#tv shows are inherently better for character driven stories because they are longer so maybe its not fair to compare aos to the main mcu | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gaygollum · 3 years

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all of ur tags on the endgame sucked post!! >>> i think the complete refusal to accept anything that happened in aos/ac is, yes, as you said, hating-women-o'clock. all of the character development went backwards and they tried to cover that up with action and guns. that one shot with all the mcu women in it was pANDERING and whoooooo boy this movie makes me mad !! glad to see there are other ppl in the 'engame completely ruined the mcu for me' club tho lmaooo

(this response ended up being very very long im so sorry but i get heated thinking about this stupid franchise lmao)

RETWEET to everything you said i remember walking out of the theatre feeling so crappy about the entire movie but not being able to verbalize it and everyone around me loved it and it wasnt until like after spiderman came out and the entire movie was basically about tony and i was like actually…maybe i hate this. and yes the woman group shot bothered me so much russo brothers you owe me financial compensation

and yeah agent carter wrapped up a lot of loose ends from the first cap and it meant so much to me while it was airing and having this movie just completely erase Literally everything that happened in those 2 seasons was a punch in the gut. esp because they just treated peggy as a “”reward”” for steve at the end… it was weird and bad! after peggy had literally moved on!!! and then endgame was like sousa?? never heard of him. by the way steve kissed his literal actual niece in civil war :) we made it even weirder than it already was :)

other mcu hating women moments was captain marvel in endgame supposedly being one of the most powerful superheroes but she only had like seven lines ohhhhhh my god. and killing off black widow… that sure was a choice!!! and i know these are all white women so like the few crumbs in this movie about women were. entirely white. girlboss!1!!1!1!1!2!!32

but even if i overlooked the abysmal treatment of women in this movie it just. wasnt good anyway. everything they did with thor especially was just… yikes! they completely ignored everything that happened in ragnorak they killed off loki in like the first five minutes they gave thor back his eye and his hammer and then they turned his depression into a running gag and it was like haha hes fat now isnt that funny!! *fornite joke* and i was like im in hell im literally in hell

not to mention the way they handled time travel was like the worst take ive ever seen. the plot was just flimsy and thanos isnt even a good villain like there is not really a memorable scene in this entire film and they hyped it up so much. russo brothers how does it feel to be literally so inconsequential (and the fact that russo brothers also wrote winter soldier which is about steve trying to move on from the past…what happened. WHAT HAPPENED?? im convinced they have a ghost writer or something because its the worst 180 ive ever seen.)

agents of shield interlude because its my favorite marvel thing: it is so good. like there are better seasons but there are no wholly bad seasons. i get it if people dont want to watch seven seasons of 40+ minute episodes because that is a LOT of tv but mcu stans are watching all these new disney+ shows and acting like they Invented television and i feel like im losing my marbles a little bit because aos has been here the entire time with the character relationships/growth that these people always gripe about the avengers not having but barely anyone has seen it!! not to mention the five female characters we got who all got their own arcs and were essential to the plot (two of which were superheroes and two of which were black widow-esque spies and one of which was a scientist — and 3/5 were women of color)

were they mad that the only main cast men in this show were 1. a traditionally masculine white man that fanboys would typically idolize who turned out to be a bad guy who was never redeemed or justified and was killed off in a gruesome way because he sucked in every possible way 2. a socially awkward nerd who is not very masculine 3. an old man who is not very masculine either 4. a black man 5. a man that sacrifices himself for a woman (fuck you endgame) and 6. two other men who were most of the time played for laughs because they were less capable than the women of the team. did that hurt their feelings?? that there were no billionaire playboys for them to idolize :(((( that women were given actual depth :((( boo hoo

anyway aos season 4 robot plotline was better than age of ultron, which admittedly is a low bar, but still. i think i watched aos s4 back in 2016/2017 and it blew my mind and i expected the mcu to hold up against it and it never did

#mine #long post long freaking post im so SORRY once again #not to say that aos doesnt have its issues it definitely does #nothing is perfect i just wholeheartedly believe its the best thing marvel studios has produced #i have one friend who has seen all of it and i text her like twice a week with a new aos analysis fjshshfj when will she tire of me ❤️#talk to me about hating marvel any time i love hatred i love being contrary #didnt talk about radcliffe in the man thing i think he was technically main cast?? but he died lmao #also sousa was there for the last season and he was disabled and respected women #any sexist joke in this show was called out!! like the two men played for laughs would make these jokes and other characters #would always call them out on their bs #i mean this shows handling of disability and mental health was questionable #and all of their main poc were lightskinned #also its produced by joss whedon 😐#u think your life is hard? one of my favorite shows was produced by jos- 🤮🤮 by joss w- 🤮🤮 i cant even say it #like i said it is not perfect. it is simply everything mcu stans complain about the mcu not having #good villains good characters GOOD ROMANCE?? actual funny jokes #tv shows are inherently better for character driven stories because they are longer so maybe its not fair to compare aos to the main mcu #but maybe i hate the mcu that much. u suck.#idk i dont see a Lot of content for aos so maybe i just havent delved deeper enough i just feel like it has been completely sidelined #and i literally do not know what other people think about it i never see meta posts about it or anything #this show just. didnt hate their fans yknow. theres a line in s5 where may says ‘we have a small but active fanbase’ and it was so funny #and the ending was one of the better finales ive seen??#in the age of spn n shit. having a good ending that makes sense for ur characters is so rare and this show understood its characters #THE CHARACTERS ARE JUST THE BEST PART THEY WERE AMAZING but the plot was also very good. double whammy.#i just wrote like a 2000 word essay about this huh. it lives inside me.#mcu #aos #marvel

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Wynonna Earp Season 4 Episode 9 Review: Crazy

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This Wynonna Earp review contains spoilers.

Wynonna Earp Season 4, Episode 9

Wynonna Earp has often balanced the inherent darkness of its premise with, among other tones, some zany supernatural fun. Ostensibly, “Crazy” is another case-of-the-week story that has Wynonna & co. hunting a social media-obsessed genie who has a cannibal suffering from kuru disease as her, er, master.

Past that, it’s yet another glimpse into just how deeply Wynonna has internalized the curse she was once ruled by, and just how much she is suffering because of it. She may no longer be beholden to the Earp curse, but Wynonna is still living as if the only thing she’s good for, the only thing she deserves, is a life of demon-killing. “Genie, you’re free,” our protagonist tells her target—the implication being that there is no such freedom for Wynonna, only a life of looking morally ambiguous monsters in the eye as she kills them and then going to sleep drunk and alone. I can’t quite figure out where Wynonna Earp Season 4B is going thematically, and I love that I don’t know because I think that is part of the point: Wynonna is in a dark, messy place. She’s an imperfect heroine, a hero who has made some bad choices, and the show isn’t giving us an easy answer to the questions of morality those choices have brought up.

In “Crazy,” Wynonna’s antagonist is not Doug, but rather Ginny the Genie. I’m not sure how well it works that Ginny’s relationship with Doug begins narrative life on this show as an allegory for domestic abuse, but, aside from that, Ginny’s messy end works incredibly well with this larger thematic exploration of monsters & morality Season 4B has been exploring. Because Ginny’s culpability in Doug’s murders isn’t black and white. She may be hiding behind Doug’s wishes and his disease, or she may be genuine when she tells Wynonna she silenced her screams because she couldn’t stand to hear them when there’s nothing she could do. Wynonna seems to believe this is a lie, but it’s unclear if she would have made a different choice, that she would have spared Ginny’s life, even if she did believe the excuse.

“You gotta listen to the screams. You’ve got to look the cost of it in the eye, and tell it to go fuck itself,” Wynonna tells Ginny. Because this is the deal Wynonna seems to have made with herself, the line she has drawn in the sand, and you’ll notice it is very different from what happened with Hoyt Clayborn. She didn’t look Hoyt in the eye. She waited until his back was turned to shoot him, and she seems to think there is no coming back from that. She doesn’t believe she can be with Doc unless he falls down to the dregs of humanity alongside her. “Welcome to the moral low ground,” she tells Doc when she believes he has killed someone, so happy to have a companion once again because she is so damn lonely in her moral failure. But she doesn’t know how to ask for help; she only knows how to keep fighting. “The difference is that you have a way out,” Wynonna tells Ginny because she is so unpracticed at imagining a future for herself guided by self-compassion and forgiveness—these weren’t thinks her daddy taught her.

Meanwhile, Nicole is finally able to face her own ghosts—and I’m (mostly) not talking about that chicken-kicking video. It’s fitting that this episode begins with Wynonna and Nicole doing some friendly sparring because the two mirror one another in some interesting ways in “Crazy.” The difference is: Nicole is much further along working through some of the issues holding her back. She is able to look Doc in the eye and be honest about the mindset that led to making a deal with Margo Clanton, trading Waverly’s safe return for Doc. She admits that she was scared, and she thought Doc would be able to get out of whatever the Clantons had in store for him. She doesn’t say she regrets it because that would probably be a lie—she had to be sure that Waverly would come home—but she listens when Doc rebuts and she apologizes. More importantly, she faces it… and herself.

In the process, she reclaims the town sheriff position. (The democratic process has really fallen by the wayside in Purgatory, huh?) It’s hard for me to get behind Nicole’s return to the uniform as anything other than a plot point driven by characterization. If this series has a major narrative flaw, it’s the lack of specificity in its small town setting. As someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere, I’m always on the lookout for more authentic representations of rural life, and Purgatory is not it. (Though it does get winter right—for obvious reasons.) That being said, I don’t need Purgatory to be authentic, but I do need the setting to have, for want of a better phrase, better character continuity. Wynonna Earp seems to want Purgatory to have a sense of place, but it’s been incredibly erratic, from season to season and sometimes from episode to episode. That someone could live in this town and not know that Doc is a hundreds-year-old vampire or that Waverly is an angel is unlikely. The memory-altering fog hasn’t made it to town… yet.

Speaking of which, Ginny tells Wynonna: “I can stop what’s coming,” implying that yet another Big Bad is on the way—presumably, Eve, whom we haven’t seen since the beginning of the season. It’s too soon to tell and not as much fun to dwell on as other aspects of this meaty scene. We’ve discussed much of it, but not the fact that Wynonna is offered Ginny’s power and seemingly easily refuses. And that’s one of the things that sets Wynonna apart from the villain she is so afraid she has become. Villainy is using the power you have to hurt other people for the sake of securing and/or accumulating that power. It’s what Doug was doing when he started eating people’s brains. (Although that analysis is complicated by the fact that Doug seemed to have some kind of mental illness?) Wynonna has only ever used her power to try to protect others.

The question then becomes: what was Wynonna’s choice to kill Hoyt if not villainy? Is shooting someone in the back to keep them from potentially hurting your family an act of securing power? Does it matter what we call it? Should any one person have the right to decide which demon lives and which demon dies? Wynonna is obviously wrestling with these questions, even if she is unable to articulate them in any real way to herself or her loved ones. The closest she gets is in her conversation with Ginny—a “safe” space to express her feelings as Ginny is about to take them to her grave or hell or wherever she is about to end up. “I get it. I’m poison too,” Wynonna tells Ginny, equating herself with someone who just helped a man slaughter multiple innocent people. It’s yet another sign of just how poorly Wynonna thinks of herself these days, and just how dark this show can get in an episode that also involves another character delightfully yelling “Kristi Yamaguchi!” to a crowded bar.

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Additional thoughts.

It’s telling how cult-like and obsessive people can get about trivia irl that it took. meso long. to realize that everyone in town was under the influence of Doug’s wish.

“I never want you to blunt your ambition… it’s one of the things that makes you you.”

“I got you back. That’s my happy.”

Doc is surprisingly good at pop culture trivia.

“I must remain in this battle to prove that it is I who has the ideal brain.”

Maybe Purgatory should come up with an alternate model of local law enforcement?

I loved the multiple convos between Nicole and Rachel—a reminder that these two spent a lot of time together as family when Waverly, Wynonna, and Doc were in The Garden.

Doc has minions now.

“God damn law enforcement.” “The gun does tend to go to their head.”

“That means our beautiful cowboy is in the clear.”

Jeremy’s a really bad coroner, huh? He didn’t notice that those corpses have no brains.

Jeremy and Waverly get to make a murderboard!

Weather facts!

Wynonna: I won’t leave your side. Wynonna: *immediately leaves Ginny’s side*

“Random trivia is not an accurate way to judge intelligence.” Scream this from the rooftops. But also I love trivia.

“Well, now I love trivia… and you. In that order.”

What did the Clantons want with Doc? I assumed Margo just wanted to, you know, torture him then kill him, but the fact that Season 4B made a point of bringing this up again makes me think it’s more complex than that.

“The badge alone does not give the authority.” Doc demonstrates his peptalk superpower yet again.

Anyone else miss iZombie while watching this episode?

The gap between real-life cops and TV cops is so broad.

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prinzenhasserin · 6 years

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Chocolate Box Exchange

Dear Chocolatier!

Please don’t feel obligated to use my prompts! This letter is just in case you might want to poke at some more of my prompts/likes. Generally, I’m open to a lot, and I will be delighted with any rating from gen to explicit. My AO3 account is here.

My prompts may tend to the longer side, but I’d love just a snippet or a scene from any of them, or illustrations of any of the scenes, too ❤️

(If this letter cribs a lot from my other letters, it’s because I’m lazy, and my likes don’t change around that much :D You can find some of my other letters under the exchange letter tag. I hope you have fun creating!)

General likes:

loyalty

odd couples!

found family, dysfunctional families that nevertheless love each other

historical stories for same-sex pairings that aren't unhappy but that fit with the society of the time (so like, spinster ladies living together; bachelors-for-life)

cultural differences! age differences! height differences!

heists, rescue missions

character driven narratives

dragons, fairy tales, magical realism, urban fantasy

Space AUs

competent characters

people not realising they’re the most competent at their job/hobby

people failing their way to success

happy endings, earning your happy ending, open yet hopeful endings

cynical humour

mutual pining

everything is better in suits, corsetry, fancy dresses

Identity shenanigans (secret identities, mistaken identities)

Blatant Lies

Enemies becoming friends and/or lovers

outsider POV

epistolary, poetry, unusual narrative formats

orange/blue morality (that is, not entirely human morality); grey/grey morality

non-verbal expressions of affection

Art likes:

sketches!

textures!

background!

lavishly designed worlds and setting!

Kisses! Sleeping Together!

Trees!

Colours! Black and White! Sepia!

Explicit art! beauty spots and scars! hair!

Kinks:

wall sex

shifting power dynamics

semi-public sex

lots of foreplay, drawn out orgasms, edging

desperate sex, drunk sex, we-just-can’t-help-it!sex, sex for life-affirming

sex toys

sex toys in public (though I get embarrassed if someone else notices)

General dislikes:

infidelity in mentioned pairings

suicide

non-con (dub-con is totally fine though; as are consent issues due to power imbalances, people not knowing all the facts, or drunken sex-pollen-escapades)

permanent character death

unrequited love between requested pairings

non-canon nicknames

Gokusen (art+fic)

(Pairing: Sawada Shin/Yamaguchi Kumiko)

How do I love this so much? I have no idea. I’m not even near high school age anymore, and yet the plot (and tbh, sometimes its ridiculous nature) always gets to me. I’d read more about any aspect of this canon though I am a little more partial to the manga, for giving me more content ;), and if you want to bring in any other characters, feel entirely free to. Post-canon would be great, but anything goes really.

How does Shin convince Yankumi to have sex with him? (A wonderful fic I got was with plenty of bad yakuza movies, which :D :D :D but I am always open for more! Maybe Shin speaks to Kumiko’s competitive spirit? Maybe he asks her to spite the police commissioner, by doing it in his house? Maybe there is some heavy kissing because they are trying to escape thugs/police/Kumiko’s students?) Is he getting kidnapped left and right before they actually get together because all and sundry already think they’ve been doing each other for years?

If they are already in an established relationship, how does Shin deal with Yankumi’s students (especially when one of them develops a crush)?

I’d be also super interested to see how other people view their relationship, like Shin’s father, Kumiko’s grandfather, the other yakuza groups, her students-- or simply Kumiko and Shin setting out to fight an up-and-coming group of delinquents, rescuing kittens, or Shirokin, from an overzealous school commissioner?

I have no problems about depicting violence, or graphic criminal activities, but please no major crimes involving children.

Inuyasha (art+fic)

(Paring: Inuyasha/Sesshoumaru)

I am here for all the contrived reasons to get them together. Hate!sex? Yes! Sex Pollen? You got me! Arranged marriage by their dad to keep dog demons with dog demons? I am here!

What I like is their contemptuous relationship with each other, that nevertheless evolves -- I like that they claim to not spit on the other if they were on fire, but when push comes to shove, they do help each other, and defend the other from their enemies. I like that they are halfbrothers, that they clearly recognise the power in each other, the underlying class issues, and all.

How about a small snippet of them teaming up together? Surprised by sex pollen, or a gender-changing well? time loops would be awesome! as would Inuyasha and Sesshomaru meeting again in the future, with Inuyasha time-travelling and Sesshomaru getting there the conventional way. Would also read soulmates!fic, or a sleeping beauty AU

I see both Inuyasha and Sesshomaru as fairly aggressive and forthright, and would prefer you not to characterise either of them as submissive (outside the bedroom).

Miss Marple (art+fic)

(Pairing: Miss Marple/OFC)

I am a fan of Miss Marple. I, too, have lived in a quiet town where you can see into the abysses of the human condition :D

I’d love to read something that lead her to the person we know her as, maybe when she went to the girl school in Switzerland? Maybe during her time in the cypher division, during the war — maybe the cypher division was really a cover for Miss Marple’s spy activities for the war office?

I’d also love fic about her as we know her: spending time in St. Mary Mead’s and solving crimes, quietly knitting her nephew another sweater. Was she maybe in love with a woman the whole time? Did she quietly retire into a cottage with her best friend, and everyone knows but doesn’t really?

Depending on when you set it, I would also love Miss Marple in a relationship one wouldn’t expect of her -- with a rival maybe? An enemy spy? A crossdressing motorcyclist, or a authoress of mystery novels. I would love an outsider POV on that! Or a 5 Times someone was surprised by Miss Marple’s companion thing.

Harry Potter (art+fic)

(Pairing: Amelia Bones/Minerva McGonagall)

I’d love to see a slow blossoming romance in the halls of the ministry, when they both started out as Aurors. Or maybe they are rivals, always competing for the same spots on specialisation teams and then, sparks fly, and there’s tension filled hate-sex? Maybe Minerva is Amelia’s auror trainer, or her superior officer, and Amelia keeps breaking the spirit of the rules while following the letter in the interest of capturing a culprit?

Would also read a story set later, when Minerva is already a Professor at Hogwarts! I love tiny extra bits of worldbuilding that show the inherent magic in the setting (like magic knitting needles, or self-filling tea sets)

(Feel free to disregard their entire backgrounds on Pottermore.)

Original Works (fic)

If you’d like to go wild with the pairings alone, that would be delightful! Otherwise, here are some thoughts:

Bored Female Physics Prof who Built a Time Machine Last Week/Female Human Intergalactic Ambassador

Long suffering Intergalactic Ambassador trying to reign in the mad genius that’s been time-travelling across history! What is there not to love?

Or; Intergalactic Ambassador is stranded on Earth and now this remarkable (beautiful, brilliant) woman has built a time machine with which she can get back to her people

adventures through time and space! physics prof trying to woo her lady love and getting stuck in time loops instead, and her lady love having to rescue her!

Classic Hollywood Female Screenwriter/Classic Hollywood Actress

they have a longterm relationship behind scenes

Screenwriter keeps writing roles for Actress, who is very annoyed at being typecast all the time and keeps bugging the writer about being a hack, and the Screenwriter is very condescending about her acting talents --> hatesex ensues

a happy ending for expies of Greta Garbo/Mercedes de Acosta maybe?

5 Times the press walked in on them having sex and didn’t realise it

Demon Brother/Half Demon Brother | Demon Hunter

idk, idk (I WANT IT LIKE BURNING) uhm, yes.

tempestuous relationships! drawn out seduction that devolves into physical confrontations!

xeno? vaguely inhuman anatomy? yes! sex pollen! ritual sex to do stuff!

maybe demon hunting together, demon brother freaking out that he’s a traitor to his race? demon hunter brother freaking out that he’s a traitor to his people? yet both of them not being able to resist each other

soulbonds

I’d like a happy or open ending, please!

Down-On-Her-Luck Aristocrat Forced to Become Barista/Emperor in Civilian Disguise

... this would be great set in SPACE. Fantasy? or 19th century Austria, either way, I am here for it

I am not to set on any gender! (The civilian disguise could even be crossdressed, for extra tropey-ness)

secret dates that lead to more! sneaking around to find a place to have sex in! and then it turns out they met before, and they have been lying to the other the whole time!

escaping bodyguards -- one thinks they are there for his debts, the other to collect him to the palace!

revolution? weird government shenanigans? reams of paperwork? beleaguered bureaucrats?

Fake Paranormal Investigator TV Host/Trolling Supernatural Creature

maybe the supernatural creature thinks the hotline for the show is a real helpline, and asks for help with the infestation of pixies, and then falls in love with the host and trolls him forever?

maybe the tv host keeps accidentally stumbling upon their real lair

prank calls: “Uhh, there’s a werewolf in my kitchen” and when the film crew arrives, there’s only the caller (who happens to be a werewolf)

Female Detective/Female Supervillain in Disguise

moral quandaries! maybe the detective figured it out way before, and didn’t say anything for plausible deniability

maybe the supervillain seduced them to keep her off track, and fell in love for real? and now she’s scared of saying anything at all?

maybe they both go to the same club to relax, sex happened, and now that they wake up they realise what they have done! most awkward morning after ever

Female Mob Boss/Female Undercover Detective

in SPACE! modern times! 1940s on the home front!

is it a planned seduction? does the detective set out to get secrets during pillow talk?

is it an unplanned seduction? does the detective have no other explanation for being in this gay club rn, and they have sex?

are they trying to seduce secrets out of each other, and more importantly, does it end with the both of them blowing this entire popsicle stand and eloping together to the wilderness?

Also here for pure smut: hate sex, switching power dynamics, ill-advised drunken one-night stands, sex for blackmail reasons

Female Pirate/Female Naval Officer

I would love this pairing in any setting, Mediterranean pirates of pre-Roman Empire, Egyptian pirates, Chinese pirates, privateers, pirates of the Caribbean, pirates in SPACE, smugglers…

Did they know each other before? Is the naval Officer perhaps a point of contact for the crown for a privateer? I like an aspect of danger in my ships, but I don’t like totally unredeemable characters.

Does the pirate capture the naval officer for ransom? To seduce her to the dark side? hate!sex! stranded on an island/planet with sex pollen!

Does the naval officer capture the pirate, and the pirate seduces her for her freedom? Or both at once?

Female Regency Crossdressing Rake/Regency Bluestocking

They meet at a ball, and flirt. Then they meet again at the next ball (or the theatre, or gambling halls) and their relationship continues. The crossdressing Lady is very worried about being actually a woman, and pretending to be a man, but the other Lady found out the very first night and is totally cool with it.

How does the crossdressing work? Is she pretending to be her own brother because he’s off to Gretna Green (or wherever) to get married, or do people dismiss the rumours that she’s a lady because of her general attitude?

There are no tropes that could make this bad for me! :D

I would enjoy this in a world without homophobia, just as I would enjoy this if they had to pretend to be a heterosexual couple forever (though I would enjoy it more if they had the support of at least one of their friends/family, or a community behind them)

Female Selkie/Original Female Character

I did not have space for the anglerfish selkie or the squid selkie, so clearly i compromised. Plain selkies are also awesome!

OFC is manning a selkie rescue station -- she steals back stolen skins; and never has she been so tempted to keep this one

OFC is a ship captain, who is rescued by the selkie and falls in love

OFC is a fisherwoman, who catches a selkie accidentally, and then retires in the lighthouse

King (Elderly)/Evil Vizier

hatesex! confused boners! a scheme plotted out by the King to secure the reign of his heir

the King is blackmailed into a relationship by his vizier, and he could try to resist, but doesn’t because he likes to be submissive in bed, and it’s so hard to find good doms at his age

they have been pining for each other for all of the King’s reign, and during a terrorist attack (?) they are sex pollened

Librarian/Patron With A Very Overdue Library Book

Librarian is part of a secret cabal of librarian assassins, and they hunt the patron down

The book is alive and doesn't want to go back to the library. It keeps on sneaking back into the patron's backpack to leave with them,

the patron is a ghost, trying to return a book from 200 years ago

hatesex

Patron with late book is actually using it in his attempts to summon the Old Ones and has already lost some sanity points in his attempts, he refuses to return the book until he is successful

The book is one of a kind and contains some secret ciphers and codes that are needed in the on-going plot to save the world. However, the patron ends up needing to also borrow some other unique books from the same library and struggles with explaining this to the unamused librarian who has a waiting list for that first book.

idk, idk, i have no ideas, but i’d love absolutely anything, and i am thirsty

time-travel! set in space! passive-aggressive notes back and forth! the patron tries to insist on their perceived superiority! and then they have to donate enough money to fund an entire new children’s department!

Loyal Knight/Professional Gambler Crossdressing As a Woman

confused boners

why the crossdressing? just because? does it confuse his gambling partners? the people he’s in debt to?

i can only tell you that i’d be into it

set in space! set in a fantasy hub! Star Wars AU! Italian Renaissance! 18th century France!

New Male Supervillain Struggling to Control Superpowers/Superhero

supervillain becomes accidental villain because of their destructive powers, superhero tries to redeem him

supervillain’s power is mind altering, and he thinks he is influencing the superhero with his powers, but the superhero has a really terrible crush on them

supervillain thinks his power is mind altering, when in fact it’s something else

supervillain’s powers are mind altering, and he seduces the superhero, and rescues him from the government who had them working for free? idk, this isn’t planned out that well

superhero seduces supervillain to do good

Pirate/Pirate

I would love pirates absolutely anywhere, Scottish smugglers, piracy on rivers, Mediterranean pirates of pre-Roman Empire, Egyptian pirates, Chinese pirates, privateers, pirates of the Caribbean, pirates in SPACE.

f/f pairings would be great, just as m/m pairings, or f/m, whatever floats your boat (heh)

Two different pirate ships try to stop a ship of loot/weapons/high profile people from arriving at its location. Two of the opposite crew fall in love along the way.

The First Mate oils their muscles, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to this bosun (or the worst, depending). There are various bets about the futility of this most obvious crush.

The smuggling cave is only accessible during low tide, and it’s only known to the pirates, yet their stash of high-grade alcohol/sauerkraut/sails/unobtainium keeps vanishing, and so they set out a trap, and it turns out to be another pirate who needs it to help heal some other dudes.

The captain is so throughly annoyed by two of his crew members, he makes them sleep in the same cabin (or the hammocks nearest to each other) for the entire voyage, and they keep falling into the wrong bed because of reasons. (Optionally, hate-sex — or they are united by their hatred for this clearly unreasonable captain and overthrow him.)

Regency Lizard Monster Coffee Shop Owner/Down-on-His-Luck Aristocrat

here for xeno! or urban fantasy! or space coffee shops!

is the lizard monster pretending to be a human, and the aristocrat finds out but nobody wants to believe him?

does the aristocrat want a job, but fails at How to greet a Lizard Monster 101?

Royal Uncle Looking to Inherit/King's Pirate Captain Identical Twin

identity shenanigans! hate sex! court intrigue!

does the royal uncle know about the identical twin, or was he raised in secret for assassination prevention, and now he roams the Seven Seas, or the space equivalent of that

the identical twin seduces the uncle, so that they can inherit together

the King deliberately introduces his two heirs to each other so they can fight it out, and they have plenty of hatesex

Successful Businesswoman/High School Rival

hatesex behind the bleachers on their 10th highschool anniversary

hatesex during their unexpected meeting at the new gallery opening in town! and then their best friends get married to each other, and much embarrassment all around

Supervillain/Superhero's Sidekick

hatesex, sexpollen

trying to seduce secrets out of each other! identity shenanigans! moral quandaries!

Female BNF/Female fandom newcomer

... look, i just want to know where this is going, okay? I’d love something inspired by Mina de Malfois; or like, whatever!

is there fandom wank about it? is it just a quiet lovely back and forth?

Crossover Fandoms (art+fic)

Victoria Winslow (RED)/Female M (Bond)

Victoria as one of M’s double Os; headstrong and stubborn and a loose canon

did they know each other before M became M? (was there hatesex, and now it’s an awkward relationship that might turn into more?)

Victoria Winslow breaks into M’s apartment with the intent to seduce her; M is prepared for the entry, but expected a man, and now Victoria is there

Victoria is in trouble somewhere, and M accidentally rescues her; Victoria has to show her her appreciation someway

Susan Pevensie (Narnia)/Minerva McGonagall (HP)

They could have met when they were young, being roughly the same age, or later. Childhood friends!

Susan Pevensie becomes the first muggle to enter the Department of Mysteries, on account of her crossing worldstreams before, and that’s where she meets Minerva, who has to open the doors for her every day

Susan is the first muggle to ignore the anti-Muggle charms on Diagon Alley, and Minerva is sent to investigate

Phryne Fisher (MFMM)/Jane Marple (Marple - Christie)

teaming up to solve a murder!

teaming up to drive a poor inspector up the wall

teaming up during the war, codebreaking! and seeking comfort with each other

they went to girl’s school together, and now have to relive old glory days!

definitely here for Phryne and Jane being each other’s lesbian experience

John Constantine (Hellblazer)/Severus Snape (Harry Potter)

they’d be so glorious together! I’m here for all the fucked-up-ness this pairing can generate

hatesex? sex pollen? :D i hate repeating myself, but really, anything would be great; I’d love a AU in which John convinces Severus to not join the death eaters because they are all wankers anyway

or a AU in which Severus survives and joins John on madcap adventures trying to survive eldritchs horrors

or like, a one-night-stand that ends in Severus hearing the prophecy and defecting from Lord Voldemort

or like, anything, please, i really want this like burning, and i saw this in the tagset, and how is there only one story of this yet, really, anything, please

also, I’d love if they’d bonded up over their chavness, or something. really, anything would be great

Jane Marple (Marple - Christie)/Minerva McGonagall (HP)

I’d love Miss Marple snooping her way into the Scottish ruin, and finding out there’s a Wizarding World

maybe they are childhood friends?

maybe working at the cypher division is a code word for Department of Mysteries, during the war?

I’d love outsider POV for this; maybe Harry noticing that Minerva is living together with another woman, and it turns out to be Miss Marple? and they bond over having books written about them

Cher Horowitz (Clueless)/Elle Woods (Legally Blonde)

Do they meet in law school? Or before, or after?

I want them to be competent, and brilliant, and dazzle each other with their excellent taste in clothes. I want them to be besieged by terrible human beings, and persevere. I want them to cuddle on a sofa, and inspire so many girls to do great things. I want them to grow as human beings, and be kind and positive, and succeed. (And I want one of them to be President.)

Also excellent would be: Elle does criminal law, Cher is in charity work, and they need to solve this embezzlement case.

But I’m also here for the porn, because that would also be amazing. Or like, buying a house together. Getting married. Deciding to adopt a puppy together.

#exchange letter

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Mad Men, the TV series that made Matthew Weiner one of the most famous, most powerful showrunners alive, obeyed the time-honored tradition of using a story set in the past to tell a story about the present.

It was a show about changing social customs and mores that lulled you into complacency with big sight gags about how much things had changed since the 1960s — hey, we don’t let kids put plastic bags over their heads anymore! — in order to quietly nudge viewers to realize how much things hadn’t changed. In particular, Mad Men contained ample storylines about how little the world had evolved for women butting their heads against the seemingly unbreakable walls of workplace sexism.

In the three years since Mad Men went off the air in 2015 and this week’s Amazon Video debut of Weiner’s follow-up series, The Romanoffs, the lessons of Mad Men’s treatment of workplace sexism have more than come home to roost, including for Weiner himself, who in 2017 was accused of sexual harassment by former Mad Men writer Kater Gordon. (Weiner’s “Who … me?!” response to these accusations in a Vanity Fair profile wasn’t terribly convincing.)

And even beyond Weiner, The Romanoffs’ original studio — The Weinstein Company — was toppled in the wake of the exposure of its co-founder and namesake Harvey Weinstein’s long string of sexual assaults.

But while sexism and gender relations are a part of The Romanoffs’ tapestry — and the three episodes sent out to critics burble with nods both knowing and unknowing to the past year of #MeToo reckoning — Weiner is once again using the past to inform the present. This time, however, he’s also using the past to predict the future.

And the revolution is coming.

Just look at the scope! Look at the sweep! Justina Mintz / Amazon

Everything about The Romanoffs is massive. The show filmed on location across multiple continents. (The first three episodes alone were shot in three different countries.) It boasts an all-star cast, including everybody from Isabelle Huppert to Diane Lane to old Mad Men favorites like Christina Hendricks and John Slattery.

Every episode approaches 90 minutes in length, with opulent production values that practically drip off the screen. And even though Amazon typically drops full seasons of its series all at once, the better to binge, new episodes of The Romanoffs will be released week to week (though the first two are both out Friday).

(Note that I’m also going to use the anglicized spelling “Romanoff” to refer to the actual Romanov family throughout this review, so as to maintain continuity with the show’s title. My apologies, Russophiles.)

The show is probably the biggest blank check in TV history, only really approached in scope by properties that were already established hits, like the later seasons of Game of Thrones. And what’s more, it has a decidedly noncommercial premise: an anthology series of small, character-driven TV films about people all around the world who either are or believe they are descended from the Romanoffs, the final monarchs of Russia who were killed in a hail of gunfire in 1918. (Though the whole royal family was executed, many of their relatives lived on, and there’s even a putative Romanoff heir to the Russian throne alive right now, though good luck getting her on it.)

All of this money is up there on screen, as it were. Weiner directed all three if the episodes sent to critics for review, and he creates beautiful, watercolor-esque images — like the soft, wintry light of a purple morning drifting through an ice-covered window in Paris, or the surreal image of an opulent cruise liner at night, or a streak of fake blood smeared on the floor of a movie set meant to evoke a tumultuous moment in history.

(If you think I’m being a little vague, I am. Weiner’s famous hatred of spoilers — which leads him to regularly send out long lists of things critics are not to reveal — has manifested itself here again, despite the relatively thin plots of the three episodes I’ve seen. Better safe than sorry, I guess.)

The most salient detail I can share about all of these episodes is that they’re all at least 15 minutes too long. Even the one I liked best — the third episode, “House of Special Purpose,” which will debut October 19 — might have been better off with a solid quarter-hour cut out of it. Weiner occasionally uses this additional length well, to create haunting silences, or to hold on an actor’s face longer than you might expect him to, or to drink in a moment of sublime beauty. But sometimes he just uses it to fit everything he can think of into an episode, even when it’s not all that clever.

Still, the qualities that made Mad Men so good are present here, if buried a bit beneath all the excess. Weiner maintains his knack for getting terrific performances out of actors. (His use of Hendricks in episode three feels like a deliberate mission to convince Hollywood of how poorly she’s been used in post-Mad Men projects.) And though his scripts might be too bulky, they certainly boast dialogue that cuts to the quick when he gets out of his own way.

And yet the weird thing about The Romanoffs is that, as an anthology drama, it’s somehow better when taken as a whole than as a set of individual episodes. Any given episode of the show can disappoint with its bulkiness and its inability to zero in on the ironies inherent in its storytelling. (Especially the second episode, which sometimes feels like Weiner flagellating himself in public and sometimes feels like Weiner asking for our love and approval despite his bad behavior.)

But the more episodes you watch, the more The Romanoffs starts to feel like a story about the instability of our modern moment, a story about class consciousness, a story about the guards knocking on the door to point guns at all of our heads, maybe even Weiner’s.

The world might be ending, but at least there are still dogs. And Aaron Eckhart. Chris Raphael/Amazon

The thing I find most fascinating about Weiner’s work when taken as a whole is that he’s simultaneously drawn to white male supremacy and horrified by that quality within himself. Mad Men could only have been as good as it was if Weiner had both wanted to be Don Draper and gaze at the emptiness in the man’s soul. He seems taken by the opulence of lost eras, of ’60s America, of pre-communist Russia. But it’s likely no mistake that in those worlds, the dominance of people who looked like him, or like me, went largely unchallenged.

But in every episode of The Romanoffs, Weiner finds some way to reenact the death of the titular family, sometimes as tragedy and sometimes as farce. It’s an echo that his characters can’t escape, a rhyme of the past they are doomed to repeat, even if they might believe otherwise.

And that doesn’t even count the bulk of the opening credits, in which the 1918 execution of the Romanoff family at the hands of Russia’s new rulers is dramatized to the strains of Tom Petty’s “Refugee.” You can’t escape what’s coming, the knock at the door, the gun to the head, and we’ve all got something to pay for.

The revolutions within The Romanoffs are smaller ones, within families or marriages or friendships, but they presage some justice over the horizon, a sense that the world has become so imbalanced that it will greenlight anthology dramas about people who believe they’re descendants of the Romanoff family that will cost millions upon millions of dollars to produce. The divide between poor and rich only grows, and in The Romanoffs’ very first episode, a character notes that the middle class has largely disappeared.

And yet these characters cling to an aristocracy that ceased to exist a century ago. They are convinced of their own royalty. They display a confidence that, because of their heritage, because of their regality, because of their class, they are somehow more than, even as they are in the same boat as so many of the people who see their charade for the false front that it is. The aristocracy disappeared. So will you.

In The Romanoffs’ second episode, “The Royal We,” an older man addresses a bunch of other older people to say that maybe in 50 years, the world won’t exist anymore, or at least humans won’t, or at least this particular social order won’t. Everybody laughs, because we have to go on believing that death isn’t at the door.

After the massacre of the tsar and his family happens in the opening credits, the sequence revisits the idea that one of the Romanoff children escapes the slaughterhouse, then morphs into a young woman exiting the subway in our present, looking at her phone. It’s a nod to the pervasive idea from the mid-20th century that Anastasia Romanoff escaped that basement room, living on into the late 20th century and animating plenty of stories about the Russian aristocracy in exile.

It wasn’t true, of course. The bodies of all of the Romanoffs have been found and accounted for and DNA tested. But the idea that the lost aristocracy might still exist in you, in me, in somebody, is a powerful one. The Romanoffs knows that someone will have to pay the piper eventually, that this modern lifestyle has become unsustainable, that we have all done terrible, terrible things we must be held accountable for. But the series holds out hope that it, too, might be the one to escape. Or maybe its creator holds out that hope.

After watching the second episode, I jokingly told my wife that The Romanoffs is the sort of series I’d be inclined to give three-and-a-half stars right now, then declare a misunderstood masterpiece in six years. Well. Here are the three-and-a-half stars.

The Romanoffs debuts its first two episodes today on Amazon. New episodes will be released every Friday from now until the end of November.

Original Source -> The Romanoffs, from Mad Men creator Matt Weiner, feels like a period piece about the present

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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