belligerent

Who ever could have predicted that both immunity potions would be used in situations where it didn't matter. It's almost like in that one season where it was always chocolate until it wasn't, hmmmm. How crazy and zany. It's interesting to juxtapose Sapphira using her potion when she didn't need it at all vs. Plain Jain giving it to someone else when she arguably could have needed it. Was this supposed to air before Super Tuesday and something got pushed back? Because it's really weird and unfortunate timing otherwise.

Those characters are made-up in a way that’s different from what I mean. Kimmy Jong Un was based on an actual person and “Maria the Robot” was based on a real robot personality (that felt weird to type) named Sophia the Robot. These were still impersonations on some level. What happened this Snatch Game felt different than that, because “the gold tooth fairy” wasn’t an interpretation (however loose) of an existing personality, she told Ru that it was all from her head. Likewise, when it was mentioned by Michelle (? I think) that she thought Plain Jain’s character was someone she “made up,” it didn’t seem to matter that she had or hadn’t. They also seemed iffy about Tiffany Pollard but were fine with Mhi’ya rebranding what she was going to do as Tiffany Pollard as an original character. I know there’s a lot of grey area here. I feel like once Trinity decided to do Lucifer, they probably decided it was fine to do whatever. However, it would be nice to hear what the parameters are so the viewers know. If the criteria for a snatch game character is “someone,” then why not just be your own drag persona? I’m sure that’s off the table. I guess I would rather they make up things like the Gold Tooth Fairy instead of impersonating random tiktokers, so I’m not complaining so much as I am wondering what the actual rules are. I think increasingly, snatch game is the challenge where the fourth wall has been knocked down between the viewers and production, exposing how much of the judging outcome is just whatever Ru wants it to be, regardless of the performance, which makes it feel less fun to watch for me.

I find it super weird that the editing made it appear as though Planned Jan said something about being distracted by “shiny breasts” specifically at Laith Ashley, who happens to be a trans man. I doubt she had any idea who he is and it was probably directed at both pit crew members but wow, editors. Nobody can make her say words she didn’t say but the editing really has been showing a good number of questionable things. Beyond that, it annoys me how much Ru can interfere with the outcome of snatch game. All she really has to do is express doubt to someone in the workroom to make them second guess or just refuse to play “yes and” to derail them fully. I also didn’t think it was totally fair in untucked that Q was getting accused of pulling out the Brick for Amelia Earhart. Ostensibly she’d practiced Amelia beforehand, so she was more spoilering her own performance in the SNL episode by choosing to use the mannerisms she had planned for Amelia. Did they change the rules for this season to allow made up characters? I think in the past, you weren’t supposed to do that, but they didn’t stop Xunami from doing it when they had the chance, and someone mentioned that they had thought Plane’s character was made up.

I don’t really like Plane Jain, but we have to let her off the hook, I guess. Season 16 started filming almost exactly when AS8 was airing (the premiere would have been the only episode shown), so I feel like this was really poor planning on the show’s part. I don’t know why they had essentially the exact same skit or why they aired the parts where they praised Planned Jan for the same things they praised jimbo for. Do they think we’ve seen so many seasons of drag race in the last year that we’d forget?

My pet theory for a while has been that Ru (a Scorpio) will never crown another Scorpio on a season of American drag race but now he has no other option. Hmm. Missed opportunity for a "Kandy Musk" scent. Imo it was boring that the queens all mostly had their designated twin outfits and a name ready to go. I get they didn't really give them time to do the challenge in an interesting way, but it is not entertaining to me for Kandy to dictate what drag her daughter is going to do and pretending (badly) like she's not doing exactly that. I know they've been doing that for the last several seasons, but it was extra transparent to me this time. "What name goes with Kandy??? Cookie???? I know, we could spell it with a K!!!!!"

This episode was emotionally exhausting somehow and I'm not invested enough to have emotions about this season, so I'm not sure how they managed that. RuPaul doing the "if you think you can throw a big fit, I will throw the biggest fit of all" thing was mildly amusing, though. I wonder if he would just decide to pull a whole season to spite them if they kept trying to quit.

Pretty annoyed at the praise Kandy got for singing when her track was the most obviously pitch-corrected of them all, especially when their criticism of Kahanna was that she was pitchy. Like, I realize all the queens had some level of pitch correction but it seems disingenuous to pretend they didn't. Oh well.

I feel like Loosey sealed her fate by voting for herself as the next to go in the mini challenge. Even though the entire point was to vote with the group, I think that's the kind of move that Ru secretly holds against queens. Loosey is a Taurus so I guess that means she is going to be mad about this forever. I'm still hoping for either an Anetra or Sasha win. I think Anetra has had higher highs and lower lows, but Sasha has been consistently pretty good. I loved them both with their drag daughters this episode.

Salina's boy drag was giving me Mike Meyers vibes. I think it was the eyebrows. Also, Loosey's boy drag kept reading as Emilio Estevez to me. I don't know that they actually looked like these people if you put them side by side, but my brain said they did. I'm surprised they didn't have costuming do something to hide Loosey's visible tattoos. That's not her fault, but I kept noticing the ones on her legs. I think either Mistress or Luxx would be fine, but the two of them together make what they're doing exponentially more tedious. It's a weird one-two punch where Mistress is being strategically shady but it's just a joke, can't you take a joke????? and then Lux is plainly stating an alternate reality with such conviction that it's a perfect storm of gaslighting whether the two of them intended it to be this way or not. The edit seems to want me to side with them and let Loosey get Derrick Barried, so I'm assuming that means one or both of them goes farther than she does. I don't hate either of them, and I think either of them by themselves would be a funny villain, but the two of them together take it somewhere unpleasant. (Although Mistress finding a security tag on Luxx's coat was funny and I'm glad we have longer episodes again because idk if they'd have kept that in a shorter edit.) This wasn't my least favorite Rusical (the kardashian one or the orange one probably take that for me. I've liked Rats the most) but we were robbed of seeing what Marcia³ would do with it. I'm surprised anybody ever wants the lead role in the rusical, because I can't really remember a time when that's gone well aside from the one with Adore and Courtney Act, and that one involved actual singing. It's not like the acting challenges where you can take more liberties with the character, because the tracks are already recorded. The more stage time you have, the more time there is for the judges to find reasons to put you in the bottom, and you're not getting the win because the leads are usually not written as very funny, which is what Ru likes. I think Anetra and Sasha were definitely the tops here. I liked that Sasha had a very specific way of moving and emoting as boy Carl that she carried into the drag Carl (I don't remember Carl's drag name lmao, was it Ethel Sperman??) persona so that it didn't just feel like suddenly, Sasha. I liked everything Anetra did. She performs with her entire soul on display and it's mesmerizing. Maybe I am still feeling overexposed to "Running Up That Hill" from dragoncon (not dragcon) last year due to Stranger Things being the big fandom of the summer, but this was not my favorite lip sync, either. Orville Peck seemed really random as a judge for this challenge, although I know it's based on schedule availability who they can get.

The editing made this feel like a clip show.

I agree. She's kind of literally doing the "look over there!!" thing but being smart enough not to call back to it.

Same. Unless there's a surprise upset and that girl doesn't somehow magically surprisingly unexpectedly truly madly deeply have the golden ticket (or more likely, if Jorgeous gets eliminated to attempt to put a fire under her and shockingly jawdroppingly no-earthly-groundhog-could-have-predicted-it-ly rigory morrisly does have the ticket and then two of those four end up in the bottom and one has to go), I would have almost bet chocolate on these four being the last four standing from about....the first few episodes? I would be happy with any one of them winning, although as someone on Team Gemini, I will be especially pleased if it's Bosco, since I don't think we've had a winner since Violet Chachki, IIRC? I like Deja but I think she got immunity at the right time. I don't see her surviving that lip sync deathmatch with anyone except Daya. Speaking of, is Daya trying to gaslight the entire cast and dragrace fandom into forgetting that she actually should already be at home with all this "i can't believe i did just as bad as jaaaaaaasmiiiiiiine" bullfuckery? I'm glad Jasmine called her out on the "no offense" method of trying to stop people from calling her out for being an asshole. I also thought it was interesting that she has different rules for how and when other people get to be honest. So you can say whatever you want in front of the group because you're saying "no offense," but somebody else has to come to you privately to bring something up? Yeah, no. Jasmine has good instincts to bring that stuff up in public where she has witnesses. Willow has been playing the game better and more intelligently than just about anyone that's been on this show. I think Bosco and Camden have also been playing fairly smartly, so I hope they can all figure out a way to get rid of Daya. I have to rewatch the episode because my internet starts getting laggy about 30 minutes into the live feed and the only matches I saw clearly without it freezing every five seconds were the first two. Willow vs Bosco is probably one of my favorite lip syncs I've seen in recent memory.

I almost would bet a chocolate bar that we saw the least funny parts of snatch game in order to have an in-story reason to justify the lip sync palooza next week. I really don't think production could set up an entire new episode in a short time, and they already saw the silky episode of all stars work as a good twist. And how many of these episodes are non-elimination? To have the right number of episodes that were ordered, they would need to know in advance which ones would be non-elimination. Kornbread threw them a curve when she had to go early, but they've brought people back, had non-eliminations, and there's still a gold chocolate bar, ostensibly. (what if Ru has the gold chocolate bar?) That said, I doubt it was actually good, either, and I will make up my mind on what percentage I think was shenanigans when I watch it again (because I was trying not to burn banana bread* and missed a minute or two), but I don't think they were really set up to succeed or edited in a favorable way. That's a shame because I think a lot of them are super talented and I don't want production gaslighting them. More opinions after I watch again, I guess. I did like the analysis in Untucked of how to do snatch game correctly, and I thought Bosco was particularly insightful and succinct about it and am kind of surprised they aired the talk at all. Basically there are rules unless there aren't. Yeah, that's the show. *The banana bread is slightly overdone, but not as overdone as production shenanigans on drag race! I agree with that, but I think it would take away the aspect that they were discussing on Untucked. If you make something against the rules, then you can decide to reward people for taking the risk to break them if it's funny. Like Bob having a second Snatch Game character. Nobody told him he could, but he did it, anyway, and it wasn't a disaster so he was rewarded for doing his own thing to stand out in a way that they must have thought improved the show. The "Nerve" criteria they allegedly use as a judging parameter is underutilized by queens, although I can understand why.

I feel like there's an inherent advantage to whoever won the previous lip sync because she knows what's about to happen and is already mentally prepared, whereas the newly eliminated queen basically hears about the Game Within A Game (GWAG? is this acronym a word or did they miss a chance to make a pun?) and has to instantly be ready. That's a lot of emotional whiplash to navigate. I'm still not a Silky fan but I was entertained by this episode at least.

I don't really understand why Ginger won but it's Ru's show, not mine. I, too, thought Kylie did a better job. However, the person I actually laughed at was Ra'Jah. I think it's because the weirdness felt more organic to me than one liners.

You can glue down short facial hair with a glue stick basically like they do with eyebrows. I don't know that this is what she's doing, but that would be my best guess.

I'm personally kind of glad she didn't win, in a way. If the first (and probably only, unfortunately) trans man on Drag Race won, there'd be an unspoken asterisk next to that win for a large percentage of cis people who think that for some bizarre reason, things are easier if you're trans because they believe people want to give things to you undeserved. I don't know if there are a lot of trans men doing drag with the kind of resume that Gottmik has, though, so I would be really surprised to see another get as far. Sometimes I entertain the idea of doing drag, but I'd have to shave off my beard and learn how to walk in heels to have any chance at a non-delusional drag race audition, lol. Symone winning is probably the best possible outcome of this season, imo. I don't feel like it was much of a surprise, but I got really nervous at the end of Symone vs. Kandy that Ru was about to do something stupid. I couldn't really pay attention to the Bette Midler number because it made me cry. I'm glad they did a tribute to Chi Chi, too, although it made me cry harder. I also love LaLa as Miss Congeniality.

They showed up in a video, being supportive on camera, but that doesn't necessarily translate to being actually supportive. One thing Gottmik said in reaction to the video was that they were using her chosen boy name, which led me to believe it's not something they usually do. Again, I could be projecting my own experience here, I know if I was on drag race and my parents sent me a video and were suddenly really cool about everything they aren't normally cool about and calling me their "son" and not their "daughter," I would be suspicious and would assume it was being done to make them look better and to make me look ungrateful (or a liar) if I had already said anything about their lack of support. I hate that if Gottmik wins, there will always be an asterisk by that win for some people. It would be nice if a person were able to be only incidentally trans while still able to be an advocate or role model for other trans people but that's probably a french vanilla fantasy. I also hated this track of Ru's. It sounded like he hired the cheapest person on fiverr to make a song based on the kidz bop version of the shrek soundtrack, set in that crossover episode of johnny bravo featuring the gang from scooby doo, but make it drag. Or don't. I need to watch the episode again but I was really bored and not paying attention to anything.

I'm assuming the rupaul koozies (roozies?? brb, copyrighting) are being used to hide that they're not using a beverage who paid sponsor money. Bubly is probably a sponsor so they were allowed to show them in full. I noticed the "vodka" too and spent at least ten minutes unsuccessfully trying to figure out from the font on the can what brand of pre-mixed drinks they had. The bossy rossy/cops/whatever improv challenges seem really uneven, and I always feel like I'm on a different planet when the judges find some funny and others unfunny. The impromptu Maury skit was a funnier idea than any of the prompt ideas they gave them. I think Gottmik played it pretty smart to side with Olivia on giving her the mime. Utica is funny and I know she would have gone, as the kids say, "ham" if she had gotten cast as the mime, but I think she would have derailed them. Part of what made their skit funny was that Olivia was working so well with everyone to let them build on what she was doing. Utica came in and didn't play off the others as much, and I think that giving her the mime would have allowed her to go too over the top with no ability to pull the skit back in. I don't think she would have done it on purpose but her strength is being and looking crazy and people encourage her to do that by laughing at it, but if she was acting so weird that Gottmik was unable to interpret what she was doing, it would have undermined her character as a mimeologist. That 600 pound ass skit was at least 900 pounds of ass in a 600 pound bag. There was potential there to be funny but Elliott never did anything with the character. I also didn't think the pop star skit was that inherently funny, so I was surprised the judges liked them so much. Would they have been impressed with a subdued performance if it had been anyone other than Kandy? I'm not sold on that. I still love Olivia even if they tried to feed us a "secret diva" edit. I also love Rosé much more than I was expecting to based on the meet the queens interviews, although I am not super in love with what she's sent down the runway. I also love Symone. I'm going to miss LaLa. I think Denali is a better competitor than they've been placing her and I hope she doesn't get too in her head about it. I like Utica but I don't think she's going to be able to escape the kooky corner, because that's her main skill. Tina I am on the fence about. I don't really dislike her and I think she's definitely got some skills, but her aesthetic is kinda ???? and I'm not sure how easy that will be for her to fix. I think Gottmik is talented and am rooting for her to win, but it probably depends on how much dancing is left in the season whether that's likely. The only two queens I still really do not like much are Kandy and Elliott. I'm still willing to give Kandy a chance to redeem herself. I'm also trying hard to have empathy for Elliott because having clinical depression can't be easy, and I don't think she did herself any favors being relatable to others by botoxing all the expression out of her face, but yikes, some of the stuff she has said recently is not really defensible. I do agree with Kandy that Elliott is probably not very self-aware (as funny as that is coming from Kandy), but I'm not sure she can truthfully claim ignorance for all of it because at a point, the stance becomes "well, I didn't know it was bad to be shitty about things!" I didn't think LaLa deserved to be in the bottom, based on challenge performance, and I personally don't think she lost the lip sync, either, but I'll have to watch it again. Her wig being in her face most of the time did make me worried for her.

Lmao I haven't. I only stumbled into this scientific breakthrough because I was at the wiki looking up to see if someone was older than me and clicked on the "queens by zodiac sign" because I was curious and noticed the discrepancy.

The UK hasn't done all that well in the contest for about twenty years, so I am not sure that the UK really gets Eurovision, either.

Not really a conspiracy theory but something I think is super interesting when it comes to Kandy: RuPaul is a Scorpio. On the US drag race, there have been a total of 6 Scorpios cast, which is way below any other sign. There have been more closeted trans women cast on this show than Scorpios. Furthermore, on versions of the show where RuPaul has been a judge, no Scorpio has placed higher than sixth, and there has never been a Scorpio in the final three on any version of the show. This season, two Scorpios were cast: Kandy and Tina. HMM. Is Ru biased against other Scorpios? Correlation is not causation but it seems like a weird coincidence. She could be looking for that special Scorpio winner, might hold them to a different standard, or could have a "highlander" mindset about it where she wants to be the only one. Based on this, I would really not expect either of them to get past sixth place, and I hope I'm right. I think of the two, Tina has a better chance of going further, at least on paper. Gottmik started a youtube channel where she demonstrates her challenge makeup looks on camera. I'm assuming she will explain more about that whenever she uploads this week's episode (probably tomorrow).

I know I personally would be suspicious af if I got a video where my parents were suddenly not stubbornly calling me my legal name (my chosen name is literally the nickname my mom used to call me pre-transition, which I did so she'd have an easier time, but she refuses to call me that now lmao) and being supportive, or at least pretending to be. I don't know Gottmik's relationship with her parents, but if they're not usually supportive and suddenly they are when cameras are rolling, she probably didn't know how to react on camera. Do you call them out for being fake or try to seem appreciative just in case it's genuine? I'm 15 years older than her and not trying to repair my relationship with my parents, so I would probably be like "that's unusual for them, but maybe they're learning." I watch Drag Race with a friend of mine and we talk over messenger and my response to her parents' message was "here's Gottmik's parents being surprised at having a Leo." This season is really weird for me to watch because what's going on with Gottmik is so close to my own experience (I personally paid around 8k for my chest and I, too, get my money's worth by being shirtless as often as possible). I also really wish she hadn't hitched her wagon to the "mean girls" thing while also trying to be good representation for trans men and serving as one of cis people's only points of reference when it comes to us. She should be glad Kandy danced in front of her so the judges couldn't see her during their group's part of the main challenge. I thought she was going to be in the bottom based on how off on the choreography she was compared to Tina. This was probably my least favorite episode of Drag Race ever. I love disco (don't take my metalhead card) and this was really disappointing to me. It's worse than that drag olympics episode in 11 for me, which was boring but didn't seem as offensive as this abridged version of the cliffsnotes for "Disco for Dummies." I'm glad LaLa at least knew who Sylvester was. I guess I just watched way too much VH1 twenty years ago. LaLa and Olivia are a couple of my favorites. They just seem like such lovely people. "Lux" is such a good name for her, because she really does embody radiance. It also worries me that nobody knew who Charles Nelson Reilly was, and now I'm dreading the snatch game episode. If I was going to be on this show, knowing how important snatch game is to how well you do afterwards, I would have Match Game on in the background while working on my outfits or whatever. It's free with Prime!!!! No excuse. Charles Nelson Reilly was also one of the first "openly" gay male celebrities on TV, so it's not just a random situation where it's become gay culture (like a lot of the movie references that were in the rupaulmark episode). I'm on Team Tamisha for All Stars 7 so she better be there. I knew they weren't going to send Kandy home but jfc. Now Kandy is going to be even more exhausting. It's really interesting to hear her interpretation of the judges' critiques, because it's always "well they said I was perfect in the challenge but they didn't like this one tiny thing and I don't care about that because it's just part of who I am."

I've watched this preview a few times now to give it a chance and I'm not sure which part brings me less joy: all the tension in the beginning or the mini challenge theme. The first act almost makes me want to skip the premiere tomorrow night and just wait for amazon to add it to my season pass so I can fast forward through this stuff.

Yes. Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman. I just didn't want to type out his whole name because I'm lazy, lol. He's one of the judges on Drag Race Canada and is also the guy from Snatch Game of Love and various other cameos.