Okay what is wrong with me? I didn’t like Juliantina but this entire dynamic with the blonde and brunette in this new series Desenfrandas? is ?!

Lol, so we continue with you sharing another of my ships, but still not one of my biggest.

Man, I’m so into the Desenfrenadas duo. I really was not expecting this whole show and ALL the girls AND this f/f to just blindside me. As much as I do keep track of all kinds of f/f, the ones I really fall for are where the writing focuses on character first. I loved their friendship, I loved the kindness, the helping each other out, triumphing over adversity, the “try your best” optimism. And as for the ship, give me interesting, rootable characters I’ll like for their own sakes, a real dynamic, and an organic arc and I’m there.

Actually, I remember jokingly coming up with shipping rules last year around when KJ and Atypical were really thrilling me and there were some lovely Tumblr posts from people speaking on shipping, Jane Austen style.

Welcome to the Booasaur Austenian Shipping Requirements:

1. It’s mutual 

2. It’s transformative, there’s real change through and for each other

3. We see them openly communicate

2 is the big Austen one and the other two, you’d think they’d be a given, but for f/f they’re not! They’re really not. 😡 But don’t my big ships fit that? Isn’t that the best kind of ship? God, openly communicating…my kink. 😛 As much as I loved Desenfrenadas ep 7 (and 10), it was ep 6 that made me genuinely into them. I love seeing all kinds of canon f/f, but the kind where you really see these characters sit and talk? Ah, man.

What did you think of Barbaras performance in Desenfrenadas? I honestly love her but I didnt feel her performance was strong and she just didnt give me the right tone for Rocio. I think Tessa was the best out of everyone.

How dare–you come into MY house and you–I’m kidding, I’m kidding, obviously, you can feel however you want about her, lol. Uh, I suppose I understand where you’re coming from, but I don’t agree with it. As with AAM, where she often acted against people who reacted in much larger ways, she comes across as more subdued, but I think that again fits her character pretty well. She’s the dutiful, responsible, med school daughter, always content to stay in the shadows of her sister and friends.

I thought she was perfect. As others have mentioned, her eyes are super expressive and I certainly felt that was the case here too. As with Juls, she’s more of a watchful character, observing people, and then in the last few eps she came out of her shell and how she played Rocio reflected that, more confident, less self-aware, moving more easily. And I’m not sure what you meant by the right tone for Rocio, but it was kind of funny, I was thinking to myself during the first ep that if we’re going by rich girl going into her father’s career, this is FAR closer to Barbara in real life than Juls ever was. 

Actually, when I was making that trigger warning list last night and had to skim through the whole show again very quickly, I stopped, for MarVera reasons, at the strip scene and rewatched about 50 times to just absorb what was happening. The reactions, the music, the fact that we were watching a female character–the top credited cast member as a matter of fact–absolutely SPRUNG on this other woman, in this setting, with that song, with the absurd parallels between Vera and Sapo, both of them looking at Marcela with this contrasting hunger, his skeevy, hers honestly kind of unaware, the way the camera returned again and again to Vera, the urgent but gentle way Rocio made Vera sit down again, it was all just–But before I keep going on about that, the reason I bring it up right now, the reactions when they first recognize Marcela:

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This wordless couple of seconds conveys everything necessary in that moment, doesn’t it? The surprise, the “obviously she’s here”, the measuring “what do we do now?”, it’s all there! I think she’s perfect as Rocio, someone who’s grown up in a restrained atmosphere, while her sister coped by rebelling, she just folded into it.

But I will agree, Tessa was ah-mazing. I honestly wasn’t looking to get into a new series this much, I thought I’d watch it almost as a chore, you know?, for Barbara, gif a bit of her face and that’d be that, but I ended up really loving it, probably one of the top two shows of the year so far for me. Give me main character Spanish-speaking wlw and I’m yours, apparently. 😛  I really didn’t need another show to be into to this degree. So many gifs to make! So many actresses to stan! There are only so many hours in the day! Oh, lol, speaking of which, the pics with Maca and Tessa gave me such strong dissonance, trying to reconcile these two fandoms, heh. 

But yeah, she was very, very good as Vera. And I know I keep obsessing on the treatment of MarVera, the meta of it all, how groundbreaking that is, but I also really just the girls and their characters and dynamics and arcs, separate and together. She was so natural and genuine, totally being this character, good at turning you off at times, and almost rooting against her, at least for her comeuppance, like, “you brought this on yourself” and “what did you expect” (re: the dresses), but a second later, feeling so deeply, impossibly protective of her. The same way Marcela felt, I imagine, lol. And the way Vera felt for Marcela. Ah, I enjoyed watching this show.

Hey! I was wondering if you could tell me rape trigger warnings for desenfrenadas or point out anyone who’s documented it please? I was watching but had to stop after that Vera backstory, but sexual violence seems pretty prevalent throughout so far and I remember the start where Marcela is all beat up and the bad guys have been threatening her from the start, so will the show go there? I’d like to skip those scenes if so.

Sorry, I don’t know anybody who has, and if you’ve gotten that far, you’ve probably seen most of it, Vera’s backstory was the worst of it to me, but there are a couple of scenes left, with Marcela and Joshua, where it’s their same dynamic as earlier except ramped up, on both their ends, but it feels like Marcela’s more doing it to put on a show and yeah, it feels pretty icky. The beaten up Marcela in the flashforward at the beginning isn’t actually from that, it’s just Joshua being “regular” violent (not that that makes it better), but let me see if I can put together a list:

I’m not really sure what to include and what not to, so I’ll err on the side of going with more, but not all of it is at the same level of awful. I italicized the most egregious cases, to me.

Ep 1:

34:55 Marcela’s gone up to talk to Sapo to go easy on them but he says Joshua’s made a deal where Marcela has to sleep with him, Marcela pretends to go along, Sapo starts being aggressive, she hits him with a bottle – 35:28 There’s a brief cut to another scene – 35:50 The scene continues with Marcela in the aftermath of hitting Sapo and running off

Ep 2:

1:20 Male truck driver is nasty and propositions Marcela when she’s just walking by, scene ending at 1:41

Ep 3:

5:47 Joshua and Marcela’s sex turns kinda rough, though still consensual, scene ending at 6:11

25:06 Marcela calls Joshua, Sapo answers and is his creepy self and threatens Marcela using Mike, if she doesn’t return, with the call ending at 25:45

30:35 The guy Vera connected with on the app and who met up with her again carries drunk Vera out, lies to her when she says she needs to tell Ro and Carly she’s leaving, then outside tries too hurry her into sex and then attempts to try to rape her, as she tries hard to fight him off. 32:10 Marcela shows up with a gun and forces him away. She beats him up and that scene is the last in the ep.

Ep 4:

00:19 Vera, now in her hotel room, flashbacks a couple of times to the attempted rape, the second scene ending at 0:51

2:26 Vera sobs in the shower, scene going into the credits at 2:47

13:50 Rocio yells at Vera in the car for what happened the previous night (not cool, Ro!), Vera has a bit of a breakdown, Marcela and Carly calm her down at 14:40

 Ep 5:

1:03 A flashback with young Vera, like 6 or 7 years old, at a party, that the ep started with turns into a nightmare when suddenly the guy who tried to rape her is there and creepily saying gross things to her young self, she wakes up at 1:11

32:10 Vera in bed, flashback again to young Vera at the party, this old guy, in his 40s or 50s, a friend of her parents, who seems nice takes her up to her bedroom and tucks her in, asks her if she likes tickling, we don’t see anything explicit but hear a zipper. Throughout this scene, we jump back to current Vera in bed, unable to keep her eyes closed, staring emptily. The scene ends at 34:40.

Ep 7:

5:35 Gas station guy leers at Vera stretching, it’s a couple of seconds long, nobody notices and nothing happens

Ep 8:

27:00 Marcela’s back at their home with Joshua, he’s just very physically aggressive, it seems as if Marcela is into it too but once they start to have sex she turns her face away, scene ends at 28:43

35:08 Last scene of the ep, Carly’s sister calls her and starts yelling at her, eventually Carly realizes the guy she’d send explicit nudes and videos to released a video with her, including the toy dolphin she used,

and it’s all over the Internet. There are references throughout Ep 9, including dolphin noises, but it’s also just genuinely frustrating and heartbreaking to watch, Carly is understandably very hurt and embarrassed.

Ep 9:

7:24 Joshua’s brought Marcela breakfast in bed, she brings up Mike again, he thinks she’s ungrateful and smashes the whole tray into the wall, she smacks him, they continue to bicker, he gets physically aggressive with her again, she pretends to seduce him, then knees him in the stomach, he laughs it off, scene ends at 8:54

13:19 Marcela and Joshua playing around on the bed, roughly, but it seems like teasing with Marcela on top until Joshua manhandles her down and it’s not so light-hearted anymore. Marcela hits him and escapes from the bed, the scene ends at 14:45 with him not particularly angry still on the bed, Marcela on the dresser.

Ep 10:

14:25 I guess at this point this level of Joshua and Marcela bickering is mild for them, although Joshua still gets in a facegrab and slapping Marcela’s butt, scene ends at 14:35

20:16 Joshua asks Marcela if she’s okay and when she doesn’t answer immediately, grabs her neck to turn her around, the conversation going back to “normal” at 20:39 for a bit until when Marcela asks him to run away together, and gets mad when he refuses and says he has no balls, at which he says he’ll prove he does and tries to initiate sex, increasingly aggressively, hard enough to leave bruises, while Marcela tries to push him away, until finally the combination of that and another stripper calling from outside the dressing room gets him to stop., scene ends at 21:54

29:30 Joshua questions Marcela on where she got the ring from, increasingly hostile, then straight up shoving her against the wall and when she finally breaks free and gets mad and starts throwing things at his feet, he slaps her, knocking her down, scene ends at 30:43

31:04 Well, the next scene is basically the other trio watching the strip joint’s exit, waiting for Marcela to come out, and she does, and in her viewpoint we see her and Joshua walking, him still being very rough with her, both basically physically fighting on their short walk to the car, ending at 31:29

34:06 Joshua realizes who the girls are and gets mad at Marcela and attacks her, throws her into the car, until at 34:22 Vera stops him

Desenfrenadas was a wild ride! Loved all of them! Vera is such a little sh*t lol but I love her Marcela was incredible in the role surprised we’re not talking more about her (most of the hard scenes were with her the one with Vera also >. >) Carlota loved her storyline, hated what she had to go through but such an inspiration in the end! And Rocio (Barbie ?) the kind soul, the mom of the group, loved how fierce she is when she protects her friends (the last scene!) and her path to freedom!

I know! I–like probably many of us–started for Barbi but this was a show I’d have finished even without her. 

You’re right, Marcela had a lot of really rough scenes, both her and Vera, and man, the one you’re talking about? Watching that was…I remember having my hand clenched around my water bottle so tightly, willing the scene to finish and not go back.

I feel like they could have gone lighter on that, but otherwise, I loved the mix of different stories and journeys and genres! Sometimes a funny roadtrip movie, sometimes coming of age, sometimes family drama, sometimes crime drama. And the four girls through it all. :> 

Ughhh, Carly, that poor girl. The men on this show were almost all like, terrible to a bizarre degree. I could count on one hand the number of non-shitty guys. Literally. Vincente, Tobias, Mike, Vincente’s dad, that other guy from Tobias’s group. The others were…garbage. But the women were great, especially the older women! I really loved her relationship with her mom. And Carly was honestly so refreshing and great, genuine kindness driving her activism. 

Ngl, when the show started, I was pretty ready to ship Rocio with Vera (they had a great friendship) or Marcela, she went out of her way to help her so much. But this was fine too. As long as she’s happy and free. I like that they’re just traveling around with their own personal doctor, lol. I actually preferred Vincente to Tobias, so I’d love to see her return and learn more from Juana. 

I’m honestly also still just blown away at how they treated Vera and Marcela. Two MAIN characters, introduced in the first episode with their own central stories, seeing those stories unfold through the season and then becoming huge parts of each other’s. It was why we loved Juliantina so much as well, the richness of seeing two established, important characters Connecting, the reason we love subtext ships even now, because main character/side character ships simply can’t compare to the amount of screentime and focus main character/main character allows.To know these characters more deeply, to see them interacting, to see their effect on each other in every episode. Side characters just cannot provide that. Heh, I went to spam my friend to try to explain with the help of a very universal example:

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I loved Ro’s reaction when that Argentinian guy was like I saw the pretty blonde kissing the tattoo girl haha she shipped it from the start

Hah, they all seemed like such real, actual people with their real friendships. I really loved that.

I think Ro was genuinely surprised but once the possibility presented itself, it all made sense, Vera and Marcela’s tension, Vera’s seemingly extreme reaction to Marcela running off, probably certain things about Vera herself. And so she gently brought it up with her to let her know she and Carly were fine with it. It was all just so cute, lol. I loved the banter and teasing.