#but i Do hope this kinda reminds people that portrayal isn’t ENTIRELY accurate

[dexter-erotoph]

little rant about roy and kinda hatzgang in general for a second… i Really liked him this episode lemme explain. tons of people love roy but i feel like they don’t actually like. ofc they like him but they don’t entirely recognise and appreciate that he really is a bad person because of how he’s been brought up . and that’s what makes him GOOD it’s the times that reminds you he’s just a kid and he really wants to be good especially for his friends who are there for him despite everything. and i feel like how he was here was a really good way of reminding everyone like roy IS a bad person and he lashes out at anybody that he feels like is threatening him and that’s what makes him a great character. idk i just think the way he behaved was a really good reminder of that

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Dolls’ Eyes — A Jaws AU

Pairings: established Peggy/Steve, developing Brunnhilde/Carol Rating: T Chapters: 14/14

Summary: Tony Stark snapped his fingers and the vanished half of the universe returned, but Thanos escaped the battlefield, fleeing into space. Now that he’s virtually powerless, most of the Avengers consider chasing him all over the universe a waste of resources, but Peggy Carter—newly deposited in the 21st century—is determined to finish the job. Brunnhilde and Carol Danvers have the same idea.

When scattered rumours of fresh killings escalate to the death of one of their own, the three women team up to defeat Thanos once and for all.

read the prologue

read ch. 1 one / 2 two / 3 three / 4 four / 5 five 6 six / 7 seven / 8 eight / 9 nine / 10 ten 11 eleven / 12 twelve / 13 thirteen / 14 fourteen

After everything, Carol wasn’t surprised that Brunnhilde put up a fight over being told to just rest. Carol reminded her that she was lucky to be alive, to which Brunnhilde responded that it wasn’t anything like luck, and went on to list the incredible, lifesaving properties of her fine armour, explain the enhanced durability provided by her Asgardian biology, and enumerate all of the injuries she’d previously sustained that were apparently worse than being electrocuted half to death, and then nearly drowning while incapacitated. Carol didn’t believe half of it, but it was kinda hot when Brunnhilde bragged.

So, in spite of Carol’s efforts, Brunnhilde kept getting up the second her back was turned in order to haul bodies off of Thanos’s ship. As they started to fix everything Carol had broken (including a patch job of that hole in the roof), a scan of the local environment informed them that almost all of the life on this planet was aquatic. They left the stack of corpses on land. Whatever water critters were around, they didn’t need toxic eyeball goo leeching into their habitat.

Carol caught Brunnhilde shaking out a twitching arm and made her sit to do electronic repairs rather than manual labour. (Carol had that handled anyway, plus, she knew where all the bodies were because she was the one who’d left them there.) Brunnhilde protested that she was the captain. Carol came way too close to saying not of this ship, but stopped herself. Instead, she suggested Brunnhilde do like any other captain would and let her underlings take on the grunt work. That got a smile, if not verbal agreement.

Thankfully, Peggy was a fast learner; Carol explained the basics of what she’d done to wreck something and Peggy quickly understood how to walk back the damage. They worked their way through the ship, staying at neighbouring stations so Carol would be there if Peggy had questions, and Peggy would be there if (when) Carol had messed something up so badly that it needed four hands to fix.

“Maria would’ve been great with this,” she said without thinking, holding up a fistful of wires while Peggy tinkered beneath.

“Maria?”

It was easier to talk about her than it had ever been before. Like with the repairs, she could tell that Peggy understood without Carol having to do much more than gush over how good Maria had been at fixing stuff, how thorough she’d been with the plane she’d kept in the hangar on her property, how reliable, how trustworthy, how patient…

“Yes,” Peggy told her with a smile. “She sounds like she was wonderful.”

“She was.”

But when the two of them had finished their circuit of the ship and Carol went to tell Brunnhilde they were good to go, she wasn’t there. Carol panicked, worried that Brunnhilde had overheard all her praise of Maria and somehow missed the tone of a person who was in the late stages of grief, who had accepted the worst and was keen to keep living, maybe even loving.

When she couldn’t find her on the ship, she jogged down the ramp, intending to look for her outside. The second she turned to face the water, she spotted Brunnhilde coming towards her from the escape vessel. Carol ran out to meet her.

“What’s all this?” she asked in a tone of amusement, because Brunnhilde had her arms full.

“Food, Peggy’s jacket, a couple beers that didn’t get smashed when Thanos rammed us, uh…” She tried to examine the rest of the pile she was carrying, but it teetered and slipped; laughing, Carol scooped a few things out of her arms before they could end up in the shallow water.

“I thought you might’ve taken off on us,” she said lightly.

“I didn’t think you thought I’d be capable of that after getting zapped.”

“I was just…”

Brunnhilde walked close, pressing her arm into Carol’s.

“I know. I would’ve been the same way if it’d been you.”

“I don’t even know if I can get electrocuted,” Carol said.

“I’m not gonna recommend trying it for fun,” Brunnhilde told her. “Anyway, I used all my discs on Thanos and I dropped the remote in the water somewhere… You’d have to go to Thor with your request, ask him to bring the lightning down.”

“Straight to Thor?!” Carol laughed. “That seems a little extreme.”

“Or you could just stand around outside in New Asgard during a storm and wait for it to happen naturally.”

“And why would I need to be in New Asgard specifically?” Carol asked in a teasing voice. “I could get struck by lightning anywhere.”

She watched Brunnhilde flounder but couldn’t get an answer out of her, not on the way to the ship, not while she was distracted with Peggy asking her a slew of health questions, and not while they were trying to figure out how to get this humongous spaceship off the ground with a crew of only three people.

As they made their rocky assent, Carol was too busy to wonder whether Brunnhilde had heard her talking about Maria before she’d left the ship to scavenge from the escape craft. They had just broken through the atmosphere, blue sky giving way to black, when Brunnhilde spoke.

“Love’s like war.”

It was so sudden that Carol snorted a laugh.

“Ok, poet,” she said. She was tempted to devote some time to getting Thanos’s ship to play her music, if only to put on ‘Love Is a Battlefield’ for Brunnhilde. To let her know what had been said on the subject already.

She smirked to herself when Brunnhilde continued, clearly not giving a shit about her interruption or joking criticism.

“It is.”

“What do you mean?” Carol asked more seriously.

Brunnhilde shifted in her seat, engaging different protocols for outer space travel. Carol noticed the tremor had gone from her arm.

“You do better in both because of experience,” Brunnhilde said, looking straight out the viewport. “Anybody who can’t appreciate the benefit of falling for someone who’s been in love before is a fucking idiot.”

“And you’re not a fucking idiot.”

“I hope that isn’t a question.”

Carol smiled and shook her head. They flew in silence for a while.

“When we get back,” she said eventually, peering shyly over at her captain, “I owe someone important to me a visit, but then I’m coming to see you. Just a heads-up.”

“Vaguely threatening.”

“Sorry.”

“No,” Brunnhilde told her, grabbing her forearm to get her full attention, “I liked it.”

Heat raced up Carol’s neck until she was blushing as bright red as her suit, or the dumb acid burn on her arm.

Just then, Peggy’s agitated voice came from the other end of the wide flight deck.

“Someone’s coming right at us!”

Before Carol had the chance to say what the hell? or who? or again?, an incoming message threw a distantly familiar face up in front of them, hovering in the form of a hologram.

“Hey,” Carol greeted. “Small universe.”

—

Peggy had never thought to imagine what Gamora might be like. She’d had an account of Peter Quill’s affection for her from Rocket, but had recognized that a portrayal of the woman that crew had known—the woman Peter had loved enough to forfeit his life in the quest for reunion—couldn’t be fully accurate. At best, the Gamora they described would be one layer removed from the real person. The Gamora they had known and the one whose hologram had just appeared before Peggy, Carol, and Brunnhilde were a handful of years and a thousand experiences apart.

It seemed absurd to Peggy that this woman may wish to harm them, but she really ought to have considered it.

“Was it your distress signal I picked up?” Gamora asked flatly, eyes locked on Carol in the pilot’s seat.

“Umm… yep.”

“And you still require assistance?”

Carol glanced at Brunnhilde, then over to Peggy, who nodded. They certainly had worked wonders, she felt, in getting this massive spaceship off the planet, but who knew how many things could go wrong between here and Earth? Peggy doubted either of her shipmates had told her the half of it. They were simply short-staffed, too few fingers available to plug any metaphorical leaks they might spring on the journey.

“Yes please,” Carol told her.

With a nod, 2014 Gamora went from unknown quantity to ally. Peggy sighed in relief.

The three of them were transported directly from Thanos’s ship to Gamora’s. The process was quite indescribable, Peggy thought. Tingly, quick, with a bit of a lurch as she rematerialized on an entirely different flight deck from the one she’d just left. Had the transfer been instantaneous? Had she, perhaps, ceased to exist for a moment or two? She was full of questions but unsure to whom she should direct them.

Gamora, while welcoming in deed, was somewhat inscrutable when they met her face-to-face. Standoffish. Unsure of herself, Peggy realized. Immediately, she warmed to the woman. She had been in her place herself once, sort of, if not precisely in her intimidating boots. It hadn’t been so long ago that she’d been ferried through time to find the world completely changed. What Gamora needed was a reason to trust them the way they were trusting her.

“I take it you killed my father?” Gamora asked plainly once they were aboard.

Oh dear. It seemed they weren’t off to a very auspicious start.

Brunnhilde stepped in front of Carol, who’d just been opening her mouth to speak, presumably to claim responsibility.

“I was the captain,” she stated. “Thanos was killed on my orders.”

“Uh, no, not explicitly,” Carol argued.

“Anyway,” Peggy piped up, “I’m the one who shot him in the head.”

“And he was only vulnerable to that because I electrocuted him to within an inch of his despicable life and his helmet fell off,” Brunnhilde countered.

“On a planet I flew us to,” Carol reminded them.

“We’ll be sharing the blame,” Peggy informed Gamora on behalf of her crewmates.

Gamora cocked her head consideringly.

“And if it’s approval?” To their universal silence, she explained, “I know what he was capable of in my time, and I saw enough of Earth to get a general idea of what he was set to accomplish if he wasn’t stopped.”

“Were you out here hunting him too?” Peggy took a step towards her.

Directing her gaze away from them, Gamora blinked rapidly, looking momentarily confused and upset. In the next second, she’d hidden any outward hint of those feelings.

“I should’ve been,” she said, “but I’ve never been able to stand up to him like I should have. After I left your planet… for a while, I wasn’t looking for him. But I began to see signs. And then Peter Quill came.”

“Peter!” Carol said. “You saw him? Did you talk to him? Rocket never said—”

“No. I just watched. I followed him for a while. I knew he was looking for me. He was so… loud.” Gamora made a face. “Leaving word for me everywhere, telling traders and transports that he was my boyfriend. He was an idiot, but an entertaining idiot… I barely noticed that I’d stopped keeping track of Thanos until he just showed up…

“I was a coward,” Gamora went on. “I saw my father intercept Peter’s ship and I knew what would probably happen, but I couldn’t put myself between the two of them. Was I supposed to stand up for this guy when I’d never been able to stand up for myself? I was raised to be cruel, to think of myself, that attachments formed to accomplish anything but the acquisition of power make you weak. I know Thanos killed Peter. It’s my fault he’s dead.”

Peggy stood in front of her, refraining from placing a reassuring hand on Gamora’s shoulder when she gave her cagey eyes.

“It’s not,” Peggy told her firmly.

“I only heard your distress signal because I heard Peter’s first,” Gamora said. “I went onboard after my father had left; it was days before I could force myself to do it, maybe longer. I used his communications system to speak to his crewmates on Earth.”

“You must’ve just missed us leaving,” Brunnhilde said.

“That’s what he told me. He said three more morons had left the planet, on their way to hunt down Thanos.”

“And you’ve helped us,” Peggy said, tone insistent. “If you do feel any responsibility for what happened to Peter, then surely you should also believe that you’ve redeemed yourself by saving our backsides.”

Gamora’s eyes squinted as though she were in pain.

“I owed him more than this and I hate it,” she said, jaw clenched. “He was no one to me. He knew someone I’m never going to become.”

“Shhh. I know,” Peggy said soothingly.

“I don’t see how that’s possible. Have you ever had someone tell you they love you when it feels like it’s impossible that they even know you? That whoever they loved had to be a different person from who you are?”

Peggy’s shoulders fell. She could feel the bittersweet smile on her face.

“Actually, yes.”

Gamora appeared surprised to have been brought up short in such a manner.

“Do you have any advice?” Peggy urged softly.

For a minute, Gamora was quiet, staring hard at the wall. Peggy could feel that the others had backed away, giving them time and space when Gamora’s stream of information had been diverted by the confusing grief she was obviously experiencing.

“Whatever lengths he goes to because he thinks you’re better than you are…” Gamora finally said, turning her head to look Peggy in the eye. “Try to be worth it.”

“Got it.”

Peggy folded her hands together, pressing her right palm to her wedding ring.

—

They were about to get underway, their new crew of four on a significantly smaller, though sleeker, ship. (Brunnhilde didn’t mourn for the one they’d left in the shallows; it had served them well, first the Asgardians and now the team responsible for the death of Thanos.) However, staring out the viewport from the seat in which she’d been installed as the effective second-in-command, Brunnhilde didn’t feel right. The sight of Thanos’s ship just hanging there in space unnerved her. It would be better if no trace of the Titan remained.

“Let’s blast it,” she suggested to the deck at large.

“Thanos’s spaceship?” Peggy checked.

“Yes.”

“Well,” Carol said, “we aren’t near anything. There’s nothing for the debris to hit…”

Brunnhilde smiled slightly and looked to the captain.

“Gamora? Do you have any weapons on this ship that could do the job?”

“There is one thing I’ve been saving for a special occasion,” Gamora said, gaze fixed on Thanos’s ship. “First, we’re going to need to get clear.”

She piloted them away—away from the planet, away from the ship. Part of Brunnhilde wanted to request the honour of launching the torpedo Gamora was setting the coordinates for, locking it onto her late father’s final vessel, but she was already satisfied with the role she’d played. Let Gamora take this final, symbolic step. It was like Thor’s hideous couch; Brunnhilde had helped him lug the thing into the open air, but permitted him to drop the match (once she’d soaked the cushions in lighter fluid, just in case it wasn’t sufficiently saturated in spilled beer). She would content herself with watching it go up in flames.

And it did. It was an impressive explosion, scattering wreckage in a wide perimeter Gamora had kept them outside of. They were briefly silent as jagged hunks of metal twisted in the void.

“That’s one way to get the stink of dead bodies out,” Carol noted, and Brunnhilde turned to her, shoulders shaking with laughter Carol quickly joined in on.

They flew for some time, and it was good just to relax, to stretch in her seat and tilt her head from side to side so that her neck cracked horrendously and Peggy said things like “good lord!” while Carol laughed her ass off. Brunnhilde remained alert though. She couldn’t help it. In the old days, with the Valkyrie, there’d been a certain relief when the battle in which they’d been engaged was done, but they’d only known true rest once they’d returned to Asgard. Home. The last time she’d been on a ship bound for Earth, the atmosphere had been one of intense grief, muffled weeping in the corridors. They’d known Earth as Midgard and had little admiration for its country of Norway, chilly with fog and swathed in the bleak colours that reflected their inner emptiness. Nothing they loved was there—not their people, not their gleaming towers and soaring statues. How could it ever possibly feel like coming home?

Brunnhilde had honestly believed she’d lost her ability to experience that feeling, that, without her sisters-in-arms, the sensation was lost to her. Yet, despite the tension she still carried from the fight, she felt it easing. She felt herself longing for home, her little house at the water’s edge. For the chance to return to her people as their king and announce a great evil defeated. Maybe this tension was only anticipation after all.

In contrast to the fruits of her own contemplation and revelation, Gamora’s private thoughts had left her expression mournful and roving. Brunnhilde exited the deck to relieve herself and find something to eat in Gamora’s stores, and when she returned, she addressed her.

“You’re not taking us all the way to Earth, are you?”

Gamora flicked her gaze sideways to assess her. Brunnhilde knew there was no judgement to be found in her face, so she stared back calmly.

“I’m taking you to Quill’s ship. Thanos, in his infinite arrogance, didn’t damage it. Maybe he thought he might like to return to it some time and claim it as part of his fleet. It’s a tribute to how much I continue to feel my father’s influence that I planned to do the same. Not build a fleet, but go back. There’s something about that ship… I find it comforting.”

Brunnhilde frowned thoughtfully.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take it and leave this one for us?”

“No. What I felt when I was onboard, examining it and… and removing Quill’s body for space burial… that was just a feeling of, I don’t know, another life. There’s a group on Earth for whom that ship means something. And it’s the only thing they have of him. I couldn’t keep it.”

“One of those people is your sister,” Brunnhilde said carefully.

“Yes.”

“I tried to talk to her, but she doesn’t like me very much. I don’t blame her,” she added as Gamora gave her a wary look. “She was upset.”

“Nebula is at her most dangerous when upset, and she’s always upset, so she’s always dangerous.”

“She was upset about Peter’s death. But I think also because, without him, no one was out here looking for you.”

Gamora stiffened.

“If she really wants to find me, she can come look for me herself. I’ll be ready.”

“She doesn’t want to fight you,” Brunnhilde said. “She misses you. I think. It’s really none of my business.”

“Why would you wish to get involved in our family affairs?” Gamora’s voice was more curious than accusing. “Besides murdering our father, of course.”

Brunnhilde sighed before answering.

“I’ve lost many people I cared about. I don’t have a family anymore.” She glanced over to see Carol and Peggy bent over a screen together, Carol’s sudden snort infecting Peggy until they were both laughing. “I mean,” Brunnhilde corrected herself, “I didn’t.”

When they arrived at the Benatar and Gamora transported Carol and Peggy off her ship, Brunnhilde motioned for Gamora to hold off a moment on removing her.

“If we don’t meet again,” she said, sticking out her arm for Gamora to grasp.

Gamora gripped her tightly and nodded.

“I think we might though. I thought about it and realized it’s easier for me to find Nebula than for her to find me.”

“I may have left you her coordinates.” Brunnhilde released Gamora’s arm. “Enjoy Missouri.”

She joined Peggy and Carol on the Benatar, pausing to bend over Carol’s seat to surprise her with a deep kiss before she took up her own position. She brushed stray strands of hair back out of Carol’s dancing eyes.

“I’m going to have to redo your braid,” Brunnhilde told her.

“Oh, we’ll have time. We’ve got quite a road trip ahead of us. Luckily… Peter left us his tunes.” Beaming, she started up a song with a bright beat.

Brunnhilde smiled and went to her seat, fastening herself in as Carol readied the vessel for launch.

“You know,” Peggy said thoughtfully, slinging her jacket over the back of her chosen seat, “before all of this, I was actually quite afraid of outer space.”

Carol laughed.

“I can’t imagine why.”

[getaroomyouheck]

wrote a review for Hospice by The Antlers

(little precursor to this review, it's rather emotional and personal, maybe also upsetting, kinda stream of consciousness at points too. so a warning in advance) The beginning to 2020 has been one of the roughest moments of my entire life, honestly speaking it's the most aimless and fucking lost I've felt in a while. My grandfather essentially gave up on living and now simply just sits and waits for his eventual death, taking a toll on me, but specifically my mom. Having heard her anger but eventually just simply harrowed emotion of seeing her father at this state. Alongside this, I've almost felt momentary lapses of reason, moments where I feel back in my hollow shell of a body left behind by ones who hurt me in my past, people i once called friends as well as my abusive ex-girlfriend. Broken promises, lies, empty betrayals, actions that left me afraid of human touch. Combined together, the past month I barely even felt like myself, just a shell of who I should be. Yet at this endless sea of wander, I've come to realize something. Something that has helped me begin to finally feel like myself again. Something that I would've only found through the help of this album. So, I want to talk about it, and really go into what it means to me Hospice is, at it's core, an album about abuse, trauma, and the psychological reparations of broken relationships. From the first words sung on Kettering to the final refrain of Epilogue, this albums breathes and bleeds raw emotion as it's main sense of catharsis and sense of meaning. The concept of this album is one that's simple enough to grasp, our narrator (I'll call him Peter since the lead singer of The Antlers is named Peter), is a nurse at a hospice. He falls in love with Sylvia, a woman who is fatally dying of cancer, and the album from Kettering to Epilogue explores their degrading love, her abuse towards him as she withers, and her eventual death. The conceptual narrative to Hospice is one that, while strong and fully developed across the 10 songs present, is second-nature to why this album hits as hard as it does. Where this album hits closest to me, is in how uncompromising its portrayal of abuse, toxic love, and psychological damage on a fragile mind, ends up being, that is what makes Hospice stand above most of its contemporaries. The prologue to the album, while a beautiful instrumental chop that sets the mood, to me, isn't really where this album begins. The true beginning, lies in our 2nd track. Kettering Within this bubble of echoed piano chords, comes our first signs of what's to come. Peter's frail, broken falsetto's, speaking over what little he knew getting into this relationship. It's a unceasing icy reminder of anguish, each hit of the chord being another lie told, another object thrown, another vicious word spat out in agony, all containing this soft yet obvious punctum to their hits. In this dirge of utter misery, Peter spills out from his heart true bleeding words of what abuse really represents. You wish you knew what you would've gotten yourself into when you became a piece of this other persons life, you wish you had the foresight to know you're just one person, that you can't save them from their own demons. Yet, you still try anyways, in an unceasing hope that you might just be able to bring them closure. From Kettering onwards to about Shiva, we get more of a standard fare of what was presented prior There's an inquantifiable amount of depth I can get into. How Atrophy perfectly captures the justification of abuse from the victim, showing what it means to accept ones abuse as a warped sense of adoration. How Bear is a dichotomy of a soft, broken lullaby alongside this crashing chorus of fuzzy guitars, accurately representing the broken home a child would grow up in. How Two is a horrifyingly real portrayal of the false world and broken promises made manifest into a reality crafted by the abuser and the victim, the private life of suffering never to be seen. And especially, how Epilogue painfully captures the cycle of abuse and the clammy throes of falling for the lies and soft words of your abuser simply to let them hurt you more. Yet, the song I want to discuss the most here, is Wake Wake is, a song I can't fully even begin to describe. The sound of this song is haunting to the fullest degree. The lifeless breaths of a dying corpse always cutting through the lowkey instrumentation to which Peter lays bare the reality of being alone as his abuser has left him. This song sounds almost like a suicide note, like a final recording before taking ones own life. The pulsating, rythmic drumbeat feels as if it's a heartbeat, ready to cease on a lifeline. Layered vocals represent that of a Wake, the social circle around a funeral. It's steeped in the clammy hands of death and throes deeply in the jaws of abuse, the breath of death is fresh always present on the words Peter sings. Yet, lyrically, it doesn't mean that at all. This song is not a cry for help, but rather a championing cry for learning to open about the pain inflicted to you, that it's ok to speak, that some people can't be saved, but that's not your burden to bear. It all crashes into what is maybe one of the most powerful moments in all of music to me, one that without fail, makes me cry. Peter, repeatedly, with more and more strain and power to his voice, screams out "Don't ever let anyone tell you you deserve that" as it all washes away in this final maelstrom of emotion. The crashing cymbals, the layering ascending horns, the cutting piano chords, the choired vocals, this song is the beginning of letting go of the anguish that's festered deep inside you. This song, after 8 songs of utter pain and abuse, being hurt and apologizing to the one hurting you, is representative of finally beginning to realize what you had was broken, but accepting it's ok to find someone to listen to you, and finally taking that step forward. Finally, walking out that door, letting people in, and beginning to accept what you are for who you are. This song, to me, helps represent the emotions surging through me as i finally began opening up to my friends and current girlfriend about how I was emotionally abused and sexually harassed by my ex. How I began to trust and learn to accept the touch of another human. How I learned to realize I'm more than just what she saw me as. Wake is more than just a song to me, rather Wake is the culmination of learning to move forward from grief and toxic love, and try to begin again, maybe wishing you could change the past, but willing to move forward all the same This is what Hospice taught me, and what truly clicked with me as I listened to it this past month and a half. As much as I may want to, I can never go back in time and change the mistakes I made in my youth. I can never go back and stop myself from making friends with people who would only feed into my depression and suicidal ideation. I can never go back and stop myself from dating someone who would end up nearly raping me. I can never go back in time and speak with my grandpa before he gave up on his own life. But, what I can do, is move forward in spite of this pain, in spite of this grief, and learn to love again, to laugh again, to trust again, to continue facing forward anything that may ever face me. Hospice taught me that while I may have endured anguish, I'm still here despite it, and can still keep moving forward. That this burden isn't mine to brunt alone. That it's ok for me, to let people in Favorite songs: Kettering, Sylvia, Atrophy, Bear, Two, Wake (standout), Epilogue Least fav song: N/A

[grimtime]

Analysis of an analysis

The main plot of The Room is very simple and God I wish I lived in the universe in which it weren’t, just to see, what it would’ve been like if the director were allowed to go fucking ham on the script. It reads like something I’d have written when I was like 9, only to go back and remove the more blatantly unrealistic elements (pirates) and insert in a lot of what my 9 year old idea of Adult Drama would be.

Jesus fucking Christ okay gimme an exacto knife and I’ll slice these boxes there is already way too much to unpack.

Why am I drawn to convolution? Why does it matter to me if the director had total creative freedom? Why would my nine year old self write a misogynistic story about betrayal culminating in a suicide and why would that be my nine year old idea of adult drama? Why did I specify I liked pirates when I was nine? Does that matter? 

It’s about a woman (Lisa) who cheats on her fiance (Johnny) with his best friend (Mark), because she’s fallen out of love with him, and the inaction of everyone involved as well as the transgression itself drives Johnny to commit suicide.

Did Tommy Wiseau intend for everyone else to betray Johnny through their inaction, or was that just my understanding of it at the time? I rewatched the film yesterday and actually, a LOT of characters try their best to mitigate the damage and stop it in its tracks. So why did I say they were inactive? 

I kinda wanna make a shittily edited montage with scenes of Mark and Johnny to Even In Death or My Immortal or something like that by Amy Lee but I don’t know how to edit video, so that’s out, for now.

Why do I want to do this? It’s not a competent film, but why do I want to mock it? Also, I like Amy Lee, so why do I want to mock it through that specific medium? And why do I want to focus it on Mark and Johnny? What’s the relevance of that? Why did I choose those two songs specifically as well? Both of which focus on grieving and being haunted by the memory of a dead loved one. 

There are a few unresolved subplots as well which I’ll get to later.

The film introduces the two main characters, Johnny and Lisa, by Johnny giving Lisa a red dress as a gift. If a man got me a sexy red dress as a gift I’d kill him. Fucking dresses and flowers and petals he’s just PERFORMING romance. He performs EVERYTHING with symbolic shorthand “oh, how do people act, men play catch I think? Eeeerrrrr then I will have my men play catch. In SUITS. Yeah this is humanity I fuckin’ nailed it.”

Why do I feel the need to specify that I wouldn’t appreciate a sexy red dress from a man as a gift? It makes sense for a man to gift his fiance a sexy red dress. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that. Why did I specify that I wouldn’t appreciate it, when my personal distaste has nothing to do with it. Nobody reading this needs to know. I don’t need to tell them that. 

Why so critical about Johnny’s performance of human concepts like male friendship and romance? Why did I mock it? What is wrong about it? 

There’s a running thread throughout this movie, wherein Johnny’s primary mode of affection is incredibly materialistic, and his friends value him primarily for what he can do for them on a financial/material scale. #Crapitalism. Similarly Lisa is only ever valued by other people for her external appearance cuz all the men are thotty creeps.

Is this assertion even accurate? Johnny provides emotional support to his friends throughout the movie. It might be more accurate to say that Johnny values *himself* for what he can provide. But this isn’t about that. Why did I discard his emotional support? Why did I assert that his affection is materialistic only? Why did I say his friends only value him based on that? 

I don’t think I’m wrong about what Lisa is valued for. But why did I pick up on that in the first place?

Blaa blaa fucking blaa dichotomy between realism crossing into surrealism Tommy Wiseau’s a misogynist and I can and will fucking make Lisa an interesting character blaa blaa fucking blaa nobody’s going to read this fuck you.

Why did I mock my own analysis in this paragraph and only very disparagingly allude to the realism -> surrealism? Is it because it’s kind of fucking pretentious? It IS. But why do I give a shit. And why do I simply just not shut the fuck up and not say it at all? Why do I say it? Am I trying to communicate I know it’s inherently kind of ridiculous? Why? For who? What am I hoping to maintain?

Why did I gravitate so strongly to Lisa’s defense despite knowing she has very few, if ANY, redeeming personality traits. I know if she were a real person I wouldn’t like her. Why do I feel the need to impose depth on a character that wasn’t intended to have any? Defiance in response to the inherently misogynic portrayal of women? Why do I feel the need to defy Tommy Wiseau’s original intentions? What am I expecting to accomplish? 

If I posit that I have no audience, who is this for? And WHY do I posit that I have no audience? Why is that important? What purpose does pointing it out serve?

Lisa is the surreal element- every other character is pretty fuckin’ preoccupied in their social status and place in their society and maintaining it, bitch gets what she wants she ain’t about that conformity. I mean she’s also an adulterer but fucking hell I have to impose depth art is interpretive blaa blaa fucking blaa why did I delete my blog I don’t remember anyone’s URL LMAO.

Here I equate surrealism with anti-conformity. Which is kind of strange, because it implies that I think conforming to society, accepting your social status, and maintaining it is realistic. The tone of this paragraph when talking about Lisa’s “surrealism” is pretty positive toward her. Which would also imply that I think realism is bad. 

Why do I HAVE to impose depth and my own ideas onto Lisa specifically? Why do I keep justifying myself with “art is interpretive”? 

I then proceed to dip the fuck out and mock my impulsiveness as if trying to remind an audience (that I supposedly do not have) that I’m self aware of my own pretentious and inherently kind of stupid shortcomings. But if there’s no audience, as I said earlier, who is that directed toward? 

Anyway I guess there’s something to be said for Johnny destroying all his possessions at the climax of the movie. Once he loses his trophy woman to his best friend he has nothing left, does he? He really has nothing going for him. I mean he has his job still but when he loses his already pretty flimsy social life all he has left are his materialistic possessions and they can’t exactly do therapy at him. But his entire life is his job and what he can possess. Destroying the only things he has left is self destruction. SHE TORE HIM APART.

Why would I claim that he has nothing but his material possessions left? I don’t think this is supported by the movie. He has his other friends. He has Denny.  I’m contradicting the source material to impose a certain idea onto Johnny. Why? 

Why did I reference a line in the movie to mock his act of self destruction? 

Ripping Lisa’s red dress at the end is a symbolic murder– because I don’t believe he ever saw Lisa as her own person. He saw her as another thing he could possess. A symbol of status he could dress up. A material. Lisa may as well have been a bit of red fabric. After all the momentum of the film often halts just to have characters comment on her hotness. Supporting this statement is the fact that, although she was lying about physical abuse, he does get pretty physical with her soon after. Foreshadowing? Fuck if I know, this movie wasn’t made competently. Was I written competently? Am I going to spiral before I die? Questions questions! All of them edgy!

I don’t know that I’m correct when I say that Lisa was his trophy, and a status symbol. He killed himself over her unfaithfulness. He stated a few times that she was clever. So why do I assert that she’s no different than any other possession he had? 

Does the momentum of the film REALLY come to a halt to have characters remark on her appearance? Why do I take notice of that? Why is it important to me to say that? 

I support that the tearing of the red dress is symbolic of murder by stating that Lisa’s lies about being physically abused are foreshadowing of that event. Maybe that’s a stretch in the context of the FILM, but I’ve also asserted that joking about having a heart attack was foreshadowing for my heart attack, so even though it’s a stretch when you apply that to the FILM, it’s not a stretch when you apply that to REALITY. Why is foreshadowing important to me in that way? 

I immediately state I don’t know, and that the movie wasn’t made competently, but we all knew it wasn’t. I immediately focus back on real life implications. Was my attempt at comprehending the narrative of The Room an attempt to comprehend the narrative of real life? If so, why did I pick THE ROOM, of all movies? If you’re self deprecating on a blog with no followers and nobody reads your post, does it make a meaning?

I wonder if there are any shitty fanfics written about Tommy Wiseau on wattpad. I’m not looking. But I fucking wonder.

Why the change in topic? Why wattpad, a fiction site known for mostly hosting kids fictions? Why am I drawn to haphazardly made fiction? 

Nevermind I looked and there’s “Trapped On An Island With Tommy Wiseau”. Fucking. Glorious. Why didn’t I pick THAT to over analyse? Holy fucking shit it’s amazing. I want to know where THAT story is going.

Whatever.

Why did I change my mind and look? I immediately contradict myself. Why DIDN’T I analyse that fiction over this one? Why did I like it so much? Why did I want to know where that was going? Why “whatever”? Is not saying something just as important as saying it? Bring up an idea only to dismiss it immediately after. 

So anyway, people repeat themselves when they talk sometimes, and they do it in the movie as well. That’s cool. That’s good. That adds some naturalism to it. That makes it seem like real people talking and not actors. Yeah.

The tone of this paragraph is different to all the other paragraphs. Why? What was I thinking?

EXCEPT IT DIVES ASS OVER TEAKETTLE INTO SURREALISM! When those people repeat themselves in ways that don’t make sense as a shorthand way to progress the scene. It’s just a single step removed from [INSERT SOMETHING TO CHANGE THE SCENE HERE]. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

What’s the purpose of pointing this out? I remember saying this and wondering if I’ve ever heard or said any artificial, fake sounding excuses to progress a plot or scene. Why did I pick “I don’t want to talk about it” as my cited quote over all the other choices? Do I just not want to talk about it anymore? If I didn’t- I wouldn’t. Does the AUTHOR not want me to talk about it? That is after all the same reason Lisa reuses that quote over and over. She wouldn’t bring it up if she didn’t want to. Tommy Wiseau is the one who wants her to stop talking about it. Why can I not focus too hard on this?

It’s something isn’t it. Damn. Yep. I’m chewing gum with the paper still on it just to see what happens. Hope it’s not poisoooooooon.

I unceremoniously change the subject to totally irrelevant bullshit, highlighting my own stupidity, as if to remind somebody of it. What audience? Then the subject of poison. Why? 

Aw hell I had to talk about the subplots. Iuno. INSERT SUBPLOT BLATHERING HERE. Danny took drugs. That was something. Amazingly the movie treats drugs and alcohol as bigger sins than attempted murder and assault! The characters do! Everyone does! Fucking glorious. IT’S NOT WHAT THE ILLICIT SUBSTANCES MAKE YOU DO UNDER THE INFLUENCE, IT’S THAT YA TOOK EM AT ALL! I forget what it means.

I hastily talk about the subplots, only really focusing on the alcohol and drugs/attempted murder and assault, for the purpose of mocking the condemnation of both over murder/domestic abuse. Why so hastily and haphazard, though? “I forget what it means” but I still bring it up? Why?

YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, NOCTURNE-DOLCE!!!

Why this joke? Is there significance to putting Nocturne in the role of Lisa? The placement of this joke is odd, too. Why here? Why now? Why out of nowhere? What am I mocking? Why am I mocking it? It’s a total non-sequitur. 

Yeah. I wonder if I could construct a shitty emo poem using only lines of dialogue from The Room.

Why?

Don’t leave I need you, I love you Everything is going wrong

You don’t want to talk to me

They trick me They didn’t keep their promise They betray me, and I don’t care anymore

You are TEARING ME APART

I don’t care

Everything is not okay

Don’t worry about it

It’s definitely shitty.

Why did I pick these specific lines of dialogue? Why did I do this at all? Who benefits from it? What’s it even saying?

The more I think on it the more I realize that Lisa is literally the only character that develops as the movie goes on. I mean her development is basically “HOT ADULTERER IS EVIL WOMAN BITCH” but, yknow, at least she’s not like poor dumb Mark who has sex with her countless times and still manages to be stunned when she proposistions him for sex.

Why did I pick up on this? What significance does it have?  

Arguably she’s also the only character that shows any kind of agency; all the other characters seem to have their patterns. Mark asks her “why are you doing this to me” as if he’s a totally passive, blameless bystander, each scene with Claudette is exactly the same as the last, etc. The only character that really advances the plot is Lisa.

Are there blameless bystanders in our reality? Who have no agency? Are we some of them? Are we Lisa, or are we Mark? Is agency indicative of immorality in the context of this movie and our lives? 

Lisa: agent of chaos and change. I unironically adore the PISS out of her dialogue. Check it the fuck out:  

If so what does my admiration say about me? She is unquestionably the villain of the film? Why do I choose her as the favorite?

You know, I really loved Johnny at first. Everything’s changed. I need more from life than what Johnny can give me. Suddenly my eyes are wide open and I can see everything so clearly. I want it all.

If he can’t give me what I want, somebody else will.

You have to take as much as you can. You have to live, live, live.

I don’t see what the big deal is. Doesn’t everybody look out for number one? Don’t I deserve the best?

There is no baby. I told him that to make it interesting. We’re probably going to have a baby eventually anyway.

I am not responsible for Johnny. I’m through with that. I’m changing. I have the right, don’t I? People are changing all the time. I have to think about my future. What’s it to you?

Do I identify with Lisa? If so, why? Is it because she’s supposed to be representative of all woman and I’m compelled to argue against the really sexist idea of that while still obeying the framework of the movie? Or is it foreshadowing of future villainy? Foreshadowing is after all significant? Is my pursuit of personal agency evil? 

Hot take: Lisa and Lola are the same character except one is a fish from Shark Tale and the other is Lisa from The Room.

This is ominous.