting people again and again in the chest until they finally go down, being hurt and bloodied and fighting to continue on.

The Male Gaze and popular media doesn’t like seeing badass women getting hurt and carrying on (it likes to see women being hurt and broken, that's a whole other topic of misogyny) - they prefer to see the Black Widow femme fatale, who kills people without even chipping her nails or ruining her perfectly-kept hair. To see a woman bloodied and hurt as she murders a lot of people has a very queer appeal. (And how many straight men do you know who don't want to know about women bleeding because that's "gross" and "weird"?)

All of that ... all of that adds together into the sort of character I've never seen in any media before. We never get to see queer butch women like this - hell, we never get to see women like this. No part of Ellie is sexualised or prettified for the Male Gaze. And every part of Ellie is queer-coded; a celebration of her identity as a lesbian in the post-apocalyptic world.

[theconservativebrief]

“I feel no nostalgia for our childhood: It was full of violence.”

So says narrator Elena Greco near the beginning of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. The bestselling novel is now an HBO series, and the screen adaptation drives home one of the book’s core messages: For Elena (Elisa del Genio), her best friend/double/nemesis Lila Cerullo (Ludovica Nasti), and all the children growing up with them in working-class postwar Naples, violence undergirds every interaction. (Spoilers for the first two episodes of the show, and mild spoilers for the books, follow.)

It’s not just the violence of the men in the neighborhood, who beat their wives and battle each other for dominance. As the show’s first two episodes, which aired on Sunday and Monday, make clear, Elena and Lila are involved too, fighting with boys and, later, conducting a war of words with one another that stretches across decades.

“While men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end,” Ferrante writes; “women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.”

My Brilliant Friend and the other three novels in Ferrante’s wildly popular Neapolitan series have been hailed as modern-day feminist classics, telling the often forgotten stories of girls and women. But as the HBO series makes clear, these are not uplifting tales of female empowerment. The story of Elena and Lila is a story of friendship, yes, but also of hate, and of anger that’s not always righteous. The novels, and now the show, remind us of an uncomfortable truth: Girls and women have always been just as capable of violence as men and boys. It’s just that for a long time, nobody was watching.

HBO’s My Brilliant Friend begins, like the novel, with Elena, now a woman in her sixties, receiving a call from Lila’s adult son: Lila has disappeared. The story then flashes back to the 1950s, when Elena and Lila met as girls living in a drab Naples neighborhood.

The Neapolitan novels center on the evolution of Elena and Lila’s friendship across time and place, and the novels are famous in part for the way they probe a complex and tumultuous relationship between two women. But the novels — and, presumably, the series, which so far hews to them very closely — make clear that even as the girls become women and grow apart and together again, they are never far from the influence of their Naples neighborhood and its feuds, both petty and serious.

As many reviewers have already pointed out, the ever-present violence of this neighborhood is evident from the show’s first episode. The streets where Elena and Lila play and the shops where their parents buy food are controlled by small-time criminals, and their power struggles are a constant undercurrent in both the show and books.

In part, the violence of Ferrante’s stories mirrors the real-life rise of organized crime in Naples beginning in the mid-1950s. And, in part, it’s a kind of anti-nostalgic approach, as Elena might put it, to a coming-of-age story. Ferrante shows us childhood as it is for many children: not idyllic, but often frightening and sometimes bloody.

In the first episode, the neighborhood squabbles turn physical again and again. After the carpenter Alfredo Peluso publicly criticizes local strongman Don Achille Carracci (by yelling about him in the street), Carracci drags him out of a funeral and slams him against a wall. Women feud too — Melina Cappuccio and Lidia Sarratore get into a fight over Cappuccio’s love for Sarratore’s husband, and Cappuccio ends up tumbling down the stairs.

The neighborhood children, meanwhile, play out their own versions of their parents’ quarrels. When Lila beats Alfonso Carracci in a school competition, his brother attacks her. And in the episode’s climactic scene, Enzo Scanno (also bested by Lila in the school contest) and his friends hurl stones at Lila, knocking her over and bloodying her head.

In the show’s second episode, violence erupts in the Greco household, as Elena’s mother beats her savagely with an umbrella for skipping school. When Elena’s father comes home, her mother demands he beat Elena too: “You don’t even know how to hit your daughter,” she says, challenging his masculinity. He snaps, savagely slapping Elena while shouting at her mother — the whole episode is a power struggle between the two parents, who have been arguing about whether Elena should be allowed to take the admissions test for middle school. In the end, she is — but her parents’ battle leaves her with a face full of bruises.

The language of the show is violent even when its action is not (the actors speak Italian and the Neapolitan dialect, and the English subtitles draw heavily from the English translation of the novel by Ann Goldstein). Lila describes Don Achille as having “sucked the blood” out of another man, presumably with his predatory lending practices. And Maestra Oliviero, Elena and Lila’s teacher, warns the girls that they must prove themselves against their male schoolmates intellectually: “If we don’t start showing the boys now that you’re like them, better actually, they’ll crush you.” In the context of the neighborhood, this feels both literally and figuratively true.

The violence around the girls clearly affects them, and not only when they’re being actively bloodied. As Hillary Kelly writes at Vulture, “Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo’s loud, crowded lives are small and insulated, and they’re always seconds away from a tragedy around which the entire town will gather to gawp.” Their world, as she puts it, “clamors and echoes with shrieks, bellows, and the sounds of violence.”

In director Saverio Costanzo’s imagining, even the colors of the neighborhood hint at the emotional effects of constant violence — everything is dull, dusty, and dark. The dangers of their neighborhood limit Elena and Lila’s lives, and seem to limit even the spectrum of their vision.

But the girls aren’t passive victims of the violence around them. They’re active participants, as when Lila hurls stones back at the boys who attack her — and Elena steps in to help. Lila isn’t merely defending herself in this scene; she’s fighting back with gusto. The whole episode, as Sonia Saraiya writes at Vanity Fair, “seems to have built the scene around showcasing her indomitable will.”

Even when they’re not fighting, the girls are always watching violence unfold. When the adults in their world beat each other up, Elena and Lila look on in open fascination. Del Genio and Nasti, both newcomers, can communicate a lot with a gaze. Elena is more of a blank slate, her wide eyes taking everything in — Saraiya calls her “open and vulnerable, like a cracked-open raw egg.” Lila, meanwhile, has already developed an opinion on — even an appreciation for — the violence of her neighborhood. As she watches Cappuccio and Sarratore scream at each other, a smile plays across her lips, though it disappears when the fight turns physical.

Later, Lila appears to lay a trap for Elena, luring her to skip school in the hopes that Elena’s parents will get angry and bar her from taking the middle school test. Lila must know that her friend will probably get a beating, and yet she’s willing to take that risk. It won’t be the last time Lila tries to manipulate someone else to get what she wants, regardless of the consequences.

If the show continues to stick close to the books — one season per novel is planned — Lila and Elena will experience, in ever more serious ways, the brutality of their neighborhood. They’ll survive domestic and sexual violence, and their clashes with the men who rule the neighborhood will come back to haunt them in devastating ways.

They won’t commit the same kinds of violence they experience, but they will wage other kinds of warfare. This future is evident from the very beginning of the show. As Sophie Gilbert notes at the Atlantic, we learn as the series opens that Lila hasn’t just quietly disappeared. She’s vandalized her own past, cutting herself out of all family photographs, even those of her and her son as a young child.

Elena, meanwhile, isn’t sad to hear that her old friend is missing. She’s angry, and as revenge, she decides to write the story of their childhood together. The very narration we’re listening to is a form of emotional violence, the forcible documentation of someone who wanted to be erased.

Part of the popularity of the Neapolitan novels has to do with their close and clear-eyed examination of women’s inner lives. Men’s thoughts and feelings have always been presumed to be an interesting subject for literary fiction, but women’s stories have frequently found themselves shunted into a variety of genres that tend to get less acclaim.

Ferrante’s work has been groundbreaking in that it has been received around the world as a literary triumph, even as it chronicles the lives of people often pushed to the side in art and history. At the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg recommends watching My Brilliant Friend alongside the Godfather movies in order to appreciate “what we gain when we see the world both from the center and the margins.”

What we learn from My Brilliant Friend, though, is that the margins can be just as brutal as the center, if in different ways. Ferrante pulls back the curtain on the inner lives of girls and women, and what she reveals is dark — just as dark as anything perpetrated by men.

“Lila appeared in my life in first grade and immediately impressed me because she was very bad,” Ferrante writes. And Lila is bad — not badass, though she is that too, not plucky or feisty or spirited, but hateful and spiteful and sometimes cruel.

Costanzo’s adaptation makes even clearer what already came through in the books: that one of Ferrante’s greatest skills lies in showing us the full range of women’s emotions and all they are capable of — love and friendship, but also destruction.

A certain kind of feminist criticism once focused on whether a particular artistic creation was empowering to women. (The Onion perfectly skewered this tradition in 2003, with the headline “Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does.”) More recently, female characters in fiction have been given the freedom to be “unlikable.” (Earlier this year, Vox’s Tara Burton deconstructed the entire question of likability.) What Elena Ferrante has done is to create characters who are hateable — who sometimes hate each other and sometimes deserve to be hated — and to remind us that women are worthy of depiction in art not because they are better than men but because they, too, are human.

Original Source -> My Brilliant Friend pulls back the curtain on women’s lives. What it reveals is dark and violent.

via The Conservative Brief

[sitcom-s]

Why you should be watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine

It's a long one, get ready.

•

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is an American police sitcom created by Dan Goor and Michael Schur. The series revolves around Jacob Peralta (Andy Samberg), an NYPD detective in Brooklyn's 99th Precinct, who comes into immediate conflict with his new commanding officer, the serious and stern Captain Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher). But despite Samberg playing the lead, it’s not “The Andy Samberg Show”, and is nothing like the Adam Sandler type movies he’s usually seen in.

Produced in Los Angeles as a single-camera comedy, Fox originally ordered thirteen episodes for its first season, eventually expanding it to 22 episodes. All episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine begin with a cold open, although this may not necessarily have anything to do with the actual plot of the episode. Since its debut, the series has received critical acclaim, with the cast, especially Samberg and Braugher, being singled out for praise.

The show constantly speaks out against racism, homophobia (specifically gay and trans rights), sexism, police brutality, and the stigma against mental health issues; with all the humour steering entirely away from offensive jokes and stereotypes, instead relying on jokes that are genuinely funny and fantastic comedic timing.

Characters

Brooklyn Nine-Nine contains a plethora of multi-layered characters; and the main cast (7 characters) contains only 2 white men, one of whom is half Jewish, two black men, two Latina ladies, and one white woman.

Starting with Raymond “Ray” Holt (Andre Braugher), captain of the 99th precinct, an African American, openly gay, middle-aged man in the highest position of power on the show. Like all the characters on the show, his race or sexuality is never once the punchline to a joke. He cares deeply for his husband, and his friends in the 99th precinct and acts as a father figure to many (especially Peralta).

Next, we have Jacob “Jake” Peralta (Andy Samberg), a white half Jewish man who even though acting immature and unable to deal with complex emotions at the beginning of the series, grows into a mature adult who can express his emotions well and apologises when he messes up. Peralta is also portrayed as a strong feminist, calling out anyone’s ignorant behaviour. In the fifth season, Peralta also must learn to deal and cope with mental health issues.

Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), is a Latina woman in a position of power (especially as of late season 4 and onwards) who’s never once sexualised because of her ethnicity. Since the beginning of the show Santiago has dealt with anxiety in various extremes, but not once is this considered a weakness, just a part of her character; and despite being romantically involved with Peralta, never is she considered “just a love interest”, but a unique and complicated character in her own right.

Charles Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio), is one of only two white men in the precinct, and his character relies heavily on his hobbies, such as a local food critic, sewing, yoga, and other traditionally non-masculine interests. He also has an adoptive son and an incredibly strong friendship with Peralta.

Then, we have Regina “Gina” Linetti (Chelsea Peretti), the epitome of self-confidence. Despite having a very close platonic relationship with Peralta, not once is she considered a “threat” to Santiago.

Terrance “Terry” Jeffords (Terry Crews) is the sergeant of the 99th precinct and African American. Jeffords is family man, with three daughters and a wife whom he loves. Not once is his relationship with his family considered to have “stripped him of his masculinity”. He also loves his work family at the 99th precinct, acting as a parental figure to them.

Finally, Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz) is another Latina woman who isn’t sexualized for her ethnicity and is in every practical sense, a badass. Recently, it’s been teased that the character will have a female love interest.

Cast

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has one of the most diverse casts on TV right now, with only 3 of its 7 main roles filled with white actors, and the bisexual Stephanie Beatriz. Not once have any of its cast been known to have done anything considered “problematic” in the slightest.

Jacob “Jake” Peralta Andy Samberg

Raymond “Ray” Holt Andre Braugher

Amy Santiago Melissa Fumero

Charles Boyle Joe Lo Truglio

Regina “Gina” Linetti Chelsea Peretti

Terrance “Terry” Jeffords Terry Crews

Rosa Diaz Stephanie Beatriz

Relationships

Brooklyn Nine-Nine portrays multiple close relationships between its characters. With childhood best friends, parental figures, ladies sticking together, a slow burn relationship, and a healthy gay marriage.

The most obvious relationship in the show is the romantic one between Peralta and Santiago, one that has been incredibly healthy and positive, with both characters supporting and caring deeply for one another.

Peralta has strong relationships with most of the characters on the show, the most obvious, after Santiago, is that which he has with Boyle. They have a strong platonic relationship that is never once considered gay by either the characters or audience nor does it “damage their masculinity”.

Another loving platonic relationship on the show is between Linetti and Peralta. The two have known each other since childhood, with Peralta even getting Linetti her job as a civilian administrator at the 99th precinct. Similarly, we see the relationship between Diaz and Peralta grow and in the later seasons, the audience can see just how important their friendship is to one another.

At the start of the show, Peralta is reluctant to show respect to Holt, thinking that Holt doesn’t know how he works and that he’s holding him back. But, throughout the show and its seasons, the two develop a strong bond, going as far as referring to the other as “son” and “dad”.

Another positive relationship in the series is that of Santiago, Diaz, and Linetti – the women of the 99. A prime example of this is when Diaz told Santiago that “You’re not the only girl at the table anymore. We work in a police force full of dudes. We gotta have each other’s backs, okay?”.

Though these are the most prominent relationships in the show, the beauty of these characters is that you could pair any two together for an interesting plot and it would still work. In fact, this is what the writers often do, with the characters in the A and B plot always mixing around.

Awards

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is generally considered overlooked, not receiving as many awards as it deserves; however, these are the awards the series has won:

2014

Golden Globes, USA

Best Television Series - Comedy or Musical

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Comedy or Musical - Andy Samberg

Primetime Emmy Awards

Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or a Variety Program - Norman Howell

Critics’ Choice Television Awards

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series - Andre Braugher

Online Film & Television Association

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series- Andre Braugher

2015

Primetime Emmy Awards

Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or a Variety Program - Norman Howell

Gracie Allen Awards

Outstanding Director – Entertainment - Julie Anne Robinson

Online Film & Television Association

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series - Andre Braugher

2016

Critics’ Choice Television Awards

Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series - Andre Braugher

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes gave Season 1 a score of 88%. The consensus is: "Led by the surprisingly effective pairing of Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a charming, intelligently written take on the cop show format." For Season 2, it received a score of 100%. That season's consensus is: "Brooklyn Nine-Nine's winning cast, appealing characters and wacky gags make it good comfort food." Metacritic gives the first season of the show a weighted average rating of 70/100, indicating "generally favourable reviews".

Brooklyn Nine-Nine premieres on Tuesdays at 9:30 - 10:00 PM PT/ET on Fox.

[squid-that-reads-a-lot-blog]

Oathbringer Review

A while back, I finished the most recent entry into the Stormlight Archive series by Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.  Haven’t gotten around to writing a review yet.  Starting off, I have to say that I have similar thoughts to my opinions of the previous two books.  Sanderson is rarely incompetent and he does many things very well.  Like the previous two entries, there are several small arcs throughout the story that make the 1300 page count a little more digestible.  There is also no shortage of action and each major character has their own story arc.

Overall, this is my favorite in the series by a long shot.  The first two aren’t bad, the style just is not my cup of tea.  However, this book did a lot of things that I liked.  The part that I liked the most is the fact that the book focused a lot on Dalinar.  Dalinar is my favorite character in the series and the fact that he is so much older than the other two previous leads made his story arc so much more enjoyable.  Sanderson puts his characters through a lot of shit but it felt more natural in this book.  I feel like the backstories aren’t as important as who the character is, and when the characters are as young as Kaladin or Shallan, their inner monologues about their pasts can’t help but feel... whiny…

It could just be me, and they aren’t terrible characters, but I think this story arc is far better than the others.  It’s full of some fantastic emotional moments that crank it up to eleven.  My personal favorites have to be the flashback of the attempted assassination and the burning of the rift.  The first one made me laugh because it’s so insanely badass and over-the-top.  It’s like a scene straight out of a crazy 90’s action movie.  The burning of the rift is a whole chapter that I found grimly entertaining.  I was reminded of stories of those ancient Roman emperors who would drag their enemies behind their chariots after they surrendered.  Everything about it is so brutal and shocking that you feel a whole mix of emotions while reading.  Honestly this is where Sanderson is at his best.  It’s when really insane shit is happening that his talent truly shines.  

A few smaller things that I liked included some of the other characters.  While I felt like it was too late to make him really heroic, Ellokar felt a little less useless in this book.  He had some nice moments in the spotlight throughout the book.  Shallan also had a few good moments but I honestly think that Sanderson is not good at writing very feminine characters.  Every time he has a female character with a tough, masculine edge he does great but if they like pretty dresses instead of punching people he tends to falter.  While some of the choices that he makes in this book could be explained with the trauma that Shallan herself has experienced, it feels a little out of touch to me.  He often misses the mark a little bit when it comes to writing women like this and it is very noticeable in this book.  

As for a few other characters, I have some mixed feelings.  Adolin is obviously being solidified as this awesome, likable guy that does badass things with a sword but something feels a little off.  There are a few times where I feel like the book is going out of its way to say how likable he is and it makes me feel like he is going to die.  It’s sticks out to me because nothing has really come out of it and he is so wildly different from the other members of the main cast.  This seems like an odd choice to me but there’s nothing we can do about it for the next four years.  Other than that, I love the fact that he is a total diva.  It’s rare that I get a Legally Blonde vibe from a male character.  

A character that got kind of shafted in my opinion, is Jasnah.  I guess that she’s supposed to be this sort of mysterious character because she’s so smart but I have a hard time getting that.  It feels like she does very little and there are few times when her intellect is really shown.  We’re just told that she’s one of the smartest women in the world while she is busy doing… stuff…  I’ve been waiting for her to be cool and I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer.  She could be a really awesome character but I just haven’t seen that yet.  

Now let’s get to the problems I have with this book.  A lot of these boil down to my personal preference so some people might not be bothered by these as much as I was.  

One small but glaring problem I saw in the last book had to do with Lift and it shows up again in this book when Lift returns as well as the introduction of Szeth’s overpowered sword.  The way that they are written really rubs me the wrong way.  The vast majority of the books are written in this old style that you see a lot with epic fantasy.  You are stepping back in time in this alternate universe.  People don’t use all the colloquialisms that we do in everyday life.  Against this backdrop, modern words and phrases are rather jarring.  Sanderson sometimes does this in this series.  Usually it’s not bad enough to take me out of the story but with Lift and the super sword it is pretty egregious.  The sword is not all that bad save for a few moments but the constant use of the word ‘awesomeness’ with Lift gets on my nerves.  It is so out of place and jarring.  It reminds me of L.E. Modesett Jr. where they would use modern curse words and it was really out of place.  I wish he wouldn’t use words like that but ultimately it is a small part of the story.  

A big grievance that I have with this book that may not seem all that bad to others is the whole murder plot.  I read that scene in the last book where Sadeas is murdered and I was really waiting to see what would happen.  Ialai is set up as this incredibly dangerous woman earlier in the series.  The last time she saw her husband alive was when he walked off with a guy that hated his guts.  There’s no way she doesn’t know exactly who did this.  It might have been my expectations being too high, but I felt like this was such a lame story arc in the end.  This was one that could have had some real consequences for our characters.  Imagine how much trouble Adolin would have been in with this woman for an enemy.  Not only that, but his rash decision would have some serious consequences on Dalinar’s budding political career.  Does he punish his son for his crime or does he risk looking weak in front of his political opponents?  It would add some legitimately serious consequences to Adolin’s story arc and this sort of thing sounds like it would be right up Sanderson’s alley storytelling-wise.  But things didn’t go this way.  Ialai doesn’t do anything in this book.  There were so many chapters that talked about her extensive spy network and how dangerous it is to get on her bad side but it all seemed like it was for nothing.  In fact, the whole treatment of the Sadeas characters has been disappointing to me.  Toral’s betrayal in the first book didn’t really make any sense to me.  I felt like he really was warming up to a friendship with Dalinar again.  Politics had driven them apart but I believed that he could come over to the good side.  I think he could have made a great anti-hero with his crooked approach to the things that the team good-guy is trying to accomplish.  Appearance-wise, I also think that they are very well designed.  I always like it when an author gives the faces of their characters some character itself.  I have a clear image in my head of what these people look like.  The fact that they’re both really ugly but really happy together is kind of unique as well.  Team good-guy wouldn’t just be comprised of a bunch of pretty people if these two had the potential for some redemption arcs.  The fact that he just died and his wife is just sitting like a bump on a log just feels like a waste of two potentially great characters.  Sanderson could have something planned for Ialai, but I felt like this was a huge waste of potential and her potential time in the spotlight has passed.

The other big problem is just an extension of a complaint that I have with the other two books.  Sanderson doesn’t seem to have the knack for making characters seem quite as alive as other authors.  The coldness in his writing is one of the few things keeping him from being one of my favorite authors honestly.  He’s introduced this vast and expansive world but it feels strangely small.  I think a big contributor to this is that the plots rarely take the characters outside of one area.  It’s a problem that’s seen in the original Star Wars trilogy.  Action packed plots and fun characters in this massive universe but it feels so small because we just see this handful of people.  The whole Kolinar arc made the world seem a little bigger but that went away as soon as the characters left.  It’s strange because we get so many POV chapters from characters all over the map but they feel incredibly disconnected.  It’s a strange problem to have, especially when this series is compared so closely with the Wheel of Time series, where this was one of its strongest parts.  

One more small gripe I have has to do with the pictures.  All of them are great but I wish there was just one landscape in there.  The world is so alien to what we’re used to seeing that it would be cool to really see it through the character’s eyes.  I hope he gets one of these in a future addition to the series.  

I haven’t mentioned a lot of things about the book either because I’m not sure what to think about it, there’s not enough information, or the fact that it’s just good.  The good far outweighs the bad in this book and I could not put this one down (not easy when I got the huge hardcover copy).  Even with all my complaints, this is still a fantastic book that I would highly recommend. Full of action and badassery at every turn, this is something that I see people enjoying for a long time.

[astroprojections101]

The Signs as Characters from ‘BRIDESMAIDS’

Annie Walker - Taurus

Bridesmaids is a hilarious and groundbreaking female-driven comedy about addiction and friendship, two things Tauruses know how to do very well. They are loyal and committed people whose reputation as the most boring sign of the zodiac is forgiven for also being the best friends you will ever find on this fucking planet, and they KNOW this dammit!! They wear their friendships like purple hearts, but it also means they can easily get stuck in a rut and indulge in self-destructive habits like fucking terrible people and matching red shoes with red nail polish when the waves get rough. Not to mention it could take years (or a very messy rock bottom) before these bulls get the wake up call they need to make a positive change in their lives, as evidenced by Annie failing to do any of this until Melissa McCarthy literally bites her in the ass while watching Castaway, a movie I am SURE she has seen at least five times. 

They can also be territorial and possessive. While Annie may seem like that down-to-earth, low-maintenance girl who side eyes women that wear $8,000 evening gowns to an afternoon engagement party, on the inside she is a red-faced toddler crossing her arms and stamping her feet because Mom won’t let her play with the iPad. Or, in this case, because her best friend since CHILDHOOD (seriously, who still has friends from childhood? TAURUSES, bitches! + people from the Midwest) is getting married and has, like many grown ass adults sometimes do, ~made another friend~. Suddenly, Annie is forced to, without prior knowledge or consent, confront the bull’s biggest fear: change. Which is a big fat scary no no for a masochistic Taurus who would rather pursue subpar fucks than make baked goods with an emotionally literate Scottish bae. Tauruses like Things As They Are even when they don’t, and Annie Walker is no exception. We stan a true Taurus queen. 

Sorry, Libras. Branding the antagonist of the movie as one may seem counterintuitive for a sign whose entire identity revolves being nice and fair to EVERYONE and liking EVERYONE and getting along with EVERYONE, but that’s exactly why Helen Harris III wins the coveted title of Passive Aggressive Shithead Who Reminds You of 30% Of Your High School: everyone loves her, everyone wants to be her, and who can blame them? As a wise Jeff Winger once said, nerds go to space to impress the people who wore leather jackets in high school. 

And Helen Harris is beautiful. She can pull off wearing an $8,000 evening gown to an afternoon engagement party (almost) without coming off like an asshole. Helen Harris can book spontaneous bridal salon fittings. Helen Harris could eat that fucking cookie (Annie could never). Even if it means gaslighting a woman out of a wedding party, getting bullied by bratty white kids or marrying David Wallace, Libras don’t know who they are without the bliss of knowing their personal brand of outward bullshit is loved and admired by all, even if that means suppressing their true feelings until their next tennis sesh at the Milwaukee country club. Helen proves this when she ugly cries to a woman she socially tormented for the better part of a year, and also proves this when she arranges for Annie’s emotionally literate Scottish bae to pick her up after the wedding. You can’t convince me otherwise. 

Lillian - Virgo 

It’s easy to put Virgos in that Friends Who Have Their Shit Together box, even if underneath that facade they are literally dying inside. But this is what I love about Lillian, who is yes, obviously a Virgo. Lillian is getting married to the man she loves. She curated a bridal party that genuinely knows and loves her. She gets someone like Helen to simp for her. So yes, she is that classic Virgo who doesn’t judge you for not having your shit together but also would never, ever forgive herself for sinking that low. 

But Lillian also manages to laugh when she comes out wearing that Abominable Snowman of a wedding dress. She shits on the street and lives to tell the tale. She is able to make hard choices and set boundaries with her best friend. Lillian doesn’t judge people out of insecurity, because she knows who she is and accepts it. 

I’d like to think there is a Virgo out there, punishing herself because she applied to three jobs instead of two that day, who sees a Lillian and realizes there is a future where she can be a #BossBitch without committing her entire life to proving it to herself and others. I’d like to think there’s a Virgo out there who sees Lillian and realizes she doesn’t have to let her friend copy her homework answers for the fourth consecutive math test because no, she isn’t responsible for her lazy friend’s inability to study ahead of time. Lillian is the representation Virgos desperately need - not just because she is a badass woman, but because she is happy. She is a role model for all of us, and you can’t get more Virgo than that. 

Megan - Aries

This was a hard one. On the one hand, Megan is weird. But let’s be real, an Aquarius could never be entrusted with the codes to every nuke buried underneath the United States. They would take those codes and use it to yeet Mark Zuckerberg out of his 100 million dollar Palo Alto estate within the first hour of signing their W-2 form. No, Megan may be unapologetically Megan as shit, but it’s not because she’s an Aquarius. She’s bold, and forward, and unapologetically Aries. 

Which is odd, considering that an Aries and a Taurus together is, well... an unlikely friendship combo. Both signs are strong-willed and stubborn as hell, but in a way that makes them want to declare war on each other’s egos, not inspire the other into becoming better people. But then again, maybe that’s why their friendship works. Where Annie throws an empty compliment at an overdressed woman she’s already decided she hates, Megan expresses a desire to climb a man five minutes upon meeting Annie. Where Annie sits on a couch watching Castaway instead of addressing her issues the way 35 year old women probably should have learned to do by now, Megan bites ass and reminds her of this this. Where Annie HOLDS IN VOMIT UNTIL SHE HAS DRIVEN MILES AWAY FROM A BRIDAL SALON, Megan shits right into that refurbished marble sink without a second thought. Get where I’m going with this? Megan does what Annie doesn’t, which sometimes is exactly what a Taurus needs to get out of their rut of self-pity. But of course, Megan doesn’t just exist to provide emotional labor to lazy Earth signs. She is an individual truly living her best life, and we love for her for it. Aries women slap like no other.

Rita - Scorpio

Brutally honest and a sexual goddess. What more can you expect from an unhappily married Scorpio? Rita is bold, sexy, and dramatic, who knows how to pack the punches so quick and dirty she can turn a Disney-obsessed woman child into a drunken bisexual as she sips her martini on a first class ticket she bought with her asshole of a husband’s tax fraud money. After all, who else besides a Scorpio would tell a woman she hasn’t seen since high school that her very own flesh and blood masturbated a blanket into oblivion? Scorpios are dark, brooding, and know when they are being taken for granted. Nowhere is this better exemplified than when Rita spills the piping hot tea on her shitty family that can’t see her for the goddess she truly is. Rita, you deserve better. 

Becca - Pisces

Erin Kemper has a long history of playing maladaptively naive characters, but I will bet my next unemployment check that Erin based her performance of Becca entirely off a Pisces description she found on Cafeastrology.com. Because there is literally nothing more Pisces than Becca. The hair, the clothes, the willingness to go through hospital levels of self-sanitization for her husband so that she can finally bone? Trying to convince herself she’s also too tired so that she doesn’t have to admit to herself that her husband is an emotionally and sexually unavailable failure of a man who can’t give her what she needs until she experiences a sexual awakening 2,000 miles up in the air with her Scorpio biffle??? Yup. Pisces to a P. 

Rhodes - Cancer

Aww, Rhodes. So sweet. So awkward. Why did they have to make you a cop?

Can we talk about why it is that almost every leading man who is emotionally mature and secure in his masculinity ALWAYS seems to elicit Cancerous vibes, even if they’re clearly not a Cancer? Actual Cancer men, take note. Rhodes  pursues respectfully. He calls, even after Annie doesn’t call back. Rhodes attempts exposure therapy on a woman he has had sex with once. Rhodes WOULD get ghosted by 80% of the women he meets on dating apps (including Annie, let’s be real), and we love him for it. Because cancers are just that loving and loyal! So yes, we can excuse him for getting a stick up his butt sometimes when someone drops a perfectly biodegradable vegetable on the ground. He more than makes up for it. 

Annie’s mom - Gemini 

Geminis are either terrible or the best people you’ll ever meet, and Annie’s mom is one of the rare few that falls into that in-between category of chaotic good, adorable Gemini doing her best not to drive everyone she’s ever loved away with what little self-awareness she has about her Gemininess. Annie’s mom is bubbly, chatty, and queen of the chisme. She uses logic to justify calling her ex husband’s wife a whore, and talks like she has a doctorate degree in the unsolicited advice she offers her daughter. Until at least, she’s introduced to a sweet man, and all that logic and wordiness melts away into a gooey puddle of all those emotions she likes to think she’s above. 

Bryn - Aquarius

There are a lot of stand out heroines in this movie, but none of them beat the comedic genius that is Bryn, an incestuous roommate Annie probably dug up from Craiglist’s seventh circle of hell. Aquari are trail blazing, unconventional, and friendly enough to distract you from the fact that their brain cells came from aliens. Bryn is no exception. Even an impulsive Aries would look at the opportunity to get an offensively tacky tattoo in the back of a van and think, “I’ll get Starbucks instead.” But an Aquarius thrives on making people uncomfortable with their Society Has To Catch Up To Me complex, and Bryn is no exception. After all, if they’re not scandalizing their depressed roommate with xenophobic tattoos and baths with their brother, then who even are they? A sheep, that’s who. 

13 year old - Sagittarius 

This specific breed of popular mean girl is either a Gemini or Sagittarius. I have nothing to back up this claim, but watching that horrible girl verbally spar her way into getting a 35 year old woman fired from a jewelry store is enough to turn me into a believer. That’s why it was so hard to pinpoint a sign for her. On one hand, this girl is probably responsible for the social anxiety of at least a dozen ex-BFFs. She also clearly knows how to use words to make someone wish they had never been born, so I can accept that this insecure adult’s worst nightmare has a few placements of mercurial badassery in her chart. 

But the truth hurts, and no one knows how to finesse the truth like a Sag, who either doesn’t know what they’re doing when they tell a customer service rep they have no boobs, or they know exactly. Anyway, don’t project your friendship drama onto an undeveloped Sagittarius child, Annie. Or tell them they’re going to be pregnant at their prom (yikes). You do not know what you’re getting yourself into. 

Annie’s Mystery Man - Capricorn

The sports jacket. The pipe. The vibes. This guy probably cured cancer back in the day and still hated himself for not figuring it out until he was 30. You could also totally tell he was sizing Annie up to see if she met his expectations of People Worth His Time (she didn’t). Capricorn man, you are right. None of us deserve you. RIP Hugh Dane.

[sc-reviews]

Wonder Woman (2017) Movie Review

****Please Be Aware that this review contains spoilers******

I went to see this film three times in theaters and I’m still excited to watch it again once it comes out on DVD. Needless to say, I wasn’t originally a Wonder Woman fan. I just didn’t know that much about her other than a graphic novel I had to read for class once called Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia written by Greg Rucka and with artwork by J.G Jones. It was a fascinating, dimensional read, but I still wasn’t sure if I’d love the movie. See, I was worried that the film was going to be a film strictly about a female superhero to make up for the lack of female superhero lead characters in many of the comic book movie adaptions. I was worried that rather than make the story about a human being (a hero on a journey) who just so happens to be a woman from another world, it would become too focused on the fact that she is a woman and then derive stereotypes about women in order to form her character. I am so glad to say the movie was absolutely not that! It was just about this character Diana and her beautiful, courageous belief that all people are good and how badly she wanted to protect them and fight for them against the threat of war and corruption and all that is bad (in other words the character of Ares who is a symbol for all those things).

The way this film begins is very interesting. Rather than end with this strong, female centric community that seems like a better alternative to our own corrupt world, the movie introduces Wonder Woman by showing her as a young girl watching with awe the women around her on Themyscira. This is a significant way to tell the story because it gives us insight into the way that an iconic hero like Wonder Woman thinks and acts and why she does so. Her idea of strength is different from the usual types of masculine, aggressive strength that is often represented in superhero films. Make no mistake, the Amazons are fierce warriors capable of fatal combat, but they fight honorably. The way they move is graceful and quick. Their armor is unique and they respect one another. Diana’s mother (Hippolyta) points out in the film that war is not something to hope for. So Diana learns to fight not because of enjoyment out of violence, but to protect the ones she loves. To protect all people really. I just think that sends such a lovely message for why we do what we do, what our motivations for any violence are and whether or not it is justified.

Diana’s view of the world is so innocent and quite beautiful in a way. Though some might consider her naivety to be a weakness and may go so far as to call her stupid, I disagree! I think it shows the culture shock aspect of the story. She is from another world, a better, peaceful world. It’s only natural that she would choose to believe people are good at their core. Isn’t it better to hope for that than to have a cynical view of life? She didn’t have any reason to believe people were bad because she was gifted with this legend to understand a very complex, painful world. The story her mom tells her about Ares and the Amazons, man and Zeus is ambiguous as any old myth would be. That leaves room for this young woman to interpret it as she pleases and she chooses to look at it in a way that saves people from their crimes. Thinking that people could be so awful is not something she wants to believe and that isn’t because she is too naïve. It’s because thinking that way would make her battle seem a little less meaningful because there would no longer be one distinct villain to fight. Also, the whole reason for her fighting would be lost too because human beings would no longer be as good-natured as she thought they were.

There were many scenes in the movie that I loved. To name a few, there was the beginning scene with the Amazons training, the scene where Diana and Steve are having such a casual, open, funny conversation about reproduction on the ship…etc. However, my favorite scene was the No Man’s Land scene. Director Patty Jenkins spoke about this scene as well and I think what she said about it pretty much sums up why it resonated so highly with me. She said that it’s the scene where Wonder Woman is actually introduced for the first time and there is something so regal about that. She’s got her whole costume on and it’s basically shining brilliantly with hope and determination while she’s in the middle of this dull, barren, colorless battlefield. Her face doesn’t show fear or doubt. She just charges forward and there isn’t even any person to fight right away. What she is fighting are the bullets and the threat of war and what it is doing to the people around her.

The conditions are brutal. People are dying/wounded and a woman begs her to help. The thing is anyone would think “well that’s incredibly sad, but it’s just one of those situations where you can’t do anything.” I mean in an area struck by war that is still being attacked, it makes more sense to keep moving and focus on the big picture than to try and help what seems like a lost battle. Survival instincts kick in and it’s all about compromising and understanding that everyone can’t be saved like Steve mentions. However, Diana refuses this idea. She makes a choice for herself and the people she wants to protect. She goes into that battlefield alone and I’ve honestly never seen something so inspiring in a movie for some time. Here, it isn’t about winning or achieving anything for herself or proving herself. She just feels she needs to do something. She can’t walk away when these people are the very reason she came to help in the first place.

Another thing I really liked about the way Wonder Woman was presented was her costume. I thought it was slick and parts of it are armor and it also just looks so badass and cool without pushing the American flag too much. I found it disappointing that some of her critics over the years have accused her of being a poor model for young women because of how she is sexualized. Personally, I view it as a tragedy that people have that mindset and see Wonder Woman as only a sex symbol. I think people sometimes see what they want to see. Wonder Woman is not a poor role model because of her tight, leathery outfit. If anything, I’d say she teaches women to be in control of their bodies and embrace their sexuality. However, I wouldn’t go so far as to even say she is heavily sexualized by her costume. Since the Amazons of Themyscira have no men and do not follow a traditional masculine point of view, I’d say it’s very likely that they wear their “outfits” (their armor really) to please themselves and not to attract the wandering eyes of men. Isn’t that a healthy, noble and beautiful message to send to young girls out there? That they shouldn’t be worrying about how they will be later sexualized because of what they’re wearing, but that they should dress to please themselves and to be comfortable and feel empowered in their own skins? To accuse Wonder Women of being only a sex symbol is to reflect your own narrow-minded viewpoints on a powerful, complex, loving, beautiful and intelligent women. Sometimes, our own insecurities and stereotypes lash out at other people and that isn’t fair.

One thing I’ve got to bring up was what a beautiful job they did with giving Wonder Woman a love interest while not taking away anything from her story. Steve Trevor is definitely comic relief, but he’s also this honorable hero in his own right. He believes in her, is in awe of her and he actually listens to her. Their conversations were so interesting to me because they felt like two people just getting to know each other and developing a relationship, but also working toward something so much bigger than themselves (trying to end this war and save the world). Also, the cultural differences between their societies brought out a lot of comedy in their dialogue. Really, the two of them were a great team and I feel like they helped keep each other in check on the mission.

I also liked how the movie placed the characters in their roles in terms of their missions and the way they go about achieving their goals. For example, Diana is focused on saving the lives of the people that are caught in the middle of this war. So she’s geared toward looking at the fine details of the situation. Steve is more focused on the bigger picture. He’s the one that keeps saying they need to get the book to the right people and that there isn’t just one villain here. He’s thinking about the gas and what a big threat that is to everyone no matter who the bad guy is. It’s interesting because by the end they kind of switch approaches I think. Diana is in an epic battle with Ares who is trying to destroy all people. Steve is thinking about right now and on a smaller yet still important scale, about the people that will be affected by the gas if it’s launched. There’s that great quote he says: “I can save today. You can save the world.” I thought that was just humble and a really fitting way for him to go out. This was his mission and it was very linear, but Diana’s mission is going to continue. Her purpose is bigger than she knows and he sees that potential and trusts that she’ll save the world. He just needed to help in any way he could and to the very end I’m just happy he was a part of her story because I think that both of them learned something significant from one another. He learned to hope again and to have faith and perhaps to let love in again as well. There isn’t much known about Steve’s backstory in the film. However, Chris Pine did mention in an interview that he does think Steve was the kind of guy who had loved before and had lost many people. So, he’s kind of broken and lost at the beginning but he’s still trying to do what he can to contribute and to end the war. When he meets Diana and then ends up falling in love with her, it’s like he’s brought back to life in a way.

She learned that “It’s not about deserve. It’s about what you believe.” She used that as her basis to form a new, more specific goal in saving people. She chose to believe in love and she used that to defeat Ares. When she says that it’s such a beautiful piece of dialogue because she took what Steve said and she gave it her own meaning. She found her path and I think it just speaks largely to the world as a whole. I mean there are always scenarios where horrible things are happening, especially in the past few years, and people might question whether the world deserves saving? Whether it can even be saved by small, individual actions? But, it’s not always about thinking what the end goal will be and if we’re doing enough. Sometimes, it’s more important to just act now and speak up and take a stand on matters that are important to us. I truly think love is the greatest motivation for the world and that people help others because of love. So, to have a superhero say this so blatantly and have it be in a huge scene in the film was such a treat. Overall, I loved this film and I think that even if you aren’t a fan of superhero movies it is something you would enjoy. It contains so many universal themes that I don’t classify it as only a superhero film. It’s a movie about purpose, faith, love, and courage. It’s such a classic hero’s tale and at the same time it has brought so many new layers and dimensions and also a lot of comedy to a traditional hero’s story. Please check it out and feel free to discuss it with me anytime!

[thewritersguardianangel-blog]

“Strong Female Characters”

Hi everyone! In honor of International Woman’s Day, I wanted to make an official post on female characters. I answered this pretty thoroughly on an ask before, but I decided to put it on its own post as well.

The problem that usually occurs with ‘strong female characters’ is that the word ‘strong’ is taken to mean something it doesn’t. Meaning, a lot of people assume that in order to be ‘strong’, a female character has to be physically or even mentally strong, when that’s not necessarily what that means. Bad@$$ characters can be strong characters, and strong characters can be bad@$$, but the two things are not synonymous.

This might get a little lengthy.

What is a “strong female” character?

A character is “strong” when they are complex. This means that they have great and admirable traits as well as things that they struggle with, flaws and mistakes and temptations. They are like a real person, which is what you want with any character you want, but most especially with your protagonist and other significant characters.

One of the reasons writers often fumble with the concept of ‘strong female characters’ is because of the distinct lack of them in the past of popular literature. Due to the way that society has viewed women, women were often used primarily as romantic interests, or mothers, or other traditional ‘womanly roles.’ Even stories that are popular today can be guilty of this- for example Arwen from Lord of the Rings is a popular character, but we don’t really know much about  her other than that she is capable and beautiful and Aragorn’s love interest. She is almost never used in the story, and when she was, it was in relation to Aragorn.

Because of this historical lack of ‘strong female characters’, writers today have become rather obsessed with tipping the scales, to the point where the tables turned far too much the other way, resulting in the “YA strong female character” we all know today. In an effort to combat the ‘soft and gentle’ tropes of the past, writers now make woman who are essentially flawless. They are beautiful, and everyone loves them, and they might fight and defend themselves, badasses who kick butt and look good doing it… but not much more.

Even their flaws tend to be tailored to being admirable. For example, being “too selfless”, “too modest”, or “clumsy”- usually they mean “clumsy in a cute way.”

Again, it’s okay for your character to be athletic. They can be desirable. They can also be a vampire and the chosen one. But if they are not well-written from every angle, flawed in some deep way, they are simply not strong.

Traits of a YA Strong Female Character:

1. Doesn’t have arc/doesn’t grow: Many “YA strong” girls start the story already perfect. They are beautiful, smart, funny, and badass and they lead everyone through their arcs throughout the story- yet they themselves never grow… because there’s no where for them to go.

2. Everyone Loves Her:  Everyone loves or respects or fears this girl. The Brooding Male Character, the Comic Relief guy, everyone. Even if they don’t at first, they come to like her later once they Realize How Awesome She Is. Even the antagonists come to fear her in her power. She’s just Too Cool.

3. Love Interest: It’s okay for your strong girl to have a love interest. That’s totally cool! But make sure that’s not all the story is. If it’s a dystopian universe, make sure her priorities are in order, for example. Readers get frustrated when the government is brutally killing people but all your protagonist can think of is her LI. Life exists outside of love.

4. Woman-ness: In a previous post I mentioned in one of my previous posts that strong characters must have a quirk. Another red flag in the Strong Female Character problem is when the quirk is simply the fact that she is a woman. Saying she’s quirky because she’s a woman but she fights/leads/takes on a  role that is traditionally masculine is not really a quirk. It may be unusual in her world, but that’s a quirk of the world, not the character.

5. Great Flaws: As mentioned above, YA Strong Females typically have flaws that can really be spun back around into strengths. Often writers are afraid that people won’t like their girls if they are flawed. Don’t be afraid. Make her cranky. Make her bad at fighting. Make her ugly. No one in life is utterly flawless, not even your favorite people in the world. It’s what makes us all complex and interesting. So make sure to test your flaws- can this be seen as desirable or admirable in any way? Is the trait described as “too {good trait}” or “{good trait} to a fault?” Then maybe you need to try a few more.

In Summary: Write her realistically. Gives her flaws. If you can’t imagine a person like this in real life, if you can’t imagine yourself like this, then she isn’t strong.

As for writing complex characters in general…

Cornerstones and Foundations are a good place to start. And there will be more out in the future.

 This is a common problem for writers to struggle with. Almost everybody ends up with a flat, “perfect” character sometimes. Just remember to write them as a realistically as possible. Don’t get too caught up in the kick-ass tropes.

~ Penemue