snakenax

I doubt we'll see Violet or Fame hit bottom 2 until they're ready to send them home because neither are good lipsynchers at all. And because this is totally all fake y'all, Miss Fame is of course going to go far(despite being around the worst or second worst in almost every challenge) because she's a Youtube celebrity and this show ain't throwing out it's one name contestant early. Even if she is a dud.

I couldn't really see that. ShowMarg like a lot of characters changed drastically due to aging up, in her case it looks like she's maybe a decade older than the book version. BookMarg is a very young teenage girl who in all her scenes is doing young teenage girl things, which in this setting mostly means being shuttled around as a alliance maker for her family. ShowMarg is a young woman and with that comes the change that she is much more the master of her own destiny, actively pursuing that which she desires.

From what people I know in the industry say, SAG's extremely legalistic and specific nudity contracts vs most of the rest of the world either not doing nudity contracts or doing a more open 'I agree to appear nekkid on screen' is the reason US productions tend to shoot nudity very differently then much of the rest of the world. To use a example for Daario's own actor, Michail Huisman, was in a (hilarious) Dutch romantic comedy called Phileine Says Sorry where he shows his wang and quite a bit of taint, most likely because of the difference between having to sign a contract that says 'The public gets to see my butt hole' and one that says 'I agree to appear naked'. Though there is of course the notable difference that 90% of the full frontal female nudity on the show is done by extras, as Spartacus shows if you want to it's easy enough to get male extras to go full frontal as well, while the male nudity is generally provided by named cast members. Both the male and female name cast generally doesn't do more than shirtless or butts, which is pretty typical of premium cable TV(outside of Oz I can probably list on one hand the number of name actors who have done full frontal in a premium cable show, and even in the really brazen cases like Manu Bennet in Spartacus he stopped doing it after the first season).

I wonder if we'll see a Versace vs Versace lip sync given those two seem the most likely to completely bomb the Snatch Game.

Only? Probably not. But have RPDR as their primary reference and getting on RPDR as their primary professional aspiration? Hells yeah. Heck, Sasha Belle pretty much stated as much.

The cliques this season are really even more complicated than that given it seems to break down into Violet and Fame(Pure look), Ginger, Kennedy and Katya(Older performance queens) and then Pearl, Kandy, Max and Jaidynn as the outsiders. Which itself is different from just two episodes ago when Trixie was the leader of a younger clique, Ginger was the leader of a older clique(plus Kandy because apparently Kandy, Kennedy and Jasmine are besties despite us never having been shown that on the show, great job editors) and then Max, Jaidynn and Violet were the outsiders to the cliques no one wanted. I do wonder if part of the reason Jaidynn and Max seem increasingly unhappy on the show is that they're being frozen out. Oh and Max is much less weird-arty-actor outside the show, a fair number of her performances on Youtube are quite dragnificient and lean more towards a rock aesthetic(which I admit, I wouldn't have minded seeing on the show since we already have three other queens entirely specialized in the old Hollywood glam/pin up style. If she'd run with the attitude and look she brought in the Fall runway in the first episode I think she'd be a stronger contender to the judges).

It is a surprising turn around from season 6, where as soon as Laganja went everyone seemed to really like each other and work together very well(even the Darienne-Ben thing seemed to mostly be Darienne having a bitchy sense of humor and the editing monkeys turning that into a full on thing with Ben, probably because they shared two lipsyncs making it a obvious narrative). Even in season 5 if you ignore Roxxxy and Serene Chacha everyone got along pretty well, even if that was one shady group of queens. Season 4 everyone liked each other, except for PhiPhi who was a bit psycho. I guess it's more in keeping with season 3, where two cliques formed and went to war almost immediately, and season 2, where the people were just really, really incredible nasty to each other(watching the behind the scenes stuff on season 2 is possible the most uncomfortable i've ever been watching the show). Though because so many of them are extremely introverted or haven't learned the art of backtalk, drag shop talk or shade it mostly amounts to a lot of side eye and people complaining in their talking heads.

Really green, i'd heard of, and seen perform except for Mariah, every Atlanta contestant on RPDR before they showed up on the show as a contestant. Violet i'd never heard anything about, becoming a contestant was how most Atlanta queens I know heard of her. And apparently Miss Fame hasn't even performed, which is one of the few cases where I would actually question whether the contestant is a drag queen or just a transvestite.

In the case of Logan's prosthetics being really pink and pale to his model's bronze skin tone, i'd probably chalk that up to the rookie mistake of using what would be considered the standard 'fleshtone' color without taking into account that your model doesn't have that tone to their flesh.

I'd say if we look at how Drag Race usually edits things, we're just hitting the mid-season where you still have a fair number of filler(it just happens this time some of the bigger personality queens left before the filler, but that happens sometimes). Pearl's edit means she's probably here to stay, but just about every season has a darling who gets a pass into or near the finales by the judges and at least Pearl isn't as utterly risible as PhiPhi. But Fame? Almost certainly leaving soon with how her edit is. Jaidynn most likely won't make it out of the next three episodes. Max unfortunately has a bit of the 'slouching to a loss' edit many of the more interesting artsy queens get. Katya and Ginger are just about locks for final three, the show has been very heavy on praising them and giving them a lot of time to shine. Kennedy and Violet are a bit of wild cards, but i'd say still likely to exit before the final four since Ginger is shadey enough to be the villain of the final three and Violet doesn't seem to be the chosen drag baby of the season.

Logan needs to watch less porn if he thinks that is how unaugmented breasts look. I'm reminded of this little comic I saw passed around the internet where a woman shows how comic artists get breasts wrong and how they should shape in certain positions. Because two giant ovals do not breasts make.

I've been consistently bored with Violet's looks, with the exception of her killer Spring/Fall collection looks(which are, besides maybe Max's Fall look, probably the best looks we'll get all season with the way things have been going). Maybe because that was the one time she really went all the way fashion and drag and wasn't entirely focused on the utter boringness of 'look how skinny I am!'(At least Willam was doing weird interesting looks while being all 'look how skinny I am!'). And the really bad painted on boobs totally take me out of it, moreso than Fame's bad fleshtone cloth to cover where cleavage should be. She'd be lucky to hit a top 20 for look queens on the show to me. But hey, maybe she'll start showing something different than OMG waistline at some point and i'll care about her looks again.

I haven't actually been that impressed with runway this year. Outside of Katya and sometimes Max, you don't have the wild vision and interesting ideas of the last three seasons of runway. It makes me think a lot of the unimpressive runway of season 2, a lot of basic gowns and a lot of young queens with one look they have mild variations on. Which is too bad, the Winter/Spring runway in the first episode was really good and gave the promise we might see some real animals in the fashion department, but instead it's all just very samey and uninspiring. This season desperately needs a Trinity, who could make anything look good, a Sharon, who could go totally left field of everyone else, or a Coco, who brought out pure unfiltered pageant weirdness. Instead it's a lot of Tyras and Tatianas. Though that might also come down to presentation. No one this season is really stomping the runway and making themselves loud in their presentation other than Katya at times with things like the leg stomp, most of them seem to be doing Alaska slow little waddle down the runway. Which worked totally for Alaska because Alaska is weird and that kind of walk is weird. But if you want to do Fashion Queen and not just be a queen in fashion, stomp that damn runway already.

Raja also had the benefit IMO, of being really uniquely couture with his own vision of fashion. He wasn't just walking down the runway in retreads of old Hollywood glam or showgirl chic or lingerie. Raja's best looks were the kind of things you'd only see on Raja, the closest I think the current crop of fashionistas have gotten is Pearl's snake outfit. Actual strength-in-vision for looks this season mostly seems to reside with Katya.

I love the Untucked this week. The older shady queens is everything I want here, their reading the younger queens was absolutely hilarious and badly needed to wash the taste of the utter boredom they cause out of my mouth. I would happily just watch Ginger, Kennedy and Katya being shady. Much more entertaining than the main episode unfortunately. I also felt sorry for Jaidynn's little breakdown, since IMO she easily had the best look up there. Other people had better outfits, but they were ultimately just a standard look they would do with some blood dabbed on or a prop added in. Jaidynn's was 100% zombie drag queen realness, it's absolutely something I could see in a Halloween drag show, while the others are what i'd expect when a queen wants to wear their best standard glam outfits but have to modify them for a death theme. Really appreciated Ginger pointing out how the judging on looks is often ridiculously favored to first and foremost being skinny and looking like a skinny pretty girl, rather than anything interesting or original.

It has a touch of Top Chef Texas to me, that is a competition reality TV show season where they've run out of most of the good idea for challenges and bombard you with badly designed team challenges where the question is usually who stunk the least rather than shined the most.

I think it's understandable because if all the jokes had been Ginger Sets Up>Kandy Reacts>Ginger Punchlines it would have been fine(though Kandy's lack of animation still makes her a weak straight man, as a good straight man enhances the joke), but the challenge required for everyone to drop some jokes and Kandy's flatlined. I think Kennedy/Jaidynn are a good comparison, Jaidynn was a good straight man because her reactions enhanced the jokes and when she was called on, she was fine with her own jokes. IMO, Kennedy/Jaidynn should have won as the overall strongest team(even if Ginger was by far the funniest of the night) since they worked well off each other and both held up their end. Pearl/Max was.. weird. I didn't think it was bad, it just was kinda weird material that didn't really fit too much to a challenge of doing a faux awards show banter.

Oh that is definitely part of it. Having seen a lot of drag pre and post RPDR it's a bit amazing the difference you see in both number of new queens and what kind of people are doing it now.

I think Adam's could have worked with a few changes. First off, sculpt at least one oversize baby doll leg and have the hanging baby doll arms not be from regular size baby dolls but sculpted to match the proportion of the head. Pad the torso so it has that somewhat shapeless baby doll shape to it. Then have the tentacles coming through the mouth and jaw, rather than obliterating the head directly below the nose. That way you can keep the giant rounded baby doll cheeks and have it still come off as that doll. Then don't crack the head apart, leave it recognizable whole.

So unless there is some major mishap, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a Logan, Darla and Emily finale at this point.

I wonder if the problem of this season is the push for having more attractive-out-of-drag queens. You could see that push last season, but luckily they still got a stellar group of big personalities out of it. But look back at earlier seasons, you tend to have only a few queens who are notable attractive out of drag in them and being attractive out of drag really isn't considered a big issue(and the butt ugly out of drag tends to waaay outnumber the pretty out of drag). But this season is really heavily loaded with pretty out of drag guys and instead of being drag queens who happen to be attractive, like Willam or PhiPhi or Manilla, most of them kind of are the very worst image of what you get of 'pretty people' drag: people who disdain personality and performance and only want to be told how pretty they are. As my brother put it 'These people make me think of those drag queens who's "performance" is walking up and down a bar to a song with their hands held out for tips like the worst stripper ever'.

This is part of the bad editing. Plenty of after interviews make it clear how rapidly most people get sick of the sequestration, constant work, stress and other queens. But the show doesn't usually edit that in(Season 3 where the final stretch of episodes was clearly made up of tired, cranky queens who were sick of making outfits was the only one I can think of). Though the bad editing just seems part of the whole 'more raw' style they wanted to do, which mostly seems to mean being really downbeat and cutting down on the humor heavily. Is anyone else just kind of dreading the LSFYL at this point? Most seasons they were a highlight of the episode, but they have all just been so terrible this season. Like the best was still just a little over Honey Mahogany vs Vivienne Pinay. And the songs are so boring. Where are my recognizable pop party songs or weird off beat music etc?

I don't really understand that theory. If you want to ensure someone wins the finale, Roy is the kind of person you put in it because like Cig last season, he's effectively dead weight. Why? All season finales since the first season have focused on minimalist make ups that have to hold up to high stress athletics with no real room for fabrication or immobile pieces. So someone can be the best big ol' fabricated monster maker ever, but they're guaranteed to lose the season unless they're also the best minimal, often feminine, make up and body painting artist as well. I mean look at how outright bad Roy's output was in the season 5 finale, he's hardly the obvious winner unless the contest is 'make something huge and immobile'.

I wouldn't say the eliminations so far are that surprising going with the usual narrative of eliminations on the show. What is more surprising is how bad the editing around them is, usually the show is better at making a BS decision look right or make a boring queen look halfway interesting.

A lack of strong personalities does seem a problem this season. Ginger and Katya are funny, but more low key and with fewer easy quotes and zingers than the usual big personality queens of a season. Max is a skilled introvert, good at everything he does but he's very reserved. Jaidynn has high energy and likes to talk, but too little confidence to be a real shady comedy lady. Similarly, Violet is a bit shady and definitely bitchy, but he's also too reserved and given to fall back to resting bitch face to bring big time bitch theatrics. Fame and Kandy Ho continue to exist in a bland 'you barely exist except for runway' kind of way(and personally i'm finding Fame a bit noxious because while pageant vs comedy is a bit tiresome, at least that is throwing shade about different types of being skilled at performance and entertainment. Fame seems to view the concept of performance and entertainment as things beneath her). Kennedy has a very severe professional demeanor usually, we only get to see her soften and loosen up in rare bits with Ginger. Pearl is deadpan funny, but not a really strong personality either. This season has definitely has the U, N and T, but I think it needs a severe injection of C.