#your fun fanfic doesn’t have to pass the Bechdel test

[uncle-eliot]

100(I know I said 20 uhhh) incredible things about Quentin Coldwater

(I meant to add gifs but I WILL NOT be limited to 10 so)

He looks gorgeous in a man bun.

He has a nerdy "hip thrusty" dance he made up with his best friend.

He sits like the bisexual icon he is which means he doesn't

He loves magic a lot and believes that it changes things for the better

He is extremely honest about the things he loves! For example: magic, people and books:)

When his best friend lost her goddess powers he called her a high level X-Men(!!)

He looks adorable holding a teddy bear

His true drunk response to having his wine taken away was "those grapes died for nothing now" (fhfxh)

He wishes magic could run on love (or cocaine) instead of pain

When his hair is down it's beautiful and floppy and iconic

His first power move on the show was probably singing and dancing to taylor swift's 'shake it off' in order to get a psychic's attention

He's bi and it's the "only thing he isn't anxious about"

It's a deleted scene, but while working on the first years test with penny and that other guy Q got frustrated and said "Jesus why are we using candles there are literal lights"

Q is so soft and pure that days after getting his heart broken by one of his best friends he still invited him to go on a magical boat quest together

He is "Jesus, I'm not a virgin"!!

He is nicknamed "the fool" around the kingdom and owning it

His reaction to penny yelling at him was to hide behind a tree

His mom has a girlfriend

He solved multiple problems just by remembering random parts from his favourite childhood book

While singing taylor swift, he did a HAIR FLIP and BLOCKED penny's way to the door

While he was high he grabbed penny's mouth while claiming that it's HIS MOUTH

His answer to "you haven't even touched your penis" was "I had a ton yesterday"

Within the first minutes of the pilot, he was seen sitting on the floor at a party hiding behind a plastic cup hjfhc

He is gorgeous with longer hair- but also!! With his shorter hair in season 4

He got poppy a bag of sand so she could feel like she was on a beach!!

He says "um so" like A LOT

In order to get into brakebills, he built a giant house of cards and then fainted

He wore a CARDIGAN in 4x10

He legitimately asked if magicians could die from eating oreos

Q made himself a quesadilla, then held it without a plate and burnt himself, only to drop it when jennifer jumpscared him

Q attacked penny and lost the fight lol.

When he was at a party and found out he could do magic again, he made A FLYING SHIP made out of weed smoke

According to the library's prediction system, his most likely death is getting distracted by talking about dogs

He was hella hot as the beast

His reaction to being called 'not fun' was to lie on the stairs with julia and drink champagne

He always wanted to be a dad, and he was, and then wanted to do it again

His mom has a strange hold over him, because once when he was a kid he broke an ashtray and now she still thinks he breaks everything

And he believes her

Until!!! He found out that his biggest talent is to UNBREAK THINGS

When Q's nervous, he runs his hands through his hair.

When they were kids and Q had a one sided crush on julia, he never said anything because he values their friendship

His reaction to being rejected by someone he loves was WIPING A TEAR whadkdmnxndns

Somehow his best idea to unite all his friends was to sing a freaking bowie song together

He was SO EXCITED about the possibility of Eliot choosing him to become a king too

He is such a nerdy bitch when Margo told him she loved the fillory books his reaction was to raise his eyebrows and say "..you did?"

When confronted by pretty boys, his reactions are reduced to: "uh huh."

"I didn't know you liked any of the quentins"

In the beginning of season 3, he was SO HAPPY about having a freaking quest

His iconic answer to "you're dying" is "aren't we all"

He never expressed ANY SHAME about his interest in men or his experiences with men

All vests look the same to him!

His first reaction to being told to blow a horse is to look at the horse's face. (What a gentleman!)

When he's wearing a man bun he leaves strands of hair to frame his face (they're TOTALLY long enough to fit in the bun sorry)

He high-fived Julia on screen at least twice

When he had to make up a mind prison for himself, he decided that both of his current crushes should be there and constantly hit on on him

The thing that made him lose trust in Alice is nothing but the fact that she couldn't trust the fact that he loved her

He told Julia that a hot boy is "sweatin' her"!!

He likes to read books under a tree in the middle of campus like a freaking fanfic girl

He has a hard time taking off sweaters jxbx

Hearing Eliot say that him and Margo should come to Julia's birthday party so he could find his way back to brakebills after made Q smile SO BIG

A chandelier nearly fell on his head and killed him, and his reaction was "Jesus shit"

Alternatively, his reaction to being abused by a depression monster was "Jesus fuck"

He's an easy target because he's honest about what he loves!!

He believes in magic, and loves it pure and simple

After only knowing Eliot and Margo for a couple of weeks, Q hugged Margo and promised that they were going to do whatever they can to help Eliot because he's been sad lately

While taking a tour in Christopher plover's house, he stopped to take a selfie!!

Q can't have a sex dream without his brain reminding him that he's not passing the bechdel test

Q jumped over a couch to get to Margo quickly

He used to describe himself as a nothingmancer

He looks very cute lying on the floor covered in ropes

His version of seducing is mouthing the word "fuck"

He doesn't have brain cells to spare!!

His reaction to Alice complaining about the cold is to zip up his own jacket

His reaction to past!alice aggressively trying to have sex with him was "oh god okay"

Followed by "i forgot condoms" (Which were on the nightstand right next to him)

Followed by running out of the room

After getting burnt by a hot dagger, he sucked on his thumb sadly looking at penny making the same mistake

He met three dragons and he's done with them

"You let go of Falkor'"

I still can't remember why he danced in a circle after Alice died while Eliot and Margo are watching but he sure did

That smile before dropping the towel when he was with emily sjdbb

When he realized that the arrow was from fillory and confidently said "we can do this"

"Royalty bitches" (!!)

Q tried to copy the answers from penny while taking the test to get into brakebills

His answer to "feel anything?" straight up was "super stressed out"

The idea of fillory saved his life

"Honestly, fuck fillory" jxbx

He voted to test the magical knife on plover!!

His smile to learning Margo's in love and still a bitch!!

That shot of him struggling with his sweater behind Julia looking gorgeous

"Phosphoromancy bitches!"

He loves card tricks so much jgcv

"Hey, I, mm.." (you know)

"Why the fuck not?"

Him smiling at Margo and Eliot barbecuing from afar, because he knows he found his people and his place.

He just LOVES wine

Not really a scene but that one pic of him on the mosaic passionately talking about something despite Eliot looking at him with confusion

"Not everything has to look like something, ELIOT."

Q accidentally killed the physical kids' immortal puppy by trying to cure him. "Oh no." "You killed cancer puppy."

when he gets back from brakebills South and sees Eliot made drinks so he says THANK GOD and takes them smndn

Bonus: he is definitely a huffelpuff

[pass-the-bechdel]

Brooklyn Nine-Nine season six full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

66.66% (twelve of eighteen).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

28.68%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Two (episode six ‘The Crime Scene’ (41.66%), and episode twelve ‘Casecation’ (40%)).

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Three (episode ten ‘Gintars’ (18.18%), episode sixteen ‘Cinco de Mayo’ (16.66%), and episode seventeen ‘Sicko’ (15.38%)).

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-five. Four who appeared in more than one episode, two who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Fifty-one. Nine who appeared in more than one episode, six who appeared in at least half the episodes, and six who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Still better than plenty of what’s out there, but compared to its own standard? Lacking. The show has become self-conscious and uncomfortable with a lot of the social commentary that used to be its bread and butter, and it has started to include an increasing number of remarks or plot points which are tone-deaf, regressive, or otherwise disturbing. They ran out of good will to coast on a while ago; they need to lift their game, or be left in the dust (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Poor. It was not, at any point, just plain terrible, but little of the season felt like it had any real weight or even a solid sense of its characters, and consequently it rarely landed an episode with grace. There are still some good laughs in there, but not a lot of the heart or backbone which once made this show notable.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

If you were wondering: yes, yes that is the worst job they’ve done so far at bothering to have women existing in the show. It’s not their worst Bechdel, but it is bringing the average down there as well, and failure to clock in an above-average content rating is disappointing (they’ve been managing it the last few seasons with their Very Special episodes, which I am a little cynical about anyway, but they managed to cancel themselves out this time with a bevy of other, unimpressive writing choices, from biphobia to sexual misconduct (ironic, considering their Very Special subject of choice), and let’s not forget the deportation clusterfuck). Altogether, it was not a strong showing from the nine-nine, and I’m not entirely sure where the blame for that lies.

As many of us are aware, the show changed networks between season five and season six, and while that kind of behind-the-scenes switch could easily have led to a shift in content/message to tow the new production line, the differences here with this season were harder to pin down than that; even when they weren’t committing obvious faux pas (to put it nicely), the tone was off, the storytelling perfunctory, the heart and soul of the show nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t an utter, dire waste, there was still some fun to be had, but it all felt a little like a lacklustre fanfic version of the show we used to love, a knock-off by a first-timer with a thoughtless approach to the narrative beyond its comedic prospects, and only a superficial grasp on the voices of the characters within it. No, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t the kind of fanfic you forward to your friends, either.

It doesn’t have to be the end of the world, for a show to be past its peak; one just hopes to avoid a fall from grace, and whatever criticisms there are of this season of B99, it has at least got that going for it: this was not a train wreck. It still had some genuine good fun episodes, and while the show as a whole has lost the reliability that was one of its best passive assets in the past (an underrated quality in tv: reliability), not all of its strongest pieces have fallen by the wayside yet - Andre Braugher in particular continues to be the MVP of the show - and I for one am not quite ready to write the whole thing off. I am disappointed by this season, definitely, and I don’t have high hopes for a seventh season being able to recoup losses; I am inclined to think we’ve seen the beginning of the end for the show, and we’re at the point of hoping that it exits gracefully instead of hanging around until it truly becomes an embarrassing shadow of its former self. It’s already becoming difficult to talk about in anything other than comparative ‘remember when?’ terms, so. Here’s to a hopefully-not-too-painful seventh season which also, probably, needs to be a finish. I’d be glad to be wrong.

[atamascolily]

I wanted to write about things I enjoy about Adventures of Sinbad, since I'm not sure that always comes through in my episode reviews.

1) The setting

Even though the time period of the show is ill-defined (we could be anywhere between 800 - 1400 AD, or perhaps you could make a case for even earlier), one thing is clear: it's ostensibly set in the Middle East and Mediterranean during height of the Islamic Golden Age, which is a fascinating era I know very little about. What I do know, however, sounds tremendously exciting! Calligraphy! Music! Art! Poetry! Culture! Science! People reading Aristotle and Apollonius! Lots of trade and cultural mixing and melding and fusion!

Anyway, this is not a setting you see everyday in most media, and I really wish there were more because there are so many interesting elements to play with - especially when you combine them with magic and monsters to create a fantasy setting. There are so many European/medieval historical or inspired dramas or fantasies and while there's nothing wrong with that - the Matter of Britain's got a lot going for it, after all - it's just really nice to see something OUTSIDE of that particular genre.

(If anyone does know of fantasy or historical fiction from this time period, please let me know, because I'd like to know about it.)

Also, the show is filmed in South Africa, which I love, because it looks so much like California or the Mediterranean, but different. I love the white sand deserts, boulder-strewn beaches and rocky fynbos full of interesting plants. It's a varied, strange, and beautiful landscape and one I highly enjoy spending time vicariously in through the series.

2) The magic and monsters

Yeah, okay, so the CGI has not held up well, but I still love the harpies, the sea serpents, the rock monsters, the giant animals, the animated skeletons, all the same. I love that Firouz and Maeve each have their own contradictory but complementary skill sets, and everyone's realistic and pragmatic enough to use whatever solution works best in the moment.

3) The fight scenes

Yeah, okay, so these are not necessarily realistic fights AT ALL but they do look awesome, and so I'm totally on board. The bad guys usually don't seem to be very hurt, they just get knocked around a lot, and fall over or unconscious most of the time, or run away.

I normally don't enjoy watching violence, but at least in the first season, very few people actually die, and most of that is relatively ungraphic. There's more violence in your average crime/murder/police procedurals/gritty urban series than there is here. "Family-friendly" pops up a lot on the Internet in reference to the show; I guess that means there's no obvious sex and violence that won't traumatize kids.

I'll confess: I watched this series as a kid, and spent a lot of time outdoors, pretending to be Maeve, hacking and slashing at invisible opponents with a sword. It was awesome.

4) The main characters

One thing I think this show does really well is the characters - they're all relatively well-rounded (although Rongar definitely needs some more backstory!!). One of the joys of watching the show is seeing how they come to work well together, to understand each other, and just because a really competent fighting crew... and family. And I love watching them banter - typically witty and fun, without meanness.

Some of my favorite moments in the show are when the crew is just hanging out, bantering... usually something interrupts and starts a new adventures, but I enjoy those moments while they last. I'd probably watch entire episodes where nothing but bantering and routine sea-faring happens.

5) The hawk

Okay, yes, so Dermott was a BIG DRAW for me watching the show as a kid; I got super-into the idea of falconry and learned so much about birds of prey in hope of having a hawk just like Dermott. Didn't work out so far, but I learned a lot, and I think he's a great aspect of the show. Watching Sinbad come to appreciate Dermott as a person, rather than a mere pet, is another joy as the season develops.

6) The way Maeve and Rumina are treated in the show

This is a post in and of itself, but even as a kid, I appreciated the female antagonist, who was more than just a flat character. Rumina's a jerk and not a nice person at all, she's selfish and cruel and manipulative, but she's also confident and powerful and expects Sinbad to fall for her, and is genuinely pissed off when he rejects her. She also has a vulnerable side we see for a few minutes in "Trickster" - fear of aging and being alone. She's genuinely upset about her father's death, and conflicted in her feelings for Sinbad as a result.

Then there's Maeve, who is occasionally teased, especially in the beginning, but earns the respect of the (entirely male) crew and is treated like an equal. Sinbad never talks down to her on account of her gender, and Doubar apologizes for his skepticism in "The Beast Within" when he realizes she was right all along. She fights well, doesn't take shit from people, flips a man to the ground one-handed while holding a hawk on the other fist, can do magic and talk to animals. When she gets kidnapped by Vikings, she fights, she resists, and she never stops trying to escape or appealing to her captors' humanity. She never stops talking about her choice, and why it matters.

Also, while she does have feelings for Sinbad, she's never presented as Rumina's romantic rival, and she and Rumina are not fighting each other because of their feelings for him. Their feud, although only hinted at in the series, is based on a larger conversation about power and agency. Rumina hurt Maeve's family and Maeve's village because she could and dared Maeve to do something about it. Maeve is taking action to do just that, at great cost to herself, traveling halfway around the world to do so. Even though Dermott is technically her brother, transformed into a hawk, I don't see Maeve doing this expressly because of a man - she would do the same thing if Dermott was her sister, for example. Even if Dermott hadn't been transformed, I could still see Maeve taking on this quest because Rumina committed great injustice and Maeve wants to pay her back for it.

I saw all this at a very young age, and I loved it, and I still haven't seen very many shows or series with a similar dynamic. It's not a coincidence that my favorite episodes, then and now - "The Ties that Bind," "Double Trouble" and "The Beast Within" -  are the ones that deal with these unconventional power and gender dynamics.

Does this show have problems with women? Yes. Besides Maeve and Rumina, there are barely any other female characters who aren't victims (Princess Adeenah, Gaia, Queen Nadia, and Sudrah, who wasn't even real to begin with) or evil/ambiguously moraled (Talia, Sariya, Alanna) and both groups are poorly developed. And unfortunately, we don't get to spend a lot of time with the people who are more interesting - like Jiyal, who spends most of her episode tied up and screaming in a victim role, and the barkeeper in Episode 3 who Doubar is so fond of. Caipra and Serendib are the only female characters I can think of at the moment who seem like fully-rounded people, and it's probably not a coincidence that they're both magic-users. Magic is a code for power, agency and indepenence here, and I think that really helps.

The end result is that most episodes don't pass the Bechdel test because there aren't any women in major roles besides Maeve and Rumina, and when there are, the women don't always talk to each other. Furthermore, sometimes Maeve is talking to them about Sinbad or being aggressively jealous about her relationship with him. The few episodes that do pass the Bechdel test - again, the ones with Serendib and Cairpra in them - are again, the ones that deal with magic, agency and power.

As I've said, I'm not sure I would consider the show to be "feminist," and there are some gender elements that irritate me, but Maeve is a badass and a big role model for me growing up and I will never forget that.

7) Nostalgia

Yeah, nostalgia is definitely a big factor here. Were I to watch this show in 2017 for the first time, would I be so into it? Hard to say. But childhood loyalties are strong.

I was nervous the Suck Fairy would come to visit, but the most delightful part of the rewatch has been to discover that all the episodes I loved most as a kid are still actually pretty enjoyable for my adult self as well. So there's that.

Also, I have a thing for low-budget '80s and '90s fantasy and aesthetic, so this is all right up my ally, anyway. They literally do not make them like they used to, and I didn't know that I liked the old way more than the new way until the new way became the most common way.

8) The fandom

Okay, so the fandom is very small, and most of what I find on the internet hasn't been updated since 2000. Adventures of Sinbad had its big run just as the Internet was getting going, so most of the fansites look their age at this point. But still. I can find Tripod fansites with interviews and scripts. There's a whole site devoted to high-quality screencaps. One group of fans wrote three seasons of fanfic shows and 2 movies; I just found another alternate fan version of Season 2 on a different site. There are even a few things posted to FF.net or AO3 and tumblr, but for the most part, the fandom is very old-school. Still, it makes me really happy to see what's there for something that's 20 years old and relatively little-known.

I think a lot of people have good feelings about this show, they just don't necessarily remember or post about it. I usually missed out on cultural phenomena as a kid, and while this wasn't a big one, it's one I'm happy to be a part of.