#sublime bartlet

[zoe-oneesama]

Since you drew pig!Sublime, i wanna know what you think about the character (even though she only appeared once)

Season 6 gives me Season 1 vibes but with baggage, so I fully expect Sublime to be, like, the Aurore of S6 - high impact in Her Episode only to be relegated to background fodder. Honestly we probably won't get much more out of her despite the Smirk of Dubious Intentions we got when Tomoe Tsurugi agreed to sponsor her. Oh nooo, giving money to allow a disabled girl to participate in her chosen sport, what evil must lurk behind her choice here, ahhhh, I'm so scared.

Sorry got off topic

Uh, Sublime seems fine? I mean it's hard to get enthusiastic about yet another Comically Flawless Character for Marinette to compare herself to for no reason. I guess it's that to me Sublime herself isn't interesting, she's just kind of a prop for other characters to reflect off of. That's kind of the downside to being so Comically Perfect, most of her personality just doesn't read as real or relatable. I mean, she wasn't even the akuma, her mother was. And her mother and father's dynamic around both each other and Sublime's career are much more complex and I have way more to talk about the two of them than Sublime herself.

The only place of any interest is her unique way of dealing with her anxiety - making it separate from herself and talking shit to it. Of course, this was just a contrived way for Marinette to mistakenly believe Sublime was talking shit to her, so even that's not without it's annoyances, but it's definitely A Strategy to dealing with your Inner Saboteur. Reminds of the post/tweet about turning your Intrusive Thoughts into a drunk backseat passenger so it's easier to write off as nonsense.

Sublime's design is okay, I like having a character actually lean into some less saturated colors for once. I just wish she had more contrast because it's a lot of similar blue on blue on blue, especially where her dress hem meets her "legs". And it's crazy that her default hair has FIVE BRAIDS, at LEAST. Where does all that hair go when she puts it in a ponytail though?

The name is cringe, but we all knew that. It's like the episode title "Sublimation" was decided on first and they worked backwards from there. I don't know if Sublime is a common name in Belgium (doubtful), but in English it's just weird because that's Not a Name. It's not even a common adjective that people use. In English, a more appropriate name would be "Grace" or "Harmony" or "Bliss" - they are names but they're also pretty literal. But then they couldn't have the "gotcha!" moment from naming the episode "Sublimation". Does it sound weird to French viewers the way it does in English???

I'm glad she's so forgiving but also has a healthy amount of Oh This Girl is Craaaazy in the way she interacts with Marinette. Willing to meet her half way but isn't like "oh that's cute how she's a total freaking weirdo!" She sees Marinette for exactly who she is. And I'm glad she's Adrien's friend, he needs his own damn friends.

Anyway, hopefully we see a little bit more of her but I'm not really holding my breath. As is, she's nothing that really makes me excited. At least I get to practice drawing prosthetics now?

[thebreakfastgenie]

one 🔥 for mash, one 🔥 for tww

These won't be new because I post my unpopular opinions all the time lol but

MASH:

There is a very obvious "king of repression" in MASH. It's Margaret. Margaret struggles to admitting she's feeling anything or experiencing negative effects from the war to anyone. If there is anyone Sidney is dying to put under a microscope, it's her, although I don't think he sees any of them that way; they're his friends and he likes being able to help them, they're not lab rats. Margaret has an entire conversation with Sidney wherein she's denying feeling anything at all, while expressing sublimated rage, and basically projecting, as she's trying to offer him advice. In fact, rage is one of the few emotions she ever feels comfortable expressing. One of the only people who can get past her walls is Hawkeye, and in Comrades in Arms she even falls back on rage with him.

Margaret's second conversation with Sidney is mostly comic relief and unfortunately dominated by early installment weirdness Charles ship tease, but it goes very similarly. She makes claims about other people while seemingly unaware of her own feelings and behavior, and she yells a lot.

Margaret says she's not a very open person. We see her struggle to form relationships, including with the other nurses, because she is so closed off. She's lonely, but she pushes people away. It's hard for her to admit she wants or needs anything. She hates to show any kind of vulnerability.

And yet we can see Margaret be compassionate! With the other characters in the later seasons, and with the patients throughout. She does acknowledge emotions, just not her own, because that would be too dangerous.

These are all traits you rarely get to see in a female character and I for one owe Loretta Swit my life.

In the spirit of the game, I'll get a little spicy:

I think the reason the fandom devotes so much time to the repressed BJ headcanon--which is just that, a headcanon-when Margaret is right there doing it in canon and gets very little attention is that people struggle to see female characters as complex. Emotional repression in particular tends to be associated with men; we see this all the time in society. This is not a problem specific to this fandom; it's a reflection of how we are taught to view women that manifests in every fandom. I do think Margaret is a prime example of it.

TWW:

I don't like Donna's arc in season 6. I think it loses sight of the foundation of the character, which is my criticism of a lot of seasons 5 and 6. I hate the "shallow girlboss feminism" critique, but if the shoe fits... We're supposed to believe Donna is overqualified for her position and Josh has been unfairly holding her back. This is simply not the case. There wasn't really a ladder for Donna to move up. She was very good at her job, so Josh had every professional reason to keep her.

None of the other assistants are portrayed as being treated unfairly. Mrs. Landingham, Debbie, Bonnie, Ginger, and Carol are all career assistants. That's a real job! Donna also has no formal qualifications and no relevant experience prior to the Bartlet campaign. The whole point of Donna was that this silly, slightly flaky young college dropout is actually extremely smart and capable. Donna not wanting to remain an assistant makes sense, but she wasn't wronged. The job offer she gets in season 4 is lucrative, but it's for a start-up, where formal qualifications are less important than in, say, the White House, and they're more free to emphasize her on-the-job experience. Donna getting as high a position she as she does on the Russell campaign is frankly absurd and in my opinion a product of it being a convenient way to have two main characters handle those campaign scenes.

Once Donna does get successful, she jettisons most of her personality in favor of being Competent and occasionally the only moral one (2162 Votes; Donna is the moral compass of the show but the way that was presented bugged me). And Josh was right, if a bit dramatic, when he said he was the victim. Donna quit without giving notice! That's pretty unprofessional! Donna was so full of shit when she accused him of keeping her in grunt-level servitude, when we've seen the responsibilities she's been given. And like... knowing how he liked his food was part of her job. It's uncomfortable to admit but Josh did give her a career. That doesn't mean she's beholden to him forever, but it happened. In Impact Winter, she never told Josh what the meeting she wanted to have was about or that it was important until the last minute. She also knows better than literally anyone that his meetings get rescheduled all the time because that's the White House, and him not prioritizing her meeting over various urgent situations is not personal. Maybe if the show had done a better job of showing him dismissing her and taking her for granted as an ongoing pattern I would buy it, but they didn't.

Even in the Josh/Donna resolution in season 7, Donna has to be Cool and Right even at the expense of making sense. Josh is the first one who brings up talking (and even indicated he wanted to way back in Election Day, which she ignored), but we're supposed to believe it's a sign that he's panicking about commitment when he doesn't want to do it while badly jet-lagged? It's all the tables have turned, Josh is pining for Donna, until Donna's the one setting deadlines. All in all it made the character much less enjoyable for me and unintentionally sent the message that women can't have personality and success. Iirc, CJ gets a lot less fun material once she becomes chief of staff, too.