#is this an egregious fuckup? also yes

[salemoleander]

Oh my g-d. Doc is going to fucking kill them, and it's entirely justified

Fuck around and find out, I guess

#now do I think Doc enjoys having people to hunt down and destroy? yes #is this an egregious fuckup? also yes #hoooooly shit #s9 #scar #grian #hc s9 #hc s9 spoilers #i do empathize with the mood of 'got bored fucked around and fucked up so so bad' #but damn yall. keep your hands to your damn self

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Genuine question what is billions even about I see clips all the time and I cannot figure out what the plot is besides like “business” but I am very much in love w Taylor Mason (i think that’s their last name?) so I am intrigued ...

oh i’m so glad you asked

yeah it’s not at all a Just You thing, not only do we often only post about a particular slice of the series, it’s just REALLY difficult to get (or provide. but i’m always up for the challenge) a sense of what Billions is like as a series like, genre wise, and re: the plot, my god, every [usually more than 50 min but less than an hour] episode is a journey, in that So much will have happened. it moves at a Pace, i can tell you. but you know, good news in that it’s not really necessary to explain every plot thread ever, b/c it’s as much about its Themes or what have you

the stats rundown is billions is a weekly showtime tv series partway through its 5th season (12 episodes per season, currently they are producing the last half of s5 but had been on pandemic production hiatus for the past year, we do not yet know when the rest of s5 will air, s6 was greenlit a while ago) this isn’t really need to know for this question lol, but you don’t need to Not know either

the like, content Rundown is that yeah, it’s business, mostly high finance, although one of the main characters is always doing Legal Stuff (don’t care really b/c that side of things is not generally as relevant to, yes, taylor mason, who Makes the series). the kind of overarching Theme / premise is that the show is about like, here’s these Conflicts between people who are wielding some power in various ways, looking at the motivations of the individuals involved / the Cause And Effect web of these conflicts between them, e.g. how the consequences / fallout of one Power Play Maneuver will affect someone else’s storyline and result in them executing their own maneuvers, and of course, the pitfalls of all of this. more specifically, the series kicks off with the two (then (taylor is introduced in season 2) mainest characters, Axe, ceo of a hedge fund, and Chuck, some kind of lawyer who decides to go after axe b/c axe thinks he’s hot shit (true) and chuck is like ohhh i gotta do something about this guy. so there’s an Unending Conflict, axe vs chuck, an ongoing back and forth series of small or more overarching battles, and of course sometimes alliances, because there’s a Lot of characters on this show and we’re in season 5 so there’s been plenty of other Conflicts introduced besides this particular ongoing war. also, uh oh, chuck’s wife wendy works for the hedge fund axe runs! that’s just a whole wrench in things. as some sort of like, in house therapist performance coach sort of deal, thanks wendy, she’s also fairly a Main Character

axe is somewhat more relevant for our purposes b/c that’s that Finance side of the show via which taylor is introduced. but yeah both axe and chuck are exasperating lmfao like, this isn’t a show where it’s about the Likeability of whatever main character where like, you’re rooting for the obviously righteous / justified person or anything, it’s more about being along for the ride where you get to know Why people are engaging in these conflicts for sure, but like, unless you’re one of plenty of fans who maybe aren’t bringing the most Insight to the show who find any of this like, aspirational Epic Winner stuff like hell yeah axe or chuck as the Cool Guy Who Deserves To Win lmfao, being along for the ride is knowing that you’re just getting to watch this unfolding mess, so that’s “fun” lol

to get more to the point, yeah Taylor Mason is again the best part of the series lol, they’re introduced early in s2 as a Very Talented young iintern at axe capital (axe’s hedge fund) who, yknow, part of what makes axe an Eventful character to center things around is he’s (sometimes) capable re: all these strategic finance maneuvers, and also all “i don’t play by the rules,” which can often mean like, the actual rules like “no insider trading please” or more kinda implicit moral rules like “don’t keep taking Business Advantage over people’s deaths,” and here means that even though taylor is this early to mid 20something intern with no experience in finance who’s not even, at that juncture, necessarily planning to stay in the industry, he’s like yeah they’re valuable and i’m not gonna hold them back from that potential / opportunities * just because they’re a 20something new to the industry intern who definitely doesn’t behave in the Usual Way around here and is also a canon nonbinary character, thanks ( * you might not believe it, but axe does not proceed to only ever be a potential encouraging, opportunity creating ally* (*although, one nice thing is that they....almost always....have axe adamantly hold everyone who works with him to respecting taylor as a nonbinary person, at least in how they address taylor. b/c taylor Does get misgendered periodically, which can be exhausting, but they also aren’t exactly striving to hold it to what might be most “””realistic””” so like, taylor isn’t subject to transphobia and misgendering All The Time either) and so taylor very quickly goes beyond internship at axe cap, to the extent that when, at the end of season 2, axe effectively leaves them in charge of the whole fund when his own fuckups mean he temporarily Can’t helm axe cap

aaand then s3 starts off with taylor running things but has axe return Officially in charge soon enough, so there’s problems there, in that axe is now pulling taylor Back, and like, axe is alllllll about his ego, so it’s like, of course he’d Want taylor to have been able to successfully run axe cap while he couldn’t, since it’s his fund, but then of course he’s also mad about it b/c he needs everyone, like taylor, to know he’s better & more winning than them. and taylor doesn’t appreciate now being more sabotaged and stifled and that, like, if they’re mad about being treated this way, axe is just gonna be mad about That b/c you know, why aren’t they Only grateful to their mentor or deferential to his Skill And Experience, as well as the fact that no matter how much of an Ally you are to him, he’ll be mad if you’re not unilaterally loyal, aka if he fucks you over you can’t be mad about it or that’s actually a way you’re wronging Him, and you’re also wronging him if yknow, you say he can’t/shouldn’t just do what he wants, or do anything that to him implies you don’t think he’s objectively the Best most Winning and Deserving guy in whatever regards, like, if you’re associated with someone who makes him feel insecure in his superiority for one moment, and/or who he thinks doesn’t also recognize his superiority or something, he’ll be mad at you.......the Conflicts can arise v easily around here with this beloved character walking around. so, yeah, whereas season 2 for taylor is more like wow taylor you’ve got all this potential and value here, in season 3 taylor’s sure got reason to question their future at axe cap (see this post resident Billions / Taylor Mason Pro soph made last night) and, when not only are they and axe just more often going head to head over what they want here, there’s also this added egregious conflict of “taylor starts seeing this guy oscar who’s also in finance (but not at axe cap) and when they ask axe for some input on a matter via which they intended to help oscar out, axe uses that Information taylor just used to fuck oscar over to his own advantage, and when taylor is like ‘what the hell’ axe is just like ‘what’d you expect!! i gotta be me!!! if you expected anything different, that’s on you, and if you Did expect me to do this, that’s also on you’ because i’m sure it’s a surprise to hear that axe considers himself this like, force of nature where all his feelings and motivations and justifications are Objective and Correct, and then taylor has to tell oscar what happened and naturally this ends the relationship, to their evident further unhappiness” and oops, season 3 ends with taylor having started their own hedge fund.

i could give a tl;dr for what happens over the course of s4 & (so far in) s5, but i think the s2/s3 arcs are kinda the Essential Lore for explaining this character who crashes into the show (not in that their character tends to crash, their arrival and presence is clearly somewhat of a shakeup re: the norm, but they themself are all about staying balanced and Not being driven by tumultuous emotional impulses or anything like that, *cough, the characters they are quite a Foil to in this way*) and quickly ascends to Main Charactership. (also just remembered the other stats note that taylor is played by asia kate dillon, who is themself nonbinary.) another element that is a lot of fun re: taylor is that they have like, the series’ best Friendship lol, the show is not very conducive to a bunch of characters having a bunch of heartwarming relationships, though they sure Do appreciate those characters and let us see a lot of Dynamics at play even beyond the “these people are locked in conflict” plots and characterful interactions and moments for their own sakes, and Alliances, even friendships, sure are the other side of the Ongoing Conflicts coin here. but what i’m getting around to is that taylor gets to be good buds with mafee, a Guy who was working at axe cap already in season 1, who, along with ben kim (Another Guy At Axe Cap in S1, who we are also fans of) is like, one of the actually nice(r) people around there, and who is just like. such this Hapless Cishet Dude lmfaooo but he also happens to be the guy overseeing taylor’s (and presumably others’) internship, and is yknow, maybe kinda conflicted about “i’ve Been an actual employee this whole time and there goes an intern rocketing past me” but is also Supportive towards taylor, and taylor in turn is an Ally to him, and they are Friends, and when taylor starts their own fund, Taylor Mason Capital, mafee is the person from axe cap who helps them do it and leaves axe cap to work for them there. there’s also a part in s4, after an arc in the middle of the season ended up with taylor taking quite an emotional L, mafee has gone and confronted Responsible Parties over it and, naturally, ended up in a charity interfund Boxing Match (which, a] billions is deliberately Wild plenty of times in both its Elevated Dialogue style but also just like, things that happen lol but b] apparently that’s something that can & does happen in real life in hedge fund world. absolutely bizarre to learn this kind of stuff) taylor kinda gives him this pep talk including “asking you to come with me (to TMC, mase cap, their fund) was the best decision i ever made” and even back then, when we’d just started paying attention to the show fairly recently and weren’t exactly familiar with everyone and everything going on, it was like oh i Gotta post that clip lmao

there are many other side characters, this is a very Populated show, including like, recurring characters, people liable to be introduced at various points who might become regulars Or make repeat appearances but more periodically Or be around for part of a season, but naturally also i am mentioning one specific side character of Winston (No Official Last Name), who is a Quant, aka a quantitative rather than fundamental analyst, who first appeared in One Scene at the start of season 3 when taylor was looking to hire some quants for a project, but did not succeed, and the character (then only Quant Kid 2) was only meant to have that one appearance, but delightfully everyone wanted him back and they wrote more material for him asap. taylor later brings him on to their quant project, which is revealed to be part of what ensures they can start their own fund, and in season 4 winston is apparently the head of the quant team at mase cap, and he continues to appear as taylor’s main Quant. could go into a long (and, as he’s not a Main Character and it’s easier to cover his material, very thorough) tangent there lol but you’re asking about taylor and i’m only bringing up winston b/c technically he Is relevant there lmfao but also, i have to, and [tfw this side character quant who was originally only going to appear in one brief scene was the reason you got into this series in the first place and now it’s like well, We’re Here Forever, and also, taylor mason is The character]

natch you must’ve noticed if you’re sending me an ask about billions, but if you like taylor mason you Gotta be following @nothingunrealistic the #1 Tayficianado and who has also recently nobly finished Actually Properly Watching Billions and who can give you all kinds of info about the character / series, there’s A LOT to cover and it’s kinda impossible to convey some stuff w/o simply experiencing things yourself firsthand lmfao but also, we think about these characters and this show every day for like, two years and running, so. as you can see......totally willing to talk about it at any time to any extent lol

#anonymous #winston billions #So glad to get asks like this at any point lmfao like #oh someone's asked me about My Interest huh lol. here we go babeyyy

[noccalula-writes]

Can you give us your detailed thoughts on Avengers: Endgame?

SPOILERY THOUGHTS ARE COMING.

The basis of most of my gripes are: if Age of Ultron hadn’t been so shittily written, a lot of this could have been avoided. Not all of it, but a lot of it. But I’ll go line item by line item outside of that thought.

First off, Steve. Y'all already know I’m a Stucky shipper, but even outside of the context of the ship - and I fully support people who feel their relationship is platonic but very intimate as long as they have been supportive of how emotional their story is, let’s do that more with male friendships please - you have to admit that there has been no greater, longer standing or fucking emotional relationship arc through the entire goddamn MCU than Steve and Bucky. Platonic, nonplatonic, whatever. We literally watch Steve tear down a branch of the goddamn government to get Bucky back, and since the first movie, Bucky has been his emotional touchstone. Steve’s singular dedication to rescuing and protecting Bucky has driven him to the heights of recklessness and has made him nearly sacrifice himself a dozen times.

But he ditches out on him, after he’s been dead for five years no less, to go back to the fucking fifties and derail Peggy’s entire well-lived life.

I don’t buy it. I think this was purposeful diversion to avoid appearing “too gay”, and it fucking infuriates me. There is an article on The Daily Dot that explores this better than I even thought to and you should definitely read it.

The idea of Steve getting to live a full life and be happy? Wonderful. But the way this was executed felt cold, clinical. We’ve spent more time developing emotional bonds with Steve than any other character in the MCU except maybe Tony, and yet we the audience were completely shut out of his feelings for the entire last half of the very last film. It felt like a door had been closed on us. There was none of the warmth of Steve, only the resolve of Captain America, and a very rash decision that felt so poorly planned after he said barely two things to the man who has been the axis of most of his decisions in this entire series.

Sam is absolutely the right choice for Captain America, though. That was what I was hoping for, and he deserves the mantel.

Tony Stark, love of my life, was set up to make the martyr play from the very first Avengers film. This is where it was always meant to go, and I have spent every movie since AoU waiting for it to happen. Honestly, I feel like Tony’s arc was the one arena where everything was done right (except, I’ll be honest, I don’t know how I feel about him having had a kid - I’m not mad at it, though). If you follow me you know I don’t think he and Pepper had real staying power no matter how much they love each other, but I also never anticipated that he’d be with anyone else, so this wasn’t a disappointment (I love Pepper, to be clear). I was proud of him. I was sorry he wouldn’t get to see Morgan grow up, but I was proud of my man saving the world.

I love him with all my heart. He’s made dumb decisions but when the metaphorical knife was against his throat, he came correct with absolute resolution.

Wanda might as well have been a cardboard cutout, which on one hand was fine because she had way more screen time in Infinity War than she’s had anywhere else since AoU (shudder), but she’s been reduced to this background character who got shipped off with Vision just so she’d have something to do (and yes, I know it’s comic canon, but it was so out of left field in the MCU that there was no way this wasn’t a factor in). Wanda is a wealth of possibility for a storyteller - think about the grief this character has endured (consider my consider, Wanda Maximoff diatribe from yesterday) and how she’s learned to use her power. Think about the evolution of going from a volunteer for a program to literally become a mutant to fight the Avengers and then becoming one and losing your fucking twin brother, the only constant in your life. Think about having to kill the only person you could try to put a life together with. Think about all of that and tell me she hasn’t been wasted in the background.

(Also - how in the fuck is Steve gonna tell his black best friend Sam that he preferred the fifties? Really? )

This brings me to what I think is easily the most egregious of all the fuck-ups in this movie - Clint and Natasha. This is where we can draw a direct line back to the problem in AoU, when Joss “Feminist Icon” Whedon decided that dropping a house, wife and 2.5 cardboard-ass kids we got zero development time on was a better answer than, oh, actually developing Clint as a character. Partially this was to promote Brucetasha, which as we all know went so fucking well through the rest of the movies, but subverting what he felt was the “obvious” ship for Nat (the irony of this being he said something along the lines of “well, Bruce and Nat made so much more sense to me” and pulled some lame ass Beauty and The Beast allegory out during an Entertainment Weekly interview about AoU and it’s ended up becoming one of the most hated creative decisions in the MCU as of yet.

Listen, if you want Clint and Natasha’s deep and intimate and formative relationship to be platonic-only, I’m cool with that. I ship ‘em but I also love male-female friendships that mean the entire world to the involved characters and are not romantic. But we were given a decision in AoU that was eliminated so many future possibilities and put us on the path we’re on now.

If you know Clint as a character, you know that he’s a loveable fuckup. THat’s kind of his schtick. I have no idea how they plan to make that work in the supposedly-happening Hawkeye series based on Matt Fraction’s run given that now we’ve got Clint married with kids and Natasha dead, but okay. Endgame takes Clint’s grief and weaponizes it, but naturally, we only ever see him killing people of color (they mention he killed a Mexican cartel, we see him going after Yakuza) ((if you couple this with the shaved haircut and the shitty Japanese-inspired sleeve, you start venturing dangerously close to white supremacist territory)).

Clint is dark and broken, and Natasha saves him - just like how Natasha was dark and broken, and Clint saved her. By not dying. So. I mean.

As I’ve said in another ask, here’s the thing: I would have been okay with Natasha making the sacrifice play if there had been no Bartons to bring back. I still would have been furious if they hadn’t loophole’d her ass back - What happens when Steve returns the soul stone? Do you get back what you paid for it? - but the idea that we had to trade the original female member of the team - the closest thing to diversity they had being a white woman is terrible but here we are - for one of the shittiest, most sloppily written things that Joss Whedon plunked down on a page? My blood boils.

It’s been like 4 days and I am still just beside myself angry about Natasha Romanoff. Furious. I love her and Clint and I don’t undersell the strength of their relationship but at the end of the day, she died so a man could go back to his family, because nuclear families are more important and Natasha has no one. I guess. I don’t know. I’m so fucking mad.

That pandering-ass “we’re doin’ us a feminism” scene of all the women fighting together, even though it made zero logistical battlefield sense and most of them didn’t even know each other, felt even more gross and cheesy and self-congratulatory considering what had just been done to one of the most important women in the series. But hey. We got a shot of a lot of women fighting. Hashtag feminism.

Thor’s ending was okay. Thor’s arc was pretty good. The fat jokes were shit but I loved the idea of Thor still being worthy even when he’s not who he used to be. I nearly came when Cap caught Mjolnir. Conceding New Asgard to Valkyrie was super smart, and I like that he’s going to go figure himself out with the Guardians.

Speaking of, Gamora’s whole story has made me feel gross. As the daughter of an abusive stepfather who also loved me a lot when he wasn’t being a monster, it def made me squirm. But the reality is I don’t give enough of a shit about any of the Guardians to care about what happens to them other than Thor, so. Chris Pratt can eat my entire ass.

The things it got right - pacing an insane amount of action in a way that never stalled, executing a beautifully woven and inlaid sacrifice arc for Tony, Paul Rudd in general - are so much smaller than the things that were just… gapingly terrible.

Did Bruce even get an ending? Did anyone remember what the hell he said he was gonna do? He got lost somewhere in the shuffle and I legit have no idea what his ending was.

Ugh. I need some ibuprofen and a nap. I’m gonna go back to writing my Natasha sex-shop au in which SHE WILL NEVER EVER EVER DIE FOR CLINT’S STORY DEVELOPMENT and wish I still drank.

#spoilers #endgame spoilers #i'm so goddamn mad #ask and ye shall receive