It's been rolling around in my brain the last few days for some reason, but I still hate the family backstory reveals for Sophie and Eliot. I've seen some of the meta for it, but quite frankly, it still makes no sense. If it had been something actually thought of and intentional in the original, I think it could have been so fascinating. I mean, Sophie's willing abandonment of Astrid to contrast with Nate's loss of Sam or Eliot's adoption in contrast with Hardison's and Parker's? Could have been excellent! But they came out of nowhere in Redemption and don't work with these characters.
Sophie was still actively using the fucking alias that she met Astrid under! She met with someone from her past on the show! Like. Quite frankly, that one is unequivocally bullshit that they made up and threw in and pretended could fit with the established canon. (And I'm sorry, but the idea of Sophie abandoning Astrid and never telling Nate about her just... So much of Nate's trauma was rooted in the loss of Sam, and I think that introducing this element after he's gone and unable to respond to it taints Sophie and Nate's relationship in a way bc I'm not exactly sure how Nate would've responded to learning about this but I think that it's something he'd have needed to know. I don't know how to fully express my thoughts on that but yeah.)
As for Eliot, I don't like the adoption aspect literally at all. The way that he would interact with his family and the memory of his family would be different, and I think that it's flat out ridiculous to think that he'd have never mentioned it to the team in the original show, especially when dealing with the kid cases. (I also dislike the biracial adoption as its own element because if Eliot was actually raised by Black parents in the... idk what 80s/90s? That just. doesn't feel congruent with how they write Eliot interacting with PoC, not necessarily in a bad way, but babe, he's written like a white southern man raised in a specific kind of culture that does not jell with that. It also makes Eliot look... really bad that he was apparently raised with the knowledge of how fucked up the military was and his parents' history and made the choices that he did.) Like the show may not have explicitly stated it but the implication of that relationship was vastly fucking different throughout the original show.
Just. These were not backstories that were congruent with their depiction and characters in the original show, and they're also just moves that I don't particularly like or find interesting directions for those characters. There's also something to be said about how it was apparently unacceptable for a woman to not have kids or someone not reconciling with their biological family when that was something that the original show handled a lot better. Out of all the directions to take Sophie and Eliot's stories, that's just not really one that I think was a good idea.
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episode 5 has left me considering the different - and similar - ways taeyoung and kwonsook think about themselves, and how they respond to pain/violence.
kwonsook calls herself a monster, someone who goes crazy in the boxing ring. that monster, she says, was created by her father, and her father used abuse, violence, and emotional manipulation to create that monster. he didn’t treat her like human, so it’s no surprise that the way she talks about herself when she boxes is as if she’s discussing an animal: she gets cornered, gets scared for her life, and lashes out to kill. she calls herself a monster with resignation; it’s not what she wanted to be, but she knows it’s what she was. she ran away to escape that monstrosity, to live as a human, doing good things, but that part of her never really died.
taeyoung, too, calls himself a monster. he’s a SOB, he does thing no one with an ounce of humanity would do. he seemingly has no qualms about what he does, perhaps because he can always justify it to himself, always has an exit prepared for when things really get bad (until, i’m sure, he doesn’t). like kwonsook, taeyoung accepts the label of monster, accepts his own inhumanity, even if they are inhuman in very different ways. whereas kwonsook wants to break away from that monstrous part of her - she’s only returned so she can free herself from that part of herself permanently (and if she finds a way to box without a monster, then...) - taeyoung embraces it. it’s through being a monster that he’s found success, how he secures futures for his athletes, and how he’s able to ‘solve’ their (and his) issues. monstrosity was not imposed on taeyoung, but (due to what we know so far) is something he chose for himself (although the factors surrounding this part of his past are decidedly murky).
in this episode, taeyoung and kwonsook also demonstrate similar responses to violence and (emotional) pain. when taeyoung upsets kwonsook by working with her father behind her back, he offers her an outlet for her anger by punching him. later on, after ahreum has already slapped kwonsook, instead of lashing out, kwonsook offers to let ahreum hit her again if it will make her feel better. in parallel responses, both ahreum and kwonsook debate taking that opportunity to hurt, but decide not to (kwonsook because she’s taking a chance on taeyoung, or moreso giving him another one, and ahreum because she decides that she doesn’t owe kwonsook that, that kwonsook is beneath her in terms of boxing, no longer on her level).
kwonsook learned to respond to pain at a young age. in boxing, you can’t flinch from the hit - you have to learn how to take the pain, absorb it, and get back up to hit again. outside of the rink, kwonsook absorbs the pain, but she doesn’t hit again. she’s experienced firsthand what her hits can do to people, and that terrified her. after all, she only boxed so that she could protect her mother. so when confronted with violence and pain, she takes the hit, because pain is what she knows and understands. it’s the emotions behind it that are hard for her. pain is easy for kwonsook, because she’s used to living through it, surviving it; beneath it, she’s always empty. she’s never really cared about boxing; it was what she had to do. the lee kwonsook that was a boxing genius was a monster she ran from, after all. but in order to break away from that monster, she has to come to understand the emotional investment of her fellow female boxers. before, they were just her opponents, never her friends, but now she has to face their own feelings about the sport, the passion they have for boxing that she never felt. like ara said, she didn’t feel happiness about winning, and kwonsook has never lost, so she’s never had to live with that humiliation, either. how her feelings will change in relation to boxing will likely be a reckoning for her.
taeyoung, on the other hand, is confronting his fair share of non-boxing sanctioned boxing. even though kwonsook is the boxer, it’s taeyoung who’s been touched by ‘true’ violence in this present timeline. his life is quite literally on the line, which has been shown again and again. he’s been ambushed by her father, threatened, blackmailed, and beaten up by chairman nam’s guys. he lives on the edge, anxious at every shadow, which is chewing him alive. to him, kwonsook’s anger is much easier to deal with. he knows she might hurt him, but his potential to hurt her is so much more (and if he does, in that case he’d find her anger justified, and probably let her beat him to death or something if what we’ve seen of his feelings for her is an indication of anything), and she might hurt him, but she’d never hurt him as much as other people in his life at the moment would (i.e. by killing him, or hurting the people he cares about). taeyoung is used to weathering the storm of other people’s dislike; he’s the scumbag, and he does bad things, deserves other people’s anger when it’s directed at him.
both taeyoung and kwonsook want to resolve things through violence. i think it’s telling that despite being two emotionally aware people, they both consider other people’s feelings to be so easily taken care of. they want the quick, instant pain, and then they want to get it over with. because the violence is what they’re used to, and to a degree it’s what they both think they deserve. however, what lies beneath that, what doesn’t go away with a single hit, is much harder for them to confront and understand.
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Ya know, current setups are real fun, but I've been playing horse games again lately and I've noticed some things...
If Roxy were to find the horses in storage and decide to keep them as her own, her only knowledge of horses up to that point would be horse games. I'm trying to think about the other ones I've played because I can't say I ever really looked for accuracy before, but depending on the games, Roxy would have a surprisingly hard time with this.
To my memory, none of them have the saddle positioned correctly. I don't remember any that used martingales or chest plates which some of the Plex horsies have. Horse games are designed in such a way that you can visibly see where the budget and time was put in, meaning you have some games that tell you a little about what you're doing, and some that are very detailed about certain aspects of horse care, but completely fuck up the rest of it. It's fascinating to me.
If Roxy played Bella Sara for example, she would know you can't ride until you've cared for your horse, but she wouldn't know about any sports outside of show jumping. If she played Pony Friends, she would know about trail riding, that racing is a thing and that horses get sick if not cared for properly, but may not understand that you can't ride a sick horse. Sick horses aren't really relevant here, but you see my point.
Like the standard sports tend to be show jumping, cross country and the chronically under-explained dressage games. They also all have a mechanic for brushing the horse and cleaning the hooves out, with most of them having you clean out the stable too. BUT none of them are consistent outside of that. So even if she played a bunch of them, she's not going to know what she's doing at all
Brushing and combing is straight forward enough. There's a method to doing hooves and stuff she'd not know but if she can figure out how to lift their foot up, she'll be fine. She may also know about leg wraps from some games and would find it pretty easy to do simple hairstyles with them, though the tail would be a bit harder.
But that saddle is not staying on that horse. She may get a basic bridle right but probably doesn't know what the bit is. The horses are literally built to help in teaching this stuff and they're struggling trying to find ways to help her but they're fucking horses man. What are they gonna do? All they can do is kinda give her a nudge, make loud noises, move out the way, steal shit and bite her. The Minis are trying to help but they also don't know what they're doing at all so that's not working either
The absolute relief when Roxy finds Foxy's bird and reactivates her. They've never been so excited to see a duck before. Things get easier at least, but lack of information is only part of the issue for Roxy so uhh... Yeah it's not the biggest improvement ever, but hey! At least the saddle's staying on this time!
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I just got reminded of a memory I've completely forgotten. Not a full memory though but it's memories related to a bracelet I've had for the longest time until it broke years ago. It was one of those segmented metal bracelets that stretches to a certain point where it also has letters etched on its segments that make up a name.
I happened to find it at home somewhere when I was younger and just wore it for fun until it wasn't for fun anymore (I got so attached to that bracelet I never took it off at all unless I have to clean it like once a year. I'd use a toothpick to get rid of dirt and suds between its segments).
It doesn't even have a name remotely close to my own, it had "Cindy" on it and whenever anyone looks at that bracelet, they'd ask who Cindy was and I'd just say "I don't know, I just found this bracelet." I think there was the rare moments where people thought My name is Cindy cuz of it.
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First week of school go okay? If yes, YAY!!!! If no, Im sorry my guy and I hope it gets better!!
Yeah actually! I’ve had 2 classes so far, first one was just setting up and going around an introducing ourselves which as a kid I would have loved to brag about how cool I was and as an adult made me be like hi I like metal music and I’m watching Saw movies don’t talk to me and then I literally had a hot guy come up to me after class and walk with me to my car talking to me, and then after that I a girl in my class saw me and started talking to me, and then last class was “okay group work! I’m putting you guys in group to meet each other” which made me want to gouge my eyes out because if there’s one thing that makes me feel good about myself it’s being in a class full of idiots and realizing I’m literally one of the coolest people in the room because I’m either smarter then everyone else or if I’m not I’m not super fucking dorky about it. Like. There’s a guy in my class that won’t stop talking about the ACTs. Like okay dude. Chill. Go smoke some weed or something. And then there’s the kids in my class who are just Not Getting It and I’m like wow! I’m so fucking glad I am Not That Stupid! And then there’s the girl in my class who is like timidly raising her hand and I just want to take her and be like girl don’t raise your hand women have been waiting their turn for centuries speak your thoughts. Meanwhile home girl is literally an ICU nurse like girl you are telling me you watch people cut open people for a living and you literally keep people alive but you’re too shy to say anything without raising your hand first and getting acknowledgment from the teacher. But like man she was so cool to talk to as well. So like my plan of being antisocial isn’t working at all because I keep meeting really cool people. There’s literally a guy in my class in a metal band who is a tattoo artist. Like damn dude can we hang. Next class I gotta drop in online though because I’m gonna be on vacation. I want to talk to the guy who was talking to me on the way to my car more but after class last time he was taking to ACT dude about- wait for it- the ACTs and I heard him be like “hey can I get your number” like wait hey I want YOUR number you’re hot and you like Pierce The Veil… anyway yeah.
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