#whoever the director was for the episode did such a good job on those camera shots I was anxious and scared for haein the entire car ride

[taro-tk22]

Eunsong…count ur days, f this man, kidnapping haein, he’s genuinely so delusional, someone put him behind bars.

I knew something was way off when supposedly “hyunwoo” asked why she was outside and THOSE CAMERA SHOTS to trick us she was in hyunwoo’s car with the red roof, that’s some good cinematography right there I was eyeing up that scene so intently, I was so scared for haein the entire time😔

[mostofthingsmostofthetime]

I just finished the first episode of Heartstopper, so here are some of my thoughts in no particular order.

The opening song is cool (will probably look up the shows soundtrack like I did with XO, Kitty).

Why did the camera focus so much on Charlie's bag & Elle's drink? Is it product placement?

Wow, no hate to the actor, but Charlie's eyebrows are THICK!!!!

Tori is beautiful but also kind of looks like a ghost (I think she’d be great for the role of  Violet Baudelaire from A Series Of Unfortunate Events) & why was she so pushy about the "dream guy" thing? Like let the poor boy breathe.

Is Nick's actor that much taller than Charlie's? I hadn't noticed.

I’m sorry, but knees are so weird to me lol. Also obligatory, 🎵 she's a runner she's a track star🎵.

Wait, is that PE teacher that will later interrupt the team theorising about Nick & Charlie's relationship? It's crazy how they’ve found actors who look so much like the characters in the graphic novels (other casting directors should take notes).

Ok fair enough about wanting your team to be good & wondering if the quiet, skinny, nerdy, boy is even into sports but the shit about him being gay is so stupid (bet it was Harry that said that).

Glad Charlie didn't get injured learning rugby, lol.

Nick's shorts seem a lot smaller than Charlie's ones do, but maybe that's the costume designer's way of helping Charlie’s actor look more skinny?

Omg Stephen Fry, what are you doing here lol?

Wow, people weren't kidding. Olivia Colman really did show up just to say one line. What a legend, lol.

Ben, did you really make Charlie walk all that way for such a lame ass kiss? Also, let him talk about his Christmas, you jerk!

I don't think that Form tutor is very good at his job (while Nick thankfully turned out to be nice) it’s usually not a great idea to put the skinny, gay, nerd that has already been bullied with the bigger, popular, seemingly straight, athlete, especially at an all boys school!

Ben, you dick. Like I get wanting to keep your relationship secret, but you did not need to pull the 'who the hell are you!' card. All you had to do was say hi in a confused/uninterested tone (then apologise later). If anything, your reaction came off more weird than what Charlie did.

I'm sorry, but I don't get the leaf animation. I mean, I GET it, just why leaves? Why not flowers or hearts or something? It just doesn’t seem that impactful to me, but maybe they have a deeper meaning that I'm just not grasping yet? If so, please let me know.

Ok, so I'm torn over the gay teacher. Like artistic? That's cool. Those glasses? Cute. Him giving Charlie a safe space to eat lunch? Great. Him being worried over Charlie potentially being bullied again? Awesome (take notes, Form guy), but his advice to Charlie seemed slightly lacking. Obviously, honesty & communication are important in relationships, but I'm a little surprised that possible safety concerns weren't addressed at all, especially from a fellow gay guy. Like I get that he doesn’t know the kind of guy Charlie's "dating" & that just because someone doesn't want to come out yet doesn’t mean they should be labelled as dangerous but internalised homophobia can make some people lash out & after everything Charlie's been through his clearly more likely to be vulnerable to situations like that.

Nick is a golden retriever in human form, they're 100% correct 😊.

Isaac? What happened to Aled? I hope he still shows up. He may be quiet, but he was so cute during Charlie's 15th birthday in the graphic novel.

Interesting to get to see Elle's time at Higg's (fuck that transphobic teacher & whoever was throwing sandwiches at her). Sad she doesn’t have any friends but I'm sure that'll change when she meets Tara & Darcy. Wow, is it strict over there, though, like you can't even be on your phone at lunchtime? Damn! Surprised they did it this way, though, as I was assuming they'd just make Truham co-ed so all the characters could be in the same place.

Tao, my guy, the drink thing is sweet but that hair is.....certainly.....a choice 😅.

The shots of Charlie looking at food, without eating, make me ☹️.

I gotta be honest, the montage of Nick & Charlie saying hi to each other was a little cringy to me compared to how it came across in the graphic novel, but they're meant to be teens, so I'll let it slide. It's also an effective way to highlight how differently Charlie's "boyfriend" treats him compared to an acquaintance.

Ben's hand covering up Nick's smiley face got me like ☹️/😠. They're not even together yet & I already felt like telling him to get off Charlie, like that boy is not for you! It’s ridiculous, lol.

Ben what you did was fucked up but it's hard to be scared of someone who looks so much like a meerkat in a wig (no hate to the actor) also did it seem like he just....skidded away when Nick pulled him off Charlie? Like, was the actor wearing Heelys lol? Or had someone just mopped the floor without telling anyone? Also, it's lame to wear a coat when you're cold? What in the toxic masculinity are you fucking on about Ben?

Omg the bathroom scene was so adorable, but I wanna know what kind of pen Nick was using because being covered in that amount of ink is crazy 😆.

Overall, it's very cute. I like Nick & Charlie. It’ll probably take a bit longer for me to really care about the other characters. Ben can catch these hands! And I’m looking forward to watching the Narlie relationship develop.

So while not overly ground breaking (though obviously important for LGBTQ+ rep) it's definitely enjoyable in a comforting sort of way which (considering medias fascination with marginalised suffering) is obviously important for queer youth but also must be quite healing for queer elders. Because you deserve wholesome, cheesy, romance just as much as anyone else.

[thewonderingsorceress]

Okay well here are some of my thoughts on today’s episode- can’t do too detailed I have an assignment due this week 

So first whoever is the set director and director did a great job- that first scene where we get the over head shot of Ayo and Bucky, notice how both are half and half but the colour of Bucky’s stones make a path into Ayo’s? Like how his path leads into wakanda  It got spoiled for me that Lemar died before I watched the episode but I didn’t see the how. So the choreographer for the fight scenes and the camera shot we got - beautiful. Immaculate. I recognized as Lemar jumped in to help Walker this was probably when he was going to die I didn’t think he’d basically instantly die. We see heroes and people being thrown into walls all the time right? So we weren’t thinking anything of it until we heard his head connect and him just slump. This comes after them giving us a love/hate relationship with Lemar he’s a friend to walker he’s being a good friend and he’s putting his life on the line for his friend being Mr. America and we see he plays as Walker’s rationale, and when he died so did walker’s rationale, his calm, his ability to think clearly right? We saw hi make Walker wait for Sam to do his thing, but when he recognized what waiting was doing to him he backed him up- we would expect nothing else from Bucky if he was in that position right?

Another thing I liked was Sam addressed something I asked about the minute they started working with Zemo- he hates super soldiers so what about Bucky? How is this all going to end well? Will Zemo not try and kill Bucky? Or has Bucky become more humanized to Zemo? He doesn’t humanize when he kills like with Carlise - She’s just a kid? who cares?

The writers and  Daniel Brühl are doing a magnificent job portraying Zemo (although we knew  Daniel Brühl was going to do a great job); Zemo is slick and charming and smooth. He’s treating this as if he’s not going back as if everything is fine and forgiven. He doesn’t seem to fear going back because I don’t think he thinks he’s going back. He has a plan and the writers and directors are purposefully keeping it from us- there are times where Zemo is off screen or vanishes and during those moments I feel we might get something that explains how he planned his escape from the moment Bucky opened the door to his cell. 

SPEAKING OF BUCKY THE POOR BROKEN WHITE BOY. That acting? Oh jesus award winning performance, like goddamn. Going from fear and terror to terror and slow sinking of realization to relief and freedom all while crying. Amazing. Truly. And the first real emotion we’ve seen from him that isnt guarded. and it breaks my heart because let’s be honest once that settles in the first person he wanted to call was Steve. So seeing Ayo again probably reminded him not only of his freedom but having Steve there to help. 

[lovecanbesostrange]

I have a lot of feelings about the latest Grey’s Anatomy ep “Silent All These Years” and so let me ramble a bit. I can’t put everything into well written and organized words, but I have to type something:

First off all, hats off to writer Elisabeth R. Finch and director Debbie Allen. Amazing work. The script is tight, tackles so many issues about trauma (related to rape/abuse) all at once, without ever losing the focus that is on the victims. The SURVIVORS. They are the ones talking, they are the ones the camera follows, no unnecessary distractions. We are here to listen to their stories and empathize with their emotions. As hard as it is.

That said, I want to get one tiny thing out of the way. I like how the guys are handled, that we do see. There is Alex, supportive husband #1 who clearly wants to do everything that helps, having no clue what is going on (being concerned, not mad). There is DeLuca, who catches on to what Jo is saying without saying it and from there on following her lead, whatever she asks. And we get this minimalistic b-story about Tuck dating and getting a very important talk about consent from Warren. That is really good, because he is the young generation, the one we have to raise to be better. (Warren could’ve thrown in that Tuck can say no himself anytime as well, but that’s the smallest missed opportunity ever. The sports analogy of a time out is so good and easy to grasp.)

Where to even start? Just to pick something let me go with how trauma is not an Olympic discipline where the winner gets a medal. Because they have all lost already. In different ways. And you can’t deny somebody their feelings of pain and hurt, because you have been hurt as well. It does not work like that and that is the biggest take away I get from Jo and Vicki meeting. It should be a common sense statement, something we can agree on easily, but we are so trained to look for somebody being wrong, for somebody being right, for a conflict with clear edges. There are none.

Vicki was raped. At a time when she wasn’t even allowed to think about it as rape, because she said yes to a date. (It always makes me sick knowing that it was only in 1997 when German law ruled that rape in a marriage was a crime at all.) She felt all the shame and guilt and was completely alone, because how to even ask for help? To hammer this point home we get Abby’s storyline. Who so randomly bumped into Jo at the hospital and so accidentally found a person who would not leave her for a second. (I know Meredith would have caught on, just like Teddy did. But Jo was in this headspace already, and sometimes finding the help you need is dumb luck and that is a terrifying reality.) Vicki had nobody to push her, to talk to. She went down the path of staying silent. And nobody has the right to yell at her for that.

But of course Jo is hurt. And she has to now re-arrange everything she ever imagined about her biological mother and the circumstances that lead to her being left at a firestation as a baby who never did anything wrong. Just think about it, with all the crap that Jo has lived through, the one thing she never imagined was that she was conceived during rape. That was too far a reach for her. And I guess that is in part because she herself had an abortion, because she could not imagine bringing a child into her marriage with Paul.

That bomb went off. Wow. Like I could already see some pro-lifers gleefully using this episode. That if Vicki would’ve had an abortion, like we advocate for rape victims to have the choice to, there would be no Jo. It would be so easy to fall into this trap. But nope, Jo then talks about how she was in a different, yet also desperate, situation and she did the best she could think of – which was an abortion. And I dare anybody to try to weigh these two things and tell me there is an outcome that won’t leave people traumatized one way or the other. It is so not a sport and there is no always right/always wrong answer. And that makes this scene, that is just a long conversation, so difficult and powerful and brutally honest. That is something that more people need to fully understand.

Vicki never wanted to hurt Jo. The fact she clung to these stories that mothers feel all the love and joy once the child is born – she tried. And I admire that so much. But then there was only more pain. For nine months she was reminded of this event, she didn’t even dare name rape and the baby that came out of it made this open wound so much worse. And how much do you think she hated herself for resenting a baby? How do you even start to get back into your right mind? The way Vicki talks about this – it’s a memory, it’s a thing in the past, and with one flick of a switch it’s all fresh.

Michelle Forbes does such a good job to show this. Vicki opens the door, her kids are in the kitchen, she’s open to whoever just knocked, she gets the mail and all is well. All is this normal world she knows. And one word from Jo, who is a stranger, and it’s like her rapist is breathing down her neck. That is a trigger. They just show the thing. (btw as always such a good Meredith voice over for the beginning and end to remind us about this week’s theme) Vicki has a good life, a family, a job where she helps others. And all that is taken away in a second and she is put back into the worst place she was ever in.

I like how both, Vicki and Jo, have a moment where they get up from the table. The way Vicki asks if Jo came to hurt her and that worked. So here is something I wonder about Jo in this situation. Letting out her frustration and anger that has built up over the years is one thing. And it’s clear to us that she doesn’t have a real game plan. What to say, what to expect, what to even get out of this. There is a lot of uncertainty and she lets emotions take over. But what does it do to her to realize that her very existence is a trigger for Vicki? When she asks if she looks like her father. A word Vicki rejects for his contribution (she is the biological mother, not a mom though, but he is even less – a point explored in the film [i]Room[/i], with a far different set up of course). That nameless TA, that raped Vicki, never knew about Jo and now she has to live with the knowledge that this connection hurts somebody so bad on so many levels…

Vicki just listens to whatever Jo has to say. And how does that feel, that the baby she gave up had no break in life from the start and fell for an abusive man. (This is also of note, Jo makes it very clear when talking to Abby, that she suffered through domestic violence, but was not raped, nothing “like this” happened to her.) Once again, a tiny bit of luck was all that was missing. Being placed with a good foster family at the right time and Jo’s life could’ve been completely different. And now Jo and Vicki are facing off, both with their very own trauma, that can all be traced back to one night. But it was society that failed them both. They are not enemies, but how to reconcile the different points of view here?

Abby is the story in the now that anchors it all. As sickening as it is, I’m sure if we just had that diner conversation randomly thrown in as maybe even the B-plot, it would be easy to dismiss. Jo being angry, a woman talking about a rape that happened over 30 years ago… but seeing what Abby has to go through, just to get help, is the reminder of what rape means. And it is not about some quick sex. It’s not over and done and here is what the immediate aftermath looks like. Without being exploitative. They show how invasive and almost degrading it is to get that rape kit done. Even with the most compassionate people by your side, it’s torture all over again. And in the end that is for the benefit of the survivor.

Those moments before, when Abby vocalizes her fears, how she knows these stories and how that damn kit might never do anything good and she wants it done and be over with it – I felt all of that in my bones. So, another kudos here to Khalilah Joi. Both guest actresses give it their all. But Jo pushes. Against protocol. Teddy does everything the best she can think of and I like how she talks about giving Abby the tiniest bit of agency back in all of this. But Jo pushing with the right words, putting it into perspective that later on emotions change and this is about having a chance.

I love how Abby grabs Jo’s hand in a panic and then they never let go of each other. You can even see Jo switching hands so she can close the curtain and so it’s clear she did that again when getting her coat off. Never letting go. It’s such a simple gesture, yet so powerful and the clear picture of not being alone. Jo saying “I got you, Abby. I’m not going anywhere.” It’s a lifeline and I wish we could live in a world where this is the default response to get from doctors (other people in general, especially those with the knowledge/power to directly help). This is all about Abby, helping her and never is it made about the rapist or even the exact circumstances. It should not matter that she was out to get drinks. And that she questions herself if she should’ve taken another route home…

The most striking visual is of course lining up all the women so Abby won’t have to see a male face. And more than that, faces of so many women who are all willing to be here for her, symbolizing she is not alone. On the one hand it is mortifying, but on the other Abby isn’t the one who needs to hide. She survived. The only thing she deserves is help and support. And so we get this scene as a heavy show-don���t-tell of sorts.

“It’s not your fault.”

This is not an episode about fault. The abandoned-child-seeks-biological-parent has been played out in very many different ways. But this is not that story. Jo’s anger is understandable. Vicki’s behavior is understandable. Abby’s reluctance is understandable. Three women, all have their own story and in some ways Jo and Vicki have hurt each other, are hurting each other, but it’s not their fault. Because it is very complicated.

Oh, I haven’t mentioned her specifically, Camilla Luddington is once again doing all the small details just right. I have to say, in the end when Alex walks up to her and she is somewhat startled, that was like watching her back in “1-800-799-7233” again. Jo is on auto-pilot flight mode. That hurts. One day she sits down with her mother, triggering her pretty much by existing. And the next she is with a freshly traumatized patient being the emotional support.

[olicityara80-blog]

Hello, how are you? I really enjoyed the season finale and found it to be a strong end to season 2 while its cliffhanger and also Luke’s Batwing début makes me hopeful for season 3.

The only complaints I had with the finale was in regards to Kate exiting after the fantastic performance Wallis Day gave her, her not visiting Alice to say goodbye to her and to tell her what she told Mary about her twin and even though Alice/Beth saved her, and Ryan still blaming Alice for her mom’s death even though Alice did not order it. Otherwise it was well written, felt dark, gritty, intense, high stakes, and very emotional while giving further character growth for Ryan and a final Batwoman vs Batwoman along with the emotional and compelling twin bond between Kate and Beth and also seeing the original trio of Kate, Luke, and Mary all together and later as a foursome friendship with Ryan. Great job.

And thanks for also giving Alice/Beth a proper goodbye with Ocean, who I’d personally like to think of as his ghost.

Thanks also for having season 2 further, but albeit slowly and gradually, integrate the series into the wider universe of the Batman mythos, including but not limited to seeing Lucius’s ghost albeit in silhouette form, and the real Bruce even if he was only in Luke’s mind.

On a side note and while I really like Luke’s suit, some feel that his helmet is a bit too big and also resembles Optimus Prime’s head. I’m personally alright with the helmet although I can see a bit of the resemblance and so maybe it could be redesigned a bit to look more bat like?

Having said all of this, I’d like to request some things I’d like for season 3 which I personally hope you’ll consider, as follows:

Could you please increase the series current budget to either 100 percent close to that of “Superman and Lois” or as close to it, like 95, 90, or 85 percent close, as possible? I’m significantly enjoying the cinematic borderline A List movie feel the latter series has and I believe it’s one of the main reasons it’s an enormous success and getting almost nothing but love. And so I personally think it would be a great idea to integrate that into “Batwoman”.

I don’t know how “Superman and Lois” is being funded. Many have claimed it’s being funded by HBO Max. Someone else claimed its writers are using the same company that Netflix, Disney+, and the MCU use to fund their own programs. I personally don’t have a clear answer but wherever they’re getting their budget from or what agreement they made with whoever to have it, could you please consider doing the same for season 3 and giving it that stunning cinematic, significantly visual impressive, close to an A List movie feel?

And not only the budget but I’d also like to respectfully request that season 3’s choreography, camera movements and angles, and directing also 100 percent mirror that of “Superman and Lois”.

Could you also please have the fight and action sequences to be as intense, brutal, fast paced, strong, and in the viewers faces as in the very beginning of episode 18 of “Arrow” Season 6, the Oliver vs ninjas scene in the first “Crisis On Earth X” crossover episode, episodes 10 and 12 of “Arrow” Season 7 and also that season’s prison arc, and plus Netflix’s “Daredevil”? I very much enjoy those types of action and fight sequences and it’d be fantastic to see them in season 3.

And speaking of which but could you also please consider adding James Bamford and whoever the action, fight, and stunt director was for “Daredevil” to the “Batwoman” crew for season 3 if the two of them are interested and available? I personally think Bamford did an excellent job with the action scenes on “Arrow” and that he, and whoever controlled the “Daredevil” action scenes, would both be great additions to your crew.

In addition to lesbian intimacy scenes, could you please also add an equal amount of hetero intimacy scenes while also giving Luke a girlfriend and having both those lesbian and hetero scenes be as passionate and heated as the ones that were in “The 100”, “Jane The Virgin”, and “Riverdale” but also balancing them out with lovemaking scenes if called for? And in regards to Luke but I’m ready for him to have a love interest and I’m personally leaning towards Luke/Mary.

On a side note but it’d be historical for the Arrowverse if polyamory was not only explored but also as endgame since those types of relationships are rarely explored in fictional media even though I think they’re a major part of the real world. And I think I like the idea of both Luke/Mary and Luke/Stephanie while polyamory would be a different way of exploring it rather than the love triangle idea which has been done in the past.

But if you do give Luke a love interest and potential relationship or relationships, could you please keep his journey as Batwing and growth as a hero more in focus than his love life while having said love life and its development presented in a highly mature, natural, and non-toxic fashion like with Clark/Lois, Jordan Kent/Sarah Cushing, and Steve/Diana [“Wonder Woman”] but with some playfulness, especially the mature aspect if you decide to bring back Stephanie and if Luke were to explore potential feelings towards both her and Mary and how the two women handle it? In regards to the couples I listed but I’m personally unaware of if whether or not there’s a fictionalized version of a highly mature and respectful three-way or poly relationship.

I’d also like to request please that Ryan, and while she doesn’t have to be friends with or even like her, to stop blaming Alice for her adopted mother’s murder. From what I saw and while Alice has done a lot of horrible things, and unless I missed something, it had not appeared to me as though Alice was involved or ordered that particular murder. Instead her gang seemed to have acted on their own and then she came into the apartment and stopped them though it was too late.

Another thing I also hope for, and if Julia returns for season 3, is that Sophie apologizes over her anger towards her in 2x01. I understand why Sophie felt the way she did but personally and with respect found it to be immature and that Julia did not deserve it. Though that’s my opinion.

On another subject but one thing I enjoyed about 2x15 is that the Bat Team conducted a significant amount of smart thinking and great coordination as they worked to help Luke. Such as when instead of the Bat Team twiddling their fingers, Mary quickly put together the serum needed to cure Luke and went on the mission to do so, they called a part time ally to deliver the cure to him instead of bemoaning and giving up over the Crows having him under guard, and when he was framed it occurred to Sophie and Ryan to do all they could to clear his name instead of the team acting like there was nothing they could do.

Plus I also liked the coordination and simultaneous operations they conducted in delivering the serum while working to find the real video to clear his name.

And so I’d like to ask but will you would please consider having the entire Bat Team continue all of that quick thinking, planning ahead, common sense, tenacity, professionalism, and coordination for every episode of next season? Though there’d still be times when things wouldn’t always work out since there’d be villains who’re smarter than them and by no fault of their own.

Regarding Mary’s clinic, I personally support it and her trying to help the city in her own way though there are some other viewers who have a problem with it since it’s illegal and doesn’t seem to require the option of calling the GCPD over bullet wounds. In light of that, could you please consider having her clinic become completely legal next season and with the calling the GCPD for bullet wounds requirement but still keeping it completely free of charge for her patients?

I’d also like to say that you’ve had some interesting rock and roll plus pop music selections for the episodes including for a great many of the fighting sequences. And I also think the respective music selections for the first and last Ryan vs brainwashed Kate moments were pretty good for those scenes while the song for Beth/Alice saving Kate from the water in the finale was a perfect fit for said scene.

Having said that, I’d like to make a request for next season but would it be possible, and if it’s alright with you, for the music selections of all of the upcoming fighting and action scenes in season 3 to be the same type of music style, whatever that particular type of song genre it’s known as, that was used for “Arrow”, “Gotham”, “The Dark Knight” trilogy, and “Daredevil”? It’s just that I’d like to hear some music that matches the dark, gritty feel for “Batwoman” like those other aforementioned programs had for theirs.

Speaking of which but the “Batwoman” theme sounds great and I really, really like Batwing’s new theme. They both scream “Power” and it’d be interesting to me if they combine during scenes when Ryan and Luke fight side by side.

On the subject of Kate’s exit and while I found it to be beautiful and well written, both myself and I believe a great many other fans are very disappointed, and the others upset, that she was written off. For me but with Wallis being such an outstanding actress from what I saw here such as the realism by having her characters show strong emotions, being a highly advanced martial artist in real life and can do her own stunts, I assume also having high levels of endurance since she’d trained for the swimming portion of the Olympics some years ago, and having the look you’d chosen for Kate but also had the familial resemblance to Beth/Alice and Jacob [the green eyes in regards to the latter], she is the perfect choice for the Arrowverse’s Kate.

Plus her being written off also feels to me like the same thing as if Ryan had been written off after all of the character growth and investment that was poured into her.

Having said all of that, and while I don’t know if the higher ups in DC would allow this, I’d like to please pitch a story idea to you and Mr. Berlanti for the back half of season 3 that could hopefully bring her back for said back half and it’d have to do with solving Bruce’s disappearance.

What if Bruce went missing some years ago because he learned of one of the most dangerous and nefarious organizations out there and that they are conducting a years long operation to destroy Gotham and are also responsible for his parents murders. And they either captured him followed by him pretending to submit to them or he decided to approach then pretend to join them?

Either way he’d have been on a deep cover operation this entire time to destroy them from within. Perhaps the Court Of Owls or another evil cabal from the Batman mythos if there’s one.

And so after the first half arc of Ryan and Luke dealing with old and new villains causing havoc with the weaponry used by Batman’s rogues while Luke also battles Tavaroff, the back half would be an arc for Kate and Bruce in that Kate returns by calling the Bat Team and asking their assistance to help her and Bruce stop this cabal and warning that the city is in imminent danger, explaining why Bruce went missing. It would also be revealed that the cabal secretly both funded Alice’s operations and helped build her organization while also organizing and funding Black Mask’s own operations though Roman was aware and was actively working with them and was their chosen and willing champion, his plans being their endgame for the city.

But since the Bat Team stopped it in the season 2 finale, the cabal’s planning something far more nefarious. And first the Wonderland Gang and then the False Face Society were their final tools in softening up Gotham and smoothing the way for the city’s end.

Alice would be infuriated by this since it would turn out that she was once more the puppet of others besides Cartwright and then Safiyah while realizing that everything she did in season 1 was never truly her own but had been preplanned for her by others. This would be the final straw to end all final straws.

And so Ryan, Luke, Mary, Sophie, Stephanie if she were to join the season 3 cast, Alice/Beth, Julia if she returns along with some contacts from British Intelligence connected to her father, Kate, and perhaps even Barbara Gordon/Oracle and her father if they’re allowed to be used all join forces to help Bruce complete his mission and Bruce, Kate, Julia, and Barbara’s primary objective would be to destroy the cabal while Ryan, Luke, Mary, Sophie, Alice/Beth, Stephanie, and Jim’s primary objective would be to protect the city from the cabal’s latest attack.

After which that arc would conclude with Bruce formally giving Ryan and Luke his blessing to continue as Gotham’s protectors and also to Kate and Julia as well if they want to stay and with Kate helping to guide the Bat Team as a mentor figure even though they seem to have grown as protectors on their own. After which he’d go on a new mission which is to find Selina Kyle.

If however the answer is no to that story pitch, could you please consider having the real Bruce appear in recurring flashback scenes as part of Luke’s journey and not just him but Lucius as well? It’d be nice to see more of them and Warren seems to be doing a good job as Bruce.

I also don’t know if one of the Batman rogues appearing next season will be Penguin but if he were to appear, what if Robin Lord Taylor portrayed him once more? I think he made a great Penguin and with the multiverse in existence…….

Also, and back to “Superman and Lois” once more, but someone wrote that they love it because according to them it has, and these are their words, small details, lasting effect, consequences to past episodes, smooth action. And so I’d like to ask if those elements also be incorporated into season 3, though I still hope for the intense action I’d mentioned above.

Also, but could you also please consider doing a shorter season once more like you did with season 2? A shorter season could perhaps keep the series lean and focused while maybe allowing a bigger borderline A List movie level budget to be fully utilized. Perhaps either 17 episodes or if not that but 19 episodes while 18-19 are the two part season finale?

Finally and while I don’t know your plans for Ryan’s love life, but could you please consider having her and Angelique be endgame in the presumably far future? They seem to have a nice dynamic and I like that Angelique has changed.

Those are my requests and wishes and I can’t wait to see season 3, am eager to see Ryan and Luke vs the new villains who’ll use the Batman rogues weapons, and look forward to hopefully the Luke vs Tavaroff rematch. I’m also curious to see what Sophie’s arc will be moving forward since it originally seemed to move around Kate and the Crows but now they’re both gone while even Safiyah’s also gone for now.

Have a wonderful day Miss Dries.

P.S. I didn’t think of this but in regards to season 3, could you please consider doing a tremendously epic bank scene, like in Snyder’s “Justice League” with Wonder Woman, and also Superman in “Superman and Lois” 1x09, in which either Ryan, Luke, or them both use explosives to burst through the doors and save the hostages from the bank robbers while the camera movements give the heroes a 50 % tremendously fast, and 50% slow, pace as they brutally & powerfully take down the thugs, and with the same or as close to the same budgets for those two scenes ?

Also, a friend told me that the “Daredevil” stunt coordinator that I mentioned above is named Phillipe J. Silvera.

[topmodelranking]

Cycle 24 Week 11

And we are down to 5, for the first time, this cycle. I’m honestly not that excited for this week, this season has kind of just flailed out for me. Well, lets hope this week is a bit better, and we get a good video shoot, even though ANTM hasn’t got a great track record with those. I am going with a weird prediction, but I think Jeana is going to be out. As I said on here, I think whoever is out this week is the comeback, and I think it is down to Jeana and Rio, and I just can’t see Rio being Clark’d.

This week is all about personality; oh god, Tyra is over-emphasising how important personality is as usual. Like being nice is important, being the most interesting person ever is not.

Rio is hamming up this weeks theme, and Shanice is back to bitching on them. Seriously, there is just way too much repetition of conflicts here. The editing is so flat.

Oh no...the game...why, just why. This has to be the worst thing in the history of ANTM. So tacky. And now they are basing an entire challenge on it...god why. This is such a bad challenge. Even the presentation doesn’t save it from basically being Sims. Their challenge is playing Sims...let that sink in. Ugh, the prize is awful too. Fitting.

Okay so we basically have a montage of them all talking rubbish, and oh, surprise Khrys photo. We know what that means; first call-out or bottom two. So Rio talks about stuff, the only meaningful she talks about is her battlescar. That is cute, if only she hadn’t proved she was a bitch it would make her a bit more inspirational. Kyla talks about stuff, though her avatar doesn’t really look like her. Same with Shanice, so far Rio is my favourite. Khrys’ avatar is...distinctly not plus-size. So much for inclusivity Tyra...your game needs to change. And last up we have Jeana, who has a bald avatar with an incredibly boring outfit. Her personality sort of matches too...

I think it is down to Rio and Khrys, and the judges agree with me. And Khrys wins. I would have given it to Rio, but I can understand Khrys winning her fifth challenge.

Oh god, Jeana is going off at law. Calling him a sassy bitch. I don’t like him either Jeana, but I didn’t choose to come on a show where he is a judge...so like, just suck it up. And now she is being a bitch to Khrys. It is a official, no one can survive an episode when they insult Khrys. Like that is just character assasination to the highest level.

Rio says she got 3 first call-outs, but like did she really? She got 2. Lets just ignore that one. Rio would not have gotten that. That week was is essentially Khrys’.

Jeana is crying down-stairs, and of course Khrys is supporting her, because Khrys is officially the greatest human being on earth. Poor Jeana, I want to feel bad for her, as getting judged like this must be draining, but she needs to toughen up and remember it is a show. If they insult you, it means purely in the context of a reality show; aka having a normal personality.

Ugh, its not just a video shoot, it is actually a music video. Great. Some completely irrelevant music artist comes on, I mean who calls themselves Maejor? Just spell it correctly.

Rio continues to blab about first call-out, so she is clearly going in the bottom 2 with Jeana. That means Khrys gets first call-out, and Shanice/Kyla who we have hardly seen end up in the middle.

Khrys looks gorgeous on the first set, and the rest kind of look flat. Actually, Kyla looks alright. She apparently throws things well, so good job Kyla. How can people not look bland enough? I have no clue what vibe they are trying to get, Rio looks fine to me...and Jeana, I am so confused.

Okay the second scene is apparently the same thing...but a little bit more shambalic...I guess that makes sense. And Tyra is here. Doing...a little bop. Now they are rocking it out, and we only saw that for a few seconds.

Time for the more interesting part. Kyla looks incredible in that outfit, I wish they weren’t wasting it on a video. Imagine this as a photoshoot...it would be incredible. There are some gorgeous shots of Kyla in that, but I still think she suffers from mono-face most of the time.

Jeana looks incredible to me, so I have no clue what Drew and Director X want. She was rocking the bondage gear she had on. Though now she is giving Khrys the cold-shoulder, so I hate her again.

Rio does kind of flop for me. She looked okay on set, but in the brief moments we saw on camera she looked awkward.

Time for Shanice and Khrys’ scenes. Shanice looks okay, but I still think Jeana looked better. Shanice is constantly pushing her head too far back, and just giving us massive nostrils. Khrys on the otherhand looks absolutely incredible, and her shoe breaks. Jeana is struggling to contain her joy at Khrys is failing...wow, this episode is AWFUL for her. There is no suspense in the slightest here.

Now Jeana is jumping in...and I am confused. Like I feel like she did what she was meant to, otherwise I am sure the director would have told her off. But apparently Shanice and Khrys thinks she just jumped in randomly. I am reluctant to think Jeana is in the right in this situation...but we shall see at panel.

Now we are at panel, and like always I’ll save any comments about that for the rankings. But as expected, the music videos as a whole come out...meh. Khrys looked incredible, she is telegenic as hell here, and I hesitantly say this is my favourite performance of her. Kyla and Jeana did the best of the other two, while Rio and Shanice were definitely the weakest two.

As expected, and deservedly, Khrys gets first call-out, followed by Kyla, also deservedly, and then Shanice. All as expected. And Jeana is out. Nothing at all surprising this episode.

And look at that, next week is the comeback. Just in time to swoop up Jeana, and take her back into the competition. Overall this episode was a tiny bit better than I expected, purely because Khrys actually blew me away with her section, and while I am not excited to see Jeana back in next week, I am excited to see the killer spider shots. I am just hoping that photography isn’t wasted.

[mst3kproject]

817: The Horror of Party Beach

A while back there was an incident at work when I was trying to get a patient to tell me which doctor he'd seen.  He didn't remember anything about her except that she was female, which didn't help much because four of the clinic's five doctors are women.  I tried to get him to describe the doctor, and after some thought he told me that she “looked Polish.”  I managed not to laugh at him, but it was a damned near thing.

Anyway, The Horror of Party Beach.  The movie begins as an evil organization dumps some toxic waste into the ocean, which causes sunken skeletons to come back to life as bloodthirsty fish monsters.  If this movie had been made in the 70s or 80s, the evil organization would hang around trying to cover up its crimes and be as big a villain as the monsters themselves, but since this one's from 1964, they simply vanish from the story, their job done.  The monsters immediately attack a woman at the beach, and then venture further inland in search of more victims – they need blood to survive, and for some reason only the blood of bikini-clad women will do!  Our heroine, the mighty Eulabelle, first tries voodoo to combat the creatures, then discovers their true weakness... sodium!

You may be snickering at 'our heroine, the mighty Eulabelle', but I'm only partially joking: she's the only proactive character.  While better-educated but stupider people are sitting around wringing their hands and wondering what to do about the monsters, Eulabelle's getting to work, making a voodoo doll and nagging Dr. Gavin to get on with his research. When the movie's Designated Love Interest, Elaine, doesn't want to fulfill her role, Eulabelle urges her to get up and go with the Designated Hero.  When the Designated Hero, Hank, is close to giving up on ever finding the sodium they need, it's Eulabelle who orders him to keep looking, and it was Eulabelle herself who discovered that the monsters go up in flames when they come in contact with the metal. Everybody else in this movie just reacts to things rather than taking any initiative, and if it hadn't been for Eulabelle, they'd all have been eaten.

This is not an uncommon observation among MSTies – Eulabelle's hero status is a frequent subject of YouTube comments on the episode. It's not all that makes her the real star of Horror of Party Beach, though.  Unique among the characters, Eulabelle has a personality and a tragic backstory!  We know that she's the only survivor out of a large family.  Her status in the Gavin household is somewhere between 'servant' and 'family member'.  She feels rather maternal towards Elaine, and is comfortable enough with Dr. Gavin to stand up for herself when she disagrees with him.  She is somewhat cowardly, but relies on her faith in God and a variety of superstitious practices to ward off dangers, while seeing no inherent contradiction between her Christian and non-Christian beliefs.  These things make Eulabelle a stereotype, yes, but they also give her about six hundred percent more personality than anybody else in the movie.

Hank and Elaine, our supposed leads, are complete nobodies – you could replace both of them with cardboard cutouts (it almost seems like somebody did during the Summer Love scene) and it would have almost no effect on the movie at all.  Hank's alcoholic, hard-partying ex-girlfriend Tina was a little more interesting, with potential for a character arc, but she's killed off almost right away.  Dr. Gavin and the cops are as dull as Elaine, existing only to show up, speak lines, and vanish again.  Do any of these people do anything when they're not on camera, or does the director keep his characters in boxes when he doesn't need them?  Does Hank have parents?  What does Dr.Gavin study that makes him the go-to expert on sea monsters?  The movie doesn't even bother asking.  Eulabelle is not just the only one with a character or past, she's the only one with a damned job.

A lot of MSTies find Eulabelle to be the most memorable thing in this movie, second only to perhaps the silly monsters with their mouths full of hot dogs.  Now, Eulabelle is the hero we need in these dark times, but there's lots of other shit in this movie that deserves discussion.  For example, you're likely to notice, if not on your first viewing then at least on your second or third, that almost all the monsters' victims are attractive young women, and very few of them are fully dressed.  First to go is Tina in her swimsuit.  Later it's the slumber party girls in their nighties.  The Girls From Noo Yahk are wearing clothes, but the movie makes it clear that they would happily doff said clothes for random gas station attendants if only they weren't in such a hurry.  Finally, while Dr. Gavin does whatever the hell he does there's a background montage of monsters attacking bikini-clad females at the beach, in the woods, and even in a backyard pool.

The only male victims we see are drunks – two come staggering out of a cocktail lounge to find a third dead in his car, in a reveal that is surely among the most blatant instances of a movie pretending the characters can only see what the camera sees.  Like any sensible predator, the monsters go after the weak and confused members of the herd, right?  What this tells us, then, is that the writers think a man has to be middle-aged, overweight, and so sloshed he can barely speak or stand before he becomes as helpless as a fit and healthy young woman!  Not only this, but the women are easy prey even in groups.  The news anchor says that over twenty girls were killed at the slumber party, apparently by just two or three monsters.  Seriously?  Two or three monsters overpowered and killed twenty women while only one (the report mentions the survivor rather than a survivor) escaped?  Wow.

Even if you can ignore the movie's politics, it's still very strangely constructed.  The over-long opening sequence, with the beach dances and Tina, seems to set up a slightly different movie than the one we're about to watch.  Tina speaks of Hank's 'experiments in that laboratory' in an accusing tone, leading us to think we're going to see a film about a mad scientist creating monsters.  It's somewhat confusing to then see the waste dump make them instead, and get no context for it until the film is nearly over and Hank finally mentions 'the floating pig'.

The beginning also sets up the love triangle between Hank, Tina, and Elaine, but not in a way that encourages us to like any of these characters. Neither Hank nor Tina seems invested in their relationship or concerned that it's falling apart, while Elaine is poised to swoop in like a vulture the moment Tina's out of the picture.  We spend enough time following Tina's antics that we might expect her to be a major character, but her story, like those of the slumber party girls and the women from Noo Yahk, is only there in an effort to get us attached to her before the movie kills her.  It fails, and by the time of the later sequences, we're wise to the trick – like Mike and the bots, we watch the scenes snickering to ourselves in the knowledge that all these characters are going to die.

Part of the reason the film fails to get us interested in Tina's fate is because none of the other characters seem very interested in it, either.  She is as disposable to them as she was to the writers. We never even see Hank react to realizing Tina has been murdered, which you'd figure would be an important part of that love triangle plot.  The movie had an opportunity for him and Elaine to talk awkwardly about it at the funeral, but doesn't bother.  Maybe this is why Elaine's internal conflict over her unrequited crush on Hank seems so unconvincing – or maybe it's just because Alice Lyon and whoever dubbed her are both terrible actresses.

Despite Dr. Gavin saying that 'a lot of families have been affected by this', nobody else misses Tina much, either.  We never see her parents or friends.  The next mention of her we get is back at the beach, where one of the Del-Aires remarks, “ever since Tina got killed, like, no action around here,” to which Hank replies, unconcerned, “it'll pick up.”  I have literally seen people interviewed on 48 Hours who turned out to be the actual murderers and yet showed more emotion at the death of a loved one than this.

Really, the only purpose the entire opening sequence serves is to sell Del-Aires records.  I don't know if it accomplished this, but I rather doubt it, since the Del-Aires broke up within a few months of the movie's release.

So having said all that... do I hate this movie?  Nah!  The Horror of Party Beach is way too much fun for that.  The plot is absurd, the accents amusing, the monsters hilarious, and the music is... actually pretty good as MST3K music goes.  It's not hard to be better than The Sad Mushroom Ukulele Anthem or California Lady, and it's true that all the Del-Aires' songs sound alike. But the tunes are cheerful and catchy, and the lyrics are pretty creative (one of the songs is, rather delightfully, about getting a speeding ticket).  The Brains apparently liked them even better than I did, since Paul Chaplin says in the Amazing Colossal Transplanted Sci-Fi Channel Episode Guide that they were all Del-Aires fans by the time they completed the episode.

[mikemortgage]

Brandon Truaxe built, then nearly broke, Deciem. Can it go on without him?

Nicola Kilner, chief executive of the skin-care company Deciem, has a joke about last year. If you didn’t get fired in 2018, she says, “then you didn’t really live 2018 at Deciem.”

Kilner was fired twice, by Brandon Truaxe, the company’s founder and one of her closest friends. Last year, even as Deciem grew, Truaxe plunged the company into chaos. He was committed to hospitals four times in three countries. He died in January of this year, after a fall from a Toronto condominium.

His death left Kilner at the top of a company that is projected to sell US$300-million worth of products this year. She is working to stay faithful to Truaxe’s vision. She considers him a genius, but she also wants to integrate new values into the company’s culture, like kindness.

Because 2018, she said, “wasn’t a very kind year.”

Deciem founder Brandon Truaxe dead at 40

The inside story of how Deciem, the Abnormal Beauty Company, lived up to its name

Deciem founder ordered to stay away from Estee Lauder offices, workers after ’harassing and menacing’ communications

Kilner and Truaxe met in 2011, when she was working as a buyer at Boots, the British pharmacy chain. She was inspired by his energy and constant stream of ideas, and when he founded Deciem, in 2013, she was excited to be hired as the company’s brand director. They spent every working hour together.

Truaxe was passionate and funny, but also quick to anger. Kilner, who is preternaturally calm, would help soothe tensions in the aftermath of any given blowup. He recognized his own volatility, though, and the two grew to trust each other. She soon became Truaxe’s co-chief executive.

Deciem was conceived as a skin-care product incubator, a company that would house 10 different brands with different missions. Truaxe’s background was in computer science, and he approached moisturizers and toners as engineering problems.

Shamin Mohamed Jr., Deciem’s director of operations under Truaxe and his good friend, said that beauty was supposed to be just the beginning; Truaxe had intended to disrupt other sectors, including apparel, nutrition and technology.

“He’s more Silicon Valley than beauty,” said Nils Johnson, whose company Beautylish was one of the first retailers to stock Deciem products in the U.S. “He was kind of in a position where he didn’t care about status quo and he didn’t have respect for status quo.”

Deciem founder Brandon Truaxe is shown in this undated handout photo posted to Instagram.

Truaxe grew frustrated in an industry in which brand names determine prices and packaging is crowded with marketing gobbledygook. So he created The Ordinary, a line of a la carte ingredients that are usually prettied up or disguised and sold at a premium by other brands. Much of Deciem’s value derives from The Ordinary, which has become its most popular offering, leaping over brands like NIOD, Loopha and Ab Crew.

The Ordinary was released as a product line in September 2016, just a few months after the company started opening retail locations. It was Deciem’s 11th brand. None of its products cost more than US$15. Between August 2016 and August 2017, the company more than doubled its wholesale revenue, causing a stir in the industry and attracting Estée Lauder Cos. as a minority investor — even as Truaxe’s behaviour shifted from passionate to disturbing.

What Does a Visionary Look Like?

Truaxe’s behaviour began to change in the early days of 2018, after he said he had spent the end-of-year holidays in Mongolia. (Kilner came to believe that he was not in Mongolia but in Venice, Italy, and Amsterdam; Mohamed said that Truaxe had never planned to go to Mongolia.) In January, he announced on the company’s Instagram that he would be taking on all marketing — that there would be no more barrier between himself and Deciem’s followers. “From now on I am going to communicate personally with you,” he said.

It was difficult for his co-workers, including Kilner, to make judgments about his behaviour. When the founder announced that he would no longer be using his cellphone or email, they weren’t sure whether he was being unreasonable or a genius.

“Brandon was so infectious in whoever he spoke to,” Kilner said. “You were just in his magic charm. I remember having conversations with my husband around things he was saying. You challenge yourself thinking, ‘Am I the one not getting this?’ ”

Mohamed thought that Truaxe’s behaviour was less a sudden break than a continuation of familiar behaviour. “Brandon didn’t magically become crazy in eight months,” he said. “He’s always been like this. He’s always been this manic guy who ran this company.”

Kilner felt compelled to say something in February when, on Deciem’s Instagram account, Truaxe abruptly ended the company’s relationship with cosmetic doctor Tijion Esho. Esho was caught off-guard and upset, a preview of what the rest of the year would look like for those in the founder’s orbit.

“I started to ask him, ‘Are you OK? Are things OK?’ ” Kilner said. “The next day I was terminated.”

Truaxe delegated the firing to the company’s human resources director, Neha Gupta. Kilner’s husband, Sean Reddington, booked the couple on a flight to Barbados. The two had been married for several years but had put off having children. They decided that, free from an all-consuming workplace, it was time. In March, she became pregnant.

Progress within the company almost ground to a halt. In March, Truaxe fired Deciem’s U.S. team. In early April, after he published an Instagram post insulting Kilner, Reddington emailed him, disclosing that his wife was pregnant and that the stress was unwelcome. Truaxe responded warmly, congratulating the couple. He knew that Kilner had always wanted a baby and had told her he worried that Deciem would keep her from starting a family. Then he posted the news on the company’s Instagram account. Kilner was only about four weeks pregnant and had told very few people.

Kilner said that such behaviour marked a definitive break. “Before 2018, Brandon was the most respectful person in the world,” she said.

The Vanishing Line Between Public and Private

Deciem’s employees embraced the common startup practice of referring to co-workers as one’s family. Kilner, the company’s U.S. director, Dakota Isaacs, and others tend to speak in superlatives about their colleagues. (And Truaxe’s longtime partner, Riyadh Swedaan, worked at the company for years.)

But Truaxe’s actions further confounded the boundaries separating the workplace and the home. His Instagram posts and conduct within Deciem suggested that he was having trouble parsing which behaviour was appropriate for the public, what might belong at Deciem and what he might keep private.

Kilner did not deny a report in the Financial Post that he was ingesting psychedelic mushrooms in front of employees. She said he did not attempt to persuade team members to take drugs with him.

But he did recommend that they take mushrooms; he was convinced of their creative and spiritual benefits. This behaviour constituted another change. “Before 2018, he barely even drank alcohol,” Kilner said.

Mohamed said that he did not think that Truaxe had been mentally ill, but said he did think that he had been addicted to drugs: crystal meth and psilocybin.

In May, according to an interview with the Financial Post, Truaxe took crystal meth in Britain, which led to him being arrested and committed to a hospital. By June, he was calling Kilner and begging her to come back, partly, she said, because he was hoping to win back the support of Estée Lauder Cos., whom his behaviour had alienated.

At first, she was not sure whether she would return. But ultimately, she decided, “This wasn’t a job. This was family. You’re there for family.”

View this post on Instagram

Our co-worker is back—but never behind. We love you, @nicolalkilner. You’ll always be our only 🐌—and always stronger than any 🐅 can ever hope to be or become. 🧡💛🌕😜

A post shared by THE ABNORMAL BEAUTY COMPANY (@deciem) on Jul 3, 2018 at 7:04am PDT

Breaking Point

At first, Truaxe seemed improved upon Kilner’s return. He was in the Toronto office infrequently, which helped Kilner and the rest of the team to get things done.

But it became clear that he would not return to being the person he had been. At one point, in late summer, he and Kilner spent hours together in a New York restaurant talking about new products, one of the most normal exchanges she had with him in months. She texted her husband, telling him that she wanted to cry with happiness. Ten minutes later, Truaxe got up and said he had to leave the restaurant “because people were in there watching him.”

In August, Truaxe and Kilner cut off Deciem’s relationship with Beautylish. Johnson said that in the meeting, Truaxe seemed to be “having one of his episodic experiences” and that he talked at length about subjects that were unrelated to the business. (Johnson has not forgiven Kilner. He sees her as having enabled Truaxe’s darker tendencies; it was she who sent the email terminating the relationship.)

In an email sent Oct. 1, Truaxe addressed the distrust for him that had grown rampant at his company. He wrote, referring to himself by his own initials and in the third person, that “I recognize that many of you may have allowed doubt to cloud your judgment of B.T., despite much kindness, love, respect and generosity that our founder has shown us.”

People react as they look outside a Toronto Deciem store after all locations closed unexpectedly on Tuesday, October 9, 2018.

Eight days later, he announced on Instagram that the company would stop all operations and close down its own stores, provoking pandemonium within the company and a run on its merchandise from a consumer base worried that their preferred products would soon be unavailable. Three days later, Estée Lauder Cos. successfully sued to have Truaxe removed from Deciem. Kilner, then seven months pregnant, replaced him as chief executive.

“You’ve got 700 people who’ve got livelihoods, they’ve got families, they’ve got bills to pay,” she said. “So when it came up what needed to happen there was a part of me that thought ‘Maybe this is what he needs.’ ”

A New Deciem

Kilner believed that he would recover and return. She called him as the court case was proceeding to see if one more conversation could make a difference. But after that, she made a firm decision to focus on Deciem and on her soon-to-arrive baby.

She stopped talking to him as much. Conversations with him were trying. Truaxe seemed consumed by the idea that those around him had committed financial crimes, and had an obsessive interest in and affinity for President Donald Trump. His anger at being removed from Deciem also made him hard to talk to.

Mohamed thinks that Truaxe may have closed the stores to cause his own ouster. He does not blame Kilner for taking over, but does think that Truaxe should have been able to remain in contact with some of his co-workers. Cutting him off from the colleagues he saw as family was cruel, Mohamed thought, and he said he believed it led to the further deterioration of Truaxe’s condition.

As she entered the final month of her pregnancy, Kilner began to envision the company’s future. Deciem this year will open a new, 70,000-square-foot facility in Toronto, the first in years that will be able to house all its employees. The facility, in the Liberty Village neighbourhood (the location was chosen by Truaxe), will include an on-site laboratory, a factory and a store. They expect to introduce between 100 and 150 new products this year, and several new brands. Both Kilner and Mohamed plan to devote their organizations to furthering the study of mental health.

One of Deciem’s new brands will make skin-care products for babies, something Kilner said the company’s customers ask for all the time. She had a daughter at the end of December. She did not know the sex of the baby until the birth, but had already picked out a name for a girl, Mila, which she shared with Truaxe in July. He adored it, she said.

Kilner took no leave from work; she answered emails about Deciem from the hospital. She said she loves her job so much that managing the company does not feel like work to her. When Kilner was interviewed in early April, her infant daughter had taken more flights than she had lived weeks.

Kilner learned in January that Truaxe might be dead from reporters emailing one of Deciem’s publicists: one last awful piece of news that strangers had access to before Truaxe’s work family did.

She said she feels privileged to be able to work on building the company that he created. “The best thing that we can do to honour him is to make sure his vision lives for eternity,” Kilner said.

—

For general information on mental health and to locate treatment services in your area in the United States, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Treatment Referral Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). In Canada, visit the website of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2GuiYuY via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[thekoreanlass]

Also known as Tempted (위대한 유혹자; Widaehan Yuhokja) is a 2018 South Korean television series starring Woo Dohwan, Park Sooyoung, Moon Gayoung and Kim Minjae. It is loosely based on the French novel titled Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. It aired on MBC from March 12–May 1, 2018.

The Cast

Woo Dohwan as Kwon Sihyun Park Sooyoung as Eun Taehee Moon Gayoung as Choi Sooji Kim Minjae as Lee Sejoo

The Plot

The series depicts rich young men and women in their twenties who discover their true feelings while playing the dangerous game of love. In an act of revenge, Kwon Shihyun makes a bet with his friends to seduce Eun Taehee, who believes people that are swayed by love are pathetic. After Eun Taehee meets Kwon Sihyun, her view on love starts to change. As Sihyun’s secret deepens, he starts to fall in love with Taehee

Review

And so, as the description above says, The Great Seducer is loosely based on the French novel ‘Dangerous Liaisons’. I read a little about how the summary goes in that novel and found that it mostly centers the game that the rich anti-hero started with one of her lovers. She also plays with lives of those weaker than her and her lover, a known seducer, plans on playing fire with an innocent soul. Indeed, that screams of ‘corruption’, but not the corruption you know. In a psychological sense, the corruption of the soul. Ruining someone’s true self for self-gratification, to feed ones already big ego.

Isn’t that great?

The novel is as bold as the French culture is. They love art to an extent–that is free, liberated. That I guess, the original is better in terms of content, consistency, the story build up or the character build up.

MBC’s attempt in loosely adapting the concept is a bit of a failure if we’re talking about consistency. I mean, the beginning of the story where they introduced the dark, extravagant life of those three friends–Sihyun, Sejoo and Sooji–is great. It shows how privileged they are because they are rich, but it also shows the ugly part of being in their status. That to stay on top, they have to constantly watch their backs, they are forced to do things that make them lose themselves, and they live in constant hollowness. Sihyun doesn’t even blink an eye when he plays with people’s feelings. Sejoo does the same and thinks that everything is a funny game. Sooji enjoys seeing others suffer for trivial reasons; for her own pleasure.

Isn’t that just as twisted as it should be? I found this part of the story really heavy, but at least it is true to its concept at that time.

But just as Eun Taehee’s character was introduced, it was as if everything was all rainbows and unicorns and girl power. She became the ice that cooled the fire down and brought a little more color to the story by being the light in Kwon Sihyun’s dark world. However, no matter how great the chemistry is, the premature build up of the characters ruined my expectations. I mean, I’m okay that Kwon Sihyun is like the tsundere type of guy that softened through time because of Taehee, but Taehee’s a different story. In the story’s description, before it even started airing, Taehee is labeled as someone who doesn’t easily believe in love. Plus, she started appearing the series as a tough chick who we are all sure won’t easily fall for the bad boy, but then what happened? She is easily swept off her feet by the seducer in just a few episodes and they even kissed.

It would have been really nice if she had strongly brushed Kwon Sihyun’s attempts to swoon her a little longer and with more resolve that her character didn’t appear so weak. I found Taehee’s character bold, but sometimes she can’t stand for herself, but honestly I’m glad I know Joy so I can’t say that her acting sucked. I still believe she did really better in this project that in her first acting gig (The Liar and His Lover) and that the cause of this loophole in character development is actually the script, how it is written and how they are described in paper.

Then there’s Sooji who is the mastermind of the vicious game they started. The game that says for Sihyun to seduce Taehee to get back at her ex-boyfriend who she thinks likes Taehee. Clearly, the game suggestion from the princess herself lack something to back it up, not unless she is that childish to play a prank like that for fun and because her ego sucked at that moment.

They were obviously talking about getting married to get back at their parents who were about to officially get married soon for purely business, but then Sooji just says the brightest idea of entangling the innocent Eun Taehee in the food chain. out of the blue, causing for a more complicated plot that hardly followed through. It’s a good thing Sihyun couldn’t stick to the sick game and followed his heart by liking Eun Taehee even if he had to lie to Sooji and Sejoo, but somehow the plan about marriage between the two of them became buried under a big rock for a long time, until Sooji tells Sihyun’s father of this plan. I don’t think that it doesn’t have that much impact then, considering Mr. Kwon is an adult who could care less about such a childish plot of revenge, plus, her mother is so in love with Mr. Kwon that Sooji may rest her case, and then there’s Sihyun who has completely abolished the plan in his mind because of Taehee.

Sooji could have been a really strong and scary character if it isn’t for the flaws in character development. She’s vicious for most part of the drama, but there are times when her resolve dwindle and she seems inflexible in such a way she has insomia and that has become a bigger problem in the end. It made her character weak and it doesn’t help that her mother is a doctor. Because the doctor can’t even see what’s wrong with her daughter. The link between them feels so superficial that her mother couldn’t have uncovered the real problem with her own child and that causes Sooji to rely so much in her friendship with Sejoo and Sihyun. That she is utterly destroyed when things start to fall apart among them.

Sejoo on the other hand is quite adorable in the beginning. In fact, I didn’t mind that he is sort of a womanizer or whatever, since it really doesn’t feel that way. And among the three of them, I feel he is the one that keeps them together. That it feels a little heartbreaking he had to hurt Sihyun just like how Sooji did even if he didn’t mean to. Out of revenge, he ruined them all and he isn’t even able to to throw a punch at his brother or that annoying Lee Kiyong when they beat him up and Sihyun. I just don’t get it. How are two privileged rebels who looks like they know how to fight can’t even pull the trigger at two self-proclaimed thugs?

I sound like my review is all over the place, but literally I think that’s how much chaotic and confusing the story is. Sometimes, I even think their problems are even pointless and that they always worry for nothing. But is it because they aren’t just able to really show a real mirror image of how it should have been if it is them that have been hurt that way? Did the emotions lack depth?

I always thought like that for the benefit of the doubt, but something always feels wrong. Say for example, the night of Taehee’s accident, she runs away just because her mother doesn’t want her to go to Seoul to study. If she already hates her mother for not loving her father, then could her mother’s opinion even mattered and had she ran away? I think she’d rather lock herself in her room or something. Plus, the drama made it seem like Taehee was in such a grave accident that traumatized her and caused her psychological damage, but the accident was her really being hit by the side of the car and injuring her leg. The only reason why she was in a ditch was because she tried to stand up and fell there. Then there were the other characters who limit themselves to orders made by someone who they think are much bigger than them. Sometimes its frustrating that they are obedient and that they think because someone said to get out of the house that they really should.

The only merit I found in this drama and that keeps me going back is the overflowing chemistry between Woo Dohwan and Joy. They have opposite characters that meet at one single turning point and helped them heal each other in such away that love knows no bounds and that it can conquer everything. Even if it is young and hurtful, they are still really cute together.

Plus, I should give props for them ending the drama happily. The last few episodes are really frustrating, emotional and dragging, so I am happy that they gave the characters some light in their dark world after a few years. A lot of people think this is some pitiful consolation for the characters and they did it to salvage the drama from bedrock bottom ratings, but I wouldn’t ask for another ending, you know. This is probably the best decision the people behind this drama chose to do.

Cast & Characters

I know I ranted a lot on my previous statements, but don’t take it out yet on me. I’m just frustrated with the roles these actors were given. Maybe the main characters are all too young to embody how deeply scarred Sihyun, Taehee, Sejoo and Sooji is, but that’s a room to make improvement.

Nonetheless, I think they did a stellar job and that if there is anything or anyone to blame with how things came out to be, it’s the director, scriptwriter, producer, or whoever is behind the camera. The drama couldn’t have been filled with too many flaws had everything been all mapped out carefully and smoothly.

Plus, it’s the first time watching Woo Dohwan, yet he has me really swooned. Perhaps I am the one really seduced by his charms? Haha. He tears up so easily that I watch every time he’s in drama mode and is pouring his heart out. That vulnerable side of Kwon Sihyun he is able to show simply touches my heart in many ways a guy with similar character could probably do. I mean, if he is my boyfriend, I would probably the luckiest girl that he allows me to see this vulnerable side of him. To say that least, Dohwan is indeed boyfriend material.

Then, there is Joy. Our Eun Taehee, who grew up from her awkward and cringe-y role from The Liar and His Lover (that thing is so much better in the original Japanese version). You will clearly see how much Joy has improved in her acting from her first drama to this one. Her expressions came out more natural now, even if many people still say that her smile is weird and that she’s just as expressionless as Shin Se Kyung in The Bride of the Water God. I don’t think she’s that bad and I’m going to say I will be looking forward to her future acting projects.

Moon Gayoung is one of my most favorite actresses since EXO Next Door and then Jangsoo’s Shop. She has lighter roles in the past and acting as Sooji in this drama is a huge step up for her. Even though she also received a lot of criticism for portraying the role, I believe that she is perfect to have been the one to play Sooji. I would ask for a more intense performance, considering Sooji’s character, but improvement is a process not something that comes true overnight.

I would love it if Sejoo’s poster isn’t this dark. It’s weird to see him pose as if he’s the gang leader or the mafia boss or something that serious, since Sejoo is more like a puppy than a conniving man.

But anyway, I can say that Kim Minjae really grew up somehow in this drama. I watched the drama ‘Second Time Twenty Again’, which he starred in as No Ra (Choi Ji Woo)’s son, and he was really cute and sort of nerdy back there. Kim Minjae made Sejoo his own person unique from his other roles.

Overall

Although the drama’s pacing, overall sequence, character build up and exposure all feel lackluster, I must say I enjoyed the journey to finishing the 32-episode series. Because despite the many flaws of the drama, they are able to take some good points: like being able to portray the two sides of the characters–the good and the bad, show good chemistry among the characters (especially Sihyun and Taehee; I don’t mind the ship sailing!), and have a happy ending for all of them.

I know that the drama didn’t intend to replicate or copy Dangerous Liaisons, but it would have been nice if the drama stayed true to the theme from beginning to end without making the characters’ growth abrupt or unsupported by a good and gradual build up. I must say, the choice of the age of the actors might have indirectly affected the potential strong impression The Great Seducer failed to maintain, considering the characterizations sometimes doesn’t suit how young the actors are, but at the same time I am thinking the actors were casted for the purpose of getting an audience. I do think that getting a mature cast and making the drama even more daring and darker would have been a disaster. I don’t think Korea is ready for that kind of plot. It’s perfect for the English speaking audience, but not for somehow conservative Asians.

Still, I’ll give a slow clap for The Great Seducer for making my heart flutter and I’ll rate it with a 3.8 out 5.

Review: The Great Seducer Also known as Tempted (위대한 유혹자; Widaehan Yuhokja) is a 2018 South Korean television series starring Woo Dohwan, Park Sooyoung, Moon Gayoung and Kim Minjae.