#we should start accepting that writers can do a beautiful job with one storyline (will and mike) then turn around and fuck up/lose sight of

[frogfacee]

byler is going to be canon in an unforgettable way but at what cost

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[crazymisscarly]

on today’s episode of essay-length hot takes nobody asked for:

So I freak out and internally implode whenever ~bughead~ doesn’t let their ship set sail as much as the next person, but I’ve been (over) thinking about it and maybe doing all this weird ‘everyone breaking up and going to the person they dont really work with’ is actually a good thing in the long run.

Not saying I like it, in fact I have approximately seven fanfics that deeply demonstrate HOW MUCH i don’t like it, but this is the canon storyline we’ve got.

Since the writers clearly want to drag it all out for as long as possible because they… want to (their choice, its their work of art, we can only glare at it from afar), perhaps they’re trying to go full circle and prove that couples like bughead, varchie, choni and even kangs are the ones that will work out in the end.

here’s my reasoning:

Yes, I have scrolled as fast as humanly possible through my dashboard to avoid the jughead and tabitha gifs, and earlier today learned that they sang ‘perfect for you’ and my immediate reaction, after I’d finished mourning their platonic friendship, was just *vomit emoji*. But, then I saw the lyrics to perfect for you…. And it sounds like Jughead is trying to change himself into being someone ‘perfect’ so that tabitha will like him. That just doesn’t strike me as either healthy or long lasting. He shouldn’t HAVE to change himself to be in a relationship with Tabitha. Get better, yes, because he’s recovering, but change himself??? They were good friends, they worked well as a team, but in none of those interactions did he try to change himself to make her happy. So why is he now??

And take Fangs and Toni for a moment - they just had a baby together, and they’re apparently in love after one episode (hey if it works for barchie and veggie then why not -.-), but really, aren’t they doing this because they work well as a team and are starting to think ‘maybe we can be a perfect little happy family’???

And Veronica and Archie (won’t lie didn’t watch the musical ep so can’t be sure) broke up because they see themselves doing different things in life (?) and veronica wants to go back to New York. And she wants to work on herself (valid)  and for some reason goes back to Reggie the sister-swapping gigolo next ep (whom she made THIS face at when she found out:

But I digress.)

With this in mind, I would assume Veronica is fearful that, like she lost herself in her relationship with Chad, she’ll lose herself in her relationship with Archie because he isn’t a big time New York City high roller like Reggie must want to be. So she’s hoping that maybe Reggie, who she works well with in a team, could be the one for her.

Now, Betty and Archie…. My soul shivers with cold despair as I even type this, but let’s humour them for a second. Archie is upset that veronica has left him, betty has been shown to use sex as a coping mechanism to avoid her trauma, makes sense they might start their FWB situation again, right??

Except…

Betty is devastated by the loss of her sister and needs to stay in Riverdale, Archie needs to stay in riverdale because he has 673 jobs there, and both of them have shit they want to move on from or be distracted from - they’ve been shown to work well (dare i say it?) as a team, and they’re apparently good friends with each other, so why not give dating a go since their first choices (and make no mistake, Veronica is Archie’s first choice and Jughead was Betty’s first choice) are unavailable and they’re both depressed, traumatised and lonely??

So this should all be just fine and dandy, then right?? Everyone’s happy with their friends-to-lovers relationships, they can frolic blissfully in Pickens park with the loves of their lives shouting “Go teamwork!” Because this is the height of passion! Right??

No.

None of the above mentioned ships have achieved anything more than showing that the characters are SETTLING for the relationships that are ‘second’ best because they’ve come to the conclusion that this is safer than going for the ones they really love. You can’t get burned by your second choice because they don’t hold your heart in their hands - after all, you haven’t truly given it to them.

So if all goes to what I think (hope) is the plan, then by the end of this mysterious 5 episode event, most of these ships should have realised that their relationships are all just relationships of convenience. They aren’t passionate about each other. They are trying to force themselves into a ‘perfect’ relationship that suits what they think they need.

But inevitably: 

Betty will realise that nobody understands her like Jughead. Nobody else lets her feel vulnerable and shows her its okay to open up. Jughead will realise he doesn’t have to change himself to suit a relationship, and he and Tabitha can still be friends - Betty accepted his darkness for what it was, and he loved her even when she showed him hers.

Veronica will realise that she doesn’t have to give up being who she is, even if she chooses to live in Riverdale. And she doesn’t need to be with another Hiram-Lodge wanna be - she loves the small town boy who tries to be good rather than rich. She sees the value in his desire to help others, and HE sees her passionate nature and refusal to give up when she knows something is right!

Toni and Fangs will part amicably as happy little coparents, and i’m sure Kevin and Cheryl will eventually sort their shit out - what’s beautiful about these four though, is that they’ve been working on themselves all season and have actually spoken to each other a fair bit. I’m not even going to pretend to know whats up with Cheryl, but she at least leaves Thornhill occasionally now, and while I don’t know how its going to happen, i’m sure kangs and choni will rise.

On that note, fangs still doesn’t know kevin wanted to win him back, so that can be some actual tension between the characters in the coming episodes.

So where does that leave Tabitha and Reggie?

I can see it going two ways:  1. Tabitha franchises pops diner and moves back to Chicago where she doesn’t need no man, and Reggie keeps being a little philanthropist car salesman (possibly still hooking up with veronica’s sister) 2. #Teggie rising??? 

They’re both very driven people, both business-minded, both excited about the opportunities life has to offer AND they’ve both been shown to be incredibly ambitious. 

They’ve hardly interacted this entire season…. Maybe the writers are Saving a sneaky little surprise for when all the main ships get back together??

We can hope.

Anyway, I wrote this instead of an overdue essay (a real one for my masters degree) so i’m gonna leave my theories in the tumblr void for the time being. Let me know what you think :)

[douxbebearchives]

Meet the Author: Jayismz

Hi, J / Jayismz!

Stories can be found here.

Twitter.

Wattpad. 

__________

When did you start writing Olitz? I started writing Olitz a year ago around December 2019. 

Tell us about yourself! What do you want readers to know about you? I want the readers to know that I’m a pretty humble, easy going guy who loves writing & wants to one day make a career out of it. It’s become a passion of mine. I dislike unnecessary drama & disrespect, & I’m obsessed with fruit snacks. I’m also very easy to talk to, so don’t hesitate to reach out. 

What drew you to Olivia and Fitz? It wasn’t the immediate connection for me. It was the drama between them that pushed & pulled them apart. To see them triumph over all the darkness to show each other a love they never experienced was beautiful.

What made you want to write about them? Honestly? I didn’t plan on writing them but my girl Muses pushed me to do so and I don’t regret it. I love being able to bend and shape them how I please. In ways that the show didn’t.

How would you describe your writing? Drama, Romance, Action, Adventure. Angst as well, depending on the storyline. It’s easy to follow, too. Some points are a bit more subtle but if you read for the sake of the story & not just for olitz smut/fluff then you’ll get the fully painted picture. 

What inspires you to write / create? Honestly? That’s a difficult question. Sometimes watching certain episodes of the show will give me an idea/inspire me. Other times, it’ll be late night inspiration, when I’m supposed to be asleep or life in general. My mind never stops creating, but every idea that I have doesn’t make the site. Also music. That’s heavy inspiration, too. 

Favorite movies, shows, music?

Favorite movies? 1. Dawn of the Dead. 2. The Halloween film series minus one. 3. Jennifer’s Body. 4. The Incredibles film series. 5. The Friday the 13th film series. 6. Insidious 1-2. 7. The Avengers / X-men film series. Even the bad X-men films give me something. 8. Call Me By Your Name. 9. 4th Man Out. 10. Mulligans. 

Favorite shows? 1. The 100. 2. The Witcher. 3. American Dad. 4. Scandal. 5. Kingdom. 

Music? Alternative, pop, electronic, hip hop and r&b, soundtrack, dance, rap, light rock. A little bit of everything.

How long does it take you to write a chapter? I used to be on a once a week schedule but that doesn’t give people time to miss a story and digest the current chapter(s). So, now I wait until I’m ready. Sometimes it takes a week to write, other times it’ll take longer. Depending on how tired, busy and inspired I am. Time limits stress me out. 

Did the show’s themes and plots encourage you or discourage you from writing? The themes I looked for always inspired me. 

Writing AU or Canon? AU.

Reading AU or Canon: some canon is really good, but mostly AU.

________

A favorite line, scene, or paragraph you’ve written.

Though there are many moments I love from all of my stories. The speech Ryan gave to Olivia in Herstory is one of my favorites. 

Ryan: "Option three, we let them bicker and whine and panic because it's you who calls the shots. You are the leader of the free world. You make the tough decisions that mold and shape the world. You break down the barriers of what it means to be president." He slowly strides around the office.

"You're not like the countless men who came into this office and paraded their power as if they were some Gods here to bless us with great fortune and progress only to leave us with broken promises and lies. No, you are Olivia fucking Pope. You are light and you... have more guts than any man I know." Words unwavering, filled with fire.

"Babying everyone with an opinion is not how I see you running this White House. Your White House. So, what's it going to be?"

Reason being is because he sees her for the woman she is here. There’s no underestimation or denial of her skills. Just pure, unadulterated passion and the will to stand by her side knowing that she’s going to make history.

________

Fave Olitz moments? The season 7 conversation when he asked her if he crossed the line. The trail, of course. The lawn kiss in season 6. And also the deleted scene from season 6 where she was leaving the residence and they talked about him having two weeks. OH! And the dug the phone out of the trash moment.

Fave Olitz fanfic moments? I read too much to remember all of them, omg. Don’t hate me y’all 😭. But everyone I follow in the site gives me some of the best moments and they inspire me to write in all honesty.

________

Do you like it when readers engage with you via comments / social media? Of course! It helps. 

Story Reviews: Love them, hate them? I’m indifferent about them. Sometimes they’re so negative but other times, they’re good— constructive even. I read them once every so often before expressing how grateful I am to have people still enjoying my works. Negative ones get deleted without a thought. 

What advice would you give to a new Olitz writer? Just write! Perfection should only matter to you and you only. If it’s perfect to you then I’d say you’ve done a good job. Also, write the story that you want to tell. People tend to scream that something’s not good if the idea they had in their mind doesn’t happen. Stay true to yourself and never let anything dictate the words you write. 

Outside of your fics, do you have any fave Olitz stories or authors? Anything by Musesoftheminds, labellebeaucoup, sweetness04fj, anonolitz, glamour02, loveoverpride, annnnd Keke thegoddess. 

Do you talk to other Olitz authors? If so, do you like the camaraderie? I talk to a good 4 of them. Muses I talk to almost everyday off Twitter, of course, but the other three I’ll reach out and check in or they will. I do like it— the camaraderie. It makes me feel wanted here which means a lot. 

Have you made friends (people you talk to outside of fanfic) because of Olitz / Scandal fanfic? I have, yes.

Before you go, anything else you’d like to share?

Yes. To those that read my stories and newcomers. I’m glad you enjoy my work and I’m happy to continue writing for you all. I know it was a big change with me adding new characters and turning the tides a bit but the reception to them has been so heartwarming.  

I’m happy Ryan has been received well in the fics. He’s an extension of me if I were to put myself in those settings. I used to be so afraid to admit that but it’s nothing to be ashamed about. Adding myself or a fraction of myself in some way pushed me to continue with writing these stories. It’s like I become one with the character thing. Plus, it makes for good dynamics. 

As far as other characters, I tend to use people I know as blueprints as well as other celebrities. For example, Rose / Viper is based on my girl Musesoftheminds if she were in those settings. In When It All Falls & its sequel, Danny is portrayed by actor Marcus Rosner. In Hunted, Walker is portrayed by Charles Melton & Mike is portrayed by Trevante Rhodes. In Herstory, August is portrayed by Henry Cavill and Rose’s husband is portrayed by Jason Mamoa. She picked him herself, LOL. 

And if anyone wants to be in a story of mine, let me know! If it works with the story, we can make it happen now that you know my process. 

Lastly, I want to thank the community for being so open and accepting of me and my ideas. I was afraid that me being an openly gay man and incorporating every facet of that from presentation to relationships to sex would’ve pushed people away, but you’re still here and it means the world to me. And to the writers I speak to personally, thank you for always having my back and for encouraging me to continue. You’ve been nothing but kind & I love you. 

Thank you to DouxBebeArchive for this writer’s spotlight, for always being kind enough to share my works and for being a kind soul. 

xoxo, J

________

Thank you, J, for allowing us to feature you!

[takaraphoenix]

Hi! What are your thoughts about OUAT.

That’s a complex, layered answer because my feelings for OUaT are very complex. The short of it is that, obsession and love level wise, this was my Shadowhunters before Shadowhunters existed as a show. I completely loved and adored this show, I watched every episode as soon as it came out, with a single-minded focus (as in: normally, when watching TV, I use the show as a background noise to my writing. There is only a select handful of TV shows that ever managed to get my full, undivided attention of me turning all else off to only focus on the show).

I love OUaT to bits and pieces. However, much like Shadowhunters, it was far from a flawless show. Very, very, very far. Seriously, it’s an absolute mess in many aspects but damn do I love it.

It appeals to many of the things I love. For one, classic Disney movies. For another, fairy tales - but the very specific niche genre of fairy tale crossovers, which is just... my biggest weakness, possibly. Thirdly, characters you can get invested in and love to bits and pieces.And fourth, shipping.

This is one of the incredibly small, tiny pool of shows where I absolutely adore the canon ships, not just in a “daw it’s cute enough” way that makes me accept that it is The Canon Ship That’s Happening, but in a way that has me actively invested in and rooting for those absolute dumbasses. And. Not just one ship, usually it’s like “huh I am surprisingly invested in this one ship”, but - Rumpel/Belle, Hook/Emma, David/Snow?? Yes, please, inject it into my veins.

Though also just as attached to my non-canon ships - REGINA/EMMA FOR LIFE, Ruby/Snow, Hook/David. And that duality of being really invested in the non-canon ships but still absolutely loving the canon ships? That is... completely and entirely unique to OUaT for me. Never happened outside this show.

I adore that this show did one of the things that I complained Descendants didn’t - it respects Snow White, the very first Disney princess, and puts her front and center. Never-ever made sense to me that Descendants just went “uuuh we at random picked Belle to rule all the kingdoms because I dunno the head writer loves Beauty and the Beast the most”... Snow White was Disney’s very first and I do think she deserves more respect.

The things they did with her! They made her an actual active heroine. Not a little girl hiding out in the woods. They explored possibilities and turned her into a total badass, who never lost the main qualities of Disney’s Snow White though. Her nurturing, loving, gentle soul. That is what I adore about her, because very often when trying to portray strong female characters, media removes their softness, makes them hardened to make them a badass.

Regina and Emma have such a brilliant canon dynamic - even beyond the fanon ship. The way they mended and grew together and became friends. The growth, the softness, the shared custody. I love them.

And with both Regina and Rumpel, I love the day they gradually progressed from “main antagonist from season 1″ to “part of the family”. This show is a found family feast.

It wasn’t flawless. It had some pacing issues, in my opinion. Like the Peter Pan arc was too long. They went hiking for like 12 episodes. That one still sticks with me as having bored me. And I also do think it was a huge mistake to make Peter Pan, one of Disney’s heroes a villain. He was a great villain and his actor absolutely killed it, don’t get me wrong, but in the context of Disney canon, it was a bit jarring.

The same is to be said about Arthur. Don’t take King Arthur, of all people, and turn him into a jackass. That didn’t sit right with me and I think that could, and should, have been handled differently.

As a huge fan of Wizard of Oz canon, I have mixed feelings about Zelina. She was kind of a joke most of the time, her raping Robin was not good at all (beeecause that’s what it is when you shapeshift into the person the other one loves and then have sex with them under pretense to get yourself pregnant), but in the end it - and her - fit relatively well into all of this.

Was completely wasted for the entire Frozen arc, but even I, someone who loathes that movie with a burning passion, genuinely enjoyed the way the show was trying to fix it? Answer all the unanswered question the movie left and actually tie it into the Snow Queen fairy tale? Like, that was a feast and I love that they did that. Also Ingrid was hot and checked all my boxes so there’s that.

In the same way, I adore what they did with Ursula. That they took the scraped canon of Ursula being Triton’s sister and worked with that and that they in the end decided to redeem her too - though I am still very disappointed that we never got to see Ursula actually interact with Ariel at all. That’d have been so interesting. (Also, I admit, they went really overkill with having three Ursulas. Regina pretending to be Ursula, Ursula the ancient golden statue goddess and the actual Ursula, daughter of Poseidon).

I love Hades. I love Greg Germann’s take on Hades. He absolutely killed it. The whole underworld story was incredibly awesome to me personally - though I know others didn’t like that half-season as much. But I really dug that.

I think that it started to fizz out after that though and that after the underworld storyline, they probably should have drawn it to a close, because... after everything, after five whole seasons of watching redemption and working hard to make up for the things you did in the past, they really just decided “and now Regina is gonna physically split off her Evil Queen”... and made that Evil Queen the villain. That felt insanely repetitive of season 1 and like a set-back for Regina.

(The second half of that season didn’t go better because honestly that whole nonsense with “not only is Rumpel the son of Peter Pan, nope, now we bring in his mom the Evil Fairy”, featuring the very overused trope of “baby is magically aged up to be a character who can contribute to the plot”... Not the best.)

Also I refuse to acknowledge the existence of that reboot season. It’s bullshit is what it is. The show had the perfect ending. And then they immediately slapped a reboot onto it... why? If they had taken their time, wait ten years until nostalgia for the show kicks in and the actors all need work again, and do a proper “now Henry goes through shit”, that’d have actually been interesting, but... the moment I saw “so... we keep half the main cast, break up some OTPs, don’t age the adults up but age Henry up and also there is now a second Cinderella”, I knew that’s not gonna be good.

Seriously, the second Cinderella is what really fucked it over for me. What I loved about OUaT was that it gave very specific rules to its universe.

The Author documents the tales. The Author gives them their spin. But they are still the same tale. Be that the Brothers Grimm, who documented Cinderella, or then Walt Disney, it was still Cinderella, from the Enchanted Forest. Their stories were simply written down.

That they then, in the reboot season, went “well, actually There Are Many Cinderellas!!” completely contradicts the previously established rules of this world? Because yes, the concept very similar to Cinderella actually exists in many cultures - and that was the cool thing of OUaT’s take, because pressumably that is because the Author was in said culture at said time and documented the tale, as is the Author’s job.

Especially since it was so... unnecessary? I mean, they gave Rapunzel one half-assed episode in the past, they never tackled Gold Mary, they could have shown what became of Hänsel and Gretel now also grown up, etc. There were other unused characters that could have been brought in instead of throwing the rules out of the window.

But moving on from that; I love that they didn’t limit themselves to Disney movies - that they did prominently put Red Riding Hood (my favorite fairy tale character) in there, that they worked with mythology as well as books.

One thing they absolutely fucked up was their spin-off though. Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. They made that. They decided that, out of everything touched upon in the series, Alice’s tale should get a spin-off... and then they didn’t use any of the actual characters?

Alice herself never got an appearance in OUaT, not prior or after the spin-off (only very much later in the reboot season, with a different Alice)

They had the Queen of Hearts on OUaT, but they didn’t use her as the main antagonist, or at least a huge deal, on Wonderland

They had the freaking Mad Hatter on OUaT, but he doesn’t even have a single cameo on Wonderland

And don’t give me “Seb Stan was too busy!”, because... even then, they could have recast. The Mad Hatter is kind of a big part of Alice in Wonderland, but... they ignored the majority of what is important in AiW in general, so there is that

They named the Red Queen Anastasia and very heavily implied that yes, the Anastasia who was the stepsister of Cinderella - but when OUaT’s original Cinderella got her stepsisters introduced, they suddenly had entirely different names than the Disney stepsisters and of course it wasn’t the same actress either

They introduced Jafar (for some reason) in Wonderland. And then recast him when Aladdin was tackled on OUaT and never addressed any of the things that happened on Wonderland, especially not how Jafar was the son of the sultan which would technically make him Jasmine’s brother

It was nearly dumb to move Will Scarlet to OUaT after the spin-off was axed, because at that point they legit just ignored Wonderland as a whole so this acknowledgment felt very off. But then it’s Michael Socha and I love him so I ain’t gonna complain about that.

So yes, I have mild issues with how they made a spin-off that had basically no inpact on the show, despite many elements that should have crossed over and carried significance in both shows.

Lastly, because we’re on the topic of spin-offs, I still would absolutely kill for a spin-off about Mulan, Merida and Ruby. Those three, exploring the Enchanting Forest together, training together, being gay together, it was the best thing. Which does force me to mention the gay. Because... Mulan was canonically in love with Aurora and when they set her up to find Ruby and journey with her, it came really off as them trying to make Mulan/Ruby happen. Then they introduce Merida, a very famously single princess, and you start to wonder. But in the end, it’s Ruby who ends up with Dorothy, aka two characters not associated with Disney. And it makes you wonder. (It doesn’t. We all know Disney is hugely homophobic. We all know OUaT most likely had some Disney executive yelling at them for even implying one of their characters may be gay. So they backtracked to give the wlw storyline to two characters that weren’t Disney property.)

Ah, I don’t like ending things on a negative note so one last positive - as weirdly as the Dark Swan arc was handled at parts, I absolutely love that Emma’s name being Swan really did pay off in making her the Swan Princess in the end and giving a nudge to Swan Lake with the Dark Swan. That was such a cool pay-off of something as small as a last name.

So, to sum it up, there’s some flaws in the writing, some things I wish would have been explored more, but overall good gods do I love and adore this TV show.

[bowenandjohnson]

My Thoughts on Elite Season 3

Spoilers! Under the cut!

The Murder of It All

Well, I definitely didn’t see that final twist with the murderer happening, but I understood why Lu was the one to do it. She has always had the capacity for darkness, and even if it was an accident, Lu made the best unexpected choice. I’m glad Guzman was able to forgive Polo in the end--he needed that closure to fully move on and heal from Marina’s death. 

Did I like that everyone covered for Lu? Eh. I didn’t ever really enjoy her as a character. But the fact that everyone overcame their differences to come together as a team? That’s the real endgame that I’m sure the writers were going for. Forgiveness and growth is possible, which is a large theme this season.

Omar/Ander/kind of Malick

Ander’s cancer storyline hit very close to home for me. My father was diagnosed with cancer last year in February 2019, and has only been in remission for around four months so far. Seeing his struggle and his journey was hard. I know a lot of people are being hard on Omar, and I certainly condone cheating on a significant other.

However, many people don’t understand the pressure of being someone’s main support system like I do. It’s so hard and so draining on a person, and luckily for me, my dad had his wife, my brothers, and his parents. But for Ander, he only had his mother and Omar at first, before slowly starting to let Guzman and Polo in.

Omar is a 18-19 year old boy, and so I can understand why he had a thing with Malick. He’s young, his only major support system is Ander and Ander’s mother. His family (outside of his sister) disapproves of his life, and who he loves. His life was falling apart, and he was losing control. Malick could relate to being a gay Muslim with a disapproving family, so it makes sense why he would cling to someone who shared similarities to his own life. Omar made a mistake, and he realized who he truly wanted to be with.

I do wish he would have owned up to the cheating with Malick to Ander directly, but they only have eight episodes and a large cast to support. Overall, Omar and Ander are happy, in love, and returning to Las Encinas TOGETHER. Plus, Ander is in remission--thank God! And Yusef finally accepted that his son is gay and has a boyfriend, true character growth!

Carla/Yeray

Teodoro Roson is a goddamn asshole. I hate him, and I wish he were also dead. He manipulated and gaslighted his daughter for several more episodes than I wanted to see. Carla truly suffered this season, and I hated that. They broke down her character to serve the whims of a powerful, white man, and I hate that. Carla was such a bad bitch in s1, and she didn’t deserve this storyline. Ester Exposito did the most with the material she was given, however.

Yeray could have also been so much more as a character. They barely addressed how he was harassed in the past for his weight, and how that affected him still in the present. Though he didn’t love Carla, nor she him, he cared about her enough to accept her friendship, and help her take down her father for good. 

Those final interactions of the two talking about their relationship and how the two teamed up only showed me what could have been for the two in this third season. As one of the first black characters on this show, Yeray really got the short end of the stick, and he didn’t deserve to be an obstacle to a white girl’s true happiness. I did truly like him in the end, and Sergio Momo did the best with the material he had.

Samuel/Rebeka

I felt bad for Rebe throughout the entirety of her relationship with Samuel this season. She was a obstacle for “Carmuel” and ultimately used by Samu who helped to throw her own mother in jail. She deserved so much more. So much more. I’m glad she’s going back to school and she got her mother out of the drug business. PLUS SHE ADMITTED SOME ATTRACTION TO WOMEN!! Rebe/Caye for season 4, perhaps?

Samuel has also never been a favorite character of mine throughout the series, but I’m happy he got his brother free, he’s going back to school, and he’s single. That’s right--single Samuel may just be for the best. When Samuel is romantically concerned, there is always trouble to follow. He has never made it easy for any of his romantic interests.

Also, can we please get Samuel some therapy? They really needed to address his anger issues. Season 4 needs to get all these kids all some counseling, honestly. Two people have died that these kids were close to.

Cayetana/Valerio/Polo

Caye, Polo, and Valerio have never been my favorite characters on this show, either. I’m sorry, I guess I only enjoy five characters on this crazy-ass show. However, despite this relationship feeling like a rehash of s1, this relationship got Valerio away from the toxicity of his incest relationship with Lu and it helped him to succeed in school, and I felt like the dynamic was also evenly balanced between the three. Ultimately, I feel like Valerio grew enough to earn his “happy” ending helping Carla run the wineries and also pissing off Teodoro.

Caye also figured out FINALLY that money doesn’t equal happiness. I’m glad Polo broke up with her, and that she works as a cleaning lady like her mother did at Las Encinas. She helped a murderer, and in the end, she got an ending that I thought she deserved. I enjoyed her bonding with Rebe though after Polo died. They should date. The fraudster and “Narco Barbie” would be a match made in heaven in season 4.

Polo got his forgiveness, and he was fully charged with the murder of Marina posthumously. Alvaro Rico has always done a wonderful job portraying Polo over these three seasons, and I wish him the best with his future endeavors, this guy is a star.

Lu

Lu, Lu, Lu. She is, by far, my least favorite character from the show, and while I did enjoy some moments this season, her redemption arc was lazy and unearned. She never apologized to Nadia for releasing a sex tape of her, and that is what I had the most issue with. She didn’t earn Nadia’s friendship in the way that I would have wanted her to.

Sure, Lu grew. But did she grow enough? No. 

Have a nice life in NYC, Lu, with the happy ending you never truly earned.

Nadia/Guzman/Malick (part 2)

Nadia’s arc made sense to me this season. I know why people feel shortchanged by the lack of physical Guznadia this cycle, but there’s a clear undercurrent of love throughout all their interactions this season, and it makes sense why Nadia would pull back after being so violated in an intimate moment last season.

Malick makes sense for Nadia on paper: he’s nice, a good listener, and most importantly, he’s also a Muslim. However, Malick and Nadia’s relationship crumbles because he’s maintaining a facade: he’s closeted, and interested in hooking up with Omar, her own brother. Nadia is betrayed by this, of course, but the truth is: she wants a relationship that is based on love and respect. She’s done putting up a facade. 

She has that real connection with Guzman, the boy who offers to work at her family’s shop while she works on her scholarship applications, the boy who doesn’t want to jeopardize her dreams, the boy who loves her without expecting anything in return. At the end of the season, when she promises to come back for him, and he starts crying, that is the first time that he is certain of her committing to their relationship--and it is so incredibly beautiful.

Nothing will ever come in their way--not religion, not other people, not time or location. Their love will endure.

Guzman scared me in episode 2, when he kidnapped and tortured Polo. That moment felt so out of character for me, it took me out of the show for a bit. It was detrimental to the rest of his arc this season. However, I’m glad he grew out of his anger and frustration, and ultimately forgave Polo. He’s a supportive friend to both Samuel and Ander, and he reclaimed his “Mom Friend” title in the process. Can we please get the boy some therapy though? Please? Next season? I’m glad he gets to go back to school.

Malick also got the end of the short stick this season, and I wanted to see more of him as well. He deserved more than to be an obstacle to both “Guznadia” and “Omander.” Have fun in NYC, dude, I guess.

Thoughts on Season 4

Considering Guzman, Samuel, Rebeka, Ander, and Omar are all attending  Las Encinas to make up a year, it makes sense for season 4 to include them. Each season is a half of a year, so the also-ordered season 5 would be when they graduate. 

This way, other characters could guest and make appearances when they’re on break from college or something. It will be interesting to see how the show evolves in the future.

Overall, this season was a mixed bag, but I love these characters, and I will probably return to watch future episodes.

[gothamloveforever]

May 3, 2019 Great article about how the Gotham cast wants to reprise their roles!

In closing out its final season, Gotham launched viewers to the point in Gotham City's future when Bruce Wayne finally returned to his crime-ridden home turf in full Dark Knight glory. Of course, the episode held its focus on all the other colorful and iconic characters that have populated Gotham throughout its five seasons, granting Jim Gordon, Barbara Kean, Oswald Cobblepot, Ed Nygma and others a fond comic-book-infused farewell. But could these characters return in our future one day?

The #1 hope, of course, is for another network or studio to hurry up and pick up where Gotham left off, but even if it takes time, there are feasible ways to jump back into Gotham's story. It's not likely that every single cast member would be able to pick back up where their characters left off, but CinemaBlend asked a handful of stars, including Cameron Monaghan, if they would be down to return. Let's run through their answers.

Cameron Monaghan - Jeremiah / J / The Joker

Of all the elements that made Gotham such a blazing romp, its greatest weapon was the sporadically utilized Cameron Monaghan, who inspired increasingly Joker-esque pandemonium as both Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, as well as the finale's Mr. J. Oker. (Not the actual character name, but wouldn't that be a hoot.) Thinking about Gotham returning in the future without Monaghan's sadistic villain – or even just his laugh – is a bummer, so it's a good thing we don't need to do that.

CinemaBlend spoke with Cameron Monaghan for this year's Television Critics Association winter press tour, which took place ahead of the finale's airing, but after the principal photography was shot. The actor was very pumped for fans to get a load of Jeremiah's final turn, and I had to ask if he would be interested in reprising Gotham's version of The Joker in the future. His response:

“Yeah, maybe. I think that it just depends on the context that it's within. I think that this specific version probably wouldn't be used if I was to return to it. It would be in a different capacity. It's like one of those things, because The Joker, to me, is like the most distilled version of an antagonist ever, and he is the counterpoint to whatever he's in a scene against. And he needs to shift depending on the context around him. So if I was to return back with these characters, he would probably be different, and reinvented again, you know? It's one of those things where he has to be completely tailor-made to the tone and the story of whatever it is he's a part of. So I would be willing to go back if the story was good and it made sense, but it would probably be different.”

 The last time we got to see Cameron Monaghan's Joker was in his first face-off against Bruce Wayne's Batman, although it was a severely short-lived one. The scarred-up J took a Batarang through the hand, and then one to the top of the dome, which knocked him clean out, though it definitely didn't kill him.

Considering the finale was viewers's big introduction to the post-Arkham Jeremiah, it would make total sense for his next appearance to head down a different creative route. Assuming the next Gotham project would get to feature more of Batman, that would automatically change the writers' approach to weaving a Joker storyline into it. And I'd love to see it, if someone can just make it happen. Someone?

Ben McKenzie - Commissioner Jim Gordon

If there was a load-bearing character on Gotham, it would definitely be Ben McKenzie's Jim Gordon, as close to a working-class superhero as there is. The fact that the finale even hinted at him trying to quit the GCPD was surprising, given the character's legacy, but the story obviously worked itself out in Gotham City's favor. Even if he had to shave to make it happen.

I also got to talk to Ben McKenzie during TCA, where we talked about him facing fellow former teen hunk Shane West as Bane. McKenzie is a pragmatic actor who loved his time on Gotham, even if he didn't flip out with excitement over Batman's arrival. But would he return to play Jim Gordon again someday? His answer:

 Sure. Possibly. I mean I think that, in the right context, sure. I think this, for what we were doing here, we really bookended it in a way that feels true and honest to the characters that have been fleshed out here. So this feels like a real ending. But if in the future, it were to come back around again in some way, yeah of course, I'd always be open to thinking about and talking about that, and doing it possibly. I mean, I've mainly played three characters in 15 years, you know? Three different shows, and each of them kind of stick with you a little bit, and it's fun to re-explore and think about again, if you haven't thought about them a lot.

 Three different shows that might seemingly have three very different fan demographics, too. Ben McKenzie starred in both the teen drama The O.C. and the non-comic cop drama Southland before hanging his hat in Gotham City, and I've no doubt that fans of both of those shows would love to see them get revived in some form or fashion.

 Regardless of any of that, though, Ben McKenzie sounds like he'd be willing to slick his hair back anew to lead the GCPD against whatever dangerous threats lie over the horizon. Just imagine if the newest recruit on the squad was his Southland character Ben Sherman, and if Joker's newest henchman was The O.C.'s Ryan Atwell.

 Robin Lord Taylor - Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin

After five seasons of watching Robin Lord Taylor committing some Penguin-lite acts as Oswald Cobblepot, Gotham fans were introduced to the most genuine iteration of The Penguin that TV has seen since Burgess Meredith waddled around for the 60's Batman series. The penultimate episode injured his eye to set up the monocle, and a rough decade in Arkham Asylum led to his weight gain and heightened levels of frustrated anger.

I got to talk to Robin Lord Taylor on the phone just ahead of the finale's airing, and he seemed to still be riding that one-of-a-kind Gotham high, championing the work he got to do alongside Cory Michael Smith as Ed Nygma. When I asked Taylor if he would ever want to get uncomfortable in The Penguin's signature garb again in the future, he was down, but only if his co-stars were making the return with him.

“Absolutely. I totally would. It would have to be the right circumstances. I don't think I could do it...in fact, I know I couldn't do it unless the actors I worked with on Gotham came back as well. It's like, there's no way I could be in a scene with a different Riddler. I couldn't do it. It wouldn't be justice. It would be blasphemous to what we had done before. So again, if the circumstances were right, in a heartbeat I would be there.”

 As great as Oswald and Ed were in Gotham's first 99 episodes, seeing them in pure Penguin 'n' Riddler glory was a gloriously batty punctuation mark on the series' run. (A question mark, of course.) Any follow-up version of Gotham would be severely lacking if Taylor's Oswald and Smith's Ed were absent. However, Robin Lord Taylor wouldn't begrudge another team picking up where the Fox drama left off. In his words:

 “You never know. All I put out there is that whoever takes up the mantle of the Dark Knight or any of the amazing characters that we got to put in Gotham, that they have as beautiful a crew and cast as we have. Because that's really the success of the show. It was built on the backs of many. No one takes full credit for being successful in this show. We all came together in this spectacular moment, and I feel like we just made something really amazing, and I'm just so proud of it.”

 Again, it should be stated that any future Gotham-y project that doesn't have Robin Lord Taylor's Penguin and Cory Michael Smith's Riddler is not the ideal iteration of that project. So other decisions should probably be made. Soon.

 David Mazouz - Bruce Wayne / The Dark Knight

David Mazouz's potential to return to Gotham's universe would a little trickier than what would happen for the others. As viewers witnessed – or didn't witness, as it were – Mazouz's Bruce Wayne was completely absent from the series finale, which wasn't announced ahead of time like Camren Bicondova's absence was. (She was replaced as Selina by Lily Simmons.) That was, of course, due to the actor's young age not exactly matching up with Bruce's for the finale's flash-forward.

As such, I didn't directly ask him about reprising Bruce Wayne for a future Gotham project, I did ask if he'd be down to play Batman on the big screen. His answer did not take long to formulate.

“Oh, absolutely. I think I would need to be a little bit older, a little bit taller.”

"I know there's a new Bruce that's going to be cast soon. I'm sure whoever they cast is going to do an incredible job. All I can say is that it's my philosophy that if you're going to do something, do it well. There's no point in doing something a half-assed. That's kind of always how I've functioned. So I feel because of what I've taken on, I sometimes decline challenges because I say to myself, 'I know I'm not going to be able to do my best on that.' And that's not acceptable to me. If I do something, I'm going to do my best. And I think this job was no exception, and it's pushed me to some limits and it's challenged me in ways that I'm forever grateful for. I feel like this role has changed me in so many ways, and this experience has changed me in so many ways, and all for the better. And I know it sounds so cliche and like, you've heard it a million times, but I'm just so grateful. It really comes down to that.”

 All that said, David Mazouz spoke so highly of his experience on Gotham, especially in the final season, that he would very likely return for more small screen vigilantism should anyone come calling. Now, someone, start calling!

Gotham is over on Fox now, but there's always the hope for more in the future. While waiting for Season 5 to hit streaming, you can watch the first four seasons on Netflix, while Hulu is still hosting the final five episodes of the series.

[backtoreal]

MY FAVORITE DRAMAS OF 2019 !

Hello everybody, I’m back for this annual drama pick !

Unlike last year, this year was good, not exquisite, but good. But, I’m still going to give you the best of the best, la crème de la crème ! Once again, this is only my humble opinion, and I might add, I can’t watch every kdrama of the year, so I guess this is quite a small list.

PS : I still can’t choose an order, so please, make your own ranking out of my choice ;)

The 2018 version of it !

Hotel del Luna (호텔 델루나)

Jang Man-Wol is the CEO of Hotel del Luna. She made a big error many years ago and, because of this, she has been stuck at Hotel del Luna. Jang Man-Wol is fickle, suspicious and greedy. Koo Chan-Sung, a sincere perfectionist but actually has a soft disposition, begins to work as a manager at Hotel del Luna, due to an unexpected case. The hotel's clientele consists of ghosts.

> Where to begin... I guess IU got me again this year (My Mister in 2018), but in a totally different role and kind of acting. I was not disappointed. This drama has a really good storyline, using modern days and history, and reality and myths and legends. This kind of mix works really well for me. All the cast was perfect and the two leading actors had a great chemistry, and it made me love Yeo Jin-Goo a little more. Plus, the scenery and special effects were really great ! AND let’s not forget the looks of Man-Wol, and the charisma of IU > PERFECT ! I guess this drama is in my top 3 !

Kingdom (킹덤)

10 days have passed since the King collapsed from an illness. Queen Jo and her father Chief State Councilor Jo Hak-Joo have forbidden anyone else to see the King. Even his own son Crown Prince Lee Chang is forbidden to see his father. But rumors spread that the King is dead. Crown Prince Lee Chang senses something sinister and sneaks into the King's palace. He sees a shadowy monster through a door and smells its foul stench, but he is discovered and escorted out of the palace. To find out what happened to the King, Crown Prince Lee Chang and Moo-Young travel to the Jiyulheon clinic in faraway Dongnae to see a physician. When they arrive, they discover that the clinic is in ruins and dead bodies are found under a building. A medical staff member Seo-Bi tells them that the dead they saw at the clinic are not dead and they will rise up soon to kill.

> If anyone asks, zombies are my thing, it’s been years, I literally dream of a zombie apocalypse (no, not really). As I’m not over Train to Busan, I was very excited to see zombies in a kdrama. And I’m not gonna lie, it was damn good ! And I was not very glad at first that the storyline happened in old time, because like I already said, I don’t really like historical drama. But this one made it to the list. Great zombies, great actors , great all ... I guess it’s Netflix ! (Mr.Sunshine from 2018)

My Strange Hero (복수가 돌아왔다)

When Kang Bok-Su was a high school student, he was falsely accused of committing violence and kicked out of school. This was caused by his first love Son Soo-Jeong and a male student Oh Se-Ho. Kang Bok-Su is a now an adult, but his life has not gone smoothly. To get revenge on Son Soo-Jeong and Oh Se-Ho, he returns to the same high school as a student. The environment at the school has changed and Kang Bok-Su gets involved in unexpected cases.

> In a lighter tone, my strange hero is a great drama with a great story and great acting from Yoo Seung-Ho, it kind of made me want to follow his project in the future. The story is a classic revenge one, but it really made me want to have justice for Bok-su, it made me attach to this character. Great drama to relax and enjoy the love story.

Touch your heart  (진심이 닿다)

Oh Yoon-Seo is a popular actress. She is famous for her beautiful appearance, but her acting is bad. She gets involved in a scandal with the son from a chaebol family. Her acting career declines precipitously. Oh Yoon-Seo hears that a famous screenwriter wants her to play the lead female role for a drama series. The character works as a secretary for a lawyer. To gain experience for the role, Oh Yoon-Seo is required to work as a lawyer's secretary for a few months. Meanwhile, Kwon Jung-Rok is an attorney for a law firm. He is arrogant and cold-hearted. One day, his boss asks Kwon Jung-Rok to let actress Oh Yoon-Seo work as his secretary for 3 months. He is not happy about the situation, but he has to accept.

> Basic Kdrama trope, but this one worked on me. We can say that Goblin greatly influenced my choice, the chemistry between Lee Dong Wook and Yoo In Na is beyond everything. But my heart goes all the way for Lee Dong Wook ! Anyway this drama really shows some deep characters and I loved it ! Bonus : it’s funny as heck !

Leverage (Korea)  (레버리지:사기조작단)

Lee Tae-Joon is an excellent insurance fraud investigator. An unexpected case changes his life. He quits his job and recruits talented criminals, that he once caught, to form an elite fraud team. The team includes Hwang Soo-Kyung , Ko Na-Beyol , Roy Ryu  and Jung Ui-Sung . They scam wealthy criminals and return the money that they stole to the victims.

> As a huge fan of the original US version, I was forced to watch this one, and let me say that, for once, the Korean version did not disappoint ! It takes the best of the original series and adapt it to Korean standards, and it works very well ! We can feel a great union between the actors who plays the team ! 

He is Psychometric (사이코메트리 그녀석)

Lee An has a special psychometry ability. Whenever he touches someone, he can read that person's memory. Using his psychometry ability, Lee An wants to take out evil people in the world. Yoon Jae-In is a girl with a scar in her mind. She tries to hide that. Lee An and Yoon Jae-In happen to meet and they struggle to solve cases.

> I was never a fan of Park Jin Young, but damn this boy got me ! He really has a great future in acting in front of him ! But all the cast were amazing. The story for once was really outside the box, I think that’s why I liked it so much ! Kudos to Da-Som whom I hope to see in more dramas !

The Light in Your Eyes (눈이 부시게)

Kim Hye-Ja hopes to become an announcer. She is honest and has a positive personality, but she suddenly becomes a 70-year-old woman. 70-year-old Kim Hye-Ja gains the special ability to manipulate time. Lee Joon-Ha wants to become a reporter. He has worked hard to achieve his dream, but he now lives his life hopelessly. He gets involved with Kim Hye-Ja.

> You can never guess how much I cried at the end of this drama ! You should really watch this drama, for the great acting, but also the story, a brilliant and well made one, I think you never really expected the ending, it tells how much the directing of this drama was good. This drama is definitely a revelation for me !

Extraordinary You (어쩌다 발견한 하루)

Eun Dan-O is a student at a prestigious high school. Her family is wealthy, but Eun Dan-O has a heart disease. Her fiance Baek Kyung attends the same prestigious high school. She likes him a lot, but he does not like her at all. Suddenly, Eun Dan-O has short-term memory loss and she can see what will happen in the near future. She gets confused by her symptoms. Then, Jinmiche, from the school cafeteria, tells Eun Dan-O that she is a character in the comic "Secret" like everybody else there. Eun Dan-O learns that her character is not even a main character, but rather an extra and she doesn't have much time to live. Eun Dan-O is stunned, but she decides she wants to find her own true first love and not someone written by the comic writer. One day, she falls down the school stairs. She feels her back touch the back of another student, among a group of male students. Her heart suddenly starts to flutter. Eun Dan-O wants to find the male student who made her heart flutter. She eventually finds the student and he is her classmate. He is a character that doesn't have a name. They get close and Eun Dan-O names him "Ha-Roo."

> I really did not expect to like this, why ? Because the basic story of this drama has been already this a thousand times : high school crush, bullying, ... But the fact that it happens in a comic really changed it all, plus, the scenography is really pretty, and the acting is on point when you watch them shift of characters ! You should really watch this !

Search : WWW (검색어를 입력하세요: WWW)

The story of three women in their late thirties — Bae Ta-mi, Cha Hyeon and Song Ga-Gyeong — who work in the top two competitive web portal companies: Unicon and Barro. This drama is about the conflicts, the wins, and losses one experiences when working. It will follow the story of 21st century women, who chose to not be a wife or a mother and successfully work without discrimination or impediments.

Bae Ta-Mi works as a director for a big web portal company. She is in her late 30's and is quite competitive. With her competitiveness, Bae Ta-Mi enjoys success. The methods she uses to win has her wondering if she is doing the right thing with her life. 

Cha Hyeon also works as a director for a big web portal company, but as the direct competitor of Ta-mi, she’s also quite competitive, fierce, but also has a soft side, a side that she only shows to Ga-Gyeong her superior and friend.

Song Ga-Gyeong, is a rigid director of Ta-Mi in Unicon and the daughter in law of the CEO of KU Group, a big society who wants to influence the politics via Unicon. She is used by her mother in law but quickly became a fierce woman who stands for herself.

> First ... THREE STRONG WOMEN AS LEADS ! What can go wrong ? What can do better than this ! I don’t know my dear friends, I don’t know... If you ask, yes there is a love story (it won’t be a kdrama otherwise duh !), but the main couple isn’t really that great, and I really didn’t care about that. I loved the show for the power that these three women shows, and how it’s natural for women to rule the world ! (Yes I said it !) Bonus : openly showing that some characters could be bi (Cha Hyeon), and it show a very natural side of people that often people (especially in Korea) think it’s deviant (not shy about expressing their feelings, implying sex scene, etc ...). Great great drama !

  Honourable mention (but did not make it to the list) : Romance is a Bonus book (My love for Lee Jong-Suk did not help unfortunately ! The female lead was hard to like), Her private life (great drama, great actors but the fangirl story is a little cringey), Melting me softly (Nice but weirdly made love story...)

That’s it for this year !

Please feel free to recommend me some 2019 kdrama ! ☺️

2018 ; 2019

[lastsonlost]

What does Christopher Priest see when he looks at Vampirella?

Loneliness.

And in his new Vampirella ongoing launching July 17, the veteran writer will give Vampi the human connection she craves... before ripping it all away.

Illustrated by Ergun Gunduz, Dynamite's new Vampirella relaunch begins with the alien vampire as the last survivor of a plane crash which took away any friend or acquaintance she had. Now she's here on Earth and all alone. And this isn't a fictional world known to have vampires, witches, warlocks, or werewolves - this is the real world, and you know how real people would take to someone like Vampirella?

... but do you, really?

As Priest tells Newsarama in an email interview, Vampirella's supernatural abilities are "a metaphor for a univeral human condition, for being either rejected or idealized (or, in the case of our series, both) because you are different. Anyone who’s ever moved to a new town or a new school or taken a new job should be able to identify with Vampi’s challenges."

Priest, an ordained Baptist minister (as a reminder to readers, prefers to be addressed as 'Priest'), shared his thoughts with Newsarama on how the prospect of writing Vampirella was first received by him, how it fits within his religious life, and how he's using it to examine humanity.

Newsarama: Priest, what makes Vampirella interesting to you?

Christopher Priest: The fangs. Definitely the fangs.

When DC Comics approached me about writing Deathstroke, I’d really never thought much about the character. It wasn’t a book I’d normally read because I probably wasn’t the audience the book was targeted toward. But it presented an interesting challenge: what new things could I find to say with this character and what unexplored areas of the character were there to develop?

When Dynamite Publisher Nick Barrucci said “Vampirella,” I had nearly the identical reaction. I was, of course, familiar with the character but wasn’t a Vampirella fan, wasn’t the audience for that book, which made me an odd choice. You’ll have to ask Nick why he made it.

My immediate reaction was exactly the same: what new thing could I bring to this property? Where is the untapped potential? That, for me, is the interesting part; craft a Vampirella narrative that broadens the audience for the property while (hopefully) not putting off the hardcore Vampi fans.

Nrama: So what was the answer to that? What is the story?

Priest: I read this Bruce Springsteen Rolling Stone interview a couple decades back (yah... decades...) around "Born In The USA," where Springsteen said something remarkable that’s stuck with me all this time, about how each of us needs community. He said something like, “Without community (by which I presume he meant human attachment and interaction) we’d likely go crazy and kill ourselves.”

Over many interpretations Vampirella has developed many versions of a supporting cast, but she is fundamentally alone, one of few of her race living on Earth. Considering the Boss’s statement, I wasn’t eager to create yet another supporting cast and then echo adventures she’s had before. For better or worse, I wanted my at-bat with the character to be unique and in some ways challenging.

So the thought occurred to give Vampirella that community, that human connection... and then have it all ripped away. Our story arc revolves around a plane crash which effectively terminates many connections Vampi has built while forging new ones.

Nrama: You're setting this in the real world. A real fish out of water scenario, but one you're playing at for deeper cultural issues. What's a woman like Vampirella likely to face here on Earth?

Priest: With all due respect for the legion of much better writers who’ve handled the character, as I mentioned, I probably was not the audience for this book. Vampirella was created with a satirical flair and Vampi herself was in on the joke; not quite breaking the fourth wall but offering up a knowing come-hither smile. She’s existed in a reality that routinely and, for me, far too benignly, accepts the supernatural as fact.

Here in the real world, vampires are merely a thing of myth and the reality of hyperfactual supernatural events are subject to the interpretation of the particular tribe one belongs to. It bothers me that, in 2019, DC and Marvel universes are still mostly portrayed in an idealized hyper-reality where the average man on the street simply accepts superheroes as fact and, in fact, refers to them literally as “heroes” or “villains,” which is absurd. There’s no news anchor in the world who would start a broadcast piece with, “Arch-villain Saddam Hussein...” even though that description would be apt.

The world our Vampirella series takes place in doesn’t believe in vampires. Or witches or warlocks or werewolves. This world seeks rational scientific explanation for paranormal phenomena which it greets with enormous skepticism.

Which isn’t to suggest no one will believe Vampirella exists but that that acceptance is not as matter of fact as it seems to be in most of this genre.

In terms of what she’s facing, her number one enemy is loneliness. I am, hopefully, writing a woman first, a story about a woman who loves and wants to be loved but whose circumstances are complicated by the fact she has fangs and drinks blood. The supernatural attributes are a metaphor for a universal human condition, for being either rejected or idealized (or, in the case of our series, both) because you are different. Anyone who’s ever moved to a new town or a new school or taken a new job should be able to identify with Vampi’s challenges.

Anyone who wears their hair a different way, listens to a different kind of music, embraces a different religion, anyone who steps outside of or gets shoved outside of the so-called “mainstream” can identify with our take on Vampirella. I hope it is precisely this universality of theme that helps broaden her audience; the Vampi tent is large enough for everyone.

Nrama: Someone walking around in that Trina Robbins-designed costume is bound to get some headturns. If I know you as much as I think I do, you're going to tackle that head on, right? How are you getting into the subject of the costume?

Priest: Well, yes, we will have a go at it. The basic argument is simple: where do you draw the line between women’s liberation and women’s exploitation, and who gets to draw it? Who gets to define femininity and why should an extraterrestrial have to submit to that definition?

It’s like the world woke up in the last few years and realized we actually have two genders and both of them matter.

So we now have heightened scrutiny of themes and behaviors and that poor bastard Joe Biden gets caught up in the switches. I’ll confess, I’m terrified of women because I’m a Joe Biden. I was taught to pay a lady a compliment and open doors and I want to be friendly and accessible but I’m absolutely terrified of having my good intentions taken in a bizarrely paranoid light.

It is comical to me that I am far too often seen as creepy by women - especially black women - because they have been conditioned by their personal experience and their media consumption to misinterpret a simple "Hello." These days I cannot pay a woman a complement without a legal preamble and assurances that, no, I am not hitting on you and even then I get the skunk eye of suspicion.

Which is a little insulting because this “guilty until proven innocent” defensive posture presumes I am other people or that the bar is set so low for me that I’ll jump into bed with just anybody I happen to meet. It’s like we’ve just gone too far now to the point where women are not just being protected but being alienated to some extent because I have no earthly clue how to deal with them and I’m frankly scared to shake their hand.

So, is Vampirella’s wardrobe choice sexist? I don’t know. Vampirella obviously doesn’t think so. As I see her, she comes from a culture much like Star Trek’s Betazed, where people wear little or nothing at all. If anything, Vampi wonders why we humans choose to smother ourselves in so much fabric and why we’re all so bound by self-loathing.

There are hundreds of women who enjoy cosplaying as Vampirella, and maybe hundreds of thousands offended by the character. How do we reconcile all of that for the 21st century?

The one thing I won’t do is cover her up. I accepted the gig: write Vampirella. If you change the outfit, she’s no longer Vampirella. Frankly, her costume is the only thing about her (well, okay, that and her pansexuality) that makes her at all shocking or controversial.

My goal, and the readers will have to let us know if we’re passing or failing, is to make this a book as much about femininity as about bloodsucking. The storyline is driven by women, mostly populated by women, of all shapes and sizes and ethnicities, and most of them dress as sexy as they dare. The singer/rapper Lizzo is a terrific example of this. Is her blatant sexuality liberating or is she being exploited? How about Beyoncé? Do we put Vampi in a raincoat but cheer Bey on?

See what I mean? I’m screwed either way.

Nrama: So Priest - Vampirella's here on Earth. What would you do if you found yourself, I don't know, sharing a cab with Vampi?

Priest: I’d ask the driver to pull over and let me out. I’m a Christian, so I have these issues with all of that “fornicating in your mind” stuff. I don’t live a perfect life but I try to avoid cluttering up my conscience. Among the things the printed page cannot convey is the amazing, intoxicating glow and, yes, smell of a woman.

All women are beautiful, from 8 to 80, regardless of weight, height, or nationality. I wouldn’t share a cab with a woman as under-dressed as Vampi, which sounds hypocritical because I’m writing her. But I write Deathstroke, too, and wouldn’t share a cab with him, either.

Nrama: On the flip side of this, Vampirella's stranded on Earth. What's going through her mind in all of this?

Priest: How stupid and primitive we are. It’s not arrogance. I believe any visitor from another world would surf the net for a few hours and come away shaking their heads. I watched an episode of Little Miss Atlanta yesterday. Jesus. We’re just idiots. The moms fighting and bickering and cursing - cursing - in front of these little girls, berating the little girls. This sickening child abuse... That's entertainment?

I have Christian friends who will criticize me for writing Vampi but they watch that crap.

Nrama: This comes over a decade after your previous stint with Vampirella - Harris Publishing's Vampirella Revelations with artist Eric Battle. That run had some issues, but you're back here again. What makes is something you want to return to?

Priest: *scratches head* Really? I did a run...? I remember doing a silent issue... and vaguely remember doing something with Eric, a good bud. But that was way back. I really hadn’t considered this a “return.” I just pivoted and stared into Barrucci’s hypnotic vampire eyes and ran dozens of scenarios through my feeble brain, coming to one conclusion: this would be an interesting experiment, a writer’s challenge. Writers love challenges.

Nrama: Big picture, what are your goals with this ongoing?

Priest: To not have the women of America torch my house. This run will be as different a take on Vampi as any that have come before.

Which is not to say “better;” “better” is subjective. I’m sure a great many Vampi fans will hate what we’re up to. Maybe they’ll come along, maybe I’ll get fired. If I wasn’t nervous about it, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

Editor's Note: The above interview was conducted via email eariler this week, and we received all of Mr. Priest's responses along with all our original questions. Newsarama asked Priest if he would respond to follow-up questions Friday by email. He agreed and those questions and answers follow.

Nrama: Priest, our original questions to you were about the Vampirella comic book and our role is to talk about that and not audit your personal life, but your responses appear to be hyper aware of a social climate you seem to lament in terms of relationships between genders and conduct towards one another.

Priest: I lament the social climate in general, on all levels. I lament our lack of civility and lack of empathy, lack of patience and understanding. I hate the way we assassinate one another with our thumbs, all this hostility in social and other media. It's not just gender issues.

Nrama: Yet empathizing with Joe Biden without citing the actual specific behavior he’s under scrutiny for, stating things like "the amazing, intoxicating glow and, yes, smell of a woman" and by offering you’re “often seen as creepy by women,” it seems like intentionally inviting the sort of reaction/assumptions you state you’re “afraid” of and inviting the same scrutiny Biden is under.

Was this was your intent and are you prepared for pushback to your words and questions to be asked?

Priest: Wow, there's a lot to unpack, there. But let's start by saying I seriously doubt anyone reading this is NOT aware of the Biden issue to which I am referring. 

I come neither to defend Biden nor to bury him, so I think you're probably taking my "poor" Joe reference a bit too seriously. I wasn't trying to litigate Biden, only to make a point about how hyper-sensitive and overly politicized our nation is and how this will impact Vampirella in her series.

Assembling disparate quotes to paint me as some kind of deviant makes that point for me. I stand by my statements. "...the amazing, intoxicating glow and, yes, smell of a woman..."

 is something difficult if not impossible to convey in literature (which was my point), but your question was about me sitting in a taxi with a near-naked woman and I answered that honestly. 

And my point was relevant to understanding the challenges and conflicts Vampirella will face in this series.

This is the environment Vampirella finds herself in, people misinterpreting her actions, words, and motives. This is why I mentioned it, to place the work we are doing with Vampirella into context.

Were a person like Vampi walking around in our world (or riding in a taxi with me), she would be misinterpreted, and every word she says would be drilled into looking for the worst possible interpretation of it. I can't help but wonder why anyone anywhere speaks publicly because no words spoken by anyone can withstand this level of ridiculous scrutiny.

Nrama: In another response you state “It’s like the world woke up in the last few years and realized we actually have two genders and both of them matter”. While not assuming your intent one way or another, it seems it to overlook genders outside the male/female paradigm. Can you speak to that?

Priest: Gender: noun

1. either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female. "a condition that affects people of both genders"

I wrote an ecumenical commentary in support of gender and and LGBTQ issues, Chris. I invite everyone to read it.

It was a simple interview. I was promoting a comic book and, as a really busy writer, I was typing really fast and speaking honestly while engaging with you. What I won’t do, not even for my own safety, is censor myself or try and anticipate every horrible way someone might choose to misinterpret something I've written or said.

 If anything, that just makes my point for me about how free speech is being compromised. It's a tough environment to publish comic books in because every publisher is terrified by the spectrum of extreme possible reactions from an increasingly intolerant environment where everybody's playing "gotcha" and looking for the worst possible and most extremely negative interpretations of everything.

The whole point of free speech is my duty to defend others' rights to have it, not to shout them down or demonize them.

[throwpillowshavenopurpose]

Okay so...

I know I’m going to get lots of hate because it’s been a while since Japril and Jaggie were “fighting” but with the recent season direction going where it’s going, I feel like I should explain why I don’t like Jaggie. I never really did that, and maybe it’s too late, but, eh, oh well.

Also, I haven’t seen a lot of Japril on my newsfeed thing, which is also another reason I’m posting this. I don’t want Japril to end. Just because the show killed it doesn’t mean we have to stop shipping it.

Okay so first, unlike many Japril fans, I DONT HATE MAGGIE. When she first enter the show, i though she was cool. She was a dork and I related to her because of that, like I first did with April. Her storyline was brilliant, and I loved how she acted with everyone. Like she was this incredible smart young lady who was incredibly brave enough to move to a new city all on her own to meet her real parents, and took the possibility of them not like her as a chance. Maggie was amazing. She was a really amazing chracter who has delt with things other characters haven’t and she was just a splash of something new to the cast. She gave the audience a person to relate to.

Okay now we get to the real stuff.

She doesn’t have chracter development. A good chracter slowly changes in front of your eyes. That’s what good characters do. That’s why we love watching them. She never really did that. In fact, I think she has become less than the chracter she was. All she does now is complain. She doesn’t really have a personality. It almost seems like she’s nothing more then Jackson’s love interest. It’s not fair to her or her fans. She deserves more.

They (Jaggie) don’t have a foundation. They aren’t really standing on anything. I love Japril to death, but honestly if the writing had build Jaggie right, if they would have slowly build up their relationship, Jackson and Maggie getting to know each other very subtle like instead of just making them talk for the first time since, what? Months. Having a “deep” very force talk and sudden Jackson liking her, I wouldn’t have mind. Or you know, the deep moment talk wasn’t that bad, if the writters would have then used the next season AND I MEAN THE WHOLE SEASON to allow them to get to know each other. Then on the last episode, THATS when Jackson realizes he likes her. That would have been okay with me. I wouldn’t have like it, BUT I WOULD HAVE RESPECT it. Because then at least I could see how it happen instead of a snap of my fingers and sudden they’re head over heels for each other.

It’s rushed, and that’s why it’s bad. Jaggie relationship is the equivalent of the “I know I just met her, but I think I love her” in bad fanfics. Japril relationship (and I’m talking about human connection, not love) started season 6. They did not rush. It was lovely and great and it could have happen in real life which is why it was so freaking brilliant! It made sense. Jaggie doesn’t make sense. And really, it’s super unrealistic.

There isn’t an actual storyline. If you think about it, Jaggie is actually Japril storyline, just with an added chracter. I like the idea of Jackson and Maggie, who have never really know about each other but working at the same place for a long time slowly realizing that the person they wanted was there the whole time. I think that’s an amazing storyline but they didn’t go along with that. They just got them together real fast. And then the whole brother and sister thing happen and I was like ‘oh, okay, this is going to be interesting. Are they going to try to stay away from each and hide their feels for one another because their technically siblings, but doing so builds the foundation they desperately need in order to get together, and then when they do, it’s going to be this epic thing because it doesn’t matter what the law says if they really like each other?’ BUT THEY DIDNT DO THAT EITHER. They kind of pushed them together and then focused on April, relaying on her storyline to be entertaining enough.

Jaggie fans are settling. I understand why so many people want to support Jaggie. Why they want to believe that Jaggie is this amazing ship. They want to believe so bad that they overlook every reason why the ship is bad. Maggie, again, was an amazingly build chracter at the start that deserved a equally amazing partner. Maggie fans deserve an epic love story too. They deserve little catch phrase like ‘me and you’ and hot bathroom makeout sense. But instead they’re getting forced towel bathroom talk and bad flirting and...I don’t know what else... I skipped them when ever I still watch the show. They should be settling for this forced relationship. They deserve more.

Jesse (Jackson’s actor) is clearly a Japril fan. He has admitted that his favorite sense from the whole show were with April over and over again. Just google it. In recent interview he talks about how much he love it and how Sarah (April) and him have work so hard to create such a beautiful couple.

The writters stole Japril from right under our feet. We have need in this ship for SUCH A LONG TIME. I even have a picture of them on my wall. What Jaggie fans have to understand is how we were so attach to this ship and suddenly the writters are telling us it’s not going to happen. OF COURSE we weren’t just going to accept that. OF COURSE we would fight back every way we can. OF COURSE we would get angry and upset that the thing we held so precious to us, the thing we (in a way) help build was taking from us and then given to a very bad, not even thought fully of ship. And the things I read on twitter after episodes from Jaggie fans made me feel really bad. They were dissing us. And I know we’re not innocent either. Hell, im sure I rebloged a couple of Jaggie hate stuff. But what happen to Japril was unfair, you have to see that. Which bring me to my last point.

We all got screwed over. Jaggie fans. Japril fans. Jackson fans. Maggie fans. April fans. Arizona fans. WE ALL GOT SCREW OVER. Arizona’s and April’s actors got fired to get out of the way. Writers did a awful job of ending April’s storyline, making her marry a guy she clearly wasn’t in love with (without any of her family let me remind you) in order to kill Japril. Maggie has because less of chracter, labeled as nothing more than ‘Jackson’s girlfriend’ and does nothing more than whine. She has no real personality. Jackson is a completely different chracter. He’s all over the place and now he left to ‘figure things out’ which means the amazing Jaggie storyline Jaggie fans wanted is nothing but some rocky crap. Now there’s no April, no Arizona, no Jackson, Maggie with barley any storyline and a whole billion (I believe so) so done with this show they are no longer watching.

Okay..I’m done.

[lastgenpodcast]

The Marvelous Captain Marvel

​Captain Marvel is the latest entry in the MCU lineup, and my most anticipated of 2019. This is finally the first movie with a female superhero lead, though it still boggles my mind that Black Widow never got one, and takes us back in time with Carol Danvers origin story as Captain Marvel. After Black Panther’s break through last year and success with seven Academy Award nominations, this movie had some big shoes to fill. So, the question is, how did our lady do?

First, some spoiler free thoughts for those who are still pending a viewing of the film. As a woman, I was clearly on the train for a good superhero film. I enjoyed Wonder Woman immensely and felt that, while it had its own hurdles, the film was one of DC’s best in a long time. With that qualification, I can say that I actually enjoyed Captain Marvel more than Wonder Woman. I loved the 90s soundtrack in the movie, which I found more engaging than Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The character development was done well, though there were no crazy twists and turns that were not televised. It was also interesting to see the “start” of the MCU - the pre -Avengers Initiative pitched by Fury at the end of Iron Man, which I still remember got a huge pop in the theater. The very opening of the movie will get a tear out of every Marvel fan. The colors popped when they really needed to and the special effects were gorgeously integrated into the movie that allowed it to feel grounded while taking you to the skies. The only issue that I had with the film was in the first half of the film - the camera work in the fight scenes. I don’t like that hand-held, close up view of a fight - pull back and let me see what’s going on. Other than that, I can confidently say that Captain Marvel did not disappoint and made me excited to see how they continue to use the character going forward.

Alright, now let’s enter into spoiler territory. From here on out, I want to dive a little more into specifics, but I won’t go into the entire storyline as I think that that’s not as important as some pieces.

First, I feel like I should say that, while I have dabbled in the comic book world and enjoyed my fair share of Marvel, I have not had the opportunity to read Captain Marvel and so I was not familiar with her, her story, or even the differences between the Skrull and Kree races - the only exposure to them was via the MCU films and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series (which I have unfortunately not had time to keep up with for the past few seasons). However, even with my limited knowledge, this film did a great job of ensuring that no prior understanding was required. I’m sure if you had more familiarity there might have been some fun nuggets, but nothing was necessary for this viewer’s enjoyment.

As a movie that played around with timelines, there’s always the possibility of confusion on the viewer’s part. However, this movie, while giving us plenty of glimpses into Carol’s past, was never disorienting to the extent that I was taken out of the movie or had difficulty following the storyline. They did a brilliant job casting McKenna Grace, who you may have seen as young Theo in The Haunting of Hill House, as teenage Carol - she again shows great acting acumen and promise for great things in her future career. The sequence where we see the greatness that makes Carol superior than any Kree allows Grace to shine as brightly as Larson and cements the fact that it’s not how many times you’re knocked down, but how many times you get up that matters. Without that terrific young actress in this role, I feel that the movie might have not have had the impact it did, especially with younger viewers.

Ok, so, let’s discuss a bit more about our heroine. While Marvel loves to have the main character tied to someone that is already familiar to the viewer, I feel like it’s done in such a different way in this film that I don’t think it’s actually comparable to the prior situations. Usually, the new character, despite being the main character, can sometimes be outshone by the familiar face - or rather the familiar face is there to help our character because the main character has some weakness that precludes them from fully realizing their true potential and the familiar character acts almost as a guide of sorts. In Winter Soldier, Black Widow is there to help Captain America navigate the new world on his own and his dealing with what Bucky has become. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, you had Tony there to guide Peter in this new life as a superhero with all the fancy gadgets, though the scene in Civil War should have given it away that Peter was doing pretty well in his friendly neighborhood hero role. Many times, the films seem to force the main character off to the side while the familiar face walks them through their own film. Here, however, in Captain Marvel, Danvers is not overshadowed or pushed aside. While we have Fury as the familiar face, Danvers actually takes on the role of tutor to Fury’s young agent. He has no idea about the vastness of the universe and what is possibly out there that could threaten the world he is living in. Danvers never needs to rely on Fury, at most, they work as a team with both characters holding their own. And the fact that they did not brush aside our main character shows that the writers knew they could not do that to our female heroine - which is similar to Wonder Woman. Both of these heroines show that they do not need the male counterpart in their film to be successful or to get things done.

The writers also gave Danvers a great sense of humor - while she’s not as one-liner witty as Starlord or snarky as Stark - she has her own understated humor that hits when it needs to but doesn’t define her character. The other great part of Danvers is how she carries herself. One of the people I watched the movie with denoted that Danvers holds herself with confidence throughout the film, not cockiness. This distinction allows for the viewer to fall in love with her more than say the cocky Iron Man or Starlord, who come off as somewhat obnoxious at times. I love that there was no typical woman discovering her strength or beauty - Danvers knew she was strong but once she realized how strong she was throughout her life, she became even more powerful.

Speaking of strong women, Danvers counterpart Maria Rambeau is another character worthy of praise. I loved that not only was she Danvers flying partner, they had a deep connection that was clear despite the small pieces that the viewer gets of it. There was no typical girl fighting or competition that can sometimes tank female relationships. Both women had their own strength and they recognized the other’s. An important scene that needs to be called out is the one where Danvers shows up to Rambeau’s place after the years she’s been “dead” - there was no fighting or hurtful doubting that soured their relationship. It was acknowledged that Rambeau was deeply hurt that her friend had gone, but she didn’t need it explained that Danvers had no control of her disappearance. They did what the best of friends can do - they easily fell back into their friendship routine of jokes and taking care of each other. This is what true female empowerment is about - no bitterness or jealousy, just understanding and love. You want to embolden women - show this type of relationship more in movies.

Speaking of relationships, I need to point out the thing that was lacking in this film - but that was lacking in a good way. There was absolutely no love interest for Danvers. There was no time where she was put into that trope of female in love - the closest we get is her friendship with Rambeau, but this does not prevent her from taking care of what she needs to take care of, at the end especially. They didn’t do the love interest with Danvers’ teacher or some past love that she was trying to figure out. This film allowed Danvers to shine as her own independent person without being defined by someone or something else controlling her emotions. If anything, this film shows that being in control of your own emotions, while acknowledging they are there, is its own super power. Jude Law’s character, Yon-Rogg, is the one pushing Danvers to be less emotional - a clear parallel to how women are spoken to most of their lives. How many times do we classify a woman as “hysterical” while a man doing the same would be “passionate”? Yon-Rogg constantly tries to push Danvers to put away her emotions, but she finds out that there is power in harnessing those emotions and allowing them to work for her. Fighting them just leads to worse outcomes, while embracing them, along with her entire being, takes her to the next level and puts her above everyone else. She can truly do anything once she accepts who and what she is - all of it. I can’t think of a better message for all females.

While I’m sure there’s plenty that I missed after my first viewing, I can say that this movie did not disappoint. It lived up to my own internal hype and brought me a strong female character that I want to show off to everyone. Celebrate women and support this movie by going to see it on the big screen. Show Marvel that they should have done a female-centered movie long before this, but if waiting allowed this to be their first, then huzzah!

[jacktherph]

Hi, Jack! We are a new murder mystery roleplay inspired by A Series of Unfortunate Events with new plot twists and characters. We would love some feedback. May we please have an opinion? Please, feel free to take as much time as you need. Thank you so much! We really appreciate it!

hi there @unfortunate-rp​! i’m happy to give you an opinion. since you didn’t specify private, i will post this on my blog. feel free to ask me to take it down if that was a mistake.

NOTE: all opinions expressed here are mine, jack’s, belonging to jack. i make no claims to knowing what is best for every group – i only offer advice based on my experiences, what i’ve seen in the community, and my personal knowledge. no one person knows what is best for you or any group other than yourself; because you were the one who put all of this together in the first place. so take everything i say as a suggestion, and remember that you have accomplished so much!!

and if you have any questions, want feedback on something specific, or want elaborations on anything said in this opinion, don’t hesitate to message me!!

this isn’t just an opinion, it’s a shoutout and a rec!! any fans of the asoue book series &/or recent netflix adaptation will adore this rpg. it perfectly captures everything snicket was about from beginning to end and the skeletons are frankly fucking amazing. what a creative admin team!! 

start: 2.30 | pause: none | end: 2.58TOTAL: HERE 28 minutes to read all pages (please don’t take this as a measure of anything, I simply time myself and am a speed reader)

*spelling error on /uptown: Mureau Cinema -- Christmas

So the first thing I’m going to say before I go into the full details of each page and contents and such is that I have one big recommendation: finding a way to adjust your line height in your code. The common theme I ran into while reading all of your pages is that after a while my eyes would gloss over certain sentences because I thought I was reading each line but they were too bunched together. Because you have such beautiful pages with so much information to give to your members, this is super important. If you’d like me to see if I can find that part of your code for you, feel free to IM me at any time and I’ll be happy to help.

My first impression of everything is a big fat fucking WOW. From the pages to the graphics to even the way you word things I feel like I’ve been transported back to that dreadfully delightful macabre world Snicket created for me as a child. I don’t know if you’ve been given proper praise for that yet but if you haven’t you certainly deserve it. You have a functional and helpful theme that works for what you need from it and your design of everything is both simple and artistic at the same time. When you have a new acceptance posted the dual ember gifs make it feel like there’s a lot going on but it’s not consistent, with too many repeated or flashing gifs, and so there’s not anything you need to do to change that in my opinion. It just tends to happen with graphics that use the same images. Really though, please feel extremely accomplished about the tone and theme you set on your main. I’ve never gotten more of an impression of what an rpg is about by one glance than I do here.

Your Plot is astounding. Disregarding the fact that you wrote it just like Snicket, I think this is one of the most original fandom concepts I’ve seen in some time. This was the perfect story to be able to take away from the canon and still keep it within the realm of possibility. I’m actually really glad you did this so well because this way people can still have all of the fun of the storyline and plots and not have to worry about the possibility of “playing a canon character wrong” or trying to fit it into the canon of the books/show.

I’ll sort of go into all of your lore pages as a whole rather than go through every single page? Because the love and dedication you’ve taken to ensure potential members and your members have everything they need in order to work within the worldbuilding of your group. I can seriously appreciate that as an admin of a group with a ton of lore, myself. That you go into so much detail on the locations pages and everything about VFD, you make it so your main is the one-stop shop for information rather than asking people to go elsewhere like a wikia page and I’m gonna shout my praises to you for that!

So your Guidelines are something I’m a little iffy on -- and I’m gonna say this is honestly the only thing I really find debatable about your rpg. The very nature of the ASOUE series was about children being involved in all of the gruesome stuff that comes with being an adult; so in that I can see why you allow writers of any age. But you also have content warnings such as smut, violence, drugs, and etc. and state that the roleplay itself will have mature themes and contents. So that being said, I have two moral issues: allowing members under 18 and the playing of characters who are minors. Generally I’m against playing characters who are minors of any kind. That results in using FCs who are minors and yes, while they are celebrities, it gives the potential for undue associations with the child star. Have you considered possibly keeping children out of the RPG except for in the case of mentioned NPCs? Regarding the “members under 18” bit, honestly that one isn’t as much of a big deal so long as your members are tagging and using read-mores where and when needed, but i’ll include that it will deter a certain number of people from joining your group. I’m not telling you to change anything -- but these are things I think you should maybe think about and consider adding changes to?

Your Skeletons and Faceclaims are so widely wonderful and diverse. You have such a wide range of trans characters and I always look for that in RPGs. But you’re also extremely body positive and age positive as well. This is what the faceclaim page of every rpg should look like, so applause for you. I only looked at a few of your skeletons to get a feel for them, but from what I did look at each one is unique in their own way and you have done an impressive job weaving them in with not only one another but the story. Each one has an important role to play and none feel like they’re just there for any sort of token points. You must have put a lot of work into this and you admin/s need to recognize that this immense amount of creativity is brilliantly impressive.

Personally, I think all you need to do is link to your skeleton page with the filters, rather than having a whole page with links that bring people to the tags the filters divide by, but that is more of a suggestion and if you find what you have works for you then there’s nothing more to be said. As for the images on the skeleton page: you obviously make them fit better with the psd/texture, which I like, but some of them still stick out in their brightness. Maybe go back and look at them and dim some of them individually or try to get them with a matching color hue to make them seem a little more uniform?? But the distinction between npcs and skeletons with the monochrome is great.

Overall your graphics match very well!! Your character template is perfect for the vibe and the psd you have on your images ensures they all look very uniform and put-together. The sidebar gif on the homepage feels a little left out compared to the rest, though? I don’t know if you have a lot of history working with gif editing but either changing the size, adding the psd, or adding a little SOMETHING to it might make it seem a little less “floating on it’s own in a void” in your sidebar.

Your Applications, both of them, are very well thought out and you definitely ask for everything that I can see being necessary in this group. Some in the community are against fully fleshed out apps like this but those who see your group and see the effort in your applications should feel inspired with everything that they answer!! You even provide links for them in helping find occupations and such, and that’s going above and beyond. My one thing is…. Why are both applications on bright white backgrounds and not set as pages of your main? It’s just confusing to me, nothing big. And the white sort of startles me after looking at your darker-colored pages for such a long time.

My FAVORITE THING about your rpg: the complete-ness of it all. I genuinely cannot think of one thing I would like to see here, information or rpg-wise, that would help me as a potential member understand your rpg better. You obviously put so much work into everything here and I could not be more thrilled. As the story goes on you might add more pages or such but for an rpg that hasn’t opened yet (at the time I’m writing this) there is NOTHING that needs adding, in my opinion.

My LEAST FAVORITE THING about your rpg: I’m… struggling to find something, but I guess if I had to pick it would be the layout of your applications -- how they exist on a white page rather than within a page on your main. It’s just slightly jarring to go from all that darkness to a bright white page. Think about putting them as pages on your theme and honestly you’re good to go??

OVERALL this is probably one of the best examples of a put-together skeleton and bio rpg I’ve ever seen. Like, I don’t even know anything about the series beyond the show and I had to stop myself from joining while writing this opinion. Even if someone knows nothing about the fandom they could be coaxed to join after just taking a few minutes to look at everything you’ve put together and provided for people. You didn’t leave anything I could think of out and included more than I would have thought if I were the one putting this rpg together. The fact that you may have done this solo stuns me even more. This is an rpg everyone should check out because it has everything people are looking for: diversity, depth, a well-formed plot, and the potential to last for some time with the right cast and crew behind it.

Well fucking done.

Sincerely,Jack

[onedayatatimeblog]

Episode 2: “Bobos and Mamitas”

One Day at a Time

Sofia Christophel-Lichti

Key Characters in the Episode

↠ Penelope (MC): US Army Nurse Corps Veteran; single mother of two

↠ Elena: Penelope’s daughter

↠ Alex: Penelope’s son

↠ Lydia: Penelope’s mother and Elena and Alex’s grandmother  

↠ Dr. Berkowitz: Penelope’s boss at work

↠ Lori: Penelope’s coworker, secretary

↠ Scott: Penelope’s coworker, nurse

Episode Summary

At the start of the episode, Penelope is discussing her plans for presenting an idea at her staff meeting and her worry about being interrupted by her coworker, Scott. And at the meeting, exactly what she described occurs. She gets ignored. When Penelope shares her experience in the work environment, Elena is astounded by her mother’s lack of anger surrounding the sexism she experienced. As a family, they then unpack their different perspectives on sexism. A sub-storyline emerges at this point about Elena’s lack of being taken seriously at school with her compost initiative, and Lydia encouraging her to wear makeup to gain attention. She does so, but hates it. The next day at work, Scott ends up being praised for the same idea that Penelope proposed the previous day, and it sends her into a fury. Penelope also learns that Scott’s paid five dollars more an hour than her, and after hearing that she quits. The episode concludes with Dr Berkowitz begging for Penelope to come back to work and agrees on a fair and higher salary. Lastly, Lydia shows Elena what she looks like without makeup, and they reconcile.

Racism and Sexism in the Workplace

At the initial staff meeting where her ideas are overshadowed and interrupted by Scott, the white male nurse, nobody seems to be aware of the dynamics of the group. Penelope’s office mates consist of Dr. Berkowitz, an aloof seeming yet loving white male doctor, Scott, the unyielding and self-assured white male nurse, and Lori, the totally oblivious and ditsy white female secretary. When Dr. Berkowitz agrees with Scott’s dismissal of Penelope’s idea, Scott says “there’s a reason why this guy has been running the office for so long” (Wolfe). And Dr. Berkowitz responds with “I must say I'm very attracted to the concept of nothing changing… status quo it is!” (Wolfe). There’s a lot to unpack here. I think sitcoms do a great job at presenting narratives blatantly and clearly to the audience. Watching this episode, it is clear that the takeaway should be thinking critically about how women of color are often overlooked and ignored. The white male characters clearly state that they are happy in the status quo, and that is because it best serves them. I think this scene speaks to a broader sense of society: people of color proposing change and white people in power denying the need for it. The way the patriarchy perpetuates is through people living in a state of denial and rationalization, which is exactly what is exhibited in this scene. “The default is to adopt the dominant version of reality and act as though it is the only one there is” (Johnson). Dr. Berkowitz and Scott clearly implore the status quo because it is built to hold up and empower white cis males like them.

In the scene later in the episode where Penelope opens up with her coworkers about her treatment in the workplace, Scott becomes very defensive. He claims he was completely unaware of how he was treating her and even pulls out the term “reverse sexism.” Since nursing is a field mainly dominated by women, Scott claims that Penelope is being sexist to him by attacking him for his actions. I think this opens up discussion surrounding the system of patriarchy and gender-based oppression. Many men view patriarchy as a criticism of male privilege and take it to mean that all men are oppressive people, and this is clearly how Scott feels. His contention with Penelope’s argument stems from the fact that he doesn’t want to face the consequences of giving up male privilege (Johnson). Outside of the two of them, Lori acts almost helpless. She attempts to back up Penelope's argument by relating to her about motherhood, but as Penelope rebuttals, Lori only has dogs. I think this speaks to the role of white women in the movement to liberate women of color. While good intentioned, white women will never be able to fully relate with the lived experience of women of color. And for that reason, white women should not be speaking for them in any context. What Lori could’ve done was amplified Penelope’s voice in the initial meeting, but she was oblivious to the social dynamics then. I think this reflects the ability of white women to opt in and out of uncomfortable conversations and situations that women of color are forced to live through constantly. Lori got to pick and choose her involvement in and action against the sexist and racist dynamics in the office. The way Penelope is treated at work because she's a woman and because she is Cuban cannot be separated. She lives her life with a sexual identity combined with a racial identity which makes her life situation unique. There is no way to fully separate and analyze the two, as they are fully interconnected.

Gender Identity and Sexuality

All of the characters are presumed to be cis-gender and heterosexual, and this episode doesn’t really dig in or challenge either of those assumptions. Later in other seasons of the the show, I know that comes up, but not in this specific episode.

Unpacking Feminism

Penelope’s experiences at work bring about an interesting conversation at home surrounding feminism and sexism. Elena, an adolescent, has a fervent view that her mother is experiencing sexism in the workplace, but Penelope dismisses it. She describes being catcalled in the army as what real sexism looks like. Elena then retorts “I’m not talking about old people sexism” (Wolfe). She then says that nowadays “men assert their power through micro aggressions and mansplaining” (Wolfe). I think this is a prime example of the generational progress we as a society are making in the sense that younger people are aware and discussing deep social systems and dynamics. Elena attempts to empower her mother to stand up for herself in the face of injustice. This generational divide is stretched even further when Lydia says “you will never win men over by confronting them… they’d be so upset to know you’re the boss” (Wolfe). This receives canned studio laughter, but the message cuts deep. To the generation Lydia’s character represents, this secretive, passive power seemed normal, but to Elena and the young people she represents, this thought is appalling. The conversation concludes with Alex saying “I’m glad I'm a guy so I don’t have to think about sexism” and his family members giving him a side-eye glance (Wolfe). This also reflects the sentiments of many men who hold a “not my problem” attitude. This position is obviously not on the right track. It is a known dynamic shift that when men object to sexist language, they can shake other men’s perception of what is socially acceptable (Johnson). This is what fuels the fire to systemic change, men using their position of privilege to uphold feminist ideas and respectful attitudes. Alex, a young character, doesn’t seem to have a hold on that idea, but because of the family of all women he is in and the look they gave him at the end of the scene, I assume that conversation will continue in later episodes.

The sub-narrative of this episode surrounds Elena and Lydia’s relationships with makeup. Elena’s composting initiative at school is being ignored and Lydia suggests that she wear makeup to gain attention. Lydia reveals that she never lets anyone see her without makeup; it acts as sort of her armor. I think because of the time period in which Lydia’s character grew up, she was expected to fulfill the made up housewife role. The show does a great job at framing her experiences as shocking and outdated. Elena then wears makeup to school, receives attention for it, and then removes it. This concept is almost impossible for Lydia to understand as she sees attention from boys and eyes on her makeup as a positive, but to Elena it is not. To people who have grown up bombarded by messages in the media that we need makeup to be attractive, Lydia’s stance applies. But Elena really breaks the mold by upholding her own self security above others’ opinions. In the media, women often appear in the context of “entertainment, home and personal relationships” (Kirk). And this cultural phenomena has an impact of how women view their role in society. It is directly reflected in the media. I think Elena’s position and self-assurance that she doesn’t need makeup to be taken seriously is a beautiful example of resistance to oppression.

Current Implications

This show in general does a great job at representing the Cuban culture, sexism in the workplace, and covert racism as well. In my opinion, the connections displayed between this show and societal implications are constant. Sitcoms by and large blatantly target specific problems in their stories lines and the characters pretty plainly address them.

Works Cited

Johnson, Allan G. (1997). Patriarchy, The System: an It, Not a He, a Them, or an Us. In Gendered Lives: Intersectional Perspectives (7th ed., pp. 2-17). Oxford University Press.

Kirk, G., & Okazawa-Rey, M. (2020). Creating Knowledge: Media Representations and the Creation of Knowedge. In Gendered Lives: Intersectional Perspectives (7th ed., pp. 2-17). Oxford University Press.

Wolfe, D. (Staff Writer), & Hochman, S. (Co-Producer). (2017, January 6). Bobos and Mamitas (Season 1, Episode 2) [TV series episode]. In N. Lear & B. Miller (Executive Producers), One Day at a Time. Netflix.

[jlf23tumble]

(1/?) Hi – x files anon here, from @alienfuckeronmain’s blog. I saw your reblog and now have more thoughts! About what you said about first season mulder and scully characterizations – I don’t know about “high-talker” but I just watched the pilot, and pilot-Mulder is just.. *off*. Way, way too hyper and manic, with the crazy theories and the pressured speech. I mean, it’s a pilot, and we have make allowances for the fact that the show hadn’t settled into

(2/?) what it was going to be, but I’m glad that they toned down that part of his characterization, because it made it even more implausible that someone like him would be working at the FBI. Also… I know that the premise of this show that you have to accept is that Mulder will ultimately be proven right, but I just can’t help watching those first episodes as an adult and thinking, “oh Scully, you’ve got SUCH a promising career ahead of you. PLEASE don’t hitch your wagon to this nutcase.”

(3/?) And for the wardrobe stuff… I guess I never really noticed early-season Mulder having a bad wardrobe. But then again, Duchovny was hot in anything, and everything – including those high-waisted 90s jeans – looked good on him. The man had a seriously beautiful body, but one that didn’t look like it was chiselled out of clay, or synthetically made in some gym-lab the way Hollywood male bodies typically look.

(4/?) As for Scully’s wardrobe, I kinda like the characterization of it being a bit plain and unvarnished. She’s obviously very early on in her career, and she spent her 20s in med school and residency, where your wardrobe is limited to scrubs and jeans and sweats with the name of your undergrad school stamped on them, so I totally buy that she doesn’t have a clear idea of what a high-achieving career woman should dress like.

(5/?)And I see both sides of the argument – Gillian Anderson is a pretty lady, and maybe she’s not as conventionally pretty as Duchovny, so the wardrobe frumpiness weighs more heavily on her, so it would be nice if they dressed her up a bit better. But, I’m more of the opinion that… sigh… why does everyone have to be glammed up? They’re government agents, not fashion models. The frumpiness fits, no?

(6/?)And as I’m writing this, I wonder if the earlier suit choices were an homage to Clarice Starling – didn’t she look a bit frumpy, with kind of the same brown gingham jacket that scully had in the pilot, that Hannibal mocked her for? I also clicked on your links for x files fanfic, and omg the internet was soooo cute back then! I wanna pinch its cheeks! I’ve been hitting AO3 for M/K fanfic, but I’ll try those too – thanks! If you’ve got any specific recs though, I would love to hear them!

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HELLO TO YOU, TOO, X Files anon! I’m so glad @alienfuckeronmain sent you my way because yes, yes, I can talk about these topics for hours and hours, and I’ll try to keep it at a normal level for everyone else, but it’s Halloween! If you can’t go awf about these two today of all days, when can you? Apart from 2/23 and 10/13, amirite?? Before we get too far into casting and clothing, I’m going to rec a fabulous time-waster from mid-fandom times, and that’s Jessica’s brilliant recaps on Television without Pity....here’s the link to the X Files in general (they’re ranked from most recent, and don’t ask me why, but there are a ton of gaps??? Are these just Jessica’s greatest hits or what?). but if you read nothing else, check out the recap for the pilot here because it does a FANTASTIC job of gently mocking everything about the place where it all started (and the manic high talking).

You are absolutely right on the money about the link to Clarice Starling, she seems to be the blueprint for early Scully in all kinds of way, and if you watch the pilot, you, much like Mulder, will wonder exactly who she pissed off to draw the short card here, but she’s eager and curious and coming from med school, and he’s a total pariah (not wrongfully so), and she was hired by the Cigarette Smoking Man and Blevins and the other assholes running the joint to basically spy on him (worst case) and discredit him (best case), but that’s not how it all pans out. 

I think the beauty of this show, especially in its earlier days, was that Mulder was not always right--he usually had wild hunches and went for it, but a lot of credit went to Scully for actually trying to ground his crazy ass in cold, hard facts. Spooky Mulder was in the basement for a reason, and one thing I loved about this show was that he totally Got It, he could mock her hard on for science all he wanted, but he also appreciated the credibility she brought to the operation, and he respected the hell out of her. Hard to believe how ground-breaking that was and still is, tbh. To me, some of the more interesting episodes in that regard were when they switched POVs: when Scully was faced with something related to her faith that made her believe something she couldn’t see or prove, and how whatever that thing was turned Mulder into a scathing asshole skeptic, how he couldn’t believe she’d “fall for that crap” when he basically fell for it every day. Much to think about, or so the writers were hoping, lmao.

As for casting, I’ve read alllllll the interviews, and from what Chris Carter says, Fox (of course) wanted someone who was hotter, more of the “Pam Anderson” type to be Scully, so the studio fought hard against casting her, but everyone, including Duchovny, pushed to keep her, which was pretty amazing when you consider how young she was, the overall lack of a budget here, and just what a weird show it was in context. She got pregnant a year or so into it, but by then, Scully was rock solid, and it turned into a pretty great storyline, so no worries.

As for clothes, even to this DAY, I have friends in Washington who swear there’s a deliberate style of dress for certain offices to prove how “serious” you are about your work, and this would have been doubly true for 1990s FBI...one of the gripes was that in later years, Armani or someone was dressing Mulder, and Scully had this killer wardrobe, and howwwwww on their budgets and with these types of jobs? Won’t someone think of the GS-10 pay grade???

Anyway, I’ll shut up now, but I love people revisiting it from day one! It’s probably even MORE dated with every passing day, but check out all the fic and read those recaps! I wish I had actual recs for you, but I’d need to go back and dig--you couldn’t really save them without literally copying and pasting, and I simply didn’t do that since all the archives were there to, uh, archive. Have I mentioned lately how wonderful it is that ao3 lets your bookmark, download, and subscribe? Because it’s pretty goddamned wonderful!

[nclkafilms]

A Resounding Work of Cinematic Magic

(Review of ‘The Shape of Water’, seen in Nordisk Film Biografer Kennedy in Aalborg on the 22nd of February 2018)

It’s a heartfelt romance, an homage to classic monster films and a gritty cold war thriller. But above all, Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water is a fairytale of the most magical kind. Del Toro who has struggled to gain appreciation for his work after fascinating us all with the stunning El Labyrinto del Fauno (2006), here returns to his winning formula from said film: a magical, escapist fairytale set against the backdrop of brutal, real world events. The Spanish civil war has been changed to the cold war and the space race between the US and the Soviets and in stead of the young Ophelia we follow middle-aged Elisa; a cleaning lady at a top secret US science facility. Apart from this, The Shape of Water is bursts with the same creative grandeur, fable-like imagination and heartfelt emotions that made El Labyrinto del Fauno such a hit. And yet, they are completely different films.

As already said, The Shape of Water, follows Elisa Esposito; a mute, whose shy and somewhat introvert personality suits her job as the cleaning lady, who has to simply just blend in and clean without observing or engaging with anything in the science facility she works in together with regular colleague Zelda. At home she spends her days with the same routines and usually together with her equally secluded neighbour, Giles, who is a now downcast artist living alone with his cats. One day, however, the regular routines and repetitive everyday life of Elisa is turned upside down as a new “asset” is brought into the facility; a strange man-like fishy creature with whom Elisa quickly forms a special bond centred around their common lack of speaking abilities. The asset, however, is shrouded in mystery as it is heavily guarded and tortured by new head of security, Richard Strickland, who is attached to find out what secrets the creature holds and how it can help the Americans win the space race with the Russians. As things escalate, all characters are forced to take a stand and decide which side they are on with the risk of grave, personal consequences.

As the main character, Elisa, Sally Hawkins delivers one of the most profound and stunning performances of recent years. To do so without uttering a single word throughout the film is a proof of just how good an actress she is. She perfectly captures the shy yet confident nature of the introvert Elisa as she suddenly finds a true confidant in the amphibian man who - with her own words - sees her for who she is and not what she lacks. Her performance is as powerful as it is heart-wrenchingly fragile. I, for one, completely believed in the character and her growing relationship to the odd creature; Hawkins’ mannerisms and use of body language was deeply fascinating and complex. A necessary level of performance for the film and story to work; casting  when it is done to perfection!

Opposite her is the “two men in her life” (which is beautifully shown in a panning shot from outside their neighbouring apartments in the second half of the film) is veteran Richard Jenkins as Elisa’s neighbour Giles and Del Toro’s recurring “creature man” Doug Jones as the amphibian man. Jenkins turns in a scene stealing performance as the odd, suppressed gay friend who struggles to realise the exact nature of any of his interhuman relationships. He is also the comic relief in a quite a few instances and his chemistry with Hawkins is simply heartwarming. Jones, whose job is obviously somewhat hidden by the mix of prosthetics and CGI, manages to pour a lot of humanity into the scales of the water creature. His body language shifts fiercely from delicate curiosity towards Elisa to frighteningly brutality when threatened. Make no mistake; this is the work of Jones and a testament to abilities as an actor. He strikes a magical chemistry with Hawkins.

The remaining, stellar cast is made up of Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon and Michael Stuhlbarg. Spencer, although slightly typecast, delivers her best performance since The Help as the constantly talking and loyal friend to Elisa, Zelda, who is often given the job of putting words to Elisa’s gestures. Shannon, however, is a manic powerhouse constantly balancing on the edge of blatant over-acting as the embodiment of the cynical America; demeaning towards each and every other character and brutally violent, he acts with such a nerve that he carries the cold war thriller aspect of the film on his perfectly capable shoulders. Opposite him in this part of the story, is Michael Stuhlbarg’s dubious doctor who faces the ethical dilemma of choosing between his chosen way in life or that of the mysterious, fascinating and beautiful creature that speaks to his scientific heart.

All in all, this is cast that strikes a near perfect chemistry between all the central characters making their omission from the SAG ensemble award (they weren’t even nominated) nothing but baffling!

They are, of course, all controlled by a firm, confident and most importantly loving hand from director and writer Guillermo del Toro. In his recent BAFTA acceptance speech he spoke about how monsters had saved him on several occasions and how, in many ways, there were his best friends. This love for and understanding of monsters, the obscure, runs through every vain of this film. It is a work of love and imagination with a level of sincerity towards its subject matter that is extremely refreshing in 2018 Hollywood due to the increasing rarity of exactly this. He is perhaps the best modern storyteller of fairytales and despite some issues here and there in the story (e.g. a slightly rushed initial romance and some lose elements) the overall magic of the film quickly made me forget about this. Fairytales has never been about waterproof storylines that has to be 100% believable; quite the contrary. The essence of a fairytale is the magic and the way it mirrors the real world and here, The Shape of Water, serves as no less than an exquisite example.

Be aware, though, that this is very much an adult fairytale. Where El Labyrinto del Fauno was seen from the perspective of a child, this is an adult film from start to beginning. Sexual tension and desire is recurring topic whether it is in Elisa’s daily bath routines, Giles’ misunderstood relation with the local café’s servant or Strickland’s need to control women. The sexuality of the story comes to a beautiful conclusion ultimately captured in a single shot of a bus window. The film also takes on many relevant political issues with suppressed individuality perhaps the biggest of them all: Elisa being an outsider due to her disability, Zelda experiencing racial discrimination, and Giles struggling to find acceptance for his sexuality. As highlighted by Octavia Spencer it is actually quite beautiful to see how the african-american woman and suppressed homosexual man becomes the voices of wisdom for the lonely Elisa as they take on the cynicism of the militarised world they live in.

Visually each and every frame of this film is pure eye candy thanks to the masterful cinematography by Danish Dan Laustsen (actually from my home town) and the imaginative, creative and beautiful production design by Paul D. Austerberry. The film has an estimated budget of just below $20,000,000, but the (mostly) physical sets looks like it was much more expensive than this, which is simply awe-inspiring in a time where CGI seems to be the main solution with budgets continuing to blow through the roof. The Shape of Water, is also a feast for the ears thanks to a whimsical, subtle and moving score by Alexandre Desplat, who once again shows why he is one of the absolute best in his field right now.

The film received no less than 13 Oscar nominations and is sure to go home with some of these. Whether it will win Best Picture or not is a big question (del Toro seems quite certain for Director), but no matter what del Toro has certainly found the appreciation he has longed for from Hollywood and it is a remarkable feat that this was done without the film feeling like anything but a del Toro film through and through. It’s a work of love and a celebration of the human nature. How should we deal with the darkness of the real world monstrosities? Del Toro’s answer always seems to be through the beauty and love of imagination. Thanks to this, he has created the perfect escape that simply HAS to be seen in the darkness of the cinema that hasn’t seen magic like this for years.

5/5

[mandibierly]

'Good Behavior' creator Chad Hodge on that Christmas episode shocker

Michelle Dockery as Letty and Juan Diego Botto as Javier in ‘Good Behavior’ (Photo: TNT)

The third episode of Good Behavior‘s second season may be the most enjoyable of the series to date. As star Michelle Dockery summed up for us, “It’s Christmas, and the audience is sort of lured into this false sense of security, like everything’s okay, Letty’s relationship with Estelle seems all right, and then of course, it takes a huge 180 at the end.”

That twist: Estelle (Lusia Strus) had told Agent Lashever (Ann Dowd) that she and Rob (Joey Kern) were taking Letty (Dockery) and Javier (Juan Diego Botto) to a luxury resort in the Smoky Mountains for the holidays while Jacob (Nyles Julian Steele) visited his dad. When the FBI finally made its move to arrest Javier for threatening an agent posing as a man stalking Estelle, Letty pulled a gun on him and Lashever — landing her in cuffs as well (which was not a part of Estelle’s plan).

The show’s co-creator, Chad Hodge, who penned the episode, “Because I’m Mrs. Claus,” broke down the hour for Yahoo Entertainment and teased what’s next.

What was the inspiration for this episode? Chad Hodge: During Season 1, like way back, I had this idea with the writers. I was like, “Wouldn’t it be funny if Rob takes everybody on a Christmas vacation, and then thinks it’s all inclusive and doesn’t have the money to pay for it, and so Letty has to help him steal money from the hotel in order to pay for the vacation?” I just thought it would be so funny to put Letty and Rob in their own storyline — so that’s where it started. Then it became this family vacation with Rob, Estelle, Letty, and Javier at a fancy hotel in the mountains of Tennessee, and, at the same time, Lashever is looking for them, so it’s got all this tension. And, also, Javier’s paranoid that someone’s trying to kill him, so there’s a lot going on in this episode.

Everybody is lying to each other for most of the episode, which made it challenging to write. Estelle is having Javier help her, because she says she has a stalker who’s at the hotel, and Javier says he’s going to take care of it, and then Letty and Rob are doing their thing, and Lashever’s looking for them [instead of just vacationing with Christian] — so it’s this big, fun episode.

My favorite part is when Rob has to dress up as an elf to get the room numbers from the kids in line waiting for Santa, so that Letty can go into those rooms when the parents aren’t there. We were just talking about Santa Claus and Christmas and stuff, and one of the writers, Chitra Sampath, told me how when she was little, the way she knew that Santa Claus wasn’t real is that she told Santa Claus one thing that she wanted for Christmas and then walked away, and her parents said, “What did you tell Santa you want for Christmas?” So she told her parents a different thing to test. I used that in the script, because I thought that was so funny.

Joey Kern as Rob, Dockery, Botto, and Lusia Strus as Estelle (Photo: TNT)

Rob’s toast to the family is so sweet. Totally, yeah. Rob has the biggest heart, and he’s the biggest yes person. He’ll help you with anything, he’ll be there for you, he loves this weird family. Like you said, the toast he gives at dinner is so heartfelt, and he didn’t feel at home with his own family, but he feels a part of this family, and this isn’t spoiling too much, but, eventually, Rob finds out what Javier does for a living, and then he kind of is like, “Well yeah, but, I mean, maybe he’s like a good kind of hitman. Like maybe he only kills bad guys.” Like he will just see the good in everybody. It’s an episode about family, and how families help and hurt each other. There’s a twist at the end…

With Javier and Letty getting arrested. That’s how it became a Good Behavior episode, because if it was just an episode about Letty helping Rob steal money from a hotel, it would be fun and cute, but it wouldn’t be enough of a thing. So we were really talking about, “What’s the thriller component to it? Where’s the tension?” I knew that I wanted them to get arrested, and to put them in the same world with Lashever, because the reality is a hitman, a thief, and her kid on the run from the FBI are not going to last long. I like to try and be realistic, to a degree, about what their lives would really be and what this story would really be. I mean, yes, it’s a TV show, but, also, we play things to make them very real world, and so they’re going to get caught. I didn’t want it like, “Oh, they’re so amazing, and so cool, and so superhero-y, that they’re never going to get caught.” So I said, “They should get caught pretty much halfway through.”

If you’re Lashever and you’re looking for Javier, the first thing you’re going to do is find out where Letty is, if you think they’re together. So she does, and she uses Estelle to basically set up a trap for Javier, which is what this entire vacation at the Christmas hotel turns out to be. Estelle betrays Letty and Javier in a major way, but she thinks she’s doing the right thing. And, by the way, if you asked probably anyone, “If you knew that your daughter was on the run with a hitman, would you try to catch them so that you could save your grandson?” they’d be like, “Yeah.” She thinks she’s doing the right thing, and she is doing the right thing, to a degree, but it gets Javier arrested, which was the goal. It wasn’t the goal to get Letty arrested. But then Letty gets herself arrested, too, so now Letty and Javier, at the end of Episode 3, are going to prison. They’re on their way.

What can you tease about episode 4? So it’s Letty and Javier trapped in the back of Lashever’s Mercedes Sprinter, and Christian is along for the ride, and they have to figure out how to get away before they actually get to the destination and wind up in prison. There was the Tesla episode from the first season — I like writing episodes which are about one thing and keeping them very simple every now and then. The Christmas episode is a huge episode with multiple storylines and huge sets. We built all those hotel rooms and hotel suites, and all that stuff was like massive. [Episode 4] is two locations really: inside the back of the Sprinter and then at the Holiday Inn Express, where they get trapped for the night. Letty is very perceptive and in tune with other people. If she has one super power, that would be it, and she uses what she picks up about Lashever to try to get them out of a situation.

One thing I love about Good Behavior is that the sex scenes are always story-driven in addition to steamy. What did you want to say with the one in episode 3? Letty and Javier had not said these words to each other, which are, “We knew the very worst things about each other from the very beginning and we’re still here, we’re still together. We keep trying to run away from each other, but then we keep coming back. What are we doing? Why are we together?” Finally saying those words — which are the words that everybody else is probably saying about them — brings them even closer together. “Why do we keep trying to change each other?” is what Javier says. “You keep telling me to stop killing, I keep telling you to stop stealing, but we’re still here, and we’re still both doing those same things.” It takes them to a semi-acceptance of the other, which, obviously, brings you closer together and makes you feel even more attracted to that person. Then it turns into this beautiful lovemaking scene, which was really different from any of the other ones we’ve done. Very much Letty in control of it. That episode was directed by Clare Kilner, and she did an amazing job. It’s all about the intimacy of that sex scene versus f**king. It’s more about bringing these two closer together as partners.