Spartan Girl

Quick question: would anyone here be interested if I started a thread for the moments—no matter how brief—where we didn’t hate a character we hate?

What a way to start a Sunday. I open my local paper and there’s a big article interviewing a bunch of Michigan (my state) voters about how they feel about Trump’s first 100 days. The majority of them are Republicans, and they range from “mildly concerned” to so deep in lala land that it’s sickening. Then there’s this delightful op-ed from a Texas “boy mom” that blames progressives for how they treat boys. Read at your own risk.

The Two Popes (2019): I forgot this movie was out there until Mom found it on Netflix. After Pope Francis passed, I finally got around to watching, and I loved it. Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce are MVPS. Like with Conclave, I got a kick out of seeing the Pope and cardinals do things like watch TV shows and eat pizza and try to get flight tickets only for the airline worker to think that she was being punked LMAO. But it was so interesting to learn more about Pope Francis. Makes me sadder that he’s gone.

Another Simple Favor: I watched it for the fashion porn and the scenery porn, both of which were gorgeous. The story was ridiculous, but I had a rough day at work and needed a distraction.

What was the point of Taskmaster being in the movie at all? Or even in the MCU in general? Another disposable female character, eh, Feige? I guess I can appreciate how the movie put a realistic spin on Walker’s rushed “redemption” in FATWS, but I will never get behind making Bucky a senator, no matter how briefly.

Robert De Niro shows support for transgender daughter

I didn’t really hate Sansa until the godawful final season.* The feud with her and Dany was so fucking stupid and a real missed opportunity for them to bond over how much in common they had. But the less said about all that, the better. While on the subject of female characters that didn’t deserve the hate, I think we were all unfair to Beck on You. Maybe she was a mediocre writer and a bit self-absorbed at times, but no more self-absorbed than the rest of us. Rewatching season one, she doesn’t seem so annoying to me now. The things she did seem a bit more understandable now. Even though it’s fine not to like her, I feel bad that I got sucked into the hate. She was still figuring out her life, and she could have matured into a better person—we’ll never know because Joe took that away from her. *Then again I hated almost everyone in that shit season

I guess I'm not really surprised by all the netizens that found Joe's last bit so offensive. Obviously, society DOES have a problem with romanticizing any pretty asshole with a good sob story, we saw in happen with Luigi Mangione. And for all the people that complain about the feminism being too preachy, considering the backlash to #MeToo and other recent current events...well, I digress. But the main takeaway that those people obviously are missing is that Joe is always going to be Joe: delusional and playing the victim until the bitter end.

Back in the first season of You, one of the most disturbing things was that we never actually saw Joe kill Beck. We get a flashback of him burying, cutting to him going about his merry way about the bookstore with his remorseless voiceover tiptoeing around what “happened,” but we all knew. It was chilling, yet it was ambiguous enough to let certain viewers speculate that it could have been an accident. But. That all came to an end in the series finale with this line: “You what to know how I killed Beck? I’ll show you.” That whole sequence was horrifying. We’ve seen Joe murder other people, but this time the Nice Guy mask was completely ripped off, and he was positively primal. Kudos to Penn Badgley.

No, you are not. It’s in movies too. MCU backlash to the likes of Carol Danvers and Sharon Carter (before they turned her evil to appease the Stucky stans) has never failed to astound me. One thing that bothers me about criticism of female characters on shows is that the word “bland” gets thrown out a lot. I don’t see a lot of male characters get accused of being “bland.” Then again, the bar for likability** is suspiciously higher for fictional women than men. **And why should likability be such a big achievement, anyway?! It’s okay not to like someone, nobody has to like everybody, but why some viewers will like characters that are narcissistic sociopaths while hating others for the simple crime of bring “bland and boring” is infuriating!

The final season of You was certainly something. But one of the things that it did right was try to look at how women get sucked into relationships with guys like Joe, despite initially believing that they’re “smarter than that.” There’s one exchange between two characters—who shall remain nameless for the sake of spoilers—that sums it up beautifully: Men like Joe, they…they really catch you off guard, don't they? Even when you think you have all the facts. Even when you think your hard-fought instincts are so good. Even though a voice in the back of your mind is whispering, telling you, "Don't be fooled by his smile. "It's all too good to be true. The way he sees you. The way he loves you. Even when you don't love yourself. Don't believe it when he tells you he'll take care of you." Definitely don't assume the best when he says he'll keep you safe." You ignore that voice because it feels so good to love him…and be loved by him. Like it's you and him the world. You know what bad looks like. You know better. And when the bad things happen, you have to believe they're not actually bad, right? Because if you got fooled by this guy, you are not as smart as you thought you were. You're one of those women. You know, the ones you, deep down, think you're smarter than. It can't be you. But he's convinced you that you need him. And he's wormed himself so, so deep you don't know whether you are Bronte, or Louise, or Marienne. Or Beck. Or none of those. Or nothing. That moment was pretty profound to me, almost as profound as Beck’s heartbreaking “Didn’t you ask for this?” bit back in season 1. Both are a pretty damning indictment of victim blaming. Wanting love and romance doesn’t make you stupid or antifeminist, it makes you human. There’s nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, guys like Joe weaponize it, the judgement you get from the other side will make matters worse. Bottom line, anybody can get conned. We all have our blind spots, some just take longer to show up and level us.

The schedule didn’t work out

Well, I see the Bury Your Gays trope is still alive and well in Star Wars. RIP Cinta. At least Bix got her revenge.

Amadeus (1984): The Ovation channel had this on, and by God, it’s still a masterpiece. Deserved every Oscar it won and more. I still say the director’s cut is better because it adds more to the story (Salieri more overtly screwing Mozart over by blackballing him). I always have to watch the deathbed composition scene—I might be the only person I know that would sing along to “Confutatis Maledictis.” The moment in the montage with Mozart singing the requiem is so heartbreakingly intense that it gets to me every single time.

It was a reminder that Beck was many things to many different people. I’ve been rewatching some of season 1 and I really think we were too hard on her. Yes, she was flawed, but nobody has to like everybody, and she was capable of growing into a better person. Joe stole that from her.

Forgot to add how fucking hilarious Joe’s couch stabbing tantrum was upon seeing Harrison and Maddie so happy together.

Loved the byplay with Maddie and Joe. She may be a ditz but she figured out Joe soft-boi misogyny in five minutes flat.

Pretty much everything Bronte in season 5 of You was so damn stupid it was unbelievable.

Yeah, he deserved a worse death. Screwed over everyone in his path, including his own family.

Making Albert Edmond’s son wasn’t just to give him a happier ending, it was probably to make Mercedes marrying Fernand more sympathetic. Society back then was not kind to women that had kids out of wedlock.

Didn’t think we were going to nitpick historical accuracy in costumes for a Star Wars series…

It wasn’t as though we all weren’t warned about what he would do BEFORE the election. So thanks a whole fucking lot, people who voted for Trump/third-party/stayed at home!

I was very afraid the You finale would let me down, especially after I’ve been burned by so many finales. Part of me still felt like a perfect ending would’ve been Love killing Joe back in season 3, but despite that, I stuck with this show no matter how crazy it got. Yet while a lot of stuff happened in the final season I wasn’t crazy about, the finale was so satisfying that I forgave all of it. Penn Bradley really dropped the mask once and for all, exposing Joe for what he truly was: a sniveling, pathetic incel loser that deep down hates the women he claims he wants to save. It was looking at “I can save him” trope and replying, “No. You can’t and you shouldn’t.”

Andor: Mon Mothma’s daughter might be a bitch and her getting married so young is an extremely messed up tradition, but damn if I did love that wedding gown.

Just finished Counting Backwards by Bonnie Kirshenbaum, which is about a married couple’s struggle when the husband is diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. Yes, it is as painful as it sounds. It’s basically an unromanticized, more realistic version of The Notebook. The reason why it takes forever for him to get an official diagnosis is that the husband refuses to see a specialist, even when he starts seeing things. It is until the the wife has a breakdown and calls a suicide hotline that the hotline people get them in touch with a specialist. They get an aide who really steps up for the husband when he can no longer live at home. You feel for everything, even though one part at the end was really troubling: