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thetaoofbetty · 3 years

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Hello love!

And you’re right, the hate has ramped up and anyone who says they love bughead but don’t like Betty doesn’t actually like bughead, let’s start with that. They love Jughead and self-insert as Betty and are upset she, uh, was written badly by mediocre men for a plot device. Trust me, Betty fans have been through this for years. There is nothing that Jughead can do that some people won’t defend.

(goes for the actor who plays him as well)

(i’m not shitting on any actor, i’m making a point about sexism and the prevalence of it in media and fandom)

(also not shitting on self-inserting, i just think people should be honest with themselves about it)

If the shoe had been on the other foot? I think we all know these same people would making posts like, “jughead did nothing wrong, betty should have been supportive of him and he wouldn’t have had to do it 😌” or “are you saying mistakes can’t be forgiven??? wow, what about the stuff betty’s done???”

(especially when you consider how many betty fans feel like they can’t defend her or be attacked. which, y i k e s when you consider that fandom, in general, is made up of women who would be intimately aware of what it’s like to feel like you can’t speak up for fear of retaliation)

So, I don’t listen to that noise to be honest because here’s the thing: Betty has been getting shit since the start. I lurked for a long time before I wrote fic, btw, so I’ve seen a lot.

Let’s walk it out: Betty stands in the way of what? Multiple ships while having the audacity to be a woman.

She’s the wall, in people’s minds, between b/archie because they decided that Archie is in love with her and always has been and that she keeps choosing Jughead is indicative of...something, I don’t know, I don’t go near their theories tbh. She’s also the problem standing in the way of j/eronica. Jughead, according to the last time I got a troll (which was about mid s3 after they were convinced jug was going to kiss veronica and declare himself in the noir episode—that self own was delightful, thank you past troll for that one), was pining for Veronica and clearly in love with her but damned that Betty Cooper! Making him feel guilty for something? I don’t know, I also stay in my own lane and don’t go near their blogs either because I’m not an asshole who harasses people.

I do know enough to know that it’s never really about the fact that Jughead isn’t in love with Veronica, it’s Betty keeping him from being happy with her audacity to exist. Or it’s Betty keeping Archie from being happy. Or, in the case of j/archie, I think she might just be in the way with that wayward vagina of hers, causing chaos between true love of that crack ship (ship and let ship i say, sail your j/archie ships, y’all).

She’s also currently in the way for some people with Veronica and Archie (tho i think we can all agree, it’s just going to a be a cringeworthy plot device for when jughead and veronica stroll back into town)

Betty has the apparent bad taste to do two things: have the love of a male fave and be a main character herself.

Which, in essence, isn’t about Betty. It’s about the perception of how a female needs to act in the minds of people who were always going to hold her to standards she was never going to be able to meet. Jughead, from the word go, has been a fave. The fave, prob. I’ve seen Betty get hate for throwing him a birthday party, where her biggest crime was trying to do something nice (i’m sorry but misguided mistakes made in good faith aren’t an attack on your fave male, betty haters) and other people turning it into chaos. She’s been called a cheater for kissing Archie while single in s2.

Funny. I don’t recall anyone saying that after Jughead did the same thing. With a much shorter timespan between break up and kissing, do you? Or Archie, for that matter, with Farm Girl. Huh. I wonder what the difference is?

(and yes, i’m aware they’ll flip it to she didn’t tell him right away which is still just a plot device. literally, the whole thing existed to make 2x14 happen)

Anyway.

Years ago, reading s1 fic, I noticed a theme in a good amount of stories. Betty messed up. Constantly. It was almost always her fault and Jughead was magnanimous enough to overlook her multitude of flaws and wasn’t she lucky for it? That changed with s2 and I think a lot of us know why. Even now, when I write fics, if Jughead does something stupid, I can get comments about how Jughead had good intentions and Betty should forgive him.

I mean, I know she will. I’m writing it, ha. But that’s not the point. The point is that they’re both capable of messing up and forgiving each other. The difference is that only one of them has a large support of unconditional loyalty while the other has loyalty that hinges on a checklist of appropriate behavior.

Look, I’m not here to tell anyone how to love a character. If people wanna stan, go ahead. I don’t care. I think some self-awareness of bias is always a good thing. I can always tell which character I’m biased towards and I’m okay with it. I own it. I love bughead, I love both characters but if you don’t think that being harassed and targeted and having people I respected in this fandom come out and say some incredibly hurtful things hasn’t affected it, well. Sigh.

And this is before we even get into the fact that b/archies are obsessed with forgetting about Veronica’s existence. Which drives me nuts.

In the end it’s really about one common issue: Betty Cooper dared to be human. And as a woman on top of that, she must be punished for it.

So, take care of yourself, curate your online experience, make edits (and link me pls!), and remember: the b/archies are most likely big, big mad that they were duped. Again. And that always makes them really loud for awhile.

Thank you for the kind words and the ask, lovely!💜

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thatbadmovieblog-blog · 7 years

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Charles Review - Leeches! (2003)

Today I’ll be working on a tv movie that should have lived in infamy. It’s a film that should be a lot more renowned than it is, because it is a lot of Grade-A ridiculous in a Grade-D form. It’s a movie about horrible creatures that suck the very life out of college students. I’m not talking about graduate programs – I’m talking about the movie ‘Leeches!’. The exclamation mark isn’t a typo. Which right there tells you a lot of what you need to know about this film.

This movie answers a few questions that some fans of bad films may have always asked. The first, and most obvious, is asking what would happen if the amount of skin shown was equal between men and women. The basic plot of leeches involves a swim team, drug abuse, and leeches – so at least a third of this movie is drawn-out shots of men in swimsuits getting out of water, or being in the shower, or being devoured. The first four minutes of the film are ridiculously overdone slow-motion swimming, that’s what we’re talking about. It really feels like the director was going to get their money’s worth from whatever low salary these actors got paid.

This movie likes to get its cast wet, and apparently doesn’t like spending money to do this – which is why you’ll get a lot of shots of the same shower, from the same angle, no matter how much time has passed. I’m not entirely sure why you can only see the shower from that particular angle. Maybe that’s all the shower space they actually rented out. It is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Get used to this shot. You’re gonna see a lot of it.

This film also in many ways is the most emblematic film of its era you’ll ever see. Like what the Breakfast Club did for 80s films, if the Breakfast Club was devoid of charm, talent, or narrative common sense. I’ve been searching for a way to try and explain how the film looks and feels, and I think I can about sum it up after much thought. You remember how Buffy the Vampire Slayer was very late 90s, early 2000’s? Furthermore, do you remember that one weird Buffy episode where Joss Whedon dove into supernatural beer drinking to get some of that sweet, sweet PSA money?

This is doing that, but even clunkier.

This may be the least 2000s screencap I can get. I’m not going back in a third time to prove myself wrong, either.

The basic facts are these. There’s this college swim team, consisting of early 2000s haircuts and attitudes. I shall hereafter refer to them collectively as the Proto-Bros, because even after going through a second time for screenshots, I still can’t remember any of their names. In fact, I can’t remember the names of any of the characters, because I was distracted, both times, by the Leeches! (I think I have to use the exclamation each time. Yeah, I’m going to use the exclamation mark each time.)

The best part? Nobody notices this until - you guessed it - they get across campus to our old friend That Shower Shot We Could Afford.

But the Proto-Bros want to swim faster, so they’re taking steroids. There’s also Leeches! in the area waters, and when the Proto-Bros get in the water, our water-borne nippers get a taste for pharmaceutically enhanced Bro Blood and start to grow rapidly. This is not helped when the use of steroids is discovered, and the team coach (naturally a scumbag to his core) orders them to hide the evidence. I’ll give you one guess where the steroids get dumped. Go on, guess.

Putting more steroids down the shower drain only causes them to start growing more, and soon it is time for the Leeches! to take their blood sucking to the next level. This is where the movie gets hilariously ridiculous. For a start, when a Leech! prop gets dragged across the floor, it is very obviously a piece of rubber on a string. That’d be funny enough. But the actual attacks are where the glory really is. The Leeches! always go for the face, are clearly held on by the actors - but then, well, it gets even more hilarious. I won’t spoil it by showing you, but I will use a phrase my fiancée termed for it that is the most appropriate possible title for these moments: Attack of the Oven Mitts.

As the collection of early 2000s stereotypes and their girlfriends begins to dwindle, hidden currents of conflict, murder and the worst possible end to a kinky night all begin to intertwine. The best part is watching people repeatedly get into situations where “slowly being climbed on by Leeches!” is a valid potential outcome. Sometimes, the movie doesn’t even bother explaining how the Leeches! manage it. They just do. These are the little bloodsuckers that could, and they do it mostly by slow meandering. These truly are the laziest horror movie monsters ever, and the best part is? It works for them. They’re on a strangely monochromatic campus with Proto-Bros. The world is filled with easy prey for them – these are not people with survival instincts.

Pictured: a rubbery argument against Darwin.

We also get to see the gloriously ridiculous attempt to build tension by waiting for Leeches! to slowly come to a pool. At the end, there might be a twist. I say might have been, because after re-watching the relevant scenes again, I’m not sure. The dialogue and delivery gets kind of confusing. I get the one part of the twist, but am not entirely sure of the other. Your mileage may vary on that. I’ll honestly say it could’ve been a good twist, not exactly original, but not bad. Unfortunately, it is delivered with all the aplomb one might get a gas station corn dog.

Thing is, were this better acted or scripted, this might have worked. That being said, I’m pretty adamant that Leeches! are not the Grade-A horror monster that the people behind this movie thought they were. There’s a truly terrible 50s horror movie about Giant Leeches, where the leeches are clearly people in suits – and even with arms they’re still fairly useless attackers of anything faster than, say, Internet Explorer. Even the Triffids made more sense as attackers of humans.

The funny part to me is that this movie will be one of those films that, in decades to come, you could identify the time period it was made without any trouble whatsoever. It oozes its time period. It reminds us of the very questionable choices we made in that era, from hair to clothing to…well, name a thing.

This movie had some good ideas, but in the end it’s more a slightly strange anti-drug PSA than a genuinely great creature feature. The characters are too bland and generic to really pick up any “I want them to live!” or “ohhhh I hope they get it!” vibes like you do from some movies. Really, every scene without the Leeches! could be any Buffy episode ever, but without any deliberate sense of humour.

Leeches! is certainly not the worst creature feature out there – not by a long shot – and some of the scenes are a great unintentional laugh. But it’s not the best choice for that sort of watching either. It’s sort of middle of the road, and for that reason, it gets a middle of the road score.

Charles’ Score:

Poster from Imdb, screencaps by the Moll Rats

#tbmb review #Leeches!#leeches #b-movie #b-movie review

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