#jewish soap opera for real though

[jewishdragon]

reccommend any good book series?>

uh, sure

lets start with the three book series i have had on loop (audiobooks through libby) for the last 4 years:

Temeraire. 9 books. alternate history age of sale, an homage to Aubrey Maturin (the author literally stopped posting fanfic for that series 1 year before she published the first temeraire novel). What is the alternate? Well. dragons exist. and they are people. The premise is a human naval captain finds himself captain in the air force because a dragon imprints on him. Explore how the first napoleonic war goes when dragons are involved both in battle and in politics. I love this series because it scratches a very specific itch for humans and giant monsters bonding and interacting at every level of society. A lot of real historical figures show up (napoleon...). but it never feels forced. Im so bad at selling this series. its really great.

Memoirs of Lady Trent. 5 novels. more dragons ! this time a world similar to ours, but dragons exist! however this time they are animals, not people, and the main character is a fantasy victorian jewish woman who is obsessed with studying dragons and breaks her worlds gender barriers (which are the same as victorian englands were) to achieve her goals. also there's a slow burn romance with a nerdy fantasy muslim man (think indiana jones!!!) and they go on ADVENTURES about ARCHEOLOGY AND NATURALISM (books 3 through 5. i dont want you to think i lied when this man dont show up in books 1 and 2. BUT THERE'S STILL BOTH NATURALISM AND ARCHEOLOGY ADVENTURES IN BOOKS 1 AND 2). I did not see the twist of the series coming either. wild stuff. love it. there's a epilogue 6th book where the characters spend 80% of the time translating ancient tablets and somehow this is incredibly engaging, props to the author. this is a first person POV, the author is writing it as a MEMOIR so you have to imagine this old lady writing this down in her study.

The Murderbot Diaries (5 books, 4 are novellas). Sci-fi, out in space! Mostly taking place in literally capitalist hell region of space called "the corporation rim" which is... ruled by corporations. A lab grown robocop cyborg hacks its programming to become autonomous and wants nothing more than to watch soap operas and be left alone, but of course makes friends along the way as it continues to do its job of protecting humans. the snarky humor is FANTASTIC. its also first person POV and feels like Murderbot cornered you in a seedy space bar on an asteroid and just started ranting about shit "you will not believe the fucking year ive had" and then just rants for hours. Speaking of, 4 hours is the audiobook length for each novella, short enough that you can give the series a try without worrying about length

agatha christie. i mean. the queen of murder mysteries is called that for a reason. her stories are indeed bangers

Howl's Moving Castle. its a 3 book series though the books arent super connected. really fun fantasy adventure comedies.

Ok end of the not kids section. here's the kid section

now bear with me on this. Artemis Fowl. 8 books. I didnt read these until i was an adult, in graduate school. They fucking SLAP. some stuff is a little dated but other than that, its action packed, its so much fun. Go on an adventure where a shitty know-it-all genius criminal master mind becomes a better person and also there's fairy magic and fairy tech (which might as well be a second kind of magic). the main villain? amazing, unhinged, megalomaniac to the max. i love her. the minor villains? also amazing. i cannot overstate how great the villains are in this.

Dealing with Dragons/Enchanted Forest Chronicles. uhhhh this is my special interest. fantasy comedy adventure.

thats all for now i think.

[livsoulsecrets]

Rating Brazilian characters in foreign media (updated)

Jenny Kord (Blue Beetle)

Where do I start? Bruna Marquezine on her first Hollywood movie, playing a wonderful, brilliant important character in a DC movie. 10/10. I loved every second of Blue Beetle, I don’t care what anyone says, Jenny owns me. She spoke 3 words total in Portuguese and I was ready to give up my firstborn for her.

Iván Carvalho (Elite)

The whole “I’m in love with this guy who’s fucking my dad while I’m fucking his sister” thing? That could be the plot of a Brazilian soap opera any day, so 8/10 just for the pure chaos of that. I know it’s messy af, but it’s refreshing to see Brazilians that are not trafficking drugs or being thugs, so I’ll gladly welcome the chaos.

Also, I love how the show included the conversations in Portuguese between him and his dad. It makes no sense for two characters who are fluent in a language not to speak it with each other when they are alone or emotional, especially if they’re family.

Emilia Alo

I have been obsessed with Gigi for years now and she’s very talented, so I of course love Emilia. It’s great to hear her saying Portuguese words during her dialogues and singing Brazilian songs. I do wish the show gave her more screen time though, so I’m giving this a 8/10

Also, it’s amazing to see a Brazilian character that’s bisexual and an artist in a mainstream Netflix show!

Marlon Sousa (Surviving Summer)

I know nobody watches this show but it was a really good surprise, similar to Ivan’s case, it has dialogues in Portuguese between Marlon and his mom, which is always great to see! It even has a scene where the character briefly talks about how hard it was to adapt to a new country and language and how important surf was to him in that process, overall 8/10

Roberto da Costa/Sunspot (The new mutants)

Burn it. Burn the whole thing down. Shamelessly white washing one of the few Brazilian superheroes (are we even surprised though, coming from Marvel?) was ridiculous. What the hell were they thinking, -100000/10

Vanessa (Taxi)

Look, is this movie good, objectively speaking? No.

Was this character a robber and a criminal - very stereotypically so? Yes.

Was Gisele Bündchen drop dead gorgeous in this and my gay awakening? Also yes.

So I’ll give her 7/10 for this sole reason

Paolo Montes (Trials of Apollo)

Look he is a very minor character with barely any lines and quite stereotypical features. That being said, he’s quite Brazilian in his refusal to say things in English, just speaking Portuguese nonstop and leaving the gringos to figure it out, which I love. Also the Brazilian kid having the worst luck and being Hebe’s son is quite funny. So I’ll give him 7/10

Eduardo Saverin (The social network)

Okay. I get it. Andrew is great, the whole “smacking a keyboard down” scene is amazing. It’s a 2010 movie, made before representation was a hot topic.

All that being said, the character is based in a real person. Kid’s name is Eduardo. He was born in Brazil, even though he was raised in the states.

Rubs me the wrong way he’s not played by a actor with a similar background. However, Eduardo, just like Andrew, is of Jewish descent through his immigrant grandparents, which is very accurate. Win some, lose some, I guess. Give it a 5/10 I suppose?

Honorable mention:

Rio

It’s a movie about blue macaws (Araras azuis in Portuguese), not a character in itself, so no ratings.

Even though it’s an USA-made movie, Rodrigo Santoro (all of our mothers’ crushes and a famous Brazilian actor) plays the main human character and the director is Brazilian. The songs are great, but English simply doesn’t do this movie justice.

This film in Portuguese marked my childhood, which is a testament to how great Brazilian dubbing is. Please listen to Hot Wings (Brazilian version).

Note: I know there were a few Brazilians in Shameless, never watched the shows but know they were drug dealers - which, yeah, not fun. I did see some scenes where Portuguese was being spoken though and it was quite funny.

[benevolentbirdgal]

Purim: a Jewish holiday and wild ride from start to finish

So let me tell you about the absolute soap opera that is the Jewish holiday of Purim. The scene is set in ancient (appx. 4th century B.C.E.) Persia during the first Jewish Diaspora, in the city of Shushan (typically identified in secular sources as Susa, a now-abandoned ancient city in what is now Iran). I’m telling you, as a work of literature (even beyond theological implications for Jewish people), this book has everything: love, drama, royalty, intrigue, ego, plots, irony, mystery, and a strong female lead. 

[some non-slur swearing below]

Ahasuerus, party-loving king of Persia executed or exiled (translations argue) his wife Vashti, and had to find a new queen. Why did he do this, you ask? Well, it really starts with an 180-day party across his kingdom for all his subjects to celebrate the third year of his reign. After that absolute rager, party-bro KA has another one immediately after for a week, this time just for the capital city of Shushan. Vashti was having a woman’s party in her quarters, presumably living her best life, when party-bro sends his top seven yes-men to deliver a message to Vashti. This sleaze-ball wants her to appear at his party in front of everyone, wearing her crown, with the clear implication being only her crown. Vashti more or less tells him to pound sand (I mean, not the literal translation, but that’s the sentiment). 

KA’s advisors convince him that this is not only an offense against the king but also against all the men in the country (ah, the joys of ancient patriarchy and toxic af masculinity). KA writes a degree that women must respect their husbands so he has an official reason to get rid of Vashti. Vashti is soon thereafter out of the picture and the king is short a queen. Whether she was a Wise Lady With A Point Who Got Screwed Over or a Vicious Jew-Hating Adulteress Who Had It Coming has been a matter of furious debate for over two millennia (the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud vociferously disagree on her). In any case, KA regrets it pretty quick and wants a new queen. 

At the behest of his advisors (you know, since their last advice worked out soooooo well), KA had a big contest/forcible gathering of young women from around his kingdom and a Jewish woman, Hadassah, was the winner.  Hadassah was an orphan raised by her cousin Mordechai in the city of Shushan. Hadassah is more commonly known as Esther, because she changed her name to hide her identity as a Jew (at the behest of Mordechai). In any case, KA decided he liked Esther best and she became queen (it’s specifically mentioned both that he loved her most and that the palace staff liked her because she was nice to them-it’s unclear how much of an influence the latter was). 

Concurrently, a wicked man named Haman was the top advisor to the king and the king would basically rubber-stamp whatever Haman wanted. Haman was a raging Jew-hater-this will be relevant later. 

Some time into Esther’s reign as queen, Mordechai, who has taken to hanging around the gates of the palace to keep in touch with Esther, overhears a plot by two guards, Bigthan and Teresh, to kill the king. Mordechai alerts his cousin, and she tells the king. It’s recorded in the book of deeds and life keeps moving. 

Some time later, Haman decides (after a promotion to head lackey) that he wants all to bow to him as he passes. Mordechai refused to bow to Haman every single day (citing that as a Jew he bowed to no man), and that did not sit well with Haman. So despite being prime minister and presumably having more important things to do, “genocide the Jews” made it to the top of to-do list. He didn’t like them before, and Mordechai refusing to treat him like a special snowflake was something he took really, really personally (totally can’t think of any modern politicians like that, nope). He told KA, who frankly doesn’t seem to ask enough questions, that there was a people disrespecting the king and his laws throughout the land, and could he pretty-please exterminate them. As a bonus, Haman would “donate” 10,000 silver kikar to the royal treasury (modern conversion vary, but all agree this an absurd amount on money). 

KA handed him the royal seal to do so. Haman was feeling lucky I guess so he decided the best course of action was to draw lots to pick the day for the massacre. [Purim is lots in Hebrew, so that’s where the name of the holiday came from]. The message went out to all the provinces that on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, that they citizens and leaders should murder all of the Jews, young and old, man, woman, and child, rich and poor and take their possessions as spoils. 

As this wasn’t exactly a state secret, the Jews knew and were quite distressed. The planned slaughter was like a year out, but what the actual fuck were they supposed to do? If you lived in Persia at that point that, the empire was functionally your entire world, unless you were fabulously/ridiculously wealthy and well-connected. Having several months notice the other locals and your rules were going to slaughter you and take your stuff isn’t particularly useful when there’s really nowhere to go. 

In Shushan, Mordechai (who, although not explicitly in text, is in oral/Talmudic tradition a leader of the Jewish community) goes into mourning. He dresses in sackcloth and ashes, he weeps, and he fasts at the gates of the palace, as Jews throughout shushan and the kingdom are doing. Esther hears of her cousin’s mourning behavior and tries to send along nice clothes through a messenger, which he refuses. It is then that she learns of the decree. Mordechai (through the messenger) implores her to go ask the king if the Jews not getting murdered could be a thing. Esther explains that she could be killed for approaching the king unsummoned. Mordechai stresses the severity of the situation. Esther agrees to ask the king and tells Mordechai to have the Shushan Jewish community fast day and night (as opposed to just day as prior) for three days, and she and her handmaidens will fast too (no word on what the handmaidens thought of this).

On the third day, Esther bravely approached the king, asked him if she could request something. He said anything, up to half his kingdom (which implies to me that homedude, for all his flaws, was actually into her). Esther invited him to a party, where he and Haman would be the only guests. At the party she asks if she can another request. KA is open to it and she invites him to another party the next night. Party-bro king is obviously down and Haman is tickled to death at this second invitation. 

He goes home to brag to his wife, Zeresh, about the invite and also to bitch about how angsty he is Mordechai is still alive (this angst reignited by passing him on the way home). Zeresh suggests he have fifty-foot gallows built to make Mordechai an example on, with the king’s permission, ASAP. Haman orders the building of the gallows, feeling secure in the knowledge that his bestie the king will execute Mordechai on them. 

Back at the castle KA can’t sleep. He demands a bedtime story from the his records, because those will presumably put him to sleep. The story that gets read, ~coincidentally~, is of Mordechai saving KA’s life. Haman had sidled on up to the castle to speak to the king about killing Mordechai, and the king called him in. KA asks Haman, if he were to honor someone, what should he do? Haman is thinking “this is obvi about me” and tells the king that the honoree should be donned in royal clothing, and ride through the streets on a fancy horse with people someone shouting how great he is. KA is like great, love it, perf, go do that for Mordechai. Haman is not a happy camper but does the thing. After that, he goes home and tells Zeresh about it, who warns him that this is a very bad sign. 

Finally, that night is the night of Esther’s second soiree. Haman and KA attend. The latter offers to Esther anything she wants, up to half of his kingdom. Esther asks that her life, and the life of her people be spared. KA is like “whomst” and Esther revealed it was Haman. At this point Ahasuerus.exe stops working and he takes a walk to the gardens. He comes back to see Haman begging Esther for his life, and KA thinks Haman is assaulting her. Haman was seized by nearby guards.

One of the chamberlains is then like, hey, KA, coincidentally there’s these super high gallows Haman just had built. Why not take care of the problem that way? (The fact that the random nearby chamberlain was like yup, that dude, hang ‘em in the morning, probably says a lot about how Haman treated most people around him, even more than forcing all to bow to him). KA orders it be done. 

Not that Haman was around to be sad about it, but what happened next would have massively pissed him off, as his old job then went to Mordechai. Esther then implored of the king that the degree to allow the massacre of the Jews be reversed. The king couldn’t Cntrl+Z the order to murder-all-the-Jews, but he could issue an order that they could fight back. The proclamation was sent throughout the land, and the Jews were able to prepare. Since the royal decree had been amended, the governments (princes, governors, satraps) largely reformulated their plans accordingly, but plenty of Jew-haters still wanted to use the opportunity. The ability to self-defend meant that the communities weren’t massacred. In most of the kingdom, the Jews were now safe. Outside of Shushan, the fourteenth of Adar became a feast day. 

Shushan was still not safe though. Antisemites were still out and mad (and apparently had not learned from the previous day), so Esther asked the Jews of Shushan to be allowed to defend themselves once more. Her wish was granted, and the Shushan Jews were able to defend themselves once more (so Purim is celebrated a day later in walled cities). 

The story ends with the decision to write it down, and although there some debate on authorship, it is traditionally attributed to Esther herself cowriting with Mordechai. 

Nowhere in the book is God mentioned. Nowhere is there divine intervention (at least not explicitly). Just Jews sticking up for themselves, being brave in the face of mortal peril, and a metric fucktown of chutzpah. 

[semper-legens]

55. Roman Mysteries: The Secrets of Vesuvius, by Caroline Lawrence

Owned: Yes Page count: 206 My summary: Flavia and her friends are spending the summer with her uncle Gaius in Pompeii. They’re on the trail of a mystery that will lead them to a great treasure - but they don’t know that they’re against the clock. Volcano day is coming, and they’re in grave danger... My rating: 3.5/5

More Roman Mysteries! Yep, I’m reading this whole series. Don’t worry, I’ll sprinkle in some other stuff between so you don’t have to deal with twelve straight days of mystery solvin’ kids. Anyway, so can you guess what the main tension in this book is? That’s right, it’s Christianity and soap opera plots about lost kids! Oh, and also the volcano.

First - the kids. While later, some of the books have a higher focus on one of the main four over the rest, this one’s still an ensemble piece. We see a few changes; Nubia’s learned more Latin, with the adorable quirk that she’s learning Latin from poetry and so speaks in an overly-formal or poetic way. Lupus is learning to write, so he can fully communicate with the others, though through this book he’s still pointing, miming, and drawing. I really like how expressive Lupus is even without a literal voice, he has some trouble getting his point across sometimes, but he never hesitates to make his mark. Here, we also see more of Flavia’s bad traits. She’s bossy and authoritative, and meddles in other people’s business to the point where it horribly backfires in her face. It works because she’s a literal child, and therefore hasn’t learned any better, and also thanks to her good points. She’s smart, rational, and has a brilliant mind, it’s just that she’s also entitled and meddlesome. Also, Jonathan is there. I don’t have much to say about his character development as of yet, but I still love him.

The mystery the kids are investigating is really secondary to the ticking clock presented by Vesuvius. Much is made of the dramatic irony that the characters don’t know the One Thing Everyone Knows About Pompeii, because it hasn’t happened to them yet. Once things get going, though, they’re apocalyptic. Lawrence really captures the abject terror and helplessness of being in a disaster situation like this, and though it’s not gory, we see characters straight-up die. Not main characters, granted, apart from guest-star Real Person Pliny the Elder, an interesting historical figure in his own right. This is the point where the series kind of goes to being historical fanfiction, and it’s a welcome shift. Hey, these guys have been dead for almost 2000 years, we can make up what their lives could have been like.

Anyway, should probably talk about the actual mystery. Pliny gives the kids a riddle to work out that will lead to a ‘great treasure’, which brings them into the path of a blacksmith named Vulcan. Turns out the riddle is a coded message to hide secret Christians, Christianity being illegal at this point in Roman history. The Christian faith is a big theme in this series, with Jonathan and his family, and it’s interesting how it’s portrayed. Jonathan and his family celebrate major Jewish holidays and keep the sabbath, but they don’t keep kosher (because the Biblical God made all things clean) and also worship Jesus. As an adult, I’m not too sure what to make of it. It’s balanced, I suppose, by Flavia’s worship of the Roman pantheon, and her not understanding what Christianity is. She thinks they worship a donkey, for one, not grasping the idea of an omnipresent god without idols or temples. It’s interesting, and something to watch out for in the later books.

Next up, something more factual-ish, as we dive into the history of the séance.

[cassandraclare]

Geneaology

Rorochan92 Hey Cassie, I read about people  being concerned that Jesse and Lucie are cousins. Are they cousins? I can’t figure it out. Also, if James and Cordelia get married, and if they have kids, how come Jace doesn’t know he’s related to the Carstairs when he meets Emma? Why don’t they talk about it more?

Ok! Let’s tackle this in two parts.

Jesse and Lucie: I … think that must have been a misunderstanding? They are not in any way related. Jesse’s uncle is Gabriel Lightwood. Gabriel Lightwood is married to Cecily Herondale, who is Lucie’s aunt. The only way they’d be related would be if Cecily and Gabriel were related, which they are not. Jesse and Lucie are distantly connected by marriage, which is not weird, especially in a smaller community like the Shadowhunters who are a tiny fraction of people on the planet. She is likely just as related to Matthew or more so (i.e. not much.)

(And before there is too much pearl-clutching about that, this kind of reminds me of people in my box fretting about whether Kit and Ty would be related if Jesse and Lucie ended up together. They would not be in any meaningful way. Those ancestors are far enough back that they would be considered by any geneticist to be unrelated, and by Shadowhunter terms, they’d be practically total strangers. It’s already a small community, good luck finding someone who doesn’t share some common ancestor with you. (I am Ashkenazi Jewish ( a group which comprises 0.2% of people on the planet): the assumption is that if I meet another Ashkenazi Jew, they’re my tenth cousin. Which is to say, we share some common ancestor way back but are not related. Let me put it this way: whether or not Lucie and Jesse end up together, whether or not the present-day Blackthorns are descended from Jesse’s branch of the Blackthorns at all, Kit and Ty will be the same amount of related, which is: not.)

Another rule of thumb is that “it is 99.9999% likely … that any given person you meet is at least a 16th cousin. And 97.2% likely that they are a 15th cousin” — and that’s the general population, not a smaller community like Shadowhunters, or Ashkenazi. It is not something that concerns me, nor should it you! There is a reason no soap opera plot turns on the discovery that someone is your fifteenth cousin. They are essentially unrelated to you. This is like freaking out that Magnus and Alec have a common ancestor. I guarantee they do. We all do. As the LA Times says, “Everyone is related to everyone else.” 

Nobody in these books is marrying a first or even second cousin, though I would point out that’s exactly what Elizabeth is meant to be doing in Pride and Prejudice, with Mr. Collins, and exactly what Mr. Darcy is supposed to be doing with Anne de Burgh, and exactly what Edmund and Fanny do in Mansfield Park (they’re first cousins.) This was considered a way to keep wealth in the family, and was most common of course in royal families, which should provide some pearl-clutching historicity fun. :)

As for Jace — I mean, no, I would think of it as very bizarre if the people in the TMI/TDA era made a big deal about having distant common ancestors. Okay, so if Jace is descended from Cordelia, then she is one of sixteen great-great grandparents that he has. She is one of far, far more ancestors: literally hundreds. I think people may be compressing time in their heads and not thinking about the exponential growth of generations. Cordelia is one thirty-second of Jace’s genetic makeup, if they are related at all.

Also, not only does Jace barely know who Stephen and Marcus (his grandfather) are, he has no reason to memorize his family tree. Why on earth would he? I don’t know who any of my great-great grandparents are. I know the name of exactly one great-grandparent. I’ m not sure why Jace, who feels no great connection to the Herondales, would be researching this stuff? And memorizing it? And apparently caring more about someone removed from him by five generations that he cares about, say, his grandmother’s relatives? Why is no one complaining that he isn’t tracking down the Whitelaws or the Montclaires? (He doesn’t care to, but they’re all more closely related to him than the Carstairs.)

The answer to that is: because readers have read the books, and to them the Herondales and Carstairs are significant names, and those names have a connection. But the characters have not read the books. It would be as bizarre for Jace to go lunging at every Carstairs he might meet as it would be for Alec to weep all over the Monteverdes. Jace is not closely enough related to Emma for him to think of her as a relative regardless of whether James and Cordelia end up together or not.

We have to remember: these characters do not know that there have been previous book series in which names like Lightwood and Blackthorn are important. When Jace finds out he’s a Herondale he doesn’t leap on Alec either exclaiming that now they are related or something because a hundred and fifty years ago they had ancestors who got married. They’re not related, and neither of them would likely know about those marriages. To us, these characters are important: to Jace and Clary et al they can’t be without destroying a sense of verisimilitude that these are real people with real people concerns, not book people whose concerns are about other book series.

[misterbitches]

hi! this is long as shit i’m sorry. i hope it makes sense. i ahve adhd and like 5 million learning disorders so this is just word vomit cos there’s so many words in my brain. my b.

i’ve had such a tough day so thank you for replying and sharing! @yeedak​ 

i was thinking about what i wrote and i meant to clarify that as well. some cases are fine for both parties and it’s not like you weren’t consenting and it seems like you were happy! same with my friend who was dating a 20 yr old. if they’re happy you know i’ll clown on ‘em but yea. so for anyone that sees these posts your relationship with your partner who is older or whatever. i’m some dumb girl on the internet okay. ill side eye older ppl tho

i think a lot of people feel the same way you do now (me included.) it feels really good at the time but alter we can see the dynamics playing out. i’m 29 now and i think aging is just such a huge process. it’s wild how you at 31 are a totally different person, right?

and the US racism is probably some of the worst ever in its iteration because of slavery which started from europe etc but USA is so fucking unique bc of columbus bringing slaves here and displacing indigenous peoples or hispanola and because america is so influential the way it views race, particularly with black people as objects, has so deeply permeated into the current historical psyche globally. it’s fascinating to track how necessary anti blackness is to the flourishing of america but also the world at this point. also want to point out how fuckign scary sinophobia is here especially for covid. one is a straight historical line (black ppl + the US) and the other had to be manufactured and to continue to exploit the non-white americans and keep antiblackness in tact.i could go on about this all day. the pain of this place is immense.yet as bad as it is here, this is still the only place i truly feel safe as a black person. because of the unique experience we have in america and through the diaspora especially because we are veyr much ocncentrated here. it would be nice to like move to norway and have some alleviation financially or get free healthcare it’s just not feasible if no one looks like me. it’s fucking tough. 

i hope you don’t hate it here though and people treat you with respect. but as you know being a woman and jewish and an immigrant....shit is tough. the USA is a hellhole. :( america is so deeply tainted and desperately bad because it was founded on strife and blood and there’s no way to reverse that and what this country did in turn when it gained enough power and could capitalize off of the colonial forefathers. this is why we hsould all luv revolution!!!

HOWMEVERRRR 

boy oh boy oh BOY OH BOYYYYYYYY. well wlecome to the world of BL lmao especially as an adult with some obviously deep perspective just given your background. it is a fucking mess and it’s a hard mess to like but it pulls you in. i approach it like i do with soap operas since these are essentially telenovelas, you know? just like the drama at a billion. but the tricky part of that is like....what parts of it do we understand for critiquing? because so many of the shows are so bad at being like good pieces of things to look at just production wise and story wise. but i feel like these shows ask us to take them seriously, so why shouldn’t we take the content seriously? and this is being primarily peddled to young girls. 

i bring this up often but i read this thing about yaoi and the interest younger women/girls have in BL and its fascination with pederasty essentially. this component i think is key when we talk about who gets affected by these things the most. society in general is bad 4 girls bla bla we know lmao but in “more sexually conservative” societies it may be harder for these girls to feel safe even expressing normal emotions romantically and sexually and particularly with guys. some people hypothesized, and i think i agree with this hypothesis, that they can live through the casualness of BL. they don’t feel threatened because they can put themselves into the shoes of the other character. oftentimes, the more feminine or the younger. this was in conjunction with the age gap aspect (they say pederasty as well because there’s unethical age gaps that r gross and that is indeed what we would at least call a touch of sexual abuse if people dont feel like calling it an obsession with youth and power and uhhh young ppl and perhaps kids) where maybe girls could see themselves in these situations as the person being saved, loved, taken care of, and sadly also sexually active and penetrated. 

i think that’s just one aspect of it but i do think there’s validity in who gravitates towards it. i cannot imagine seeing this stuff and not getting enough information as a young kid, i sure as fuck know i didn’t!, and seeing these things and you look at it with 0 critique because you’re young and you may have no interest in it or you simply cannot understand what is wrong. no one is teaching you these things and these shows confirm it. and it is wild how intrinsic patriarchy is to BL although in its existence it also can’t be in line with patriarchy given the nature of two [cis] men!

it begs the question about the replacement aspect. is it just so girls can put themselves in these characters shoes? if so then that means we believe that gender is so interchangeable within our relationships and interactions and that doesn’t seem right. there’s more to lgbtq+ than just existing; it’s finding ways to communicate, finding a family, safety, your people, being a free person. there’s a lot to gain and a lot a lot to lose. and a gay man is also not a woman because those are also two distinct experiences.  especially in societies that have a more hidden aspect to sexuality (idk how to word this bc the BL industry would NEVER survive in america but in a way there’s a more “progressive” look at homosexuality but it’s still fucked up because we live in a Society, you know? at the same time look at what we are doing to trans kids. literally waging war so it’s bonkers how we all collectively have some real progress happening but at the same time not at all. the concept of ‘ladyboys’ and the frequency we see trans people in thai shows is wild and something that we absolutely do not see here in the US. still, none of these groups feel safe or are getting better material conditions in either place. we just show the ways we can try and tolerate oppression witout eliminating it imo)

to me it is clear: it’s money. which most things exist to make money so. but also who is the audience for these shows? and they have to market towards them. all that said all hope is not lost there are some decent shows. it’s just like regular media on TV though where it’s so fucking saturated as an industry that it’s literally sifting through garbage. and there are some days when you can handle the trash and others where it really fucking hurts to watch the violence, the rape, the manipulation, the violations, the stupid messaging. i have never seen more people trying to do mental gymnastics and seeing if things were “technically rape” than in teh BL fandom and that is so fucking sad.

i came into these shows at 28 with almost 0 clue of what as media BL was like esp as media that countries can use as soft power with the revenue. but i realize like...i’m 29 now and so many people don’t have a sizeable, though not huge, amount of life experience. and i wonder for people on the internet who are usually searching for something if they spend so much time on it like what a 15 year old girl thinks. what a 20 year old girl thinks. 

it is incredibly problematic and so awful but there’s also some rewards. if you haven’t i would definitely watch i told sunsset about you which i don’t think i’m going to finish and i doubt i’ll watch the second installment (watch this be a lie) but when i say some fucking impeccable storytelling and art? phew. now that is a fucking piece of media that works. it takes from moonlight heavily and you can see like...the artistic dedication is there and the story makes its world and sets up its stakes extremely well. 

i think because this is marketed towards much younger people too they know they dont have to try as hard. but they SHOULD because then you can have a fucking masterpiece like that. i think even this prolific gay thai filmmaker (who is like solidly against the government) who is so respected (and who i like a lot! if u wanna know i can tell u lmao but the films are very uhhhhhhhh “artsy”) would like i told sunset about you. i wish more people had budget like that and also just cared about the stories. it’s the fucking magic of art to figure out what you can do but there is very little incentive honestly. idk i am very pessimistic. there are days when it’s really a great pick me up and distraction but it is never a place i would love for to feel seen or heard but i’m more of the mind of i never trust the mainstream until they prove me wrong ;) 

or i never trust the mainstream and i still buy into it anyway and then cry when i don’t like what i see adn i yell “BOO GET OFF THE STAGE!” when an old man won’t leave a teenager alone

[notbang]

R/N - #11

halloween prompt meme | read on ao3

It takes him a second to recognise her beneath the wig, but he should have guessed, really. Who else would rent a costume that takes up approximately one third of the office space with its multiple layers of petticoats?

He waits until Paula peels away from her side in the direction of the bathroom, his nostrils flaring at the probably health-code-violating screen of dry ice he has to push through in order to reach where she’s leaning against a column, eyes glued to her period-anachronous phone.

“Figures you’d be involved in this productivity suck somehow,” he says as he sidles up to her, hands stuffed in his pockets in a way he likes to think exudes nonchalance.

Rebecca regards him, unimpressed, over the top of the screen. He’s not sure if it’s the light reflecting from her phone, or her makeup, or both, but she’s even paler than usual; glowing alabaster amongst the dimly lit cubicles.  

Her answering laugh is entirely mocking. “I see your invite failed to get lost in the mail. Kudos on the costume, though—rich white dude is about the most repulsive thing I can think of.”

He gives a pointed once-over to her dress—a complex concoction of white frills and lace—and feels his lips curl back in a smirk. “Almost as terrifying as the prospect of eternal matrimony,” he agrees. “Once again, my deepest condolences, by the way.”

Any chance she has at supplying some kind of rejoinder in retort is squashed by the approach of a waiter—exactly how much money had Darryl spent on this thing, anyway?—with a round mop of black hair that looks like it escaped from a disco in the mid 70s, brandishing a tray boasting an array of dips and elaborately carved carrot sticks.

Rebecca frowns, apparently already somehow acquainted with the server. “Marty?”

“Rebecca B! This is where you work? How about that! Sweet digs. Sweet digs indeed.” The disco flunkey’s eyes light up when they roam across to Nathaniel. “And aren’t you two a fright for sore eyes? A perfectly spooky bride and groom! Yeah, that gaudy ring really finishes the look. That’s gotta be from that pawn shop over on East Cameron—they sell the weirdest old junk there. Something borrowed, something boo, am I right?”

The blossoming red blush breaks out across Rebecca’s chest like bright, blotchy watercolour beneath her skin.

“It’s not—we’re not…” she begins, face scrunching. “This is not—he’s not even wearing a costume!”

Nathaniel, amused enough at her discomfort that his disdain for the entire scenario is secondary, catches the eye of the source of her distress over her shoulder, shaking his head minutely to confirm the absurdity of the assumption.

He can’t help himself, though—his palm finds the small of her back of its own accord. Rebecca’s eyes, if possible, bug even wider as he tugs her towards him. “It never feels like a costume when it’s as real as what we have, though, does it, Muffin?”

Marty lets out a low, appreciative whistle. “Right on—I hear you, buddy. Hope you two enjoy the… patê,” he adds, indicating the tray of dips before disappearing with a playful shimmy.

Barking out a polite laugh at the eye roll-inducing pun, Nathaniel shepherds a still spluttering Rebecca into the break room—currently empty, ostensibly in favour of the makeshift dance floor forming over by the elevator—before promptly dropping his hand away from her back as if badly burned.

“Muffin?!” she seethes as as she whirls to face him, giving him an incredulous shove before batting haphazardly at his chest with her tiny, ineffectual fists.

“It only seemed apropos,” he drawls, lazily, “given how many of them you eat.”

“You…” she growls, then shakes herself, her train of thought seemingly lost to her irritation. “Why are you even here? I thought you couldn’t be within a ten mile radius of candy without your teeth literally falling out.”

“Ha ha,” he says with exaggerated sarcasm. “As distasteful as this entire embarrassing excuse of party is, it is a company event. It’d be unseemly of me not to at least make an appearance.”

“Couldn’t resist ruining everyone’s fun, more like it. God, it’s like everything is some kind of masturbatory performance with you, isn’t it?”

Her ample bosom, amplified by the cut of her gown and in considerable clear and present danger of spilling over and out entirely, rises and falls with the uneven rhythm of her steadily mounting frustration.

Not that he’s looking, or anything. Just that it’s making some kind of point of filling up his field of vision.

“Please,” he sneers, looking down the ridge of his nose and being careful to focus on her splotchy face rather than directly below it as he gestures out towards the bullpen. “Are you telling me you didn’t choose that costume as some sort of dry run for your impending nuptials to the flip flop? I bet you’ve been parading around in that dress all evening, flashing that ring at anyone that so much as glances in your direction. Congratulations, by the way—purple is his colour. Really makes that pawn shop gemstone pop when it’s curled around your fiancé’s spandex covered bicep.”

“There was a slight miscommunication on which Phantom he was dressing up as, okay,” Rebecca snaps. “And I’m not bothered by it, because it’s a charming anecdote that I’m going to tell all the Jewish-Filipino babies we’re going to have every year on Halloween.”

He forces out a sardonic laugh. “Well, have fun with that. Remind me again—why is this a Halloween party?”

“It’s Halloween in September,” she says, incomprehensibly defensive, the no duh implicit in her voice. She crosses her arms, and it does nothing to coax her heaving cleavage back into its confines. “It’s like Christmas in July, except for Halloween. Darryl’s a big fan of mixing things up, unlike you—we get it, dude! You like burgundy ties!”

Just as a riposte is forming on the tip of his tongue, Jim—an eyesore in bright red pleather if one ever existed—barrels through the break room with a drunk and disorderly, vampire-fang-bearing Tim hot on his heels, forcing Nathaniel to sidestep abruptly out of their path. The issue with that is, he fails to notice until he hears the resulting sharp intake of breath, is that it has him pressing Rebecca into the corner of the bench in front of the tinsel-adorned coffee maker.

The smart thing to do would be to step away. The dangerous thing—the stupidest decision possible, really—would be to stand his ground. To loom and crowd her further.

God, it’s like the idiocy of this place is seeping into him via osmosis.

Rebecca gulps, untamed breasts brushing distractingly against his sternum, and casts a frenzied glance out into the party proper, making sure no one is watching them through the slats.

A little light headed but ultimately spurred on by her fluster, Nathaniel straightens his spine and dips his head, voice tipping low to tease. “It still makes sense, you know. The costume choice. After all, your life is basically a soap opera. And nobody can blame you for wanting to hide that—” He nods towards the photocopier, where Josh is otherwise occupied with his attempts to get a Jenga game going with several desks’ worth of highlighters. “—away behind a mask.”

“Yeah, well,” she sputters, “it’s lucky that he got the costume wrong. Because his left is actually his best angle. Yeah. So you’d be missing out, otherwise. And you’re, like, so incredibly wrong. I don’t want to hide his face. I love that face. It’s my favourite face.” He doesn’t miss the way her gaze flits down to his lips, and his tongue darts out to wet it on autopilot. “I wanna rub my face all over his face, all the time.”

He leans in further, and he can’t be imagining it—the way her breath falters, and her eyelids start to flutter as his breath fans out across her face with deliberation. “Uh-huh.”

Interesting, he thinks, filing away the visible pluck of the cords in her neck as she swallows, as if in slow motion, to revisit later.

As if compelled by some inexplicable urge and drunk off finally, finally feeling like he has the upper hand, he tilts minutely, mouth moving towards grazing the shell of her ear. “I know it’ll be tempting, when you’re lying in bed tonight, trying to get the image of your mediocre choice of a life partner squeezed into a morph suit the colour of Barney dinosaur out of your head. But do me a favour, Rebecca, hmm? Try not to—” He pauses dramatically for effect. “—think of me.”

He can tell by the way her eyes widen with surprise for a split second only to scrunch in confusion that she’s caught the reference. Finally, he thinks as his pulse thrums through him with intense satisfaction: a use for having to spend hours inside a stuffy theatre box with an aunt that always smelled too strongly of peppermint oil.

A moment later and Rebecca’s spring-loaded, shoving him aside to make her escape. Just before she melts back into the throng of partygoers, though, she turns, left hand curling around the edge of the wooden partition, ring glinting red beneath the disco lights; the only time all night she’s managed not making it look embarrassingly staged.

“In your dreams,” she tells him, deadly serious, then hikes up her voluminous skirts and stomps off in flurry of frilly white lace and bouncing black-brown synthetic curls.

[eeveemasters]

hey, all you lovely people!  full disclosure i talk a lot and i have thought about this character thoroughly when you look under that read more... oh boy... just a heads up. anywho... guess i’m the last here i see, well, that’s typical. I’m late to literally everything, although this time I do have a good excuse. i’d tell you what it is but you don’t really wanna read about me gettin’ it in all weekend and drew is my bro -like literally. we share blood. we came outta the same womb. 26 hours of labor. 19 minutes apart. our poor mother-  so he def doesn’t wanna read about it and that is a swill of information about me before ya even know my name which says a lot, doesn’t it? inst-y-ways, I’m maddie and I’m Jewish, you’ll figure out why i’m putting that out there now. also hello again. i hope y’all are ready to get this party started, cause this is where it’s at! look below & hit that read more and I will tell you all about my baby girl, Eevee.

TW: DEATH, DEPRESSION, STALKER, MURDER, KIDNAPPING

★ ━  ( candice patton,   cis-female,   she/her )  ━ ★   just to be clear, ya didn’t get this information from me.   The person you’re lookin’ for is     EVELYN LUCIA MASTERS.   also known as     EEVEE.    Last I heard she was born on   APRIL 7TH, 1988    in    SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS,   but she’s been livin’ in   RICHMOND,    for about    EIGHT MONTHS.    Word around the districts is, this doll,    EEVEE  can be    VENGEFUL,   SELF-RIGHTEOUS,   &    A KNOW-IT-ALL,   but i gotta tell, ya, alls I seen is good things, like the fact that she’s   RESILIENT,   CHARISMATIC,    &     ENERGETIC.   I guess that depends on how well ya know ‘em, though.   the last thing ya need to know is that she works as an   A-LIST ACTRESS  &  CO-OWNER OF EXCALIBUR COMICS.  I don’t know much about what that’s all about but I do know that’s all I can tell ya the rest you gotta find out on ya, own.  ━     ( ooc:  maddie,   pst,   28,   she/her ) 

Evelyn Lucia Masters.

the irony of her name is that it means “wished for child”

she was definitely not.

hence why she goes by... 

Eevee. 

Yes, like the Pokemon.

No, it’s not a stage name or a gimmick.

She legally changed her name.

It’s on her credit card. ( so are kittens! )  

Born in San Antonio Texas.

Jewish, Bisexual & Very Proud.

Collette Rivers

Her mother.

One of the first and few Black, Soap Opera stars.

Had a wildly popular sitcom for a hot minute.

Career was on fire in the 80′s & 90′s.

Transitioned to clothing designer and eventually a reality tv real housewife when she couldn’t get jobs anymore.

Joseph Masters.

Her Father.

a former actor

was very well known for CSI.

was on broadway.

became a sought after director.

it’s a whole family in the biz, so of course...

@ two years of age, Eevee became an Actress™

baby diaper commercials with her mom.

then singing lessons.

then dance lessons.

then pageants.

more commercials.

a bit of child modeling.

more commercials.

reoccurring kid on sesame street.

then a reoccurring (but not staring) role on Gullah Gullah Island.

1998. She’s 10.

lands a role on Broadway opposite Leon Thomas III as Nala in The Lion King. 

this is the jumping-off point of her career. where it really shot off

but ignoring that for a minute...

Eevee has 5 other siblings.

4 of them are alive.

when Eevee was 15 she’d just gotten season 1st ( and eventually only ) season of her Disney show renewed and she had a stalker. on her 16th birthday, the stalker snuck into her sweet 16, cornered her when she and her older, brother Elias were alone, stabbed Elias, and kidnapped Eevee. Elias was rushed to the hospital when they found him but died shortly after.  They found Eevee, recovered her from the stalker unharmed, but when she asked about Elias... shortly after Eevee sunk deeper into her depression, and also suffered from survivors’ guilt and eventually had to stay in a mental hospital and was released a year later, a few days after her 17th birthday. being in the real world was hard for her and in a few weeks time, became legally emancipated from her parents because her father had taken control of monitoring her finances, her decisions, and became too controlling of her schedule and time out of his concern for her and her mother acted like none of it happened and expected Eevee to pick up where she left off and to get more jobs and keep working. It was an environment detrimental to her health and sanity so she had to get out of that and got her own place and moved away from her parents and unfortunately, her twin sister and younger brother.

Took a break from acting to finish high school.

had to have private tutors

excelled at the school aspect of her life.

had very few friends but she did have a girlfriend.

eventually, Eevee broke up with her

to seize her 5 minutes of fame she outted Eevee as a lesbian to TMZ.

It didn’t take long for Eevee to speak out.

At 17, in 2005, Eevee came out publically as Bisexual.

as a Black 17-year-old girl she was proud of herself.

but it did not go well for her in the media or in magazines.

didn’t help what little career she had left.

but she also kinda didn’t care

Became known for outspoken activism for LGBTQ+ youth.

Started her own charity and outreach program to finance and help struggling youth in the LGBTQ+ community by providing them with shelter, food, and treatment for health issues both mental and physical.  

went to college...

Northwestern State University.

joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority

double-majored in theater and business

got married to one of her best friends at one point to help him out with his financial situation.

graduated with degrees. 

and real friends in and out of her sorority.

WORKED HER ASS OFF TO GET HER CAREER BACK ON TRACK.

it took a lot of hard work.

a lot of mediocre jobs.

a lot of auditions. 

a lot of shmoozing & playing the long game.

she pulled every single string

cashed every single favor

ate a lot of shit.

including going to her mother whom she hadn’t spoken to in six years.

EVENTUALLY ROSE BACK TO THE A-LIST WITH A VENGENCE.

Several Independent Films.

Supporting roles in TV shows.

Supporting roles in a few movies.

Starring roles in a number of pilots that never got greenlit.

Starring roles in 2 tv shows. 

one was canceled the first season.

the other had THREE SEASONS.

won an Emmy

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series

landed a few ad campaigns

Eevee went back to Broadway a few times over the years.

Bring It On: The Musical

played Danielle

won a tony

Best Featured Actress in a Musical.

Newsies: The Musical

played Katherine.

dream come true.

Hadestown

played Eurydice.

nominated for a Tony.

The Lion King

played adult Nala.

life coming full circle.

Currently stars in her own Netflix show. 

season 2 just finished filming which is why she has moved to Portland.

PERSONALITY:

very much a complete dork. loves video games, loves comic books, has a lot of memorabilia all through her house, it’s practically a dork museum, always telling puns. always joking. always been an adorable ray of sunshine. she really likes to be a light and enforce positivity for her friends and others.

talks far too much for her own good especially when she’s nervous.

very kind, generous, and loving, always willing to help a friend.

always willing to cook for someone as a way to comfort them. She’s a well-versed home chef and an excellent baker.

she’s in-between the vodka aunt and the mom friend. she’s the first to suggest doing shots and getting fucked up, but she’ll also make sure everyone’s okay and be responsible.

She’s that friend who if you fuck with one of her friends in any way she will go into protective mamma bear mode and straight-up end that person for you. if you need someone to back you up in a fight, literally, and have your back she is your girl.

she isn’t great at flirting or really being around anyone she finds attractive, she turns into a rambling, nonstop talking, pile of adorable.

up until the end of December last year, she was a virgin. She’s only ever slept with one person so she’s not really the sleep around kind of girl but respects those who do, you do you boo, but also please don’t mistake her for a relationship type girl either. she’s neither. she’s great at fooling around and hookups that usually stop before they get to the sex part. she’s actually just very awkward when it comes to intimacy and feelings and getting close to people in that way. It fucks with her anxiety so she just needs someone who can get her out of her head and that is very hard to find for her.

She’s a feminist and believes women should be there to support each other, but also is aware that feminism isn’t always equal and some women don’t include her as a woman to support because she is a woman of color and because she’s Black and will call someone out on their white feminist or anti-black bullshit.

she’s kind but is in no way a pushover. she’s very opinionated and steadfast and isn’t afraid to reason with someone and argue with them and stand up for herself.

POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS:

Friends: people who can put up with her non-stop chatter and find it endearing.

Fake Friends: people who are using her for fame, recognition and what her name can do for them.

Crushes: could be one-sided, could be both-sided, let’s talk about it.

Boxing Friendship: sparing partners, or someone who sees her at the boxing gym in her workout outfits that include but is not limited to color-coordinated custom gloves, that match both her outfit, her shoes, her gym bag and the giant cheerleading bow on the top of her high ponytail,  but has never actually stuck around to see her box so don’t believe she can throw an actual punch because they can’t take that seriously, because she’s just a pretty little celebrity what can she actually do, but then one day end up in an argument with her and challenge her to a sparring match and to their surprise kicks their ass and they become sparring partners. I don’t know, clearly I haven’t given that plot much thought.

Step-family member: Eevee doesn’t have a relationship with her mom, but she is aware the woman got married to another woman who has kids when Eevee was 19 or so. She’s never met any of them. Never spoken to any of them. Never been invited to family functions. Knows full well they exist and they know full well she exists and they have actually hung out with other members of her family, just not her. So that sounds like awkward and traumatic fun for all involved right?? Bring the angst.

Fellow Actors: They could be real friends, could be fake friends, could have worked together, could just know of each other, could be a publicity friendship, dude, I don’t know.

Fans / Haters: like her work or don’t like her work???????????? I don’t know I’m just throwing stuff out there at this point.

I don’t know we’ll figure something out, I AM PUMPED AND EXCITED!!

[humboldtfog]

Years of depression has prepared me very well for the current state of affairs which is weird but whatever here’s a list of my faves on netflix, if I’m missing something let me know cause now’s the time, right?

I'm kinda embarrassed by how long this list is but also kinda like fuck that, there have been very long periods of time where it was either sit and watch shows all day or lie down and stare at the wall in silence all day so I chose the former and it adds up and there's nothing wrong with that.

Glow (Badass ladies learn to wrestle, great 80s aesthetics and grrrrl power.)

Our Planet (Netflix version of Planet Earth, beautiful, cute, terrifying that we aren’t doing more to save us all.)

Bojack Horseman (Hilarious and “deep” critique of LA and celebrity culture for people who don’t care about LA or celebrity culture. Also very funny visual jokes about how if animals were also kinda humans, and lots of great jokes about cliches and tropes, puns, and weirdly rhyming and alliteration? I don’t know how to explain it just watch it.)

Father Brown (BBC, based on mystery novels about a priest who always meddles in police business and solves murders in his small English countryside town.)

Pose (The Ball scene in NY in the 80s, poc queer and trans writers and actors bringing their people’s stories to life. So much joy, so much beauty, but also NYC in the 80s so you will cry.)

Paris is Burning (Documentary made during the Ball scene Pose is based on.)

Sex Education (Such empowering representations of all walks of gender and sexuality, and actually very educational, like I would straight up show this in schools because everyone would be very entertained and would learn a lot more than they teach in a lot of schools.)

What Happened Miss Simone (Documentary about Nina Simone’s life, music and the activism the establishment/ government worked to suppress and used to blacklist her.)

Night on Earth (Low light camera technology has gotten hella good and they’re starting to learn stuff about animals’ behaviors at night that they’ve never been able to study before.)

Call the Midwife (Follows stories from the midwives that worked in the East End of London after the war, based on memoirs. Interesting look at the kind of life of poverty people led before there were many large hospitals or birth control, right as the British were implementing their universal healthcare program.)

The Great British Baking Show (Everyone’s so nice and everything looks so good!)

Atypical (Dramady about a high schooler with autism and his family, very funny and great representations of autism and how to be a good dude.)

Parks and Recreation (Just very funny and everyone knows it. Amazing ensemble cast, and they still keeps in touch through a group chat awww doesn’t that say something!)

Kim’s Convenience (Canadian comedy about family of first and second gen Korean immigrants that’s just a really solid funny modern day sitcom.)

Queer Eye (I feel like if everyone in this world could get a life makeover from these guys we just wouldn’t be here right now.)

Obvious Child (Jenny Slate accidentally gets pregnant and gets an abortion. It’s funny and it’s realistic, we’re not all Juno.)

Maria Bamford: the Special Special Special (Rad lady comedian not afraid to talk about her mental health and lack thereof and very vocal about the stigma surrounding mental health problems and I very much relate to. My favorite standup probably ever. I could make a list just for standup so message me if you’d like more suggestions.)

Monty Python (Flying Circus, movies, doc, ect. “The Beatles of comedy” is the cliche but it's true.)

Easy (Very unconventional non-narrative structure and editing, following random people in Chicago in a very real life feeling way. Different story each episode, but sometimes characters show up briefly in each other’s lives or return for a second episode.)

Everything Sucks! (High school nerds and lesbians and theater geeks in the 90s! I’m so sad this only got one season I rewatched it recently and it’s just so solid.)

She’s Gotta Have It (Revival of Spike Lee’s first movie, black girl magic, art world, gentrified New York, lots of sex.)

The Office (Classic, holds up very well, totally solid throughout, worth a rewatch. Also if you're a fan Jenna Ficher and Angela Davis are doing a rewatch podcast jsyk.)

Billy on the Street (Mindless game show for laughs, amazing gay comedian runs around New York yelling questions at them. I watch this with my dad and he can’t help but snort even when it’s “inappropriate” or “juvenile” so you know it’s good.)

Good Girls (Some lower middle class family ladies that are all about to be broke decide to rob the grocery store one of them works at, but they accidentally cross a gang that stored their cash there, so they gotta pay it back, and of course can’t help but get deeper and deeper into it. Very suspenseful like your heart rate will go up and stay up. )

Arrested Development (It’s just funny, as you've probably heard, but I'm telling you it just really is.)

The Laundromat (Tells the stories of a few of the people involved in the panama papers in different ways, explains in an entertaining way how money laundering works in a way that made it mostly make sense even to me. The rich get richer, and Meryl Streep is here to tell them to fuck off and pay their taxes.)

Russian Doll (She keeps dying and coming back to the same moment over and over and can’t figure out how to stop the cycle or why so kinda sci fi, very suspenseful, big cliff hanger ending, or rather no ending, and just found out season two filming is delayed because virus which is very annoying!!)

Dear White People (Show picking up where the movie left off, after a frat hosts a black face party and the ivy league college is forced to deal with racism.)

Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings (Stories based on Dolly songs. Very Hallmark channel, you will cry.)

Episodes (Show about two British writers making a version of their BBC show for American tv. Kind of meta, very funny, Matt LaBlanc plays himself and it's great.)

Dumplin’ (Fat girl grows up with a beauty pageant winning mom and enters one herself with the help of her late aunt’s Dolly Parton drag queen friends.)

Lunatics (Chris Lilley is the best character actor ever, all his shows are just him playing different parts and you seriously forget it’s all one actor, even when he’s playing teenage girls.)

Jane the Virgin (Prime time soap opera about a girl who is engaged and waiting until marrige and is accidentally inseminated with the only sperm sample of a man who’s had cancer so decides to keep the baby, very heavy on the soap opera cliches in a meta way but also that’s what it is. So good at first but after the first three or so seasons it gets too much tbh though.)

Zumbo’s Just Desserts (Australian Bake show but with just sweet stuff and pressure to be avant garde.)

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Jerry Sienfeld goes out with funny people to coffee and lunch in fancy cars and they have funny conversations.)

One Day at a Time (Very very cheesy laugh track sitcom, like the kind of thing my grandma would watch, but it makes me so happy it’s doing a great job eplaining really woke concepts like queer pronouns and ptsd and addiction and white privilege to people like my grandma!)

Orange is the New Black (Good stories about very diverse characters, I’d say by starting it off about a upper middle class white girl it tricks privileged white people into watching and then encountering the more realistic stories of women who go to prison and how the system treats prisoners. Ending of season two is super solid and you can stop it there, season three is a really great critique of the privatization of prisons. I admit it goes on and on to the point that it’s stressful and after watching it spread out over years I can’t remember/ keep up with all the different story lines, though they’re all good stories to tell.)

Space Jam (Just saw while scrolling for more ideas this was added! One of the greatest sports movies of all time obviously.)

Bonus amazon prime shows, I try to avoid Amazon in general but these are just too good if you know a prime member who you can't convince not to give their money to amazon so they might as well give you their login (like yer dad).

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (A 1950s New York upper class Jewish house wife gets dumped and starts doing stand up, so funny, great actors, and they seriously transform NY back into another era.)

Good Omens (Mini series based off Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s satirical novel about the biblical apocalypse, very funny, very smart, very British, does the book pretty solid justice.)

There are other decent things that aren’t included, I’d say these are solid recs for a general list of genres all over the map without letting it get to a ridiculously unhelpful length. I feel like I’d be good at the “if you like this then you’ll also like…” so let me know if some of these are your favorites too and want personal recs for what to watch next based on a brain instead of an algorithm.

If you want to have a remote date and watch things together on video chat or one of those watch party sites or just tell me what to watch next here’s some stuff on my list I’ve been curious about or not sure about or don’t want to watch alone or have been putting off, and now’s the time right?: Strangers Things, I Am Not Okay With This, Black Panther, The Betty White doc, John Mulaney Snack Lunch Bunch, Dead to Me, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, A Wrinkle in Time, The Little Prince, Maniac, Wet Hot American Summer reboots, and a bunch of different standup specials from comedians I like.

[evenstevensranked]

#12: Season 1, Episode 15 - “Heck of a Hanukkah”

After sneaking a peek at -- and accidentally breaking -- all of his family’s Hanukkah presents, Louis gets grounded for the holiday and believes the Stevens tribe would be better if he was never born. He travels through time and space “It's A Wonderful Life” style thanks to the guidance of his great Bubbe Rose, who shows him what a world without Louis Stevens would actually be like. 

First off, I'd like to point out that I own this episode on an official Disney Holiday DVD. So I took that as an opportunity to have HQ screenshots for once!!! :) But, yes. This is the obligatory "Christmas episode" which I’m pretty positive every single TV series has. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like Christmas episodes can tend to be forgettable and generic. This one, however, is such a classic. 

One thing I wanna mention before we dive into this thing: This episode is filmed weirdly. It has a very “soap opera” feel to it? Is it possible that it was shot at 60fps? That’s the only explanation I can think of. It always bothered me that this is the only episode out of all 65 that looks and feels entirely different than the others. I wonder why that is...? That being said, I always had such fond memories of this one.

It opens with Louis snooping around in Ren’s closet for their Hanukkah presents. (“Give it up, Louis. You are never going to find them!”) But, you see... he’s determined to find them because he’s Louis Stevens and this is what he does. 

This leads into a bit where Ren chases Louis into Donnie’s room and Louis “accidentally” (but Shia is obviously doing it purposely) knocks over all of Donnie’s trophies on the way out. THIS BOTHERS ME SO MUCH! What the heck?

He’s literally fine, and then... he just sticks his arm out, lol. Also, are all of the shelves magically connected? Why do those upper shelves collapse when Louis only wrecked the lower one? Questions. 

Louis keeps running and eventually ends up in the basement. He concludes that the presents must be down there somewhere. They chose to add this weird effect here where Louis’ mind works like a high tech computer, allowing him to scan and successfully know where the presents aren’t just by looking at the potential hiding places:

He doesn’t even TRY to check these places. He just knows. I swear, when I was a kid I genuinely thought this was some plot twist and Louis was actually a cyborg like Cookie from “Ned’s Declassified” this whole time or something. 

Of course, Louis finds the presents in a trunk with the clever message “Louis, please clean out this trunk!” taped to it. Yeah, the reverse psychology alllllmost worked there, but Louis is smarter than that.

Meanwhile, Eileen is cooking dinner upstairs. She’s casually telling Steve, Ren and Donnie the story of Hanukkah for the first time in years while they help her prepare. Since they’re distracted by the tale, Louis manages to smuggle all of the presents out of the basement and sneaks right past his family. I love that they actually wrote the Stevens Family as half Jewish on Eileen's side specifically, though. I mentioned this recently! It totally mirrors Shia’s real life and I think that’s pretty cool. 

Notice Louis hiding behind that pile presents he’s carrying on the far right lol

Having them celebrate the Jewish holiday for the “Christmas” episode is pretty nice too. I think this might’ve been my first exposure to the Jewish faith now that I think about it. Eileen’s little story of Hanukkah works subtly here. It's educational in a non-preachy way, which is an absolute feat in comparison to other Disney shows that hit you over the head with the intended lesson of the day (I’m looking at you, Girl Meets World...)

Louis rushes upstairs to his room where he hides under the covers and RIPS OPEN EVERY SINGLE PRESENT. Okay. I understand and remember the anticipation of the holidays and wanting to know what gifts you’re getting... but to actually OPEN every single one?!?! Like, really Louis? Whatever happened to simply shaking a gift and trying to guess what it is? Honestly. Was he planning on rewrapping all of them?! How? 

Just as Louis finishes opening all the gifts, Steve calls for him and comes walking upstairs wondering what he’s doing up there! Louis panics and tries to stash the gifts somewhere all bundled up in a sheet. His room is a pigsty and his closet is beyond full -- so the only place he can think to put them is OUT THE WINDOW!!! Yeah. The bundle of gifts goes tumbling down the roof and splatters all over the driveway. The entire family march up to his room piiiiised off as they stare out the window at the trashed gifts. 

"Hey! It's not my fault we live in a two-story house! I have always said that I like ranch style!" -- Louis Stevens. One of my favorite quotes ever.

They throw in a line from Steve here “Is this gonna happen again next week when my cousins are here to celebrate Christmas with us?!” simply letting us know that Steve’s side of the family is likely Christian/Catholic... which also mirrors Shia’s real life. Seriously, am I the only one who thinks this is kinda awesome? Not only because they seemingly wrote that around him -- but as someone who’s biracial, I just love to see any sort of blended family represented in TV/Film. 

Eileen grounds Louis for Hanukkah and The Remorse™ seeps in. Louis flops on his bed all depressed with the words of his disappointed family reverberating in his head. They make a point to emotionally pan over to this family photo on his bedside:

THIS IS SO CUTE! We see near-identical photos to this throughout the series, but this one is so happy and genuine looking. Does Ren have Louis in a loveable headlock?! Precious. 

This fades into a MIRROR TALK!!! Yesssss. I think this is the last we ever see of these lovely talks before they mysteriously stopped. :( But, hey! It’s a powerful one to end on! Louis thinks out loud as usual and says that he doesn't belong in the Stevens family -- that they'd be better if he was never born. 

Enter: his Bubbe Rose! (”My Boobie WHAT?!”) The ghost of his great great great great grandmother, played by Donna Pescow in some serious age makeup!! She comes flying through his bedroom window right on cue ready to take him on a ~magical journey.~ There’s a wonderful, perfectly timed Louis Scream here. There’s also a bit where Louis doesn’t believe that she’s a ghost, so she makes herself disappear and Shia presumably ad-libs looking for her between his box spring and mattress. This always cracked me up. 

That scream. You can hear this gif. 

Bubbe Rose is apparently Louis’ grandmother from only 4 generations ago but says that she has 7,000 grandchildren. How does that make any sense at all? lol. SOMEONE must’ve got busy in that family. Anyway... They embark on their journey by flying around the moon a few times and over the city, leaving a trail of rainbow light behind them. No biggie. They pretty much look exactly like the “The More You Know” shooting star:

“AHGHHH! WE’RE FLYIN!!”

They land (very roughly) right outside of Louis’ house. Except, it’s not really Louis’ house anymore. Bubbe Rose explains that they’re in a dimension where he was never born. Once again, Louis doesn’t believe her even though she just took him flying around the moon. He slaps himself in the face to prove that he is in fact born, but Bubbe Rose insists that his family will not be able to see or hear him. Louis thinks it’s a load of malarkey. He sarcastically shouts “Whatever you say! Give my regards to Casper, okay?" as he marches into the house like he owns the place. I absolutely love that Casper line. Oh my god. 

As soon as Louis walks into the dining room, Steve seemingly turns around to greet him with his arms outstretched “SON!” but... well...

Honestly, that’s some great CGI for a 2001 Disney Channel show. Wow!

Turns out they’re actually greeting their alternate son named Curtis (Played by Chris Marquette, who you’ve definitely seen in a zillion other things) and he's the polar opposite of Louis. He’s a perfect student and top-tier athlete... But, there’s one little catch -- he’s a complete and total demon child. And no, not the “Louis Stevens” brand of demon child but literally “The Omen” brand of demon child. He is a nightmare. Curtis tells the family that he was voted “Best All Around Student of All Time” by the school board which is definitely not a real award. Louis feels like a loser and a letdown to his family in comparison. 

Remember that happy family photo they made sure to show us earlier? Well, now we get this alternate dimension Stevens family portrait in contrast: 

Yeah. Not as happy. 

Louis is sitting on the stairs gazing at the portrait when Bubbe Rose randomly appears on his lap. (“AGHHHHH! Can you stop with these landings?!” haha!) At first, Louis thinks his family would be 100x better without him. Like, he actually looks at that portrait and believes that they look so much happier, which is obviously supposed to be a joke lol. He hates what the magical journey has taught him and makes sure Bubbe Rose knows: 

We go on to learn that Louis' absence has somehow thrown off every member of the family and their personalities. Ren's an edgy, messy, wild punk chick with a boyfriend named Spider. Donnie's a "wuss" (Louis' words) whose only accomplishment and prized possession is a tiny trophy he won for a 1st-grade spelling bee (His winning word was "Ride: R-I-D-Silent E,” which he frantically repeats to himself for comfort whenever he feels dumb.) Louis is just sitting in Ren’s room observing this warped iteration of the Stevens family when Curtis walks in and berates Ren and Donnie for talking so loudly while he’s studying. Suddenly, Bubbe Rose discreetly appears and softly kisses Louis on the head, magically making him visible to everyone now. Curtis tells Ren and Donnie to get rid of him and Louis is so confused. Oh, man. It gets hilarious now. 

Ren and Donnie are all like ‘who the hell are you?’ Louis insists “No, you can’t see me I’m invisible” lol. When that doesn’t work, he scrambles to come up with an identity. ("I’m Louis Steve-o-saurus... And I’m a foreign exchange student from Pennsylvania.”) I love how that’s a good enough explanation for Alternate Ren and Donnie. They just accept the fact that this random kid they don’t know appeared out of thin air in their house. Louis says “your brother’s a creep” and that’s all it takes to set off a heart-to-heart convo. 

Punk Ren is actually kinda great. 

They sit down and tell him "You have no idea what it's like to be related to someone who's perfect at everything they do" -- Obviously, this is not true and Louis knows all too well. He relates and explains that you have to "focus on your own good qualities" to deal with it. You can tell that he’s teaching himself the lesson as much as he’s teaching it to them.  

It cuts to Alternate Ren and Donnie heading downstairs to ask Eileen and Steve if they can have a friend come over for Hanukkah dinner. Louis quietly follows them down to the kitchen and interjects “Uh.. Hi, there!” from the doorway. Steve turns around and shouts “WHO.. WHO’S THAT?!?!” so loudly. Tom Virtue is always so extra, I love it. This brings us to one of my favorite scenes in the entire series. Good lord, I love this so much: 

"I mean, I have a family. It's just, we don't... celebrate........ dinner.”

Things go from 0 to 100 after Louis offers to put their chicken in the oven and accidentally drops it. The entire family starts dying laughing because they never have any sort of fun thanks to overbearing, controlling psycho Curtis. It’s hysterical to me. When he first drops it, the silence that follows cracks me up. Then I laugh even harder when he purposely drops it a second time. It’s so good. I feel like Shia is just going to town with the whole dancing chicken thing. (“IT’S FREESTYLIN’!!!!!”) He goes on to put the chicken on his head and it’s great because the thing is obviously hollow and rubber lol. Can you imagine if a stranger actually did this, though?! That’s what makes it so freaking funny. If a random kid came into my house, dropped my chicken, put his hands all over it and proceeded to put it on his head and dance around after knowing me for a grand total of 30 seconds... I’d call the police so quick.

Curtis sees them having a good time and can’t stand it. He decides to frame Louis for stealing the family’s Hanukkah money. Ugh. Curtis interrupts the chicken train dance Louis is leading (see cover photo) and announces “someone has pilfered the Hanukkah money!” Donnie rejoices (much like in The Even Stevens Movie after they’re told they’ve been shunned lol) and Curtis clarifies “That means it’s STOLEN, PEBBLE-BRAIN!” Which is so mean, but so funny to me. 

The family goes over to the coat rack/table in the hallway where Steve left the envelope of money. Curtis helps him look and immediately “finds it” in Louis’ coat pocket. Wowww. He says “He’s a bad man, Mom,” like a little innocent baby before turning into a possessed devil child behind everyone’s backs. This kid is seriously so evil. 

This dramatic shot is accompanied by sinister music. Actually, dark/disturbing music plays whenever Curtis is on screen. It’s pretty funny.

The family starts interrogating Louis and he explains “I didn’t wanna steal any presents! I just wanted to be with you guys, my family.” And Steve goes OFFFFFF! “WHAT?! You come here and dance with our chicken and suddenly you're family?!" HAHAHAHAHA. Curtis has the phone ready to call the police -- took ‘em long enough! The family surrounds Louis and holds him down. Louis asks for Bubbe Rose to rescue him, but when that doesn’t work he clicks his heels together and chants “There’s no place like home.” Once again, an incredibly solid pop culture reference! It’s not a very original reference to make, but still! This show made a lot of timeless writing decisions and I can’t get over it. Sort of like Ren at the end of “Influenza,” Louis screams at the top of his lungs and wakes up back in the right universe, lol. 

The back-to-normal Stevens family decide that Hanukkah isn’t nearly as fun without Louis and un-ground him. They all head downstairs to light the menorah and sing a traditional song. Yay! It’s heartwarming.

Also like “Influenza,” it turns out that it was all a dream! OR WAS IT....?! Bubbe Rose makes an ACTUAL public appearance that night bearing magically repaired gifts! Whooaaaaaa! She pretends to be some random lady who was jogging by their house and noticed perfectly fine gifts in the trash. The family is shocked that everything is back in mint condition! And just like that, Bubbe Rose disappears and leaves them wondering how in the heck.....?! Bubbe reappears outside the kitchen window and shares a hush-hush lil moment with Louis. Awww. 

And that’s it!

This is such a cute episode. The “It’s A Wonderful Life” trope has been used to death in TV and film, but I really like how it was done here. You can always count on Even Stevens to bring its own unique flavor to anything. It works perfectly here because it organically continues the Louis narrative of him feeling like an outsider in his family. I love to see consistency like that. It also shows just how unique and important Louis really is to his family and their happiness. Although this is a “holiday special” episode, it still manages to feel like regular one to an extent and I love that. It’s a super engaging story full of heart and laughs. That chicken scene tho... Oh man. 

Also! In the end credits, they wrote “Bubbie Rose” with an ie, but I looked it up and the traditional way to spell it is “Bubbe” apparently. So, that’s what I went with! 

This episode’s Redbubble design is of Louis yelling the infamous boobie quote comic book style lol. This actually inadvertently makes a fantastic thank you note/greeting card and is available here. HAHA! I tried to stay true to the show’s color scheme of green/blue/purple as well. 

Thanks for reading!! 

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[thenannyreviewed]

1x09 Personal Business

Hello, hello I’m back! So sorry for the super long hiatus. I started a new job and I guess I need to work on my time management skills. Anyway, I’m back now so let’s get back to making fun of my favorite television show, shall we?

The episode opens with Fran entering the room with her arms outstretched (show of hands: who’s surprised?) and sporting another bathrobe. Why this woman has 34308 different bathrobes, I’ll never understand. Maxwell compliments her on her robe and she tells him Victoria’s Secret was having a sale and that she bought some other stuff, but that’s her secret. Then she flirtatiously nudges him. There are children present. And he’s her boss. Brighton asks if she saved the catalogue and Niles cuts in and says Brighton can have it when Niles is through with it. I just…yikes. It’s like I wanna make jokes, but it might almost be going too far, ya know what I mean?

Moving on, Satan Sheffield arrives sporting a matching robe and pose as Fran.  The phone rings and everyone fights over who it could be. (Maxwell thinks it’s a business call. Maggie thinks it’s James Marsden calling to give her a good morning kiss. Spoiler alert: James Marsden doesn’t return to The Nanny though, so game over. Maggie.) It’s actually Val calling for Fran to gossip about Fran’s ex Danny. Fran’s phone call causes Max to miss an important business call so Maxwell lectures her on keeping business and personal separate. I’m sure this is going to turn out well.

Post opening credits, Fran and Grace interrupt Max’s work day to tell him they’re going shopping. Recognize Fran’s outfit from the pilot? Who even cares about that when CC is wearing … I don’t even know how to describe that. Anyway Max complains that he needs a leading man for his show. CC makes a comment about Fran’s outfit that I can’t even compute because WHAT IN GOD’S NAME ARE YOU WEARING, CC?

FUN FACT: CC Babcock’s entire Season One wardrobe was actually donated to Hamilton the musical for the Founding Fathers to wear.

CC tells Fran she’s wearing an Adolfo and Niles says “As in Hitler” and exits the room as she glares at him.  CC then hangs up with whoever the hell she’s on the phone with, with a classic “Kiss kiss, love you, ciao!” God bless that blue-blooded princess.

CC then sits on Maxwell’s desk (Petition to Give CC Babcock Her Own Desk 2k17) and tells him she’s gotten Brock Storm to be in their show. Brock plays River Shane on the hit soap opera One Day After Another. Fran is super excited about this because he’s apparently a big deal; some deli named a sandwich after him. Maxwell has eaten him. This isn’t even me being funny this is straight up dialogue from the show. Anyway, Fran thinks that because River Shane is perfect, Brock must be too. She’s unable to separate the fictional character from the actor. Hard to believe that Fran Fine, a vivacious Jewish girl from Queens, would have a hard time separating a character from the actor that portrays them.

The next scene opens with Brock Storm (hello Stefan Cassadine from General Hospital!) (and Tucker on The Young and the Restless!) (and Steve Johnson on Days of our Lives!) (why am I only just now realizing they got a legitimate soap opera actor to play a soap opera actor?!) singing Oklahoma and spelling it wrong (fun fact whenever I hear the song I almost always accidentally sing it the Brock Storm way. This show has done irreparable damage to my brain.) Also CC has had a wardrobe change and she’s gone from Founding Father to Classic 90’s Hillary Clinton.

Anyway, Brock makes it known that he’s still meeting with other producers such as Andrew Lloyd Webber (Is this the first we hear of Maxwell’s hatred for ALW?) and  Maxwell argues that he should do his first show on broadway with someone who epitomizes  style and class.

Enter Fran wearing this monstrosity! They exchange some flirtation which CC puts a stop to by threatening to hurt Fran. (Perfect person.) Fran and the kids leave and Brock says he’ll do the show if he gets top billing, the highest salary, and Maxwell’s nanny.

Stupid Maxwell thinks Brock really wants Fran to be an actual nanny to take care of his children. Niles and CC have a moment of solidarity over how dumb Maxwell is and my heart exploded.

The next scene picks up with Fran, Niles, and the children watching Brock’s soap opera together. Apparently Brock’s character got a woman pregnant even though he’s had a vasectomy. Grace asks what that is, and Maggie says it’s surgery like when CC went to Switzerland and came back without her thighs. Good for her. Grace asks if CC’s had a vasectomy and Niles says he’s heard that she’s given a few and I don’t really get why that’s an insult? Like is he saying CC emasculates men?  We get it Niles you love CC but you’re intimidated by her power.

Maxwell refuses to allow Fran to be part of the deal with Brock. CC doesn’t understand why he’s being such a terrible business man, why he’s the boss and she’s not, and why he gets a desk and she doesn’t (okay I made a lot of that up but really, I’m probably right.)

Niles comes in as CC is giving Maxwell a neck massage and telling him they just have to do it, and the look on his face is CLEAR JEALOUSY. The three of them realize Fran loved meeting Brock so setting her up with him would actually be doing her a favor (And not just pimping her out. Niles’ words, not mine.)

Max and CC call Fran into the office and CC tries sucking up to Fran, which just scares Fran. They tell her they’ve set her up with Brock for the night and she lights up like one of her sequined tops.

Maxwell is still kind of hesitant, telling her not to have too good a time. CC yells/glares at him and he shuts up. I wish CC got to yell at Maxwell at least once an episode because honestly I’m living for this. Fran is super excited and happily accepts.

Then she comes back and asks if her going out with Brock would be better for the show/Maxwell’s business. Max and CC’s reactions are priceless. CC tries to act offended at the thought but then Max cuts in and tells Fran the truth. Fran doesn’t really care.

BUT WAIT, then Fran remembers Maxwell’s rule of not mixing business with personal, and she decides to milk this for all its worth. Maxwell snaps and tells Fran he wants her to break all the rules. He’s so good at being a boss.

The next scene is Fran getting ready for her date with Maggie and Grace. Maggie puts on blush like she’s auditioning for the Ringling Bros.

Fran makes a stairwell entrance, of course. Brock seems like a real lech, which leaves Maxwell feeling really unsettled. Fran and Brock leave, and Niles asks Max if he’s worried she’ll have a bad time or a good time. He’s so insightful, that butler. Maxwell stares out the door looking very melancholy, like he’s in an emo music video. You just know he’s gonna wait up for Fran to get home. 

Cut to Fran having a terrible time on her date. Brock takes her to happy hour, keeps obsessing over how to part his hair, they get nachos and wings for dinner, and he pulls out an eye patch because he relates more to his soap opera character’s evil twin. I’ve had worse dates.

Oh my god and then my cold, black heart melted at the sight of Maxwell and Brighton sleeping in the living room waiting for Fran IN MATCHING BATHROBES!!! HOW STINKIN CUTE IS THAT? Fran comes in and asks if they were waiting up for her. Max tries to deny it but Brighton wakes up and asks if she’s home yet. Stop this is so cute. IT’S MESSING WITH MY SNARK.

Fran and Max have a sweet moment discussing how because they live together there’s bound to be some mixing of business with personal. Maxwell says he doesn’t really want to work with Brock anymore, and Fran says that’s a shame because now he can really hit those high notes as she saunters off to bed, leaving Maxwell and Brighton to simultaneously cringe.

The episode ends with Fran and Brighton playing scrabble, Maggie doing Grace’s hair, and Maxwell gossiping with Val on the phone about hiring soap opera actors for his shows. Niles is watching One Day After Another and notices that the show has replaced Brock with a new actor and wonders why. Fran asks how to spell “eunuch.” Lots of mentions of emasculating men in this episode. HELL YEAH GIRL POWER WHY AREN’T CC AND FRAN BEST FRIENDS YET?!!?!

To wrap it up:

Best Character of the Episode: CC “Kiss kiss, love you, ciao” Babcock

Worst Character of the Episode: Maggie, for no real reason. She was her usual self, which I suppose is reason enough.

Guest Star Likeability: Brock was a huge tool, but at least he didn’t really take away screen time from regulars on the show (cough cough CC). So for that I say we like him.

Best Outfit: I gotta go with Maxwell and Brighton’s matching pajamas.

Worst Outfit: CC’s take on colonial America

On a Scale of 1-10 how much does CC Babcock deserve a desk: 45

Alright folks, there we have it! Up next: an episode that was one of the reasons I started this blog.  Can’t. Wait.

[investmart007]

NEW YORK | Another socialist victory: Salazar wins NY Senate primary

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/new-york-another-socialist-victory-salazar-wins-ny-senate-primary/170064/

NEW YORK | Another socialist victory: Salazar wins NY Senate primary

NEW YORK  — Democratic socialist Julia Salazar overcame intense scrutiny of her personal life Thursday to win the Democratic primary for a state Senate seat in Brooklyn while voters throughout the state punished a group of incumbent Democratic legislators they perceived as too friendly to Republicans.

Salazar, a 27-year-old first-time candidate, handily defeated eight-term incumbent Sen. Martin Dilan in New York’s 18th District, joining the ranks of leftist insurgents nationwide who have knocked out mainstream Democrats.

There is no Republican candidate running in the district in the general election, virtually guaranteeing her the seat.

Her victory came on a night when primary voters also took their revenge on a splinter group of Democratic state senators who broke with the party to join a group that supported Republican control of the chamber.

Despite a political deal earlier this year to end the schism, six of the eight members of the now-defunct Independent Democratic Conference were ousted in party primaries Thursday — a sign that liberal voters in New York are unwilling to tolerate collusion with Republicans in the age of President Donald Trump.

Those insurgent victories were a consolation prize for candidates at the top of the left-wing’s ticket in the state’s primary.

“Your victories tonight have shown that the blue wave is real and it’s not only coming for Republicans, but for the Democrats who act like them,” said Cynthia Nixon, who lost her bid to unseat Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Dilan, 67, was not among the renegade Senate Democrats, but he represented a district that has gone through major changes, with longtime residents being pushed out by rising rents and an influx of mostly white, wealthier newcomers.

Salazar built a grassroots campaign to unseat him on the grounds that he hadn’t done enough to help the poor or stop gentrification.

“This is a victory for workers,” Salazar said to her supporters at a party on Thursday night, according to The New York Times. “This is a victory for all of you, who every day have knocked on doors and have had meaningful conversations with our neighbors about these issues.”

On social media, she tweeted, “Tonight’s victory is not about me. Tonight’s victory is about New Yorkers coming together and choosing to fight against rising rents and homelessness in our communities. Together, we will build a better New York.”

Salazar’s campaign began attracting wide attention after fellow democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scored a surprise win in June’s congressional primary over U.S. Rep. Joseph Crowley in New York.

But in recent weeks, the race became a soap opera as reporters dug into her background.

Salazar faced criticism for saying she was an immigrant from Colombia who struggled financially growing up when she was actually born in Florida and had hundreds of thousands of dollars in a trust fund. She was scrutinized, too, over a political and religious conversion during her years at Columbia University, where she transformed from an anti-abortion Christian Republican to a hard-left Jewish Democrat.

One group revoked its endorsement after learning Salazar hadn’t graduated from Columbia, as she said on its survey.

Salazar said she “inadvertently misrepresented” her family’s history and chalked up some biographical discrepancies to mistakes by her staff.

Then, reporters revealed that in 2011, when she was in college, Salazar was accused of attempted bank fraud by the estranged wife of a famous neighbor in Florida, former New York Mets player Keith Hernandez.

Salazar was arrested but not prosecuted. She later filed a lawsuit accusing Hernandez’s wife, Kai Hernandez, of trying to frame her because she erroneously believed she was having an affair with her husband. Kai Hernandez settled the lawsuit for $20,000.

Two days before the election, a conservative news site, The Daily Caller, told the Salazar campaign it was about to publish a story identifying her as a woman who had anonymously accused a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sexual assault.

Saying she didn’t want to be “outed” against her will, Salazar tweeted about it, saying the Netanyahu aide, David Keyes, had bullied her into an unwanted sex act.

Keyes called it a false allegation “made by someone who has proven to be repeatedly dishonest about her own life,” but after additional women came forward with accusations, including a Wall Street Journal reporter, he took a leave of absence. At least four female Israeli lawmakers called upon Netanyahu to suspend Keyes.

Dilan was first elected in 2002 and was a member of the state Senate Democratic Conference’s leadership. He spent 10 years in New York’s City Council before being elected to the Senate.

Thursday’s primary was a difficult one for the former IDC members, all eight of whom faced primary challenges, even after Cuomo brokered a deal earlier this year to reunify Senate Democrats. The schism was little noticed outside Albany until Trump’s election galvanized liberals.

Among those losing their races was Bronx Sen. Jeff Klein, the former IDC leader and current No. 2 in the state Senate. Klein lost to Alessandra Biaggi, an attorney who has worked for Cuomo’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.

“New York voters rejected weak, corporate Democrats for bold progressives with strong, economic-populist messages who will fight for working families,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group that supports and endorses candidates.

The Democratic leader in the state Senate, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who supported the former IDC candidates, said voters had “made it clear that this is a new day and politics as usual are no longer acceptable.”

But voters also decided to support another breakaway Democrat, Brooklyn Sen. Simcha Felder. Felder was not an IDC member but also voted with the Republicans, letting them remain in control even though Democrats outnumbered them in the Senate by one seat.

Felder beat challenger Blake Morris in the Democratic primary.

By DEEPTI HAJELA , Associated Press

[topmixtrends]

LELAND BLOOM-MITTWOCH SR., cocaine in his blood and the Torah in his hands, ends his life by jumping off the roof of a Hyatt in Tampa, Florida. It’s 1999. In the moments before he leaps, he believes he sees a hand descend from the sky and call to him. It tells him he is worthy. He asks the hand if Reggie Marshall, the man he believes to be his best friend, who he believes died at the hands of a fellow drug dealer in 1973, was also worthy. The hand says yes, and he jumps. It is a prayerful moment, one that affirms Leland Sr.’s belief that he is doing the right thing. It is also tragic, like all death, but Leland Sr. seems to be at peace. Or, at least, as at peace as someone high on cocaine before noon can be.

It’s a striking beginning, made more so by its place outside of time. Rebekah Frumkin’s The Comedown is not told linearly, but through a string of chapters from the perspectives of interconnected characters from two families, the Bloom-Mittwochs and the Marshalls. A pair of family trees at the beginning of the book represents the two lineages, and each of the 14 chapters comes from someone connected to the aforementioned patriarchs, often either scorned or abandoned by them or by one of their offspring. The chapters cover huge chunks of time, from the respective characters’ births to the book’s fictional present, around 2009.

The trees and the nonlinear nature of the book create ample opportunities for dramatic irony, of which Frumkin, in her debut novel, makes wonderful use. When Leland Sr. is reflecting at the hotel in Tampa, he considers the risks involved with building relationships with other people:

He thought how there was no way to know how long loving someone could last, or whether it was even a good investment to begin with. That’s what kept people watching all those television soap operas. That’s what kept people praying in shul. They wanted to know how the other people and things they loved would turn out — whether they’d be destroyed by them or loved back.

Throughout his life, Leland Sr. did his fair share of loving and destroying, though it’s not always clear whether he sees it that way. He cheats on and then leaves his first wife and child in 1983, and then leaves his second wife a widow and his child fatherless in 1999 when he commits suicide. The woman with whom he cheats is Reggie’s estranged wife, Natasha Marshall. Their affair ends abruptly the day one of her 13-year-old sons catches them together. Even so, those he loved tended to love him back, at least for a time. Mental illness and drug addiction linked reciprocated love and eventual destruction: for Leland, the two could never be mutually exclusive. Despite the fundamental sentiment of Leland’s reflection, there seems to be little uncertainty about the inevitably tragic end to his most beloved relationships.

The exception to this rule is not a fortunate one. Reggie, who Leland Sr. frequently calls his best friend, found him to be a reprehensible character. Outside of their narrow interaction of drug dealer and drug consumer, Reggie wanted nothing to do with him. He was, as Reggie said, a “stupid ass […] the kind of stupid that couldn’t take a hint.” At times, he considered killing him:

He hated him but hurting him would feel like kicking a stray dog. He had a philosophy that the kind of person who deserved to be on the receiving end of a barrel was also the kind of person who’d been on the firing end, and Leland Sr. had never been on the firing end.

This comes first as a depressing surprise. When Leland Sr. describes their relationship, readers trust him implicitly. Every additional mention that undermines it as the book goes forward is a punch to the gut. While Leland Sr. leaves his wives and children, and ultimately humanity altogether, in his heart, he always remains true to Reggie.

This type of dissonance is the biggest return Frumkin draws out of her roving perspectives. Rarely do characters in The Comedown believe themselves to be or in the wrong, but they often are. This is clearest in a pivotal scene that takes place after Leland Sr.’s funeral. Leland Jr. confronts Diedre, his father’s second wife, and demands that she let him go to her home and take back the possessions his father took when he left, which he believes are rightfully his. Diedre, having just lost her husband, is not in a position to fight back: “She agreed to it because he wore an expensive suit and threatened to sue her if she didn’t comply.” She feels alone and scared, because Leland Jr. is trying to make her feel alone and scared. When Leland Jr. reflects on it in his chapter, though, he refers to it as “legal business” and sees his actions as justified. Importantly, his recollections erase the hostile tone that made the interaction especially horrifying the first time around. Parts of the interaction are run back again in Leland Jr.’s wife’s chapter. She sees her husband fall “into aggressive lockstep with Diedre” before he announces that he’ll be following her to her home. Her telling has compassion for her husband and recognizes how this stems from his anger at his father for abandoning him, but she can’t help but be a little horrified by Leland Jr.’s behavior. Nine years later, Diedre’s son Lee Jr. is still haunted by the memory. The event has deeply scarred him. On his 18th birthday, he drunkenly sends an email to Leland Jr. demanding the return of his family’s possessions. His mom is a manager at OfficeMax and they’re scraping by on her hourly wage while Leland Jr., much wealthier, has no real need for the valuables he took. Unsurprisingly, this is unsuccessful.

Frumkin’s technique of replaying scenes from multiple perspectives effectively gives readers a 360-degree view of how something happened. Most importantly, however, it is useful for exploring the totality of how her characters’ actions affect those around them, and how each character lives with it. The scope of The Comedown is such that everyone is in close proximity to a tragedy at all times. Frumkin’s juxtaposition makes it clear that what these characters do to one another in the book is both awful and perfectly human.

¤

The contrast born out of The Comedown’s structure also makes room for Frumkin to explore her characters’ wide-ranging sociopolitical circumstances. The differences are generational, racial, cultural, and economic, and she writes clearly on how their existence and collisions shape the lives of her characters. Aside from the aforementioned email from Lee Jr. to Leland Jr., the most compelling exploration of the tension this can bring about is the lives of Reggie and Natasha Marshall’s twins, Caleb and Aaron.

Aaron works for a real estate development company in Los Angeles while Caleb is a lawyer in their hometown of Cleveland. They’ve both found ways out of the poverty in which they grew up, but they are on divergent paths. Caleb spends his time, according to his brother, “living out his messiah dream as Lawyer for the Poor.” Caleb is only slightly more generous to himself:

The only thing keeping him in the Midwest was inertia. Inertia and what psychotherapists would probably call a savior complex. He wasn’t afraid of admitting to it. Better to be a savior than a sociopath.

The brothers share a similar impulse to ascribe pathology to what seems, on the surface, to be relatively normal moral behavior. This is made more striking by their consideration of Aaron’s job. A colleague is trying to get Aaron to help him purchase public housing complexes in Lynwood. Aaron, at the behest of his wife Netta, an accomplished artist whose work documents the lives of black subjects afflicted with poverty, is attempting to save the public housing and steer the buyer elsewhere. This despite the lingering negative feelings he has toward public complexes from his time living in one. He “hated how it felt living there, how people treated him for living there, how the other people there were always trying to beat him up and rip him off.” Neither brother takes much of a psychological interest in the origin of these feelings. For Aaron, it seems that the trauma of his childhood makes him resistant to doing the thing he knows is right, the thing that’s best for the most people and aligned with his moral position. What Frumkin is illuminating here is the manner in which pursuits that make more money — and Aaron makes a lot of money — are almost always considered more normal despite their destructive social value. That dynamic’s opposite, sacrificing money for a job that is fulfilling in a different way, is just as rational, but because it bucks capitalist logic, it requires an explanation. The fullness with which she approaches each perspective is what makes this possible.

Alongside these conflicts within the characters’ own lives, Frumkin also explores society-level phenomena. The Bloom-Mittwoch family is Jewish and the Marshall family is black, and their similarities and differences are crucial. Leland Sr., a hapless incompetent with a philosophy degree, falls backward into a job because his friend runs a scrap shop. Reggie, a much savvier person, struggling to give his children a better life than his own, finds his way into drug dealing. He’s exceptional at it, though the requisite hazards catch up to him. There’s little ambiguity about how things would have gone if their resources and privileges were flipped.

One of the issues on which the families align is on the subject of law enforcement. Reggie believes “you really [have] to pity anybody stupid enough to believe in the police” while Leland Sr. tells Leland Jr. one night that “there’s actually no such thing as a straight cop. They’re a gang. A violent gang.” Their experiences come from different places. Reggie has dealt with racist police practices his whole life, as a black man and as a drug dealer. Leland Sr. was a hippie at Kent State and saw the progressive armament of enforcers working to squelch protesters until his friends were among those eventually shot and killed. The Comedown also explores how this manifests concretely. Aaron, at 14, routinely finds himself and his friends subjected to baseless frisking.

As the book goes on, Frumkin’s narrators come from further down the family tree, which is a handy means of exposing generational divides and inheritance. Lee Jr. is the youngest family member. He is diagnosed as having bipolar disorder in a significantly less stigmatizing (though still needlessly stigmatizing) world. The illicit drugs are better, which is good and bad. More than this, though, he’s inherited a world where, unlike his father or half-brother, he doesn’t see much of a future for himself. When he begins college in 2009, the economy is in a recession and the future feels clear in its darkness. The structures that propped up the successful people in his family are not there for him, and he does not know what to do. Still, Frumkin also shows the promise ahead. Lee Jr.’s best friend in college, born Edward Jonathan Phillips but called, at different times, Tarzan, Tweety, or New Person, is a gender fluid character with a safe space for exploring and expressing their true self.

The matter-of-fact approach to writing about the complicated web of reasons why people’s lives turn out the way they do is essential to The Comedown’s success. Frumkin is also an accomplished journalist who has written about mental health, sex work, and other areas where the subjects are often mistreated or misunderstood. It shows here. The Comedown’s characters are cruel to one another and themselves for predictable reasons as well as for surprising ones. They are loving to one another and themselves in the same way. At its core, the book is about relationships and the joy and pain they bring. In that realm, and others, it’s a resounding success.

¤

Bradley Babendir is a fiction writer and critic. He has written for the New Republic, The New Inquiry, WBUR’s The ARTery, and elsewhere.

The post Family Matters: On Rebekah Frumkin’s “The Comedown” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2HYPZ4U

[samanthasroberts]

‘I know their vital stats, their romantic histories’: how Sunderland AFC saved me

For this Chinese Jewish Texan, England was a difficult place to feel at home. But all that changed when she discovered football

Thats shite, man! the man behind screams. The discontent in the crowd is reaching a critical mass. Useless twats, snarls a father below, opening a packet of crisps for his nine-year-old son.

I stand frozen, wrapped up in a scarf and down jacket. Who are we yelling at? Why are we so angry?

Its Boxing Day 2012 and Im at the Stadium of Light in Sunderland for my first ever football match. Its freezing cold; it begins to rain. And then it happens. A Sunderland player fires a shot that creeps past the Manchester City goalkeeper and into the bottom corner of the net. The stadium thunders as a sea of 46,000 bodies fall over each other, total strangers hugging their neighbours, while simultaneously jumping up and down. The man next to me screams so loudly in my ear that Im momentarily deaf. Then he turns me towards him, grabs my shoulders, locks eyes with me and shakes my body. Ahhhhhhhhhh! he screams, in happiness and disbelief.

Ahhhhhhh! I scream back, in fear.

***

When I moved to London, I got a job as a junior editor on a luxury lifestyle website. The site was run by a flamboyant man from Croydon named Carlos, with coiffed salt and pepper hair. Never one to pass up an opportunity to show off, Carlos liked to introduce me to visiting VIPs as our New Yorker who speaks fluent Mandarin and went to Harvard.

None of these things was true. I grew up in a small town in Texas: Amarillo. For some reason, Carlos didnt think this as impressive as being from New York (despite Amarillo being the helium capital of the world and the home of Tony Christies sweet Marie). As for fluent in Mandarin, my dad is Chinese, but I speak only broken Mandarin after living and working in Beijing for a few years. I didnt go to Harvard I was rejected but I did go to a university an hour away. None of these things made sense to Carlos, so he went with his own version.

My exchanges with Carlos were stilted. Our interactions ended in awkward silences. He was twice my age and we had nothing in common. But he was well known in London media circles and I was desperate to get him on side.

After Beijing, I assumed it would be a breeze to assimilate in a country where I no longer faced a language barrier. In China, I had spent a good amount of time miming my interactions. I also had to get used to Beijing locals asking me how much money I made, or telling me I was looking fatter than usual. But it was a bluntness I came to embrace: at least I knew where I stood.

Not so in London. The city was so rife with passive aggression that I didnt know when people were being rude or kind. A woman thanked me on the train for moving my bag and I was almost certain what she was really saying was too fucking right. A man squeezed by me on the escalator and the pitch of his seemingly polite May I? was so snide, it nearly brought me to tears. Carlos asked me if I want to do something for him at work and I wasnt sure if it was an order, a helpful suggestion or sarcasm. The words themselves were unfailingly polite, but it was all in the tone. Other Americans I knew suffered the same way. I genuinely dont know if my colleagues are making fun of me or being nice, a friend from Chicago confessed one night over drinks.

London can be a tough city for newcomers to crack. Compared with the US, people prefer to keep to themselves, especially in public. Im shy, so this was wonderful at first. No one approaches you to chat. I once fell in a crowded street in broad daylight and began the, Im fine, Im fine, honestly protest. But no one had stopped. I lay on the ground, impressed with peoples dedication to not getting involved with strangers. I began to think that I might never find a way to break through the famous British reserve. Would I ever find common ground with Carlos? If only there was some magic key.

And then one day, I witnessed a man bite another man on live TV. This happened during a football match that was on in a pub I happened to be in. I was immediately intrigued: by the biting, the drama, the getting caught, the primal emotion of the incident. I didnt realise it at the time, but this was it: my in.

On a bus, I sat with a couple of friends who were discussing live scores; soon, the entire upper deck had joined the conversation. It was like a portal to another dimension in which everyone was chatty, friendly and open on public transport.

Football was everywhere, it turned out. Once I noticed this, I began to absorb football facts, though only certain things stuck. I loved it when footballers cried. Maybe it was the persistent myth of the stiff upper lip but seeing a player moved to tears, to me, showed he cared more than anyone else. It wasnt like watching an actor pretend to tear up. This shit was real.

I loved any sort of drama on and off the pitch. Family tensions, love problems, scandals, shoving matches; before long, I became a reliable source of useless, soap opera-esque information about players.

I also became a fervent Sunderland supporter. Why would a Chinese girl from Texas living in Highbury, north London, become a Sunderland supporter? Because I had married one. Ian, born and bred in Sunderland, talked about his teams players as if they were his family. That made them my family, too. I knew their names, their shirt numbers, their vital stats, their romantic histories. I was also a natural fit for Sunderland because I love an underdog and by God, I had chosen the underdog of underdogs. The big clubs, with their expensive superstars, were boring to me. Our wins were rare, but they were so much sweeter for it.

I watched televised matches, sometimes without Ian if he was busy or out of town, something that had my friends and family baffled. During visits home to Texas, Ian and I zealously woke early to catch the Sunderland game. My father would observe me, puzzled. My mother, who is Jewish, was also bewildered but said, Well, you were the most athletic of our family of klutzes. It was my childhood best friend Jori who called me out. We were in a Waffle House diner surrounded by grassy plains. I asked Ian if he knew how Sunderlands relegation rivals had fared in their six-pointer, when she interrupted me. Are you talking about British soccer? Who are you? I told her the truth: Im just a girl, standing in front of the TV, hoping a footballer scores a winning goal in the last minute of a high-stakes match and then weeps about it.

A young fan lets rip as Sunderland take on Man United. Photograph: Getty

Do you know who really liked football? Carlos. We soon developed a rapport. Every Monday, hed rush to my desk and wed discuss the weekends matches. He was obsessed with playing style, formations and league tables. Meanwhile, I was the expert on the fights, the crying and the hissy fits. Suddenly, we were friends. He wasnt just my scary boss who got annoyed that I didnt know who Lynyrd Skynyrd were. We were bonding.

They say that to assimilate in a foreign country, you have to speak the language, and now I finally did. Did I make friends from learning about football? I would go out on a limb and say that yes, I did. I made friends with Dave at the Three store when I sat there for two hours after accidentally flushing my phone down the toilet. I bonded with a Ghanaian driver as we discussed a former Sunderland player from his country. In a hotel in the Lake District, there was a communication breakdown with a concierge that ended happily when we both agreed that Diego Costa was a jerk and Jermain Defoe a great goal scorer. When cab rides were too silent, no problem. Lets talk about the match, driver.

***

Dinner in the north-east of England is different from dinner in Texas. Here the food is cooked well-done, the weather is colder and greyer, the company more polite, the table quieter.

Ians dad, brother and uncles are lifelong Sunderland season ticket holders. Ask them a question about what they want to eat, or their favourite movie, or their preference for boxers or briefs, and they will reply, Im easy. Suggest that Jack Rodwell is a decent footballer and they are unleashed animated, passionate, opinionated. I enjoy bantering with Ians brother and dad about football, but we argue a lot mostly because there is one thing I havent been able to wrap my head around since my first game.

After that first Boxing Day match, on the walk from the Stadium of Light to the car with Ian, his dad, his uncle and his brother, I ask the question thats on my mind.

Why do we yell mean things at our own players?

Silence. And then: They just didnt show up. For most of the match, they were bloody awful, Ian says. Good use of we, though, he adds.

But shouldnt we be supporting them? Encouraging them?

Ian shakes his head and sighs.

You know, like being positive and lifting them up? I was still trying to make sense of why 46,000 people would call themselves supporters when they gave the most vitriolic, abusive commentary on their own players. Their support was downright terrifying.

This was your first match, Jess. Weve suffered years of pain while watching players go through the motions. Ive been enduring this for 25 years, Ian says. Twenty-six years, Ians older brother says. His dad: Try 60 years. And finally, I understand the British subtext: You are a wide-eyed idiot.

You got me into this: Jess with her husband, Ian. Photograph: Pal Hansen for the Guardian

At my high school in Texas, there was a club called Senior Spirits. Senior Spirit members met to boost the egos of our sports teams and rally other students to support those teams. To quote from the yearbook, their mission was to make posters and give our school spirit. In the photo, a group of 20 girls wearing matching T-shirts and ponytails, grin at the camera, 100% heartfelt.

These werent cheerleaders. And they werent affiliated with the Steppers, the ultra-serious dancers who performed at pep rallies, the hour-long ceremonies dedicated to whipping up school spirit. Nor were they the student marching band that played during football matches to help stoke, yes, even more team spirit. Team spirit was like an elusive ghost permeating the school and we all had to worship it.

That spirit was partial to posters with marker pen and glitter, to ponytails, to cakes shaped like American footballs and prayers before the big game. It revelled in exclamation marks. It did not like folded arms and booing and sarcasm. It did not like being called a useless twat.

Apparently team spirit isnt a thing in north-east England. So how do English secondary schools pump up their sports teams? I imagine the halls of these schools are lined with posters of a different sort: You better not screw this up, Jones! and Dont do any of that long-ball shit, Gibbons.

I still struggle with this complete inversion, but it unlocked something core in the English mentality how ingrained the cynicism is, as well as the tendency to proceed from a position of cautious defeat. Expect to lose so it hurts less when it happens, and if we win, no harm done.

Diehard football fans remain sceptical of me. At matches, I ask questions. I get looks when I yell cheerful encouragement. I cant stop shouting, At least you tried! every time a player takes a shot but fails to score. Some have the gall to question my passion for football until I do well at the pub quiz football round. If you love something, does it matter if you love it for all the wrong reasons? Apparently, to them, yes. But one thing was for sure: I was emotionally committed.

In May 2016, at the end of that years season, Sunderland were on the brink of doom, as we are every year. Hundreds of fans gathered at the Old Red Lion in Angel, north London, for one of the last matches of the season. I am 5ft 2in, so I left Ian and his friends and waded through Mackems to get to a good vantage point to watch the match. We were playing Everton, and this would seal everything: would we stay up and relegate bitter rivals Newcastle in the process?

Awaydays at the Drayton Park pub in north London, before taking on Arsenal at the Emirates. Photograph: Pal Hansen for the Guardian

The first time we scored, someones pint of beer, spilt in jubilant joy and shock, doused my head. On the second goal, the shouts were deafening. On the third, a man threw his arms around me and together we jumped up and down and screamed with pure joy. I left the pub dazed, half-deaf, hair soaked in booze and my face aching from smiling.

I became a UK citizen last year. At a city town hall, I swore my allegiance to the Queen and stumbled through the national anthem with 17 other newly minted UK citizens. But that moment didnt come close to the buoyant feeling of pure joy and belonging I felt in the arms of a stranger as we celebrated the victory of our beloved team. If the root of football passion is said to be a sense of family and place, then this Chinese Jewish Texan has found her new home.

Unfortunately, that home is sometimes a den of pain and despair. By the time you read this, we will have played three Championship matches in the new season. Ian assures me we will not have won one: Sunderland havent won a league game in August or September for four years in a row.

In April this year, we were finally relegated from the Premier League with four matches left to play.

Useless losers! I yell at the players as Sunderland fail to score even one goal. Its all over. Nothing to hope for now, no Match Of The Day to look forward to.

As I shout at the players, Ian pats me hard on the back. Well done, he says. I look at him, confused. Now you know what it feels like to hate your own team.

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/17/i-know-their-vital-stats-their-romantic-histories-how-sunderland-afc-saved-me/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/i-know-their-vital-stats-their-romantic-histories-how-sunderland-afc-saved-me/