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NATLA
my reactions to the netflix adaptation baby!
it's long-winded as hell!
and also just a stream of consciousness, BEWARE.
Ep1
good start.
beautiful bending. way to go animator team or cgi or like all those people that i don’t know their job title or descriptions but who have done a great job. (big step up from the adaptation we shan’t name!)
really being like, 'this aint your fun kids show' outta the gate with the burning people alive multiple times in a row, but sure.
katara shoulda been pissed and broke the glacier but fine i guess
v cool symbols within the arrow
weep for gyatso. beautiful representation. upsetting visuals.
‘relatively’ painless first ep changes, i enjoyed myself!
Ep2
sticky rice. perfect.
Kyoshi warrior make-up????? AHHHHHH IT IS BEAUTIFUL and PERFECT! Suki is gorg!
YES AIR SCOOTER
kayyyyy but we don't need to make suki weird and awkward around sokka just because he's 'no longer sexist' (or whatever we wanna call that choice) and they need some reason to interact. why not ‘hey we’re both hot, lets flirt’
the warriors training is beautiful
what if, we were training, and we looked in each others eyes, then we kissed *giggle giggle giggle*
Its giving, ‘I knew i shouldn't have asked kyoshi’ lololol
stealing roku’s thunder…….i’ll forgive it because Kyoshi absolutely KILLED! (and she’s a giant. we love)
kay this Zhao works, Ken is turning it out. His crazy energy is on display.
Ep3
no need to give us rebels within the fire nation. literally no point at this time in the story. we just entered this world, there can be one bad side without getting into the grey yet. leave it.
is that who? or is it? can it be?
jet intro woooooork
CABBAGES!
tao is SO SERIOUS. a bit much
the mechanist by our boy Danny pudi is decent
azula mai ty-lee. DOES NOT EXIST TO MINE EYES
holy fuck TOO MANY PLOTS and CHARACTERS like RELAX. (why are they all in this episode?)
jet doing jet tho. his hair is soooooooo fluffy haha
fuck it up zuko aang fight. boots the house down with that fight choreo! THE SCARVES?!Love!!!
Ep4
Bumi being angry at aang WHY? No fucking need for that.
unnecessarily convoluted bumi. it’s like they wanna change plot and character, just to change plot and character? it doesn’t work and it makes them look bad (the writers)
bumi plot didn’t need to go down like that
to take the cave of two lovers out of season two. why?
the minstrels are lovely, i like them, good job actors yay!
separating story lines though… makes us miss out on gems like ‘no one react, but i think that kid is the avatar’ BIG LOSS
pretty story of omashu animation, holding to the roots in the og episode. as they should
Give one of the earth benders who captures Iroh a full on new backstory why?
iroh backstory, well done. leaves from the vine music?????? tear jerk reaction is instant.
bumi bumi bumi smh…... see above.
dawwwwww our scarred boy. uncle is here for you.
Ep5
Should we name an episode spirited away? ………. ._.
Why does aang automatically know the lost villagers are in the spirit world? He doesnt really know that shit yet so……
NO AZULA IN SEASON ONE. GTFO. Why give her a fucking monologue to her father advising him on the war without being asked and then he snaps at her for kissing ass!? And defends zuko? Mf hates zuko! And now azula has a story arc about being constantly compared to zuko? Thats fucking backwards BITCH. if this plot line sticks imma burst into flames and set the writers on fire with my burning body.
Also lay off on the serious serious tone dumb fucks.
kid who plays zuko gets it. whine whine whine.
Why bring sokka and katara to the spirit world? You split them up during other adventures but when he’s doing the things that are legitimate avatar duties, they come along…..
Arden Cho can do NO WRONG. My love.
THE KNOWLEDGE SPIRIT NOW!?! WTF are you doing!? Embarrassing.
TOO EARLY FOR AZULA! And mai and ty-lee are cardboard!?!?! WHY???
Paul as Iroh is correct. 100% correct. Kid who plays zuko (dallas?) has been v good.
Heibai looks slay.
VERY STUPID THAT YUE GOES TO THE SPIRIT WORLD AS A THREE TAILED FOX. OMG. (i spoiled my self for that kinda but also its obvious and bad)
Kay we're gonna skip bato of the water tribe I guess.
Adding conflict with Hakoda and sokka for what reason? honestly curious.
Doing katara’s story with her mom early is fine. its v heartbreaking and well done.
Why Koh now? Why add to that plot line? Changing the way Koh works with the fog?…..
koh design though? AMAZING. TERRIFYING.
Also instead of LIGHT filler episodes they go SAD filler…… -_-
ooop. gyatso! okay…. i guess. that’s alright.
Ep6
Not Iroh’s bun! how dare you archers?!
'he cares too much' okay caring about whether a soldier's life is lost is not too much.... but alright.
How many more times you think they could fit the phrase ‘saving the world’ into this adaptation?
Honest question. What was this latest attempt at an atla adaptation’s goal for the overarching message for this season based on their changes? like.... hmmmmm?
what is on the firebenders soldiers hands? anyone? i haven't looked close enough or paused it to see.
the blue spirit mask is perfect. if they got that wrong i would have thrown up
blue spirit escape on point!
lol zuko *slaps aangs hand away*
first fun goofy, non directly plot driving convo between zuko and aang for about two seconds this episode. about damn time.
lol every episode having a voice over, like why.
koh would not be giving people back though. facts.
good zuko backstory. hits the feels just right. curious, they have been leaving this arc as is more than all the other arcs…… is it per chance, perhaps, mayhaps because zuko’s character journey is one for the history books and is as close to perfection that any story teller can hope for? hm? maybe? YOU THINK?!
Ep7
team avatar should be sokka's line....
aang has yet to water bend..........
NOOOO NO NO NO NO NO so dirty they did Yue SO dirty.
enough Azula plot. just stop. it's embarrassing to attempt to change this. she hasn’t HIT as a character at all. Theres no punch. VERY embarrassing. and Mai and ty-lee are CARICATURES of themselves.
your 'the one’ what azula? that makes no sense.
Yue is a bender?.......
yue fox bullshit is stupid. sorry not sorry. not that she could go to the spirit world but that they teased her early in the first place. it’s not interesting or new just taking the whole swamp ep and revamping it for this season.
'wise to focus on your training during the journey'???? from what teacher was he gonna learn MF?! are you fucking dumb?
aang Keeps. On. Saying. 'i need help' but the fucking master water bender isn't like 'yo, lets get training right away!’ …..where am i!?
don't rewrite the koi fish. DO NOT REWRITE THE KOI FISH.
unforgiveable wig.
'boy of my dreams' bitch you had one dream. (yea you have a connection or whatever but ew. don’t say that)
WHY HASN’T AANG WATERBENDED YET!
take sokka's sexism out but AMP the northern water tribes sexism up to 1000% ??? WHY?
Bad bad bad bad bad. do not have aang tell katara not to fight. that is fucking stupid. SUCH WEIRD DECISIONS. GUYS. netflix writers. please. fucking RELENT! stop fucking with magic.
LOL Iroh and zuko are my biggest highlight. easily.
'my plan? my plan is to reclaim whats mine!’ ‘so no plan then?’ HA!
get azula and firelord plot OUT of here! FUCK OFF. i get it. i get they are good characters. great characters! and you wanna write them. but for the love of all story telling, you are going to burn yourselves out of plot too soon and then just start dishing out trash as if its a meal. i won’t eat your trash. I’m telling you now.
Daniel dae kim is good shit. (still wish he wasn't in the season but he's got the energy. and i love him)
YES Katara's hair during the Pakku fight. that's on point.
LET. KATARA. BE. ANGRY.
Good little scene about family at the end there. very cute scene and dialogue.
final ep!
do not name it legends. just. yuck.
to bring the blimp in during the war of the northern water tribe? kayyyyy. i'll allow it.
pakku gave crumbs to the women......
cuuuute the young water benders reporting to Katara and calling her master. i like that a lot.
I'm sorry ICE MOON??? (is this a real thing that i don’t know about or did they make it up? AITA)
one night in the physical world? noooooooooooooo. nope thats actually incorrect. your welcome for the correction. (odd detail to change in the first place. maybe someone has a better reason why they would do that? no?)
why the fuck would you hurt momo?
amazing round doors. love. love. love the sets.
beautiful oasis. crushed that.
BEAUTIFUL scene design, costume design, make-up and hair artists, and overall art department! Fucking Killed It! They're the real heroes!
zuko and iroh having the most word for word lines as any other characters, can't mess with fucking iconic bitches!
VERY excellent colour effects when the moon spirit dies.
im fine with Hahn not being a dick. dats cool.
silly to say that aang 'can't come back' from merging with the ocean spirit. was that a threat in our OG? No.
The ocean spirit looks good. that was fucking tough to do im sure.
no need to make it look like the firebenders can face the OCEAN SPIRIT. it's an easy battle for him not the puny humans.
good final war. they did it quite well. lovely atmosphere and intensity. the good stuff.
omg. you killed the teen and Hahn?! whu wha?
yes, sorry… WHY on earth did Aang not bend a single GD drop of water?! why in gods name in vain?! who, who fucking decided that? WHO?!
LOL little Aang actor needing a tear stick (he’s using)
'northern water tribe was never the target' how many times can you fucking say that. no one is THAT infinitely clever. you're not pulling the wool over their eyes. one fight happened in one location and one in another, no one can ever be everywhere at once so…….. enough with the smug.
why have azula take omashu now? because they are giving azula plot early for no reason and because they are gonna fuck with ba sing se? literally fuck off.
STOP stealing shit from other episodes, the calendar is in the library. season two. same with the knowledge spirit. if you didn’t know.
okay done! (overall, a lot of good work went into this by people who i’m sure cared a lot. but no one should be surprised when everyone gives their harshest critique. source material with a steadfast fandom my loves. you had it coming <3)
#natla#hooooboy#i've lost it!#i really went off on some episodes but not others#i wasn't taking notes consitently for each episode and some i watched with friends and some not so#whatever!
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For the sake of humour, they made Jennifer Walters ridiculously incompetent, even though she’s supposed to be a good lawyer both in the MCU and in the comics.
#it's annoying tbh#and like...I thought the first episode wasn't bad#but it's just more and more ridiculous situations and her not really learning anything?#like she comes off as obnoxious and self-centered#and not in a 'she's supposed to be a flawed character so those are her flaws' way#more in a 'she's super strong and great and this is what a girl boss look like'#looks*#where's the struggle in being a superhero outside of it affecting her dating life?#they legitimately had her more upset about going against the guy making her her dress#than about defending the man who attempted to murder her cousin#like initially when people went berserk over her angry outburst in the first episode#I didn't agree with them because idk I felt they would actually expand on that?#like okay she can perfectly control the hulk. clearly she doesn't realise how difficult it would be like#I thought the next few episodes would show us her struggling with it after her initial 'everything is fine. I'm fine.' phase#but no....she was legitimately fine. with a big change like that. wtf?#like she says something along the lines of 'I work for THEM' but she chose to do it and didn't really fight it?#and don't even get me started on her using 'she-hulk' to try and find dates#that was just weird.#15 year old Peter Parker thought about it and recognised the ridiculousness in that#and he was only wanting to impress ONE girl who he KNEW was a fan of spiderman#and he STILL immediately talked himself out of it. He's 15.#'is there anything more depressing than dating in your 30s?'#yeah...how about a terrifying transformation that gives you new powers and changes your body and impacts every aspect of your life? -_-#anti mcu#jennifer walters#she hulk#anti she hulk#marvel meta#in the tags#layl.text
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Attack On Titan thoughts..... SPOILERS
Okay I watched AoT when it first came out and stopped after season 1 due to my hatred of Eren/liking the side protagonists more than him.
The reason I decided to watch it again is 1. I know I would like it 2. I read the most recent Manga chapter and wanted to see how they got from A to B. I will also say I'm a person who could give less than a rats ass about spoilers and so I went to fandom wiki. I ended finding/learning all kinds a shit about the plot. And fuuuuuuck it's fucked up.
Season 2 definitely was a step up compared to S1 for me(but it's also been years since I watched it sooooooo). The ending credits is what caught my eye. These fuckers legitimately put manga spoilers in for the manga. This shit that was in the end credits wasn't even out in the manga yet! What fucking mad lads! And to mention the song! At first I thought it didn't match with AoT, but the more I watched and read the story, it fits perfectly. To me season 2 was a masterpiece.
Season 3 was really good! So like I said before I stopped watching for a long time due to me hating Eren. Well S3 made me like him. He's grown and change so much as a character. The amount of change he went through was so much! Especially when he learned more and more about his father, Grisha. And let's not forget about Zeke. The dude is so intelligent and I can't wait to see more about him(also his beast titan is just a super ugly arangatang).
Season 4 just came out, but is looks super promising. My only critique with it, is that it seems all the 9 titans will be completely in 3d. It isn't a bad thing, but I do like it when they mix up the 2d and 3d. A lot of 3d modeling doesn't usually bother me, but it just makes me think of the ending of Naruto Shippuden and so it makes me a bit nervous. But if they pull a Demon Slayer then it should be fine.
So Ymir Fritz story is so messed up. In the anime it has only been touched upon a little, where in the manga it has been explored. But! In chapter 135 we see Ymir at the pig pen! I hope this means we'll be exploring even more of her life. Like I would love to see her without a shadowed distorted face. I personally kinda imagine her looking a lot like Historia. I also want to see more of her relationship with her daughters. Not the king, fuck that guy. He had this girl hunted, then when she turned into Titan he had her make bridges and roads. Then after that, he was like now you can bear my children. Like gross dude. This girl could've been his like daughter or even granddaughter at her age. Then when she dies, he tells their daughters to eat their own mother's corpse. Like homie WTF! You sick bastard. He wanted to keep the titan gene so bad and it ended destroying his own people down the line.
A big thing though that I think would be cool, is that Armin seeing more about Ymir. He is currently in the mouth of a titan suffocating and he saw Ymir. I so desperately want home to incorporate a plan that involves Ymir.
Anyway! If you read this holy hell thanks!
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On the HIMYM Finale + Deleted Scenes (rewatch)
On my hate of Ted’s relapse in season 7:
Rewatching HIMYM and of course, I’m sad again at how much I loved it sans Ted’s suddenly thinking he’s in love with Robin again after Drunk Train. It pisses me off so much, and which there were comments on how it made sense because Ted was just so down on himself that he had stooped so low as to try to get girls on the train and be so far away from his goal—I would have believed that but the ensuing episodes definitely show this wasn’t the case. Drunk Train was season 7 episode 16. They broke up at the end of season 2 and only had a heart to heart about how difficult the break up was a few episodes later, and casual sex along with screaming and anger mid season 3. Never once in between does Ted actually like her again except when Barney wanted her and he read his letter—which I’ll account for as him being down and logically and/or nostalgically thinking they would work again, rather than current feelings. I would have wanted him to be depressed because being around happy people or people that he’s jealous of or something, because that’s relatable and understandable. But him being upset that Robin was marrying someone that wasn’t him when she never expressed being in romantic love with him for the past 6 years just makes me despise Ted. And I don’t despise him, but when I take a step back, that act makes me really hate him. And like.... Ross in Friends was a horrible human. I cannot vouch for him in that he wanted to be a good human—Ross thought he was a good human when he wasn’t. But Ted really did want to be a good human. And it upsets me that this is where the line is drawn, where he believes he deserves Robin more than Barney, more than anyone, when she never showed interest in him again.
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A brief touch on my hate of Robin’s character in love:
I don’t hate Robin as a human or a character in general. But I severely hate how she was the writers’ ultimate princess on a pedestal and never thought about how she’s not a prize, but she needs to work for happiness. Never once does she work for any of her relationships. She’s incredibly selfish—and hey, that’s fine because I am and all humans are to a degree, but she’s not allowed to stay selfish and get any and every happy ending. That pisses me off to no end. I agree with the people that say Robin didn’t deserve Ted—but in reality, it was more that Ted deserved better. She never made any grand gesture for Ted or Barney when they both tried to give her anything and everything they had. I’m unsure if in any relationship she put herself on the line. I think after Don, she stopped. I think Don got the best of her, but Don didn’t quite treat her well. Kevin was the best match for her because he helped simmer her crazy and he could be a little crazier with her, but really she didn’t offer anything consciously.
She was unwilling to compromise in season 2, and she never changed throughout—she only revealed parts of her that she kept hidden. The writers made her sane and insane, kind and cruel, and every other paradox so she could fit into anything they wanted and seem rounded out even when she wasn’t. The writers kept her as this ideal girl and never understood that girls can have character development too. (Not that anyone besides Barney really had character development—which is also why everyone was rooting for him, not Ted.) The things she’d give up for Barney, she never cared about. The dogs she gave up for Ted in season 2 were her only attempt at dipping her toes in the water, but then the writers just never made her swim again (not that she should have given away her dogs for Ted). As the series progressed, it felt like she didn’t care about anything. That’s why she was consistently able to swing into a new relationship on the same day after a breakup. Because they made Robin sane enough, no one had to doubt her love and she never had to prove it. But now it all seems like a desperate girl who is afraid to be alone and has no idea what she wanted (continued in next section).
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On the deleted Robin x Ted lunch finale scene in 2020 and how it impacts the ending:
Josh Radnor said he hoped the writers kept that in the finale because it showed that Ted wasn’t always pining for Robin when he was with Tracy, and that Robin loved and was thinking about Ted as much if not more. I agree with the first part, definitely not the latter.
Before I discuss how I interpreted that scene, here is how I interpret the two endings of HIMYM vs the ideals of the fans (from my perspective).
The ending where Tracy dies and Ted gets with Robin at the end:
Pros:
The fan theory that maybe this is a happy ending because Tracy gets to be with Max in Heaven, Ted and Robin (and Ted got the kids he wanted and Robin got her career), and Barney and his daughter.
I guess the writers get to use their original footage, but like that doesn’t really warrant a number.
Cons:
Like Josh Radnor said, it makes it seem like Ted was in love with Robin even when he was with Tracy.
Season 8 and 9 were a total bust and a LOT of the footage and most meaningful and dramatic scenes (absolutely EVERYTHING WITH TED) were a WASTE of viewer emotion. Like I legitimately regret giving any fucks about Ted’s emotions, that lying sonuvabitch.
If it is meant to be like Robin and Ted are soul mates and belong together, the ENTIRE SEASON 3-9 made the fans believe that either 1. NO THEY’RE NOT, or 2. soul mates are STUPID and a LIE and not as amazing as Lily and Marshall made it seem. And if not, then it perpetuates that soul mates aren’t a thing.
It makes it seem that if a guy pines after a girl enough, he’ll fucking get her eventually. No one on the face of at least Democratic America wants white guys to get that message, wtf.
By perpetuating Pro #1, it further makes Tracy to be a vehicle for Ted’s children and not really anything else. Kinda ties into Con #1.
The ending where Tracy is alive (actually this doesn’t matter to me) where Robin and Ted don’t get together at the end:
Pros:
The hope and dream and ideal that a soul mate (Tracy) exists at the end of the suffering—the thing that made Ted such a good protagonist—lives on. And is finally accomplished. And we can be happy for Ted, while believing in love and life ourselves. (This is the main fucking point, in contrast to Con #3 of the previous end.)
The reassurance that even if you think you’re in love now and it’s not working out, one day, you’ll GET THE FUCK OVER IT
The hope that all the love you give out will be reciprocated (this is different than #1 for me simply based on Tracy’s personality, rather than the fact that Ted ended up with someone that wasn’t Robin. Because Tracy was kind to him and wanted to make Ted happy. Robin never tried to make Ted happy, she just rolled with the punches.)
The fact that the drumroll, the build up, the suspense of the story led to actual grandeur and a happy end, and not a fake out like the other ending. (Different from the above because this is simply the storyline, and how this way wouldn’t be like a “haha, [the ending] was in front of you the entire time!”)
Cons:
No footage of the kids?
No non-sappy way to end that doesn’t make everyone hate the writers?
No reason why Ted is telling this story to his kids?
Like honestly, while sappy, there is no con to a happy ending
Now, let’s retrace the first betrayal ending with the dinner scene:
Pros:
Yes, it does look like Ted loved Tracy / didn’t pine after Robin in his head. And yes, this was something that killed everyone in the finale and thus was a big thing.
If Ted x Robin occurs, you still get the Pro #1 fan theory.
Cons:
It doesn’t look like Robin was in love with Ted even if she admits to thinking about him. It instead just looks like she regretted her life and selfishly wanted him because he treated her well, even when she never had any intention of giving him what he wanted.
Also the awkward thing about Robin kinda trying to get him back when he has a family and alive wife at that point in time.
If this continued with the Robin x Ted thing, it doesn’t really make it seem that Ted was head over heels magically in love with Tracy during this time. His quote, “Happiness is when you stop thinking about the ifs,” would instead be interpreted as if he settled and didn’t want any risks. And, considering he met her after Robin was married, and had kids with her while Robin was still married, this would further incriminate that thought. Happiness is not love, but the stability of knowing that this relationship... is stable. Ted, despite having cheated on Victoria when she was in Germany with Robin, has never struck me as a cheater. He has always struck me, even in the lowest and crappiest and sleaziest of times, as someone who wanted to treasure the people around him. The fact that he was unnerved by Robin’s confession because he had Tracy and his family did not feel to me that it was because he loved Tracy, but because it was stable, it was his, and he had stopped thinking about Robin when she wasn’t there.
If Ted x Robin get together still, a la Con #1, I cannot be happy for them. Why? What the writer showed us in the original is that Ted has always pined for Robin. This lunch scene was supposed to dispose of that. But, then, it becomes that Robin wants Ted and Ted is like “I always cared about her and it’s been 6 years and I’m lonely.” And yes, this is much better than the original betrayal ending. But it’s still not a happy ending. Ted gets with her because he’s lonely, not because she’s the “one” anymore. And no one cares about that (and it’ll always be overshadowed by the ANNOYANCE OF TED IN SEASON 8-9). Robin gets together with Ted because she’s lonely, regrets many things in her life, and she knows Ted would treat her well (despite never self-reflecting that she doesn’t offer him anything because he always blindly accepted everything about her). That’s not a happy ending, nor an ending worth giving my feelings for, though admittedly more satisfactory than the original.
Overall, the show is supposed to be about how he meets the mother. How he meets his wife. How he falls in love with her. The audience is wanting to watch him fall in love. And after so many seasons of him being alone, the build up becomes grander. We want to believe that at the end of the tunnel is salvation. That this relatable, kind character will be blessed with happiness and love equal or greater to what he’s given. We like the character, and we want him to be happy. And he was never happy pining after Robin. We want to relate to his struggles, but we want him to be rewarded. We want to believe we too will be rewarded. The original ending didn’t do that. I can’t understand how anyone doesn’t understand the backlash after properly watching the show (and being a sane romantic, which should be the prime audience of this show).
So no, I will never forgive that ending.
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And just because I’m ranting,
On what I think about Robin and Barney.
I honestly don’t care if they stayed married or not. Married doesn’t solve problems between a couple. I don’t like them getting divorced from a conservative perspective, but I also don’t see them doing well in the construct of marriage (which also goes for Robin and Ted, but Robin was always portrayed as sane when with Ted. Though really, she would suck at marriage and kids. When she was with Ted, it was literally just sex. And her being his roommate showed that all non-lust side was incompatible. But I digress).
But, I dislike that the finale gave Barney a daughter as a band-aid and made it seem all right.
I can imagine Robin and Barney always fighting. I can imagine it going as far as a divorce. But I can’t imagine it getting to a point where Barney stops trying and stops caring. Because he tried throughout the seasons and he couldn’t. Why, when he gets her, would he stop. Robin never tried, and I can see her falling out of love because she’s incapable of loving (at least for everyone after Don), only of accepting love and using them as a crutch. But Barney really tried and season 8 showed it in tangible measures. While I understand that a one-way street will eventually reach a dead-end (actually I don’t think that’s true, but for the sake of a lack of a better metaphor), the fact that at that point Robin didn’t step it up makes me hate any ending that would end up with her and Ted even more. Yes, Barney was a pig. But he was able to win over the audience into making us believe that he is capable of loving someone. And Robin never did.
I can imagine Barney giving Robin space if she asked, which includes the divorce. But to try to convince us, the audience, into believing that he stopped loving her and stopped showing it in his side glances and gentle grins pisses me the fuck off. I don’t need them married, I don’t need them constantly together. But they’re a couple where I trust Barney to keep going back to as home.
Also that daughter thing—while cute in theory, Barney had an episode about his previous wing bro having knocked up a girl and being a father and it destroying his personality. I can really only imagine this as being how it winds up. I do think Barney would be a good father. And I do think that if Barney is with Robin, he would not have that chance. But I also think that Barney would always love Robin more than enough to be willing to give that up. Unlike Ted, I believe Barney if he said he’d be willing to give it all up without regretting it for the rest of his life. I hate that Barney wasn’t allowed to remain the metamorphosed character at the end of all of his character development. They had to revert all the things to give him a daughter. They didn’t even give him some sort of back story to how the hell he could fuck up the protection when he had sex with over 200 girls without issues. Yeah I’m salty about the shitty and inconsistent writing/storytelling.
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On whether I care if Tracy dies:
Not too much, because I understand that things happen. It does make me sad if we are made to think she and Ted are soulmates, only for her to die early. While I do agree that her early death and making Max her soul mate does sound cute, I refuse to believe for eternity that Robin was Ted’s soul mate, so leaving Ted without a soul mate would also piss me off about this story and basically Ted would be equivalent as Barney knocking up someone, but with a nanny that happens to be the mother of the children. So the answer is no because then we need to destroy the concept of soul mates. So this is why I would like Tracy to live, though I’m not mad at her dying.
Obviously from a storytelling perspective, it would be weird for Ted to tell his kids his whole dating history just to finally skim through his meeting with the mother and she is still alive. But really we gave no shits about why Ted was discussing all these pointless things to his kids, so that continuity isn’t needed if it destroys our hopes and ideals.
If she’s alive, it makes more sense for Ted to talk about the courtship with the mother. If she’s dead, the only reason for him to discuss all his courtships with all the other women would be..... well, in theory it makes sense to show that he’s always loved Robin, too bad that didn’t properly translate in the actual show post season 3 (like really, Robin would have needed to interfere in every relationship Ted had for it to be relevant to the betrayal ending, but that stopped after Stella and there would need to be a time skip to Victoria with inbetweens of Barney x Robin, but ultimately most of Robin’s love life could be omitted. Seriously, if that was the reason Ted was telling the story, then his storytelling skills are shit and he should be at least 65 and retired because his mind is going). And to tell the story just to be like “I wanna date again” is also nonsense. Basically, all routes are nonsense. Shoulda just scrapped the purpose of Ted telling his sordid past into just him telling a story. Also, getting the kid actors as adults is still hilarious so I think people wouldn’t mind the kids’ continuity over a better ending.
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have you seen the finale
hi friend
I have seen the final and holy pyjama lama
I have some thoughts.
things i liked
1- Alex!!!
I loved her suit the black and blue, nice ( it ties in well with the superAlex look) also until further notice i will be calling her ‘Blue Bird’ (although i do agree it looks nightwing ish, I just love dick grayson to much to “take the name” from him) i also like that it goes well with Nia’s white and blue.
so in future line ups its bule and white (nia) black and blue (alex) blue and red (kara) black and red (J’onn/Megan) , so that’s cool that they have team colours mixed between them. it also make brainy stand out with his purple which is a mix of red and blue so i found all of that really neat.
another thing I adored in this ep was that Alex wanted Kara to see her in the suit first and alone (behind the curtain) it was such a nice sister moment (that i have been missing this season) and its Alex ‘returning the favour’ as being the first to know about Kara. so it was a moment that was so sweet i actually had to pause for a second cause it was just to perfect.
and everything with her and Kelly was so cool and fun
2- Nia using her dream powers, god i have missed them, and her ‘day dreaming’ was nice to see again. She was also bad ass this ep.
3- Megan!! i did not know how much i missed her until she came back. i don’t know why she showed up out of the blue but i love her to much to care (if i had to guess it was to have another strong fighter character’ so that Melissa could stay away from action scenes without the team being under powered)
the way she talked to Nia was so sweet and nice, big space mom energy.
and the way she talked about J’onn was nice to, talking about both of their flaws and mistakes they made (lying about being a white martian and J’onn’s reaction) so it was nice to have that acknowledged. plus she was just seamless character into this group like she has been there all season so that was great.
4- J’onn the gossip space dad loves to chat about his girls and that is just a nice touch to his character (and his relationship with Megan)
5- and this might be a hot take but i like how Kara treated and talked to Lena in the ep, not cruel or unfair but with honesty and a bit reserved, when she went off at Lena i literally yelled “finally”. when she said something along the lines of ‘i made one mistake and then you spent all this time to hurt me in every single way’ that felt so good to hear like FUCKING YES
6- Brainy’s ( for the sake of time Meghan’s brainy is being called M-brainy)
GREEN BRAINY HAS RETURNED!!!!!!!!!!!
i love and hated this part of the ep. like brainy pushing through all the pain to get the job done was soooo good and heart breaking. M-brainy was perfect to bring back for this (and a nice surprise). You could feel the sibling love between them.
the amount of pain he was willing to suffer and then Nia talking about not trusting him after his changes is so painful (in a good way).
when he said ‘i don’t want to die alone’ in the bar is such a tender moment that i could watch it a hundred times and it will still hit the same way.
and when they held hands and had the ‘will you stay with me’ ‘until the very end’
(side note: 1-good call back ref, 2- i love that they used James line and not lily/snape’s ‘always’ i love alan rickan but snape’s character is super dice-y, plus James line always hits me in a way that i can only describe as a ‘Tolkening’ way, like gentle love that could warm a whole kingdom, kind of deal, just listen to billy boyd’s ‘the last goodbye’ that’s the feeling i’m talking about)
Lex coming in and taking the bottle is so hurtful and terrible and my heart hurts at that scene. (Lex is a bitch)
Brainy, who’s character is built on compassion and love for others (despite outward appearances) is alone at what he thinks is the end, and no one knows what he did to protect them and is gone with out a goodbye or a even a fond ‘final memory’ of him for them to hold on to.
he just goes into the night quietly thinking its what he deserves, it is honestly one of the reasons i love his character (comic or otherwise) is that quiet side to him, he is arrogant, smart-mouthed even insensitive but when things effect him quietly and deeply. and it is in the quiet where he shows love, even if no one understands it or even sees it. (i love him)
(they better save him or i will burn this whole fandom to the ground.)
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Ok now on to the things that bugged me
1- Lex is a bitch (Jon is killing it though)
I hate, hate, hate that he ‘planed’ for brainy to bottle them and then take it from him like for fuck sake can someone anyone get this guy bitch-slap please
like I was fine with him ‘winning the day’ but I wanted him to be surprised or at least bested in SOME WAY like damn no one is that good
and brainy IS SMARTER THEN HIM!!!
it was fine for like the first half of the season (first of the second half? whatever) but to not have a SINGLE THING go wrong for him is just bullshit
let him underestimate brainy, let people one up him but not in a way that will completely stop him but in a way that he has to rethink how he moves forward.
the perfectness of Lex is getting annoying now. (which ironically is the most common complaint about the superfam in general)
2- (Might be another hot take) Kara just forgave Lena at the end
like what? really she does one day of probation and that’s that. after a whole season months and mouths of backstabbing and betrayal and TRYING to kill Kara and then having the nerve to BLAME her for it.
“look what you’ve done” to Kara and not ‘look what I’ve done for you’
I’m not saying she should not have a redemption I just think it needed to be like more earned then literally just making a suit and standing in the way of like one not so good assassin.
i think Kara should have been more of ‘I can’t forgive you yet, but i want us to work towards it, if your willing.’
cause that “you proved yourself at every turn, I was not ready to forgive you yet but i am now”
like WTF,
i am legitimately horrified by how quick that was. like work towards it, that is all i ask.
#supergirl#kara zol el#kara danvers#brainiac 5#brainy#querl dox#alex danvers#hi friend#rachel asks questions#damn this ep#it was so full \#yet i am so empty#also i found it interesting that#Kara fines voldermort to be the worst villain#and hp refs are all over this ep#and the querl's have 'that' exchange which is when harry gets kill by voldermort#but then comes back
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you ever feel like a space that used to be a respite for you is now just...not? I don’t necessarily mean it’s not safe, just that going to a place which was once really productive and comfortable and energizing for you now feels stressful and uneasy? I (likely temporarily) stepped out of an organizing space that I’ve built up over the last year in order to deal with the intense workload around thesis/defense which is happening this upcoming Monday. Anyway, we started at three people and now we have a pretty robust core of about 20. What we’re trying to do is organize grad students into a union at the university where we all work, which is pretty fucking horrendous about how it treats us. This basically meant spending ~20hrs / week finding new students who wanted to organize, meeting with them, agitating, meeting with other unionizing grad students at other schools, managing personality conflicts in the group, etc as well as working on whatever campaigns/ social media stuff we were doing. All while doing grad school full time. It was energizing. We accomplished shit with only very few of us. While it’s explicitly in our bylaws that there is no “group leader,” a lot of things that would usually be directed to a president end up coming to me just because I’m the common person that everyone knows. Most folks in the group have zero other organizing experience; one has quite a lot, and two or three have basically been in the periphery of this one far left org (let’s call it WTF, for Women’s Task Force) in our very conservative small city. Most of us are quite left, though there are a decent number of centrists. About WTF: basically there’s this one really...problematic? person who is employed by our university who leads WTF (which isn’t affiliated with the university). She, a white cis woman, collects people she can use as symbolic tokens (usually women of color, visibly disabled women, lesbians, and fat women) to use them in promo material, and get them to do errands for, and doesn’t help them gain more power or skills within the group. She consciously excludes transwomen and only allows AFAB nonbinary folxs, and not even those who have a more masc presentation much of the time. WTF is also massively outspoken about Palestine, which is usually a signal that a group may be pretty antiSemitic as well. She uses her identity markers to shut down others who (legitimately) question her tactics. WTF, in the 10ish years they’ve existed, has never made any actual policy or political changes in this town. They’ve never actually run a campaign. They basically just show up “in solidarity” with actions other people organize, and host fundraisers for themselves. So having to deal with them is pretty ick, because the people in that organization. WTF is basically bad news. The people from WTF--three women of color and two queer white women--are consistently bad about things which seem to be just fine for literally everyone else in the group. We understand that shit’s stressful as a grad student and that there are a lot of other things we could/ should all be doing in addition to organizing. But the few rules we have are freaking common sense/common courtesy, and not that hard to follow. When people need to drop off the map for a while, they let others know that they’ll be out for a bit, and then get back in contact when their schedules free up again, so they can be caught up to speed at the next meeting. There’s also meeting notes which you can read to get back in the loop if you thought you’ve missed something: If you think you’re not going to be able to do something, you’re not supposed to commit to it. If you can’t do something you committed to doing, give others a heads up so they can cover it. Last, since we’re trying to be a space that works for people across the political spectrum (not just like the total of 30 dedicated leftists here), we’re explicitly against callout culture. Meaning that if you have an issue with something someone says in meeting, you’re either supposed to hold it until the group evaluation (where there’s dedicated space for that), OR you’re supposed to have a conversation with the person about the situation, OR you’re supposed to talk to another neutral-party group member so they can have the conversation for you. The WTF people have committed to following all of these rules and have been consistently bad at actually doing that, as per rules. They’ve consistently just not done the things they committed to, without actually telling anyone, leaving folks in the lurch. They consistently call people out in meetings in a way that alienates newcomers. They’ve consistently misgendered me, despite my asking them to not to, and speaking to them about it after meetings. About five weeks ago, this started to become a really big problem as we planned a big public recruitment event. I had a few conversations with the people who’d primarily been affected by one of the WTF folks’ failure to follow through on commitments. They asked me to speak to her. So I took several days to plan and rehearse a conversation. She was extremely defensive (ok, that’s fine, whatever), and committed to a whole lot of other shit. My follow up with her was to meet on a regular basis, so we could check in and readjust. We met the week after that, shit seemed fine. The week after that, the day of the big event. she came to the 1:1 meeting we’d set up and basically yelled at me for an hour for promoting white supremacy in the group. I tried to ask her some questions but really it just was her telling me how I’m a white supremacist and by holding women of color accountable to rules which they too had voted for, in a UNANIMOUS VOTE, I’m promoting white supremacy. She suggested I go to WTF subgroup meetings called SURJ (showing up for racial justice), which is basically a reading circle for white people only to “deconstruct their complicitness in white supremacy.” One of my partners went once to learn more about antiblack racism, but was turned away because he’s South Asian, not white. So, nope. Not fucking happening--it’s a completely performative thing IMO. Also the WTF leader person consistently is there and I’m not comfortable around her. They are also definitely under the opinion that “Jews are white and benefit more from oppressing PoCs than other white people.” So not a good/safe place for me. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to take it as a personal attack, but about halfway through the conversation she said it was specifically about me. So, yeah, a personal attack. She quit the organization and left, leaving us in the lurch for that night. The other thing that really bothered me about this conversation was that she was using her identity as a way to evade any and all accountability for repeatedly committing to things and disappearing. I would have been really happy to talk with her about how to make the space more accessible to her. In fact, we’d had multiple conversations about this. We’d implemented multiple things to help with the issues she’d mentioned...and she’d engaged with literally zero of them. Around that time, before the big event at a group meeting, another WTF member (also a WoC) was on the agenda to talk about “accountability.” Vague agendas are generally fine, so it was like, Of course! We should talk about that. That piece wasn’t really about accountability, it was literally just accusing the group of being a space for white supremacy, telling white people in the group to go to SURJ. Then she also left the group (though she waited until after the big event), though without the “Fuck y’all, I quit” meeting. I’ve spoken to most other group members outside of WTF about this (both PoC and white folks), they agree that I’m not a white supremacist. Still, it’s probably a good idea to address the issue in more depth in the group. As a white person I really can’t say anything about how WTF members, unlike literally all other people in the group, were using callout culture and accusations of white supremacy to derail conversations, and to block any attempt at getting them to follow the same rules they not only expect others to follow but also that they themselves committed to following. We’ve had like 3 followup conversations in general meetings since then. So far, we’ve scared off 5 people that I’d recruited, as well as 3-4 others had recruited. Multiple opportunities to choose, plan, and launch campaigns have passed while we have these conversations. I can’t point any of this out because when I do, I’m just the white person who doesn’t want to talk about white supremacy. Basically even though there are supportive people in the group that I absolutely love, I feel like the space has been emotionally polluted for me. I can’t deal with this fucking shit anymore, as much as I think unionizing is important to deal with the fucking bullshit from the university. This has become more of a stress for me than the shitty paychecks that come at unpredictable times; the shitty issues with my old PI/advisor; the really terrible benefits and leave policies; the expensive term fees. I almost don’t want to go back. Is that terrible of me?
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Well, here we come: Endgame review (spoilers galore)
Endgame is essentially two different movies for me: the one up until the last three minutes and the one that includes those last three minutes.
The first is a decent movie – riddled with stupid crap, plot holes and the occasional nonsense, but on the whole acceptable.
The second is a waterfall of crap that makes me seethe in anger.
If you liked that ending, I seriously discourage you from keeping on reading. Otherwise, let us discuss the good, the bad, the wtf and the “How dare you?”
THE “DID YOU EVEN TRY THINKING ABOUT THIS” DIVISION
Let’s start with the inevitable: time shenanigans equal inevitable fuckery. That is known.
The most egregious example being: Nebula kills her younger self and is apparently fine and dandy. What the shit? I don’t care if you killed her in 2023 (or whenever Endgame happens, I’m going with Infinity War happening in 2018 as released), if Nebula 2014 dies there is no Nebula 2015 and so on to eventually become Nebula 2023. Ergo, she should absolutely have died. Same with Thanos & Co. No matter where you do it, if you kill a past version of someone, there is no one to do the things they would have done in the future. Thanos 2014 dies, so there cannot be a Thanos from after that to do the Snap.
Which is not bad, go ahead and kill past versions of evil shits, but doing so changes the timeline. Period. Rodhey even proposed that and they had a long nerd out about why that would not be possible... and then they went and did that and pretended it didn’t count. That is so goddamn stupid.
Same with all the time travel.
I don’t care if you go and put the Infinity Stones back, because those stupid McGuffins are not the only thing that can mess the timeline. First of all, there is no one to use them anyway since Thanos died before he did the Snap, but we’re supposed to ignore that.
More to the point, in order to put the timeline to right, you have to put the Stones back after the future Avengers have stolen them. Fine, that puts them back in the timeline. However, that doesn’t erase the actions your slightly-past selves have taken trying to grab them. Which means, for example, that Loki fucking escaped with the Tesseract after Avengers 1, which is a MAJOR change.
Or, it should be. But apparently we’re supposed to ignore that because in the Dark World time Loki is in his cell, and wow. NO. If he escapes in Avengers 1 (with the Tesseract to boot), that leads to massive changes in Dark World and Ragnarok. For one thing, without the Tesseract, the Bifrost cannot be repaired. More essential to those plots, Loki should plainly not be there.
Putting the sceptre back also doesn’t erase the fact that Captain America said “Heil Hydra” to a Hydra agent (oh oh oh, such canny comic references!), who apparently never mentioned it again to anyone ever? Not even to his goddamn boss? So, did Sitwell legitimately think Steve was Hydra up until Winter Soldier? And yet come Winter Soldier he never thought to ask Steve “Wait, even if you’re not actually Hydra, you clearly knew about us for years, so why are you now so outraged like this is brand new information for you? Why did it take you this long to move against us and why are you doing it without much in the way of planning or allies? The hell did you do these past years?”
Hell, why did Sitwell – a prominent Hydra agent in SHIELD who would not raise any flags doing so – never approach Steve, Hydra agent to Hydra agent? No, he discovers that Captain America is apparently Hydra and just rolls with it. No “What the hell, sir?” call to Pierce, no secret handshake to Steve. For years. I can handwave him not saying anything to Rumlow and the rest of Strike, because if Steve is Hydra maintaining his deep cover with everyone is more important than anything (even if they were right there when he gave him the scepter, so what did he say to them?), but not mentioning it to Pierce? Cannot buy that. And not having any mention of that in Winter Soldier is pretty damn unbelievable.
The timeline was also changed by having future!Steve fight past!Steve. And no, it doesn’t matter that past!Steve thought it was Loki. It was still a change.
Not to mention, Loki could not have had a Peggy compass or known shit about Bucky, so it stands to reason it’s not Loki. So, what gives? What did past!Steve think it happened? Hell, come Winter Soldier what did he think about that time some guy who looked and fought like himself told him that Bucky was alive and lo and behold, here comes Buckaroo?
In essence, the Avengers fucked the timeline without lube but we’re supposed to pretend they didn’t.
To me, that is shit.
Mess with time all you like, but acknowledge you’re doing so. Either your plan goes off without a hitch (as if!), or the moment where everything goes inevitably to hell and there are changes - and here we are talking about major changes - you say fuck it, pull out all the stops and change away.
[Ok, I admit it, by that I mostly mean: pull out all the stops, take 5 minutes to explain to your past self you come from the future and tell him to get his ass in gear because Hydra is literally running the government and SHIELD and most importantly Bucky has been frozen, tortured and brainwashed for about 70 years, so get to it, save Bucky Bear save the world, and smash Nazis like the fucking Hulk. May the fic gods, as ever, be kinder to me than the canon ones.]
This “pretend nothing has changed even while we change important stuff that should logically have repercussions” approach only works if you think your audience has the reasoning capabilities of concussed goldfishes. Tony’s last bout of genius solving time travel on the fly deserved better than this.
(Also, good luck trying to sell me on any future conflict stakes when our heroes now have the capabilities of fucking going back in time and change things, even if you don’t want to admit it.)
In the “this is so dumb and nonsensical and wow look at those strings” camp, we also have the two Nebulas being connected. That is so stupid and clearly only there for the sake of plot you can literally see the writers going “Uhm... how can we make it so past!Thanos knows what the heroes are doing? What if we make it so past!Nebula gets the memories of future!Nebula from a galaxy away? How? Why? Because!”
Riveting.
About as riveting as the Thor stuff. Here you can see the writers desperately wracking their brain wondering “But how are we gonna have dumb jokes in a serious movies? Where will we go for cheap, juvenile humor? I know! Let’s make Thor a drunk idiot with a beer belly! Oh oh oh, what could be more funny than a parade of fat jokes, we’re comedic geniuses!”
Yawn. Also, offensive much? But really, everything about Thor spits in the face of his three movies long character arc (which was all about responsibility): dudes, do you even know the characters you’re writing about?
Speaking of desperation: no Steve and Bucky reunion post UnSnapping? Seriously? We have Tony and Peter - who have known each other for 5 minutes - tearfully embrace but no scene between two characters who have known each other all their lives and have been through massive shit in those lives? Marvel execs, we know that every time Steve and Bucky shared a scene The Dreadful Spectre of The GAY appeared and made your blood pressure rise but this is ridiculous.
Which is also why you get no cookie for The First Gay Character in the franchise: an unnamed character in a single blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene, truly stellar representation. What made you believe this was a smart move?
That said, there are some good things in this movie.
THE “I DIDN’T NECESSARILY WANT THIS BUT I CAN ACCEPT YOU DID IT. ALSO, OUCH: MY HEART” DIVISION
First of all, Tony Stark.
Never thought I’d say that, because I’m the furthest thing from a Tony fan and spent all of Ultron and Civil War wanting to punch him. And Infinity War being indifferent to him.
But goddamn if I didn’t feel how goddamn much he adored Pepper and their daughter. Goddamn if I didn’t tear up at his heroic sacrifice, going out with the line that started it all (“I am Iron Man”- my heart), goddamn if I didn’t tear up at his goodbye with Pepper and then at his funeral.
For all his many, many faults – which I’m not gonna forget for a second – Tony went out exactly as he should be: a goddamn hero. With a heart big enough, strong enough to give himself up for everyone else even at the moment where he had everything he ever wished to have.
My hat’s off to him.
Never thought I’d ever say this, but I will miss him.
Other MVPs of Endgame: Clint Motherfucking Barton and Natasha “Love is NOT for Children” Romanoff. I know: Natasha, sure, but who would ever have guessed that about Clint? Prior to Endgame, he was just sort of there, not helped by Ultron and his sudden family in a farm.
Endgame managed to make me care about the family I loathed. How? I don’t know, but I am totally down for a Clint + Kate Bishop + Lila show, where everyone is a badass archer and they are all codenamed Hawkeye just because! I am also totally down for Clint’s badass reinvention (after, I’m guessing, mainlining all 7 seasons of Arrow), no matter how heartbreaking the reason or questionable the style choices.
And that Clintasha scene was pretty much worth the whole movie to me.
Because, first of all, that’s how you solve a problem like the Soul Stone: a willing sacrifice. (Which, btw, makes even more disgusting the fact that we are supposed to see this as equally worthy to Thanos murdering his daughter).
Second, because I am a total sucker for characters fighting about who gets to sacrifice themselves. Clint and Natasha beating the crap out of each other just like in Avengers 1 (just one of many delightful callbacks that pepper the movie), this time because they love each other too much to let the other be the one to die is everything.
Third, because it’s just a really good scene, based on one of the better relationships in the MCU. Even those not shipping Clintasha have no doubt that those two are extremely important to one another, and Renner and Johannson acted the hell out of it - just as they did every scene together, from their reunion post-yakuza slaughter, to the giddiness of flying a spaceship. I teared up like a baby at Nat’s sacrifice and I was right there with Clint hoping for a loophole that made it so we could get Nat back and was heartbroken anew when that did not come to pass.
But, again, the Black Widow went out just like she should have: a true hero, loving, strong and unafraid. The red in her ledger was wiped out once and for all.
The “Feels” subdivision
Scott Lang was an integral part of the solution. I mean, never before have we heard about time passing differently in the quantum realm – and in fact Janet Van Dyne aged the 30 years she spent in it, so more plot service crap – but who cares! Still, his desperate checking to see if his daughter was among the Snapped only to find his own name and running like hell to get to Cassie only to be suddenly confronted with a teenager and realizing he missed those 5 years with her and not caring because she was still there was absolutely perfect.
Speaking of families: I have already said it but Tony and Pepper and little Morgan were amazing.
Also, Thor and Frigga! Frigga was an egregious fridging to start with, so it was lovely seeing her again, but especially giving her a wonderful scene with her son that shows her intelligence and strength and exactly why she was Queen of Asgard. Not to mention being the one to restore Thor’s confidence and absolving him of his failures. Sometimes you just really, really need your mom. (Too bad about that stupid salad joke.)
Natasha and Steve. Just... Natasha and Steve being badly messed up by those 5 years post-Snap and yet being so supportive and understanding of each other. Really, after Winter Soldier, this was the best Natasha movie. And rightly so.
In general, the Avengers being not just a team but also friends, fucking finally. Sure, there is the whole “found family-baited” post going around, but memes aside, it is true that we never got to see those people acting like friends and not merely co-workers. Was that so difficult to do before the very last moment?
THE “IN HERE FOR THE HOLY SHIT QUOTIENT” DIVISION
A small but admirable moment for a villain that was otherwise pretty underwhelming no matter how much they tried passing him off as deep: Thanos having the smarts and the metaphorical stones to goddamn destroy the Infinity Stones. Better to accept never using them himself again than run the risk of someone stealing them and undo his work. He may be evil and incapable of properly understanding the concept of proportions (that whole: if you destroy half of the resources along with half of the people using said resources, you are just as screwed as before), but the guy is smart.
Carol was as amazing as she could be in a movie that by design could not be about her kicking Thanos’s ass up and down the whole galaxy but was necessarily the Last Hooray of the Old Guard. Her face seeing Fury among the Snapped, her entrance and towing a fucking spaceship, her pointing out that while the Avengers have been watching (with mixed results) over a single planet she was watching over a lot of them (likely with better results), her second entrance, her goddamn everything. Not as good as her solo movie but what could ever be?
Speaking of ladies, Valkyrie becoming a Literal Queen warms my heart. I have some doubts about Thor just up and leaving what remains of his people, even after everything (read: I don’t buy it, just like I don’t buy anything about Thor in this movie), but considering Heimdall is not around anymore, we can all agree he left them in excellent, badass hands. I want more.
Switching to metaphorical Valkyries... It was a fanservice-y, mostly unearned scene in a series that has historically been pretty low in female friendships or relationships, but goddamn if the optics of all the badass ladies of the MCU banding together weren’t made of FUCKYEAH! Give us a ladies-led movie, Marvel, you fucking cowards: DC is giving us the Birds of Prey (and Harley Quinn), what’s your excuse?
In that vein: Pepper donning an Iron Man armor! Basically everything I ever hoped for, so much so that for a moment I legitimately thought I had imagined it. Now that Tony is gone, let Pepper step up as Rescue or Iron Maiden or whatever, get her to mentor a bright intern named Riri Williams and we’re set to go for maximum awesomeness.
Still, when talking about maximum awesomeness: CAP. WIELDING. MJOLNIR. We Italians don’t have the habit of reacting to movies out loud at the theatre, but you could hear the current of FUCKYEAH!!! coming from all the nerds in the room, and rightly so. Cap fighting with the shield in one hand and Mjolnir in the other was everything every superhero fan could ever have wished for in a movie distilled into the Crowning Moment of Awesome to top all CMOAs. (Too bad this gets incredibly undermined by that ending beacuse I refuse to believe that that guy could be worthy of a fucking shoehorn, much less Mjolnir.)
Thor dual-wielding Mjolnir and Stormbreaker deserves a mention too.
(This as long as we forget Mjolnir being taken away to the future at the start of Dark World makes gaping holes in Ultron e Ragnarok, because past!Thor wouldn’t have it anymore, but whatever LALALALALA what time logic?)
But the moment that threatened to bring down the house in cheers was the sight of all the Unsnapped returning followed by - finally - the call: AVENGERS ASSEMBLE! Every single person visibly restrained themselves from punching the air and shouting along. I think we all regret not doing so, dignity be damned.
So, leaving aside the truck-sized plot holes that are practically a given once you decide to muck around with time travel and the occasional plot-over-character-or-sense stupidity, all in all we have a rather solid movie full of badass moments and with occasionally meaningful emotional beats.
Not my favorite by a long shot, but a mostly fitting end to an insane project no one ever thought could possibly be achieved that ended up sweeping the world and fandom.
Too bad those last five minutes arrive to shit all over that, and incidentally all over a beloved character.
THE “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME YOU GODDAMNED HACKS” DIVISION
Steve – I must suppose SERIOUSLY concussed during the battle to the point of brain damage beyond the repairing capabilities of the superserum – returns the Infinity Stones to the past and, while he’s at it, decides to abscond in the same past to live his life with Peggy, only returning as an old man to pass the shield to Sam.
Awwwwwwwwww... Steve and Peggy living their life together, so heartwarming...
Yeah, except once you think about it, then you want to use that shield to fucking brain the skrull that must be impersonating Steve Rogers.
Because, in order to buy this story, we have to believe that Steve “I don’t like bullies” Rogers, Steve “If I see a situation pointed south, I can't ignore it” Rogers, Steve “On va voir” Rogers, Steve “I can do this all day” Rogers deliberately chose to spend the rest of his fucking life doing exactly nothing, otherwise the timeline would have been SERIOUSLY rebooted.
A life of inaction, hiding the fact of his existence.
Sure, that totally sounds like the Steve Rogers we have been watching up until this point.
Instead of an ending about moving forward no matter what life throws at you, we got one about happiness being literally going backwards.
Because that’s a totally healthy message.
Hell, you decide to go the retirement route, I don’t even necessarily disagree with it. If, after all the trauma of Infinity War + the five years interlude + the shitstorm of Endgame, Steve decided to lay aside the shield for a while and try to make an actual, functional life for himself I would have been all for it. If nothing else, the guy could make do with a lot of therapy. Most crucially, not being Captain America would not mean quitting the fight: he could do just as much good as an artist, a politician, an opinion leader, an activist or what have you. All that is not gonna be possible in the past, because to mantain the timeline he cannot become anyone relevant in any way. Especially since he knows Hydra is still around and attracting notice would mean risking some of that attention coming from them. So no, absconding to the past means by necessity a life not fighting in any way, not doing anything of any particular importance whatsoever.
This is completely antithetical to everything that Steve Rogers, as he was shown up until now, stands for.
And we have yet to touch the morality of it all, or the lack thereof.
Lest I get accused of being a bitter Stucky shipper whose slash goggles cannot make her appreciate a Steggy ending, let me point out that I ship Steggy as much as Stucky and if anything I am a bitter Peggy Carter fangirl: Our Kick-Ass Lady of the No Holds Barred Beatdown unquestionably deserves better than this crap.
By which, I’m not even talking about how this ending shits all over the closure we got before and the entirety of the Agent Carter run, which both show that while Peggy unquestionably loved Steve, she mourned him for a while and then, as healthy people do, moved on to have a perfectly fulfilling life with a rewarding job and eventually a new love and family. I’m not even talking about how this takes her back the “Steve Rogers’ Love Interest” route, Betty Carver-style, instead of letting her be her own woman with her own story that may have started alongside Steve Rogers but then developed on her own terms. I’m not talking about how she was rewinded from a character in her own right to a “hero’s” prize.
I’m talking about how this supposed happy ending to slow dancing and snuggling is based on either Peggy being apparently also brain damaged to the point that, upon hearing that the organization she’s busting her ass to run is a Nazi cesspool, just rolls with it - which, I think we can all agree, is definitely not something our Agent Carter would ever in a million years do - or Steve merrily electing to spend something like 50 years lying like a motherfucker to the supposed love of his life about how the organization she’s busting her ass to run is a Nazi cesspool. True love, everyone!
Fuck you: Peggy Carter fucking deserved better than this.
This also leaving aside the fact that, in this happy ending, Steve knows that while he’s squirreled away in the woods dancing and doing decoupage, his supposed best friend is getting tortured to the point of complete dehumanization. But whatever, he’ll eventually be fine, no use doing anything about it. Oh, JFK got murdered? Nice shot, Buck! Oh, there goes Howard, a smooth operation, buddy: hope the brain-frying won’t be too bad, just hang on until 2014.
End of the line my goddamn ass.
Oh, and since no-one’s memories are rewritten, Bucky also conceivably knows all this. He knows that his supposed best friend voluntarily spent his life doing squat to save him.
Fuck you: Bucky Barnes fucking deserved better than this.
SO, TO RECAP: Steve Rogers is a selfish ass who chose a life of inaction, Peggy Carter is either his accomplice or a dupe and Bucky Barnes lost his best friend all over again. Coherent characterization got sacrificed for a theoretical feel-good moment that doesn’t stand up to the most cursory examination before being revealed as sheer horrifying fuckery.
Sure, Sam gets to be the new Captain America (which, don’t get me wrong: he totally deserves it and at this point he’s more worthy of it than the original), but that’s literally the only good thing in a mountain of shit dumped over characters that deserved much better.
I get that Evans wanted out, but there are ways to do it and then there are ways. Tony went out like a goddamn hero. So did Natasha.
Steve went out quitting - aka the one and only thing Steve Rogers would never ever do - and in addition what can only be called a bastard who shrugged off his best friend’s decades-long torture and quite likely spent his life lying to the woman he loves.
Fuck you: Steve Rogers fucking deserved better than this.
If there could be a worse impression to leave bowing out than this one, I’m honestly unable to imagine it (Well, beside making Steve Hydra for real: but considering that he spent his live blithely pretending they were not still around murdering, torturing and so on, that makes him a collaborationist at best and WOW, at this point it’s kinda splitting hairs, isn’t it?).
Coming into Endgame, I knew this was gonna be Cap’s last waltz and after spending years as a Steve Rogers fan I was dreading watching him die. Now, I wish he could have gone out with the heroism and dignity of Tony or Natasha instead of... whatever this was. I could have mourned him while celebrating him, instead of mourning what he used to be while despising what he was made to become.
This Steve Rogers fan, who spent years loving him while being annoyed and occasionally enraged by Tony Stark, left the theatre feeling deeply moved by Tony and quite honestly hating the guts of whatever was left of Steve. If someone told me this would happen I wouldn’t have believed them and yet here we are.
Personally, in order to actually enjoy the movie and especially to be able to retain any fondness whatsoever for one of my most beloved characters, those last five minutes are gonna join the entirety of Age of Ultron in the realm of “I recognise Marvel Studios have made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it”.
As far as I’m concerned, Endgame ended with Tony Stark’s funeral. A fitting tribute to the fallen hero who started it all, to the road that took us to this moment and all those characters who travelled it with us.
To the end of an era and hope for the next one.
#MCU#avengers endgame#not my steve rogers#endgame spoilers#steve rogers#tony stark#natasha romanoff#clint barton#review#rant#endgame wtf#epic fail
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The Lightning Thief Musical reaction post (you all knew this was coming lbr)
SO FUCKING GOOD
I have joked previously that the show ‘wasn’t in any danger of a tony nom’ and I would like to officially rescind that comment and apologize. get this show to broadway now it Deserves to be there
the quick changes, both on the human characters and the monsters, were just....outrageous okay I’m not used to that sfdjsjd. they were VERY slick with the whole riptide sword/pen deal, and the set changes happened very quick and naturally and didn’t take away from the scenes.
the lighting designer honestly went the fuck off I thought I was at a fucking concert at points. there WAS a lot of flashing lights at points, which I wasn’t expecting and wished I got a heads up for, but also dying at a percy jackson musical would have been EXTREMELY on brand for me so maybe they were just keeping that in mind
the mics and sound could’ve been a little better- there was a few instances of the singing getting drowned out by the music (I lost Grover during ‘Tree On The Hill’ and Percy in both his dream sequences, my friend had absolutely no idea what was going on for the entirety of ‘D.O.A.’) and there were a few times where actors started talking before their mics were switched on but. It wasn’t anything too terrible and didn’t take away from anything so that’s good!
listen- I’ll openly admit that I’m just not usually crazy about dancing in musicals, like. sure big dance numbers can be fun but I don’t *need* them to enjoy a show, you know? a lot of the choreo in this show was really good but there were some parts where I was just like ‘why are you doing that’, notably ‘Campfire Song’, I’m sorry, what was going on there
WHY WAS POSIEDON’S VOICE LIKE THAT
Mrs. Dodds letting out that screech of ‘KROOOONOOOOOS’ with the ominous music and green lighting took me OUT
I’ve listened to the soundtrack a million times and I don’t even LIKE the song ‘My Grand Plan’, I think it’s the weakest one in the show, but Kristin Stokes gave such an outstanding and powerful performance of it that I was brought to tears, what the actual fuck, go see that girl live before you die
I’ll admit I didn’t know how Chris McCarrell was gonna pull off the ‘preteen boy’ part of it but tbh??? he really had it down, the only time it ever felt over the top was in ‘Strong’ but I think that’s just because his lines in that are a bit awkward lol
he was SO GOOD as the lead though, he really gave a great performance and I just. love Percy lmao so it was great to see
the guy who played like...Chiron, Medusa, Hades, Poseidon, an Ares’ girl a farmer and probably someome else I’m missing....hi what the fuck? character actor of our generation? If I didn’t know it was a 7 person cast I literally would have thought they were all different people wtf he was awesome
Poseidon and Sally flirting in front of Percy dear God
“that’s your dad” I screamed
I was well aware of the thunderstorm sound effects and yet they caught me off guard every. single. time.
tragically I was not hit in the face with toilet paper, but that confetti canon nearly took me out....I’m literally still finding pieces help
listen. I’m still seeing people talk about how much they love George Salazar and that’s fine but uh!!! he’s not in the show anymore!!! please give Jorrel Javier some love and appreciation he’s fantastic!!!!
although that being said- as much as musical Grover is better than movie Grover, I still....wait....hold out hope....that one day....I’ll see Grover portrayed that’s accurate to how he is in the books....my heart won’t let me give up on that dream
tbh I always go back and forth on how I feel about Luke but after seeing him in this show. I’d join him. and also like....give him a blanket and some hot chocolate lol
okay since Hades wasn’t on the soundtrack I wasn’t sure how they’d play him but uh. Let me say. Of all things I was REALLY not expecting a Southern Gay In A Sequined Blazer sdhkfjkgjdfh
deadass the voice the guy was doing sounded exactly like Beverly Leslie from Will and Grace I couldn’t catch my breath
WASN’T EXPECTING THE VIENNA BOYS CHIOR TO BE TWO HAND PUPPETS BUT IT’S WHAT I NEEDED
okay so going in I like. knew it would be really hard for them to stage Sally’s kidnapping the way it happened in the books, like she explodes into light and shit, I knew they were gonna change it
I wasn’t expecting them to just STRAIGHT UP MURDER HER ON STAGE THOUGH HELLO
it lowkey shocked me but also. also. the minotaur killed her in like....the exact same way Kingpin killed Chris Pine’s spiderman in Into the Spiderverse and that was just....funny to me somehow dsjkslksd I had a lot of conflicting feelings going on okay
The Minotaur and the Oracle were like....legitimately kinda creepy omfg
“BEAN. DI-HAP.”
“sexist, much? “no, I love girls!!! I mean- I think- they’re really nice?- I mean-”
amazing
also “YOU’RE MY DREAM GIRL” truly iconic
honestly I could spend hours going on about this show but no one wants that lol-
just. it was visually stunning, the amount of talent in it was overwhelming, it was fun as hell and had a very strong heart. perfect musical, even if you aren’t familiar with the series. if you have a chance to check it out I 100% recommend and honestly I really hope we manage to be-more-chill them and get this show a broadway run, it really deserves it
my theater was completely sold out at 2 in the afternoon and it’s what she deserves. the energy was amazing. I’m just so happy this production exists omfg
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wtf WAS this season of got
i just finished watching and like...? i have so many questions? cut for spoilers i guess
ding dong you are WRONG i’m just going to incoherently ramble because i was like ??? for the whole thing. fyi i’ve read the asoiaf books multiple times so that’s kind of informed a lot of this rant because i just don’t see grrm ending the series like the show ended.
so since s7, we’ve really seen this whole rush of stuff and the process of dany taking back westeros has been really dialed up to 11 for no goddamn reason. i mean the leaders of dorne were murdered, edmure tully was irrelevant, the tyrells were just all killed off, stannis gang killed off, no mention of varys’s fake targ plan (which personally i was cool with; i don’t love that tbh). which is...part of the thing that makes got...good was the intrigue; the mass of characters and subplots and ambitions etc. and i didn’t rlly say anything because i thought ok, it’s not great but at least we’ll get a really satisfying s8.
the white walkers? sis WHERE? were they?? WHO were they?? the whole show they’ve been hyped up as the big bad, the catalyst for bringing ice and fire together, so to speak, and then they kill all of them off in one episode? isn’t this the greater evil that the people of westeros must unite behind that they’ve been foreshadowing all FUCKING show?? don’t they put things in perspective?? show the futility of life and the importance of humanity?? like what the hell? (side note: arya killing the night king was cool af but...narrative, but also...WOMEN so i’m torn) and then, i thought, “well maybe they were killed to have more time for intrigue but like...anyone who hasn’t firmly chosen a side is fucking dead” so lol to that my dudes
the dothraki? weren’t they all killed in the fight with the night king? how did they all show up to besiege kings’ landing at just the right moment? how many dothraki are there? i could ask roughly the same question about the unsullied but the dothraki were more egregious so imma just call them out
danaerys?? ma’am what?? fyi Evil Targ Dany isn’t a dany i would totally hate; the books have foreshadowed that dany has some potential for being a bad guy or at least a worse guy than she was at the beginning. anyone who says there’s no way dany could be a hot steaming yikes hasn’t been paying attention and that’s just the tea...she’s been told her entire life that she’s special because of who her parents were, she’s been extremely popular and successful just by using brute force and not listening, really, to her advisors. it’s always been there; she’s always been a little bit of a gamble. however, what i do have some problems with was that evil dany was just dropped out of fucking nowhere. like, they killed missandei and she just inexplicably torched the city, killed people who were surrendering (which if you remember, the only reason she killed the tarlys was because they WOULDN’T surrender so wtf dany) and started seeing traitors everywhere. if you’re gonna have a character start doing an about-face like that, you’re going to need to foreshadow it a little bit. because it just seemed rlly out of character. this season, all of danaerys’s decisions, which have usually been framed as “brutal but necessary” by the story suddenly became “extremely irrational and a threat to everyone”. for chrissakes, she should be fucking worried about jon eclipsing her in popularity because he has a better claim to the throne and is a man even though she’s done all the work!! it makes sense for her to kill varys because he was trying to murder her (like so many other characters tried!!) legitimizing gendry makes sense-hell, stannis tried to do the same for jon!! these were not totally out-there calls for dany and didn’t really count as evidence of her growing insanity or whatever. in addition, her goal shifted from “i want to reclaim my birthright” to “i want to create a utopia over which i rule indefinitely” which is not a desire that i have ever read from either show!dany or book!dany. she’s simply not naive enough to think she could do something like that. also (and this is kind of a pattern w s8) dany’s arc seemed to suggest that she was trying to be better than her family. the whole crux of her claim is that she’s better than aerys was, that she was learning that the family members she idealized her whole life could be terrible and cruel and that she didn’t want to be like viserys or aerys or even, really, like rhaegar. how many times have we heard this?? to just drop the whole “you-can’t-escape-your-nature” shit on us now is not only really fucking bleak, but bad writing. also jonerys just kept on getting worse and worse; the romanticization of incest on this show was too fucking much and i just couldn’t. why would danaerys, who was trying to escape her nature, desperately want to hook up with her nephew?isn’t there enough of this on got for god’s sake? what happened to her being a new targaryen? what fucking happened?
jon? i don’t love r + l =j but whatever, fine. may i ask what the point was, ma’am?? may i fucking ask, why bring back jon snow from the dead? wasn’t he the “prince that was promised”? then why in god’s name did he not take a more active role in the fight against the white walkers? if he’s azor azhai reborn, was danaerys his nissa nissa? and what did that sacrifice accomplish in his arc? or is melisandre full of shit all along and it’s just all up to chance? and then what was the point of setting all of that up? you can’t just abandon subplots like this guys; you just can’t.
bran? had no point, the worst character objectively... WHAT tomfoolery gave tyrion the bright idea to make him the king? isn’t he supposed to be smart good god
braime? excuse me what? FUCKING FORESHADOWED ALL THE GODDAMN WAY THROUGH, WE GET A TENDER A** FUCKING SEX SCENE THAT ISN’T GODDAMN GROSS AND THEN they’re like “nope sike!! see!! jaime can never change!! you thot that was a redemption arc sweaty!! twincest for the win!!” like this isn’t happening in the books and you can’t fucking change my mind, grrm did not set up this arc to disrespect jaime or brienne like this. part of brienne’s arc is going to be realizing that she is desirable and deserving of love. mark my fucking words. this was part ii of this weird “we can’t escape our nature” shit that kept cropping up this season for no reason. and look, i’m not just going off on this because i’m a hardcore braime shipper (sorry not sorry). i’m going off because it literally doesn’t make sense. if you foreshadow a huge character arc that will redeem the character, tease it, and then go in the complete opposite direction, that motivation for the character goes all over the place. at this point in the narrative he had cut his ties w cersei; he realized as tyrion pointed out that they had a toxic relationship and that while he still cared about her to an extent, he had come to the realization of what an intensely horrendous person she was, and it didn’t fucking matter if she was pregnant with his kid because she (unlike him) wasn’t making any sort of strides to be a better person. and then there’s brienne who is possibly the only soul in westeros who believes there’s more “good jaime” than “killing kings and crippling little boys jaime” who is his physical equal as well as his legit friend (like how many friends does jaime really have right) who he’s beginning to have feelings for because of their shared traumatic experiences and similar goals and the writers just...fucking ignored all of that previous buildup. and braime never had to necessarily end happily (see the cersei paragraph); i personally think that one or both of them are going to die in the books, but it really was a gigantic slap in the face as well as to book canon “throw this in the fire” anyone??
and cersei? don’t get me wrong; i’ve wanted her dead for so long but come the fuck on and remember the goddamn valonqar prophecy. that’s ignoring a huge part of her motivation for being so “evil”. because she knows her doom is coming and is doing her best to prevent it. jesus fucking christ. jaime was supposed to kill her (and maybe die in the process but ya know) because i personally think tyrion’s done enough kinslaying. to have her die in that way was both anti-climactic and ignoring the narrative again. they just shouldn’t have included the prophecy if they were going to butcher it like this jajkjfalk
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Is it bad I’m looking forward to Lyon settling the, “Which keeper is better?” question once and for all? They’re really going to make Bouhaddi regret her hissy fit. No way they went and signed Endler just have her sit behind Bouhaddi. Lyon said, fine, you don’t want to love us? Let the door hit you on the way out Sarah. And honestly, I’m living for it 😂 I just don’t understand why Bouhaddi threw this fit. Yeah okay Amandine’s the home grown golden child and Ada shits rainbows in Lyon’s eyes, but they never left Bouhaddi out in the cold. She’s got this inflated sense of herself and it’s really funny because she was a well respected player for the best team in the world, and that’s usually more than enough for most people. What are your thoughts?
No but jokes aside, the Bouhaddi-Lyon relationship is such a toxic relationship but also really interesting to analyze / talk about. So since this is my blog, that's going to be the topic of discussion!
The thing about this break-up is both sides were right. Bouhaddi did stop buying into Lyon's desperation for loyalty. Lyon was constantly looking at other goalkeepers even when Bouhaddi was handing them the UWCL on a couple of penalty shootouts. They were both dicks to each other!
Like let's talk 2018, yeah? Lyon just won the 2018 UWCL with the most chaotic OT against Wolfsburg, which included but was not limited to Bouhaddi knocking Bronze out cold and Bouhaddi having to play the entirety of overtime with one (1) hand. And yeah, Bouhaddi's broken hand sometimes gets mentioned during that game, but you know what is the main topic of conversation? Hegerberg breaking the record. Henry hating losing so much that she scored the equalizer through sheer force of will. Abily's final goal.
To get to the final, Lyon had to beat Barcelona, and Panos had a decent game against Lyon. I remember the game, but I don't remember Panos doing anything that necessarily put her on Endler status (am I still bitter that Panos almost knocked me out not once but twice during the UWCL warm-up? Just a bit!). Anyway, going back to story time, Lyon wins the UWCL and like legitimately not a week later there are rumors in the press that Lyon is interested in Panos and is considering making her an offer.
Not surprisingly, Bouhaddi was like WTF? And even tweeted one of the news outlets and was like "thanks for letting me know! @OL" I get why she was irked at Lyon. You win them the Champions League and they start looking at a goalkeeper who, if we are being frank, didn't do that much out of the ordinary?
But you know, one of the traits of a toxic relationship is co-dependency and Bouhaddi still extended. All's well that ends well when your happy place involves getting into a fight with your lover.
But I get Lyon's irked attitude, too, because Bouhaddi was literally going around saying that she wasn't appreciated by Lyon and yet they do put her in the big campaign ads. (I literally went through my Twitter likes to find the ad in question. I confess it's one of my favorites)
And just look at the players Lyon is putting in that ad: Hegerberg, Henry, Bronze, Le Sommer, Marozsan, Renard, and ... Bouhaddi. Like she is on the same level in this ad with with their favorite love story, the lover who came in from the cold, the one responsible for arguably the worse pun of all time which also weirdly accurately describes Lyon at the same time ("here at Lyon, it's not just gold and silver coins that matter") ... She was up there with the one who was with Lyon before Lyon was Lyon. Like those names matter, right? You looked at those names and they mean something. And it was for a PSG game, right. And those games matter, too. And this is Lyon's own awkward way of saying "I'm not the best at saying I love you but this is the closest way for me to portray it. That has to matter, right?"
But nope! It didn't! COVID hit and things changed but what really pissed Lyon off more than anything is how she threatened to fuck with their 2020 UWCL title run. They didn't forgive her then and I am not convinced that even today, in March 2022, that they have forgiven her now. She basically threatened to let them lose the Champions League unless they gave her what she wanted.
You don't get to threaten titles at Lyon and get away with it. Even Bronze, who loves Keira Walsh more than Lyon, knew better than to break that rule. Lyon was pissed and fuming and even though we won the Champions League I maintain they never forgave her for that.
And luckily for Lyon - and I use that deliberately - PSG has a super toxic environment. PSG's gross mismanagement allows for Lyon to go in and do what they want. And that has to be negligence, I'm sorry, but it has to be. If your greatest rival can simply waltz into your life and be like "I'd like these young players, your star goalkeeper, I'm gonna need your LB too, and hey let's throw in this youngster forward, she seems nice and I like Scandis" and get away with it - like, dude. You need to put things in perspective.
Signing Endler was definitely a fuck around and find out move.
Now, again, I maintain Bouhaddi has the right to be pissed about it. I maintain that Bouhaddi can look at Lyon and say, I have beaten this goalkeeper in every single penalty shootout, I have the head-to-head advantage, what the fuck??
And I maintain that Lyon has every right to respond, you know what you did.
I know I am skipping a little all over the place and I want to go back to whether Bouhaddi was unreasonable or not in her demands to be appreciated for lack of a better term. And it goes back, in some ways, to Lyon's definition of a love story. It just means you love them back.
Yeah, Lyon looked at other goalkeepers. Yeah, Lyon looked at Henry and Hegerberg and said that's a proper love story while ignoring that for a love story to mean something, there has to be protagonist.
Someone has to be the villain.
People look at Lyon / Lyon players and shrug and are like bunch of robots, the lot of them. All they know is their desire to win. And yes!! That's true!! Their hatred of losing is definitely engrained in them!! But it's also not what makes them so interesting and complex and good if you just ... take the time to get to know them?
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A bit of alcohol still left in me, went to plague and it was pretty empty so i just experimented with the bartender on a bunch of wierd shit. There are a lot of things i’d like to discuss with X, or even just say, but she is so sensitive and unable to see straight, that any level of contact would make things worse... i think she will need to hate me to move on. Here i am talking about her needing to move on, i do see the irony. The fact of the matter is that i am further along the “im over you” trail than she is, by far. I have the advantage of initiating the breakup though, it was not mutual. I think i would first try to reclarify my points, about how I myself am fundementally broken and not suitable for a long term relationship (being demisexual, that means really any relationship). 1.) I am a being of chaos, which sounds more fun than it is. I wish I could describe what its like to feel that burning passion one day, and the next day get so irritated that i legitimately wish x would just break up with me. Other times i’d feel that passion so strongly that it would drive me higher, and then some bullshit drama would occur and i’d feel the pains and stresses so deeply that *poof*... i’d “blow a fuse” as i call it, and be emotionally dead for days, unable to show that im feeling anything, and not entirely sure what i actually feel. Spans of time where everything is great, then one bad day sets everything on fire and the walls come crashing down. That was our relationship in a nutshell, it was as chaotic as I was. You’re only as strong as your weakest link? When we were good, we were great. When we were bad, we were terrible. There was no middle ground, it was all or nothing. 2.) X has no ability to see things from a “logical” perspective, when it comes to me. This has many layers, but i suppose we can break it out like this: 2A) X’s absolute best friend in the world, and roommate, is her X that she was with for 5 years. She said the breakup was mutual, but considering the fact he tried to hook up with her shortly after the breakup, and many times asked why she was with me and not with him, indicate he was still in love. The “if you’re not in a relationship with me, then you need to move out” ultimatum lends weight to that too. However, that isn’t all his fault, she doesn’t understand that you can’t be best friends with an X that you grew that close to, because its ridiculously unfair to them. She went on week long vacations with him, multiple day road trips, concerts, weekend trips (all while we were dating), and he’s not supposed to get mixed signals? She never saw this though, she never understood. It put a huge strain on the relationship because he didn’t want me over there, and if i was there, I couldn’t hug her or even cuddle up next to her. The whole thing is ludicrous, i don’t know how or why i put up with it. 2B) After all the breakups, and our friends/family seeing just how badly we affected each other, it is easy to see how our loved ones would begin to hate and distrust the person they perceive to be hurting us. That part she gets. What she doesn’t get is that when EVERYONE, literally everyone, thinks its a terrible idea for you to be with someone, that you would be alienating yourself from them just to appease the other person. That is something i couldn’t get past. It would have been one thing if she put in any level of effort to get to know my family and prove she wasn’t a psycho bitch (met my parents twice, a 3rd time in passing, within a year and they live 10 mins away), but that effort was never made because of her fears. I would try to hang out with her friends and they would either cancel plans, or the other group of friends just hated me too much to even want to get to know me. Did i mention that 4 of her 7 best friends, were in love with her and actively tried to sway her opinion of me? Now that 2 of those 4 have girlfriends they want nothing to do with her... odd. 2C) Hypocrisy. This was a steady thing, because she never got how hypocritical she was being. With the roommate situation, i’d see his girlfriend maybe 2-4 days a month, for like 10 minutes each time. This is a person i knew for almost 15 years, and had sex with a handful of times when we were both depressed and trying to feel normal (no chemistry, no attraction to her). X would get super bent out of shape any time this person was brought up, and always be the same arguments, yet it was absolutely fine for her to live with an ex of 5 years, go on vacations with him, be besties teeheeheeheehee... “it is so different” was the answer i’d get. I have another friend who i on and off talk to, for about 15 years, we sometimes go years without talking, but we can get in hours-long, really interesting conversations. I had romantic feelings for that person years ago, but it never went anywhere and we’ve never actually met. The same thing, because i had some kind of connection, i was supposed to stop associating with this person... she never got the hypocrisy (until it was too late). 3) Horror movies, some music, and food. That was the extent of what we had in common. I am very much into the paranormal, occult/other dimensions/existential theories, big topics that can go on for years with the right person, and she seemed to have no interest. Truth be told, she never really told me her passions and never wanted to get into it. Any time we were together it was just a cuddle party, and we’d sit around getting fat together, eating and watching movies. That’s good once in a while or a few times a week, as long as you exercise, but i tried on several occasions to exercise and she’d usually find some way to snake out of it and then i wouldn’t bother. We had very little to talk about, and when i instituted “talk for an hour” mondays, she seemed to be fighting just to get to the end of that hour, like super anxious to just start watching movies. Was i that boring, was i that repellent? If so, wtf did she see in me? 4) dishonesty: after the breakup she stopped going to therapy, and refuses to go. she doesn’t want to talk to a stranger, but she also won’t tell her friends all the details because she was lying to them about us being together. This really tore into the relationship that last month because she was spending more time with those friends and less time working on making sure we were doing ok, and saying she needs to focus on them (2 of those 4 or 5 people no longer hang out with her because they have girlfriends). She couldn’t try and get us to hang out, she didn’t want to be judged, so she lied. That puts me into the forced position of needing to lie as well, and i absolutely hate lying. We all get to a point where an unavoidable fight closes in, but we have a secret we need to time the release of information for, but not when you’re coworkers and not when its numerous people. Leading us to... 5) we work together, closely. This makes things really, really fucking uncomfortable because she is super emotional a nuclear warhead during an argument, which she has no qualms about having over the work chat. It makes it impossible to work effectively, makes chat messages that can’t be deleted, linger around as grim reminders, and then there is drama that other people pick up on. It is a bonehead move to date someone you work closely with, and i should have known better. She understands, or at least says she understands, that this is one of my non-negotiable points of why we could not get back together, but she seems to have forgotten that as of valentines day. 6) Explosive temper, says mean shit during it. She has a lot of freudian slips, that and/or she says intentionally mean shit when she’s frustrated. After a breakup she would, at work, rattle off every insult to my character that she could think of. Telling me i’ll never have a meaningful relationship, that i never loved her, that i’m a piece of shit, that her friends are right, that she made a huge mistake in dating me, etc etc. She’d then play it all off like it never happened, but a lot of what she says, she meant and either didn’t know it, or just tried sweeping it under the rug. 7) back to me, i am not positive of what i want. I’d think about moving out, and where i wanna go, and i want to try and buy a shitty but livable house and work on it for the next 10 years. Entirely livable, just needs minor work that can be done over time. She is the kind of person that could not deal with that, she is a “i need a $300k starter home” kind of person, has very expensive tastes. I was always torn and it would cause me problems, when i thought that far into the future because i wouldn’t want to commit to buying something with her and thinking the relationship might fail and problems arise... very logical given how many times we broke up. on the other hand, i wanted to start off in an apartment together, but it would need to be one that one of us could afford on our own, should the worst happen. That didn’t foster “confident” feeling about the relationship, always feeling a contingency plan was necessary. Yet... through it all, i still love her very deeply, and wish there was some way for us to be happy together. It would require too much change to take place, we would have to be different people.
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My Drag Fandom Experience
[[TL;dr - I just wanted to belong. In the end, I was never included in a group chat.]]
My mom & I started watching drag race season 7 religiously after watching bits and pieces of other seasons. I became a huge K fan. Her humor helped get me through one of the roughest points in my life when I was living alone in NYC & interning at a hospital. All of my nerd friends were SO beyond supportive of my newfound love of drag.
I was so happy with my supportive friends, but I got greedy. I should have stopped there, but I wanted friends who were also drag fans. So, I got a twitter.
In short, there were 2 main cliques in the K fandom on twitter. Me, wanting to be friends with everyone because why not, tried to be friends with everyone at first.
Big mistake.
I met this one girl who I clicked with immediately, let's call her Q. Q and I would text all the time. We met in person and got along really well, although we got hit on by some creepy guys. Anyway, I was so happy to know her. She was a great friend.
We decided to go to a K show together in February (this month last year 😭 oh how things change). Another girl who I first met on Tumblr (my first drag friend🎉) , let's call her Z, joined us. Q, Z, and I had a really fun time at the K show. We all got along well. I learned makeup tips from them, we sang in the car, and it was honestly just one of the best nights of my life. It might have been the best night of my life, actually. I had a great time.
Unfortunately, I was the only one. Q & Z told me afterwards they did not have such a good time with me, which sort of broke my heart tbh. Imagine having the greatest night of your life only to find out these other people no longer want to be associated with you.
I was so open, too. I was like “tell me if I’m bothering you.” They assured me I wasn’t. Then they decided amongst themselves I was bothering them and never told me. Once we all talked about it, however, they just seemed done with me. Like it wasn’t “forgive, forget, & move on,” it was “okay bye.”
So, instead of walking away & letting them treat me like shit for what I deemed to be an unfair reason (even looking back, it was still unfair tbh), I decided to run to the other clique. Now, I realize that was dumb, obviously, but in the moment I was just so hurt. I just wanted friends to fangirl with, and I really liked these girls. However, when they exiled me I was literally heartbroken. I reblogged a tumblr picture that said "friends can break your heart, too" at this time.
To make a long(er) story short(er), let’s just say I was never fully embraced by either clique. They liked me enough, but sometimes wouldn’t respond to texts/tweets/messages, yet were clearly online. So much happened, but it was ultimately just a mess of me running between cliques.
Now, being a lot more confident in who I am and a lot less needy in many ways, I can look back and be like “damn wtf was wrong with me.” I legitimately just wanted ONE thing:
I wanted to be included in a group chat.
That’s it. That’s all I wanted. It’s sad to think of now, but all I wanted was to be in group chat. It was never about K, after all. It was finding people with the same interests as me and being able to fangirl together.
But people were nasty. I also became nasty, hence why I walked away. People were possessive and skeptical. Z was the only person in the fandom who actually was cool about her relationship with K. Z introduced Q & me to K and really was just a cool person about everything, until she decided she disliked me right after the show.
I don’t know why I kept running back to people who hurt me so much. I always had so much fun with Q, and it made me so happy to be around her. I also loved being with Z, but she was just harder to get ahold of. However, when we talked, it was always a good time.
Q & Z were in my dream last night haha. They always are. They’re beyond super close now, and I’m honestly so happy for them. They’re adorable! Do I miss them? Obviously. But am I gonna do anything about it? Probably not.
In October, I burned so many bridges like damn. It wasn’t a first-degree burn it was a hard core third-degree burn of almost every bridge I had in the drag fandom. Which was kind of fine in a way, but kind of not. I miss a lot of people, and definitely regret a lot of it (not all, but a lot).
I made some amazing friends that I wouldn’t have without my instagram & twitter (both of which I no longer have).
I kind of don't want to watch season 9, only because I don’t care so much. I will, but probably not live. I’ll watch it when I watch it, I suppose.
If I could turn back time to October, I wouldn't have done anything tbh. I would have just gradually faded out of the lives’ of people I didn’t like instead of striking a match and burning it all to the ground. I wouldn’t have caused so much drama. I just wanted attention to be honest... and I got it, but for the wrong reasons.
Now, I’m not too jazzed about drag/drag race/fandoms. I’m still tired from it all. Tired from wanting and not receiving. Would I watch s9 if I could go to viewing parties with Q? Absolutely. Will that happen? No. I doubt it.
Q & Z, if you read this, please know I’m sorry, I miss you, & I’m so happy for you two - I think you’re amazing.
Lol I doubt anyone will read this far, but I learned to do things because *I* want to, not with the goal of receiving a response.
TL;dr -
I just wanted to belong.
In the end, I was never included in a group chat.
#personal#there's a snow day today so I don't need to study esophagus & stomach anatomy atm#hence - this post#I've been thinking about it for a while
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TOXIC RELEASE
I need to stop letting the two of you live rent free in my head. At this point, y’all have moved on with your lives, but I’m still here dealing with the mental and emotional scars. Scars that neither of you have. Despite me not being a fixture in your lives anymore, you guys didn’t lose anything. You didn’t have your perception of right and wrong, karma, the universe, all of the above challenged. You haven’t lost your faith in the idea of love and trust, or loyalty. All you’ve lost is somebody you didn’t care enough about or respect enough to treat right. You both are fine. I’m not.
I already knew I was done with you, but a realization about the actual issue would’ve felt validating. Instead you’ve been stewing over the idea that I’m the type of person to be done with somebody over a girl. The very idea that I’m that petty, spoiled, or selfish. CRAZY. The whole thing is insulting because it tells me that despite being around me for years, you still think we’re the same. You think we’re at the same level or morality. Shit, you probably tell yourself that you’re at a higher level of morality. CRAZY. It’s insulting because I didn’t want this, she did. This was all her design, but for some reason, it’s legitimately impossible for you to imagine that she didn’t want you, or that she DID want me. Is that impossible?! It might be. Maybe she lied to me too as a means to keep my friendship. Maybe she didn’t want me as bad as she claimed. She cut you off regardless. So believe it or not, she didn’t want you forreal. And that’s trash, but somehow I’m the villain for her actions. Her lies. Her choices. CRAZY. This skewed narrative pisses me off because right vs wrong. Because I know my truth but you've crafted this narrative to further victimize yourself like always. The notion that we could tell our stories, and you’d STILL make me the villain a year later despite that actually being full of shit. The most offensive part being how PUSSY you are to talk big shit and then run away before you can get a rebuttal, as though only your words matter, but I’ve seen the petty shit before. I’ve seen the fuck shit before. Despite all that, the reason I need my words heard is strictly ego and nothing more. You’re delusional, narcissistic, and selfish as fuck. They would’ve always fallen on deaf ears, but I needed that for me and I’ll never get it.
The nerve of you to reach out anyways. I guess I shouldn't say that. When you cut me off before, you reached out. When i expressed being scared of losing you again, you said even if that were to happen, you would always come back eventually. Should I be surprised?! Not before. It almost felt good I guess. This feeling, this idea that maybe you’ve sat with your thoughts and feelings for so long that you’ve come to the realization that you did me wrong. You’ve come to regret the selfish choices you’ve made, the way you disrespected and disregarded my feelings on so many different occasions. The UNFORGIVABLE actions, and the insane amount of manipulation and abuse you put me through both in an effort to mislead me, but then to divert blame away from yourself afterwards. You know right from wrong. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have lied so much. You wouldn’t be so easy to cave when backed into a corner. But you didn’t care. You didn’t care about me and you didn’t respect me. I made it too easy for you. I jumped thru hoops for you before. And afterwards, I walked on eggshells to keep you around. Tried to forgive everything I could because I needed something. I needed a feeling. A feeling that I had no hope of getting from somewhere healthy. Somewhere good for me. Somewhere period. So I settled from getting it from the shittiest place possible because it was my only option. And if I could “forgive” that, then you could do anything. But i never forgave it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t. i know you wouldn’t either. The difference is you would’ve never had to find out because I’d never do that to you. Either way, you reached out on some I miss you bullshit. And for a moment I thought it might be true. That you might've actually felt that strongly toward me and because of that, you felt compelled to reach out because I was on your mind. It felt good. Powerful. Because I don’t miss you so much as I miss companionship. I miss sex. I miss cuddles. I miss texting. But idk if its you. Because as much as I remember the good, nothings more vivid than that night on your lawn. And the idea that you were so comfortable lying to me and making me thing that I was crazy. I cant miss that kind of presence. I can’t miss somebody who could do that to me. I miss what you offered me but the amount of pain is always gonna be connected to you the person. Somebody who looks at me as more of an idea than a person. Somebody who cares more about attention, than our connection. Somebody who can’t even talk to me about real shit and will just do some other wild shit because “you never claimed me.” Wtf does that even fucking mean at the point we were at. Idk, stupid shit. I’m missing the point. I never felt compelled to text you. When I said, I wasn’t using that number anymore, I meant it. and I told you not to use it either. Told you, you could like my pics and we can leave it there. So when you did, I felt strong. I felt decent about myself. Until I found out you saw my friend the same day or the day before or some shit. So you didn’t miss me. You were reminded of me and decided to say something. Or what’s worse, you saw who was my ex, and thought to yourself “hmmm.. shes back in town? i wonder if somethings up between them. lemme check in.” Suddenly that victories empty and you’re as trash as you were 6 months ago, let alone a year ago. No growth, still games. Conniving and scheming. Either checking for information, or checking to see if the doors still open but not actually caring about me THE PERSON forreal. It hurts. But more than anything, its annoying and insulting. The idea that I’m so weak that I’ll fall for that shit. That I’m that low on myself, that I don’t respect myself as much as you don’t respect me that I’ll fall for these tricks and welcome this energy back.
These things have been eating me alive. Protesting distracted me from them. They happened and I didn’t feel them. I thought that meant they meant nothing. They had no power over me anymore, but that’s not the case. I was just distracted. In a world were black people are being killed by the police and ignorant people are trying to justify/defend it, a shitty, musty sociopath, and a shitty manipulative woman, both of whom probably did belong together, are so damn insignificant. There’s WAY more important things to worry about. I had hoped that that’s where I was with it, but I was wrong. When the freedom fighting slowed down, their poison creeped back in. The stupid self righteous message and cowardly last word. The manipulative games and the factors that brought them forward. Things that bounced off me when the fires were too bright have hit me like a stack of bricks. What’s crazy is that they shouldn't. What does his skewed story do to my life. What does him having it wrong do to me?! He’s not a player in my life anymore so it shouldn’t matter. He’s a player in other peoples lives that are in mine. And maybe I’m bother by the idea that I may one day have to tell the whole story all over again to so many people and relive it if he decides to play victim again. Or if I stay on the high road, maybe I have to deal with people looking at me sideways based on lies and skewed perception. People know me though. They know my heart. So with that said, I shouldn’t worry about perceptions changing, or having to go on a defend myself world tour. Let mans live in his delusion in a world that has nothing to do with me. Set it free. Don’t think about it anymore. Ever again. And her, I didn’t respond. The doors closed. Why am I so offended?! Why does it matter that she tried it!? Especially if you weren’t receptive. It’s because I’m lonely. Because I’ve given up on the idea that there is somebody out there for me. And because of that, part of me thinks that the best I can do is that or nothing. Although I’d gladly take nothing, its just a reminder of how sad my future is. Maybe I’m further hurt by the realization that I did mean nothing and that I am just a game to her. Idk how to find strength in this one. How can i let go of this stupid message?! What do I tell myself?! She’s not part of my life, shes not connected to anybody in my life. She’s much easier to separate from. I want her to know she’s broken me though. I want her to feel bad about it all. But for what?! To see if she cares?! That’s stupid. I’m seeking validation. There’s nothing I can do to get it and so I think I’m going to keep dwelling on these things. These moments that hurt me, that insult me, that disrespect me until something does. I’m going to keep feeling smaller and smaller and keep replaying everything until something else fills my brain. Idk how to open this chakra. How to let this flow, and lock the closed door. Her life goes on. Their lives go on. Mine does to, but where does it go. It goes nowhere. I have nobody, and I have nothing. I thought I would find it when typing this. And i did with the first one, but I’m stumped when it comes to her.... She is playing a game I am no longer participating in. Although she doesn’t care about me, she now knows that I’m not playing, and I hope she has gained some respect for me and my space by coming to that realization. And even if she doesn't, it doesn't matter. I’ll never know. And because I’ll never know, it doesn’t matter. That’s the best I got I guess...
#baggage#narrative#long story#introspective#introspective thoughts#toxic#toxic people#toxic relationships#broken#hurt#therapy#writing#free writing#release#stress#mental health#respect#disrespect#help me#getting over it#let it go#letting it go#moving forward#dark thoughts#understanding#reflection
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