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multimetaverse · 4 years

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Jamie Johnson 5x05 Review

If you were a fan of Andi Mack or Doafp you should check out the pretty great British show Jamie Johnson which just launched a coming out story line for one of its main characters and covers a bunch of other important issues. Let’s dig in!

My reviews will feature spoilers from throughout the series and if you’d like to watch the story from the start there are only 3 eps in the 1st season, 10 in the 2nd and 3rd, and 13 in the 4th and 5th with casting and writing already underway for a 6th season. All the eps are available on the CBBC website if you live in Britain or have a VPN. You can also contact @tkstrand for access to the eps (just don’t tell Scotland Yard). A big thanks to Mike for introducing me and so many others to Jamie Johnson and single-handedly starting the fandom. I highly recommend watching all the eps from the start; Jamie Johnson is a very charming show that tackles a lot of important issues in the guise of being a show about soccer and the show has gotten better each season and the writing shows no signs of stalling or declining. The acting does start off really rough in S1 but has improved markedly and some of the actors are very talented though overall the acting is closer in quality to a show like GMW or No Good Nick than Andi Mack or Doafp. In fairness, a big reason for that is that the show has to spend so much time on soccer games and practices and the kids are actually pretty good players; so good in fact that for S4 the actors actually entered the 2018 Gothia cup in Sweden and did extremely well. Jamie Johnson is in many ways a British Andi Mack but with a British Gary Marsh who is much less of a censoring shithead and a British Terri Minsky and crew who are better and more consistent writers

Tonight was a big night for reformed bully and star soccer player Dillon Simmonds. He’s the closest analogue to TJ Kippen the show has though unlike TJ he’s a main character and has been in the show right from the pilot; in some eps he even gets the 2nd credit after Jamie. 5x05 was in many ways a callback to 4x05 which was the first ep that had subtext for gay Dillon. 4x05 also introduced most of the characters who will play a big role in Dillon’s coming out story line: Ruby Osborne, her biological sister Alba, her foster moms who are a married lesbian couple, Dillon’s younger brother Liam, and Dillon’s father. S4 is really when Dillon Simmonds becomes a hashtag good boy and his arc is focused on him getting out from his Father’s incessant pressure to go pro though there is some delicious gay subtext in eps 4x11-13

The show’s always been good at setting up plot points in advance, like Dillon’s diabetes, Wozza’s ADHD, and Duncan Jones’ shadyness, but those plots were set up and then addressed all in the same season. I don’t think it’s that surprising that the gay story line is the exception. It’s very likely that the writers didn’t intend Dillon to be gay until they set out to write S4 and they likely didn’t have full permission to go ahead with it until S5. It’s also likely that their original plan for exploring Dillon’s sexuality was going to involve Ruby trying to act on her crush on Dillon; 4x13 set that up and then in 5x01 Ruby tells Zoe out of nowhere that she’s over Dillon and only sees him as a brother and wouldn’t you know it, she doesn’t even think Dillon looks at girls in a romantic way!

Thankfully the show is going in a much better direction with the introduction of Elliot. He’s already been fleshed out with a personality and hobbies like astronomy and magic (for his next trick he’s going to make Dillon’s heterosexuality disappear). I was shocked at how flirty the Delliot scenes this ep were, not just because they were gay scenes but also because the show really has not had these kind of scenes before for any of the straight characters either. Even Jamie hasn’t had more than pretty clear hints that he likes Jack and wants to be with her. I don’t know if it’s because the show is targeted towards an audience of young men or if there’s a cultural difference across the pond but there’s consistently been very little romance of any kind throughout the series. If this had been an American series, there’s no way that Jamie wouldn’t have had at least one girl he went on a date with or something, even if it was only a brief thing. It’s refreshing in some ways and it means that the show has to look elsewhere for drama and angst

Dillon is obviously drawn to Elliot and thinks he’s cool but he has quite the reaction when he learns that Elliot is gay. He runs to tell Ruby that she needs to cut it out with Elliot because he’s gay which is clumsy writing because Zoe had just told him that Ruby told her that Elliot is not in fact her new boyfriend but is her new gay foster brother. They obviously needed to show Dillon’s strong reaction to the news but also needed a way to come off as kind of homophobic but my own theory is that Dillon wanted to make sure Ruby didn’t waste her time pursuing a gay guy like Sienna Jones had wasted her time trying to pursue Dillon in S4. As the show hasn’t really focused much on romance I’m not expecting much to come of Delliot especially since they have a built in escape hatch with Elliot only being in care until his mom is out of hospital but I am looking forward to what happens with them this season and what will happen with Dillon in the remaining seasons this show has

I think this was the least that Jamie has been in any ep. One thing I really like about this show is that they’re not afraid to have main characters miss an ep or two unlike American shows that usually have to have mains appear in every ep even if there’s no actual story for them. From the S5 trailer it looks like Jamie will get really into e-gaming while his broken leg heals after he was accidentally run over on his 16th birthday by his deadbeat dad Ian Reacher. I would assume that Jamie eventually gets back into real soccer but it does promise a lot of drama between Jamie and grandpa Mike who has always been Jamie’s staunchest supporter

Duncan ‘’Big Dunk’’ Jones, former pro soccer player turned silver fox and head of Phoenix FC, took a big step forward in redeeming himself for trying to scuttle Jamie’s career with Hawkstone by appointing Jamie’s mom Karen as the new head of wellness which fits with the CBBC announcement that S5 would in part focus on mental health

Alba once again lost her cool during a game. It’s clear that a lot of her anger issues stem from feelings of abandonment as well as the constant uncertainty and rapid changes she’s experienced as a foster child. The show has always been good at showing how what’s going on with the children in their home lives affects them at school and on the pitch, like Jamie acting out because of his dad walking out on the family and Dillon being a bully to try and fit into the role his dad wants him to play. It’s very interesting that they’re now bringing back Liam Simmonds to begin his redemption arc as he was the first to make Alba lose her cool by attacking her foster moms at his father’s instigation way back in 4x05

To the show’s credit, they’ve always been firm in showing how awful bullying and homophobia are and all the soccer teams in the series have shown a zero tolerance policy for it. It’s a different world in many ways from North America, I couldn’t imagine an American show about football or even a Canadian show about Hockey that would plausibly show a zero tolerance policy for bullying and homophobia

Looking Ahead:

Next ep features Liam’s return to Phoenix FC after Alba accepts his apology for his homophobia. His redemption arc will be interesting to watch especially as it;s certain to tie in to Dillon having to face up to his father who is the avatar of toxic masculinity and homophobia. Perhaps it will take Liam defending his brother to make his father see the errors of his ways

Not sure who will take over coaching the U14′s now that Mike has said he’ll be stepping aside

Zoe faces another talented black player who she clearly does not respond well to. Zoe has always been hyper competitive and worried about losing her place to another female player which in part stems from the stress she’s under as her ill mothers primary carer. Good for Zoe for getting through to Howard Royle about Hawkstone lacking a women’s team

5x07 looks like it will be a huge ep for Dillon and Delliot and it seems likely that Dillon will snap after realizing that Ruby and Elliot think he’s homophobic and will come out to Elliot. Should be good

Until next week Jamie Johnsoner’s

#Jamie Johnson #Dillon Simmonds #Delliot #Andi Mack #Doafp #Elliot #Ruby Osborne #Alba Osborne #Mike Johnson #Jamie Johnson Reviews

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morrigan24601 · 3 years

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More Family Context

So my last post about my oldest stepson and daughter-in-law expecting made me realize that I have never really talked about my stepsons on here before, even though my boyfriend/partner and I have been together for almost 7 years? So I figured I’d do a post about that. Sorry in advance for this - there’s a lot of drama involved, unfortunately.

CW: divorce, custody issues, homophobia/biphobia, manipulation, abuse, parental alienation

Also, obligatory disclaimer that I do not give permission to ANYONE to share this story without my express consent. (I’m doing this because I’ve seen personal stories get shared from Reddit onto YouTube and whatnot and I really do not want that to happen here.)

Looooooooooong, looooooooong post.

...

Years ago, long before I even met my dude, he went through a supremely nasty divorce. His sons with his ex-wife were very small at the time (youngest son was still just a baby/toddler). There was a lot of emotional and verbal abuse on her end. He didn’t talk about it much because he didn’t think anyone would believe him.

Things gradually got worse instead of better after the divorce, unfortunately. As soon as she found out that he had started dating men after the divorce, she began spreading rumors among their mutual friends/acquaintances that he had always been gay (he’s bi), that he had never loved her (he had), and that she had just been a beard for him and this was why they had gotten divorced (it was actually because he had stuck it out for as long as possible and couldn’t handle her abuse any longer). She got very weird about him dating men - like, ultra-homophobic, ridiculous, “I don’t want my sons being molested by your gay boyfriends because I think all/most gay men are secretly pedophiles” weird. She began refusing to let the boys come over to his place as long as he was in a relationship with a man. “If you date women instead, I’ll consider it.”

In hindsight, he absolutely could have fought this in court because they had joint custody and there was no way she should have been able to do this and get away with it. Unfortunately, the state we live in has always been extraordinarily conservative and this was the early-to-mid 2000s, and he worried that he would face additional homophobia/biphobia in court. He also worried that fighting her over anything in court would make everything exponentially worse for both him and the kids. So he just let it go and saw the boys at her place or a neutral location whenever he could.

Eventually he moved out of state to try to make more money. His ex-wife remarried and, almost immediately, she and her new husband began harassing him about giving up his parental rights so that her new husband could adopt the boys and they could “have a real dad”. He was obviously not okay with this, but the manipulation went on for two years. At one point he ran into some temporary difficulty paying child support, and she jumped on this as “proof” that he was a terrible deadbeat dad who didn’t deserve his children.

So finally, after years of his anxiety and depression being exploited by his ex-wife, he finally began thinking that maybe his boys would actually be better off without him, that they’d be better off with a “real family” with a dad who was married to their mom. He drove back to home state and signed away his rights, and it was, he’s told me, the absolute worst day of his life.

She didn’t bother to show up to the hearing where he signed the papers. He found out shortly afterward (and this almost sounds like a bad movie plot, but it’s true) that she had recently divorced the man who was supposed to adopt the boys and hadn’t bothered to inform him of this fact.

She refused to let him see or contact the boys in any way after he signed the papers, and legally, there was no longer anything he could possibly do about it. He attempted to contact them through her quite a few times, but always in vain and he eventually stopped trying because it was too painful. She eventually remarried again and this time her new husband actually did adopt the boys.

Years went by. He and I met and started dating. He told me about the boys on our first date, when I told him I had kids and asked if he had any. “Yes...and also no,” was his somber response. He was...remarkably restrained while talking about his ex-wife that first time. “She’s a strong woman,” he said, “and I hope she’s been a good mom.” I only learned later how abusive she had actually been to him. He sort of...handwaved a lot of it, even when he did tell me. I actually had to tell him “that was abuse. She abused you. Like...hardcore.”

I asked if he ever thought about contacting the kids after they turned 18. He said he definitely wanted to, but he was sort of scared about it.

Fast forward to about 2 1/2 years ago. His oldest son was over 18 now. He was contacted by his oldest son’s girlfriend on Facebook. The message was something along the lines of “Hi, are you [son’s] biological dad? [Son’s mom] and [son] told me some stuff about you, and I thought I’d find you and talk to you about it, because a lot of it seemed really...off. [Son’s mom] said that you were gay and that this was why you divorced [son’s mom] and that after you signed the papers you didn’t want anything to do with the kids, that you never wanted to call or talk to them or anything, and [son] totally believes this because that’s what she’s been telling him his whole life. That seemed weird to me though and I wanted to find out the truth.”

He told her the truth. She was sort of floored, but not overly surprised, because she’d had her own emotionally abusive run-ins with her eventual mother-in-law. There were a lot of conversations over the course of the next year, a lot of her trying to convince oldest son to talk to his bio dad and a lot of resistance from oldest son because of everything he had been raised to believe by his mother. My partner wrote his oldest son a long message at one point explaining some things and telling him how much he loved him while trying to stay as neutral as possible about his ex-wife/son’s mom in order not to stir too much up. Total radio silence from oldest son. We kind of accepted at this point that we might not hear from him for a long time (if ever). Still, partner was still in contact with oldest son’s gf (who at that point had become oldest son’s fiancee), and she and oldest son got married last year. She apologized that they didn’t invite us to the wedding; there was still a lot of hostile awkwardness on oldest son’s part. We understood, and didn’t fault them for it at all.

Finally, a few months after they’d been married, DIL (daughter-in-law) said she wanted to come over, and we agreed. Unexpectedly, she brought oldest son with her, having finally convinced him to come at the last minute. Oldest son was super polite to both of us, and to my kids, but we found out much later he actually felt super awkward and angry and was just hiding it really well. Fortunately after repeated visits he realized his bio dad was a pretty cool guy and that his mom was, to get right to the point, full of shit. There’s been a lot that we’ve found out from oldest son about his mom’s behavior over the years, which is really unfortunate and honestly backs up everything my partner told me. We thankfully have a great relationship with oldest son and DIL now.

Youngest son is now 18 as well (almost 19) but, unfortunately, has much the same outlook as oldest son once did and currently wants nothing to do with his bio dad. However, oldest son and youngest son recently went on a roadtrip together and had a very long talk about the whole thing, and youngest son apparently got sort of thoughtful. We’re hopeful that he will eventually come around too.

Hopefully none of this has sounded like some kind of weird misogyny on my part while talking about my partner’s ex-wife. I just...have zero tolerance for bullies and abusers and she honestly blows my mind. I wanted to believe for a long time that a) there are two sides to every story and the truth of this particular situation possibly lay somewhere in the middle, and b) that maybe she had mellowed over the years and maybe felt at least a twinge remorseful and cooperative about things, but according to oldest son, that is absolutely not the case. She is still holding on to a lot of anger and bitterness and insecurities from her own abusive childhood and she constantly projects those insecurities onto people she’s supposed to love and care for, including her children. She was apparently livid when she found out that oldest son had cultivated a relationship with his bio-dad, because her carefully-constructed narrative of “the father of my oldest children was a terrible person who never wanted his kids” was suddenly in serious jeopardy. DIL has overheard her shit-talking the situation to friends, and oldest son has gotten more than one earful of “how could you do this to meeeeee, I raised you and protected you” which is just...ARGH. (On the flip side, she apparently got this shocked Pikachu face when oldest son told her about me - a woman, in a loving, long-term relationship with the man that for years has been the subject of her “he divorced me because he isn’t into women” narrative. That gave me a really good laugh!)

Anyway, that is the saga of my bonus sons and their unfortunate alienation from my partner/their bio dad, and the reason I wasn’t able to help raise them in their teens (I so wish I could have). I love them and my DIL so much, more than I honestly ever thought possible to love kids who aren’t “mine”, but like...they are. They’re my kids as much as my bio kids are. I felt that way long before I met them. My bonus sons are part of my partner, part of his heart, so they became my kids in my head immediately, and DIL became my kid immediately too. So I love them. It’s automatic for me. And I love my grandbaby-on-the-way with all my heart too and I can’t wait to meet that sweet little bean.

#I'm not sure what to tag this because I don't want a bunch of strangers viewing it so I'm just gonna tag it like this #morrigan's heavy stuff

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aesarctic · 6 years

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Warcross, by Marie Lu

The first book in the Warcross duology. Finished two weeks ago, but now that finals are done, I was able to put out a review.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

FOR THE SUPER NON-SPOILERY PEOPLE: Warcross is set in the near-future (about ten years) where a boy named Hidea Tanaka has invented a virtual reality video game. Everyone became obsessed with this game, including our main character, Emika Chen. Emika Chen is eighteen years old, lives in New York, and is a bounty hunter for a living. She has $13 to her name and rent, which is well over $13, is due. She becomes desperate, and this leads her to try something risky. Unfortunately, the outcome of her action doesn't go as according to plan. --- If you read the Legend trilogy, also by Marie Lu, you'd know that [SPOILER] this book is based off of the Antarctica points and rewards system we briefly got to see. I loved Antarctica in the Legend trilogy, and I was really excited to know that that system was getting it's own book. I have to say, figuring out that it was going to be in a video game format ruined my hopes a tiny bit, but that was easy to overlook.[END SPOILER] I don't have much to say about the characters overall, whether they seemed incredibly human-like, or if they were more plastic, or maybe they were a personality trait carved into the shape of a person. Character design didn't stand out that much. I also think that the plot is a little predictable, but I love what Marie Lu did with our world ten years from now. Ten years isn't much, so there's still hints to today's New York and other places, but there's also the differences that ten years can make. Ten years ago everyone still had flipphones; now you walk down the street and everyone has a smartphone. It's the same sort of difference, but a little more present. And if you read all of that and tried to figure out why I gave it four stars, for one, I found that I had a hard time putting the book down, no matter what happened. I actually finished it around 2AM (I read almost 200 pages that day), so if that doesn't show interest, I don't know what does. Also, if I told you why one star was docked, it wouldn't belong in the super "non-spoilery" section. Head on over to just "non spoilery" to figure it out. FOR THE NON-SPOILERY PEOPLE: Just adding on from the SNS section, I docked one star because no matter what, I will always hate romance. It makes it worse when it's predictable romance. I didn't like it. But moving away from that matter and into a different one, I think that the book had some things that seemed unrealistic. Not science-wise, but I mean little things that you'll have to find out once reading the book. Between characters that I liked and disliked, I definitely like more characters than I dislike, which is hopefully a good sign for anyone who can't read books with bad characters. Personally, if the plot's good, I can keep going, but I know some people have to like the characters if they're going to keep going.

FOR THE SPOILERY PEOPLE: Let's start with Emika: She's sort of middle ground for me. I like her, but she's not my absolute favourite. I like her name, and I like her hair. However, she didn't stick with me. How do I know? I finished this book two weeks ago and I can't remember anything that completely defined her for me. However, even though I can't remember Emika as a person, I know that throughout the book, everything Emika does seems so simple. Not that I expect her hacking process to be in great detail (because that sounds very hard to write), but she makes it sound like reciting the alphabet--something she can do every single time without fail. No challenge whatsoever. I love the idea of a fantastic hacker, but sometimes a little bit of challenge is nice to read or hear about. I also think that all of her background stories sound so dramatic. Her dad's story, her mom walking out, the thing with Annie at school. I know while reading the book, I had a harder time believing everything. After the book starts, we soon meet Keira, Emika's roommate. She was sorta deadbeat-ish, as Emika pointed out, but the way the two interacted made it seem like they were at least some sort of friends. I wish we could have seen a little more of that. I want to know what happened to her after Emika left. Emika made a point that with the rent paid off, she might have the motivation to get onto her feet again. I want to know if she did. A bit after we meet Keira, we also learn Emika's past with hacking. I don't remember when--before or after her big Warcross hack--but we learn that she was in a bad place, then she noticed Hideo on the TV, doing incredible things. She figured she could do the same thing, and did her computer science homework. And then she did the entire textbook. And then she went down for dinner. This is one of those unrealistic moments I mentioned earlier. I don't know how big her textbook was, but even thinking of my elementary and middle school textbooks (she was eleven, so sixth grade), there's no way that could be finished in a night. Especially before dinner. Maybe I read it wrong, please correct me if I did, but it seems a little unreasonable. After everything with Emika's giant hack, she becomes a wild card, and is the first wild card to be chosen by a team. She goes with them, and meets Wikki, a little robot that takes information on everyone. The reason I bring this up is because when she hacks into it, I was convinced she'd get caught or something. That seemed so simple. And then she never did. It totally worked. It seems too easy, which loops back around to what I was saying earlier about everything Emika does seems easy. Hideo and Emika quickly form a relationship, and I want to talk about it a bit. As soon as Emika took note that he was three years older than she during her "This is how I learned to hack" flashback, I knew that he was the love interest, and I was right. It also happened a lot faster than I thought it would be, and it almost seemed forced in a way. I also hated every moment that Emika blew off her teammates for Hideo. There's romance in every book, so believe me when I say that there are times I can tolerate it, but something about this relationship that I can't handle. So, a good chunk more into the book, there's been a match already, Emika finds more out about Zero with the Project_Ice_Hideo_Tanaka, and I wrote in my notebook "Zero is probably a good guy, honestly." I said this book was predictable, didn't I? Then, later, after we figure out that Hideo has a brother--had a brother, at this point in the book--I literally wrote "What if Zero is Hideo's brother." Re: predictable. Also, unrelated, but Hideo's brother is named Sasuke, which took me out of the book every time, and anyone who knows what Naruto is knows what I'm talking about. One of my friends recently read this book and said the same thing. Advancing into the plot, we reach a point where Emika is really getting on Sasuke's--sorry, I mean Zero's--nerves, and Zero deletes Emika's memory files. Memories are important and powerful, and I'll admit that I got really annoyed at that, but I'm relieved that she got all of them back in the end. The Zero plot is advancing quickly, and we find out, predictably, that Tremaine is another hired hunter. At this point, every time Zero does something huge, I wanted a huge explanation on how he does this. It's like he's magic, and I thought Emika had it easy. Obviously I don't want Marie Lu to go through the pain of writing all of that (again, sounds hard), but it just seems too unexplainable for Sasuke to be able to manipulate the game as much as he is. The end of the book. Zero is confirmed to be Sasuke, Hideo's the one who has bad ideas, the Phoenix riders know, I don't remember what happened to Asher but I don't think he's on the team anymore. Warcross is becoming a mindcontrol game, and Emika's adventure is to be continued. Despite a couple things that I found to be holes, I thouroughly enjoyed this book, and I'm excited for the next one. I want to see where we go with Emika, and I really want to see how the entire thing is resolved. Some predictions/wants for the next book: -Her mom makes an appearance for some reason or another -Keira makes an appearance -Love triangle with Emika, Hideo, and Tremaine, though I wouldn't put it past the book to through Sasuke in there as well.

#Warcross #Marie Lu #book review #Emika Chen #Hideo Tanaka

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