why did you quit watching motherland?? like something in particular or you just weren’t that invested
And another two anons:
Can I ask why you stopped watching Motherland: Fort Salem? Just curious
oh no, why did you stop watching motherland? 🙁 what made you stop though…
Heh, I didn’t expect multiple asks. Tbh, I don’t really know why, if you like a show, do you want to hear negative things about it? But you asked, so… I debated even mentioning it in the first place, but I didn’t want to lie or mislead about it either. That’s two major things in the f/f zeitgeist I’m not really connecting to, huh. Thank god for Killing Eve. 😛
To be clear, these are my reasons and I’m not saying anyone else should stop or there’s something wrong with them if they wholeheartedly love it, I don’t ever really make that kind of judgment on what people watch and why. But it was a combination of not being particularly invested and not liking certain choices, I guess. After all, if I’d been more invested, the choices wouldn’t have been a dealbreaker.
Basically, while I liked the second last ep I watched, at the wedding, with the mother-daughter teamup, the next ep had all those dead Bellweathers with their vocal cords cut out and I realized I don’t really like the writers’ perspective on this world. They seem, to me, to make choices and subvert things more because they seem cool and because of surface-level activism reasons than because they’ve put a lot of thought into it. Like, to make the powerful aristocratic family black, okay, cool, but then not changing anything else around it, and not seeing anything wrong with killing and mutilating a bunch of them. As a whole, it just seems like the show’s going to be a lot of violence coated over by the main three’s friendship (and their respective ships). I guess I was hoping for a deeper interrogation of what this AU would mean.
During Danielle’s live, she said that the two handholds weren’t scripted! Being able to do that now on numerous occasions and have it feel so natural just shows how comfortable they are with each other and how in tune they are with their characters and what they think the couple would be like. That’s chemistry.
Oh, right! I was going to ask what you meant by numerous occasions and then remembered the whole “kiss me” sequence and probably there are more.
You’re right, they’re super comfortable not only with what they’re given but actually adding these other very natural gestures and moments. I said before that to me chemistry is the willingness to play into their roles and they do it so well. Like I was saying to a friend, they both seem very comfortable with their characters’ sexuality (in a sensuality sense, not orientation–although also that) and don’t play it down in any kind of awkward, self-conscious fashion OR play it up like, tee-hee, girl on girl, it’s all very natural.
It’s funny how some couples have so much of it that it’s this noticeable. In the previous live with Stefania, when they talked about her time on Station 19 and she was describing how nice and welcoming it was, and then brought up how after their first table-read together, everyone got quiet and stared at them because it was so intense. And like, it’s true, you tend to see comments toward ships trend in certain ways, “they’re so cute”, “they’re so hot”, and for this ship, it’s a lot about their chemistry.
Have you seen The Half of It? It’s on Netflix now :) [[MORE]]
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Not yet, no! Now that it’s finally here, I feel oddly reluctant to sit down and start. Sometimes hype makes me really want to watch something, sometimes I’m scared to start and be disappointed or worse, love it and have no more of it. Also, you know. It’s a movie. I still haven’t watched A Secret Love either. (Or The Favourite or Carol or The Handmaiden. :x) But I hope you enjoyed it!
And another two anons (one is mildly spoilery and negative):
<tried to insert a read more here, it wouldn’t do it…oh…it inserted the link in the ask itself, freaking geniuses>
I just watched the half of it and it wasn’t bad? I mean towards representation is not the best movie ever but it was nice and like the way it was shot was great?
The half of it vaguely spoilerish if you haven’t seen it yet… I am so glad I found out ahead of time that this wasn’t a lesbian rom com Bc whew I woulda been pissed watching it had I not known that. As it was, I was honestly kinda bored a lot of the movie. I love Alice Wu and she made very lovable characters in Ellie & Aster, but this movie had so much focus on Paul. I’m sick of white boys dominating narratives honestly. He wasn’t a fresh character at all but he was still so much the focus.
These two came in so close together this morning, they made me laugh. You’re like two sides of the same coin, all, yeah, I guess it was okay??
To the first anon, heh, you seem unsure? You can like it or even love it without any issue! It DOES hit a lot of rep points, unless it’s willfully apathetic or offensive, I feel like you’re free to enjoy what it is more than add disclaimers for what it isn’t. If you enjoyed it, that’s awesome.
To the second anon, well, I get it. Maybe that’s why I’m not in a rush to watch. I’m not currently in the mood for a story that is basically, in Wu’s own words, an attempt to reach out to people who made Trump happen. And okay, that’s not fair, it’s so many more things, a coming of age story for an Asian American lesbian teen, the story of a second gen immigrant and her dad in a small American town, among other things, friendship between seemingly fundamentally different people, how to grow and learn past learned biases, even the effects of religion on Aster. And heck, even if it were just the first thing, that’d be an admirable goal, let alone the many other things it manages to be to so many people. I’m not saying it has to be something different.
But if this movie has two main roles, to teach empathy to an external group and to be relatable to an inner group, it is…neither of those things to me. I’m a Southeast Asian American who grew up abroad, my experiences are very different from Ellie’s and while I have a bunch of guy friends, I don’t care about Paul. Which will probably change when I actually watch, the way I love Dutch and Johnny in Killjoys. Or currently, Isaac on Vagrant Queen. I end up liking a lot of male characters, tbh. I dunno. I guess it’s what the focus is Presented as. Ellie may be the lead of THOI, but a movie’s inherent lack of time forces Paul and their dynamic to be so central, and a part of me does resent that a bit. It’s sold as a different kind of love story, their dynamic itself is the main character.
It could be a combination of many things, a difference between what I want and what it is, the fact that it’s a movie and just didn’t have the time I like to develop. I really liked In My Skin, a TV show, and that wasn’t particularly relatable, I guess I’m more open to stories when the female lead is front and center in every way. The story is about her. It’s like in Stumptown, I FAR preferred the episodes that treated Dex as the main than those where Grey or Hoffman had some adventure and Dex was just, like, there.
But annnyway. It’s fine, right, we don’t have to like everything. I get the FOMO, something like this is so big and the f/f community’s still so small, it’s hard to ignore it and everyone around us engaging with it in some way. But aren’t we reaching a point where we don’t have to like something because it’s f/f but can go on to something else? Well. I say that as someone who prefers TV to movies, because damn, pickings are slim if you want happy central f/f in movies. Honestly, that’s really what it comes down to, the issue isn’t this movie but that there aren’t enough f/f movies out there. Every one of these discussions boils down to that basic point, that this one movie shouldn’t be responsible for everything this industry’s failed to do. You don’t have to like this movie, but you should have the opportunity to watch more than one happy ending every few years.
So the scene at the end, where Maya says she’s not in denial but rather, angry. Like she’s pissed at her mom and what she said or that she’s pissed because she’s realized about the abuse? I didn’t really get it. I really hope they actually address it properly cause this show likes to wrap things up in a blink of an eye sometimes. Also yes, I need to see and Carina speak up because Maya acting out when she’s hurt is not it(maya snatching her hand away hurt me lol)!
Same! I wondered if she meant she’d realized it but still felt she owed it to him or maybe worthless without those achievements and it made her angrier, but no, I don’t think so. I think she’s just…on the brink of getting it, really emotional and worked up and frustrated but still feeling defensive on his behalf and thus angry at her mom and, because she tried to comfort her and so makes it more real, Carina. If she had really followed the realization through, that wouldn’t have been the end of the scene, no way, and Carina wouldn’t have left. We still have a ways to go. 😡
And yeah, this show does so much that’s convenient, which, of course, it is a very dramatic TV show, but that makes it feel a little inorganic sometimes. Things start happening in a way that best serves each neatly divided plot arc, not just Maya suddenly facing all these elements designed to make her lose it at once, but like how Sullivan now can’t read Andy’s discomfort at all, all the better to serve whatever new arc they have coming up. But they’ve actually given Maya a pretty long arc, remember the flashback ep with her father was the one in which she and Carina met, so everything else, the truck meltdown and the panic attack and now this happened after that. And I always forget to include the therapy session because it doesn’t feel as much like her losing control, but matter-of-factly talking about how death seems like a relief is dangerously close to…something. Kind of surprised Diane didn’t seek a follow up with her, especially given that her issues didn’t seem related to Rigo’s death or even the stress of being a firefighter captain.
I kind of don’t want things to get far enough where Carina has to speak up, but I think we can all see the trajectory this is on. Maya pulling her hand away hurt, definitely, although in that moment I felt worse for her, but when she first walked in and was like what’s going on here, eesh. Carina took it in stride and tried to lighten the mood but Maya’s tone had been rough. Her mom brought up some traumatic feelings earlier and she carried them into the fire and was that much more keyed up by the time it was over but like. You can’t take your feelings out on whoever happens to be there.
i love your gifsets :) did you get a good screenshot or gif of maya’s calendar page please?
Thanks! And here you go:
maya and carina were so sweet this episode. i second everything you said in the tags but i especially loved how cairna interacted with maya’s mom. i don’t watch greys so idk how she is there, but on s19 she seems very collected/not easily phased. i do wonder what’ll happen when naya does eventually breakdown(because that’s what’s coming i assume). i keep thinking of her’i dont fix broken people’ comment and if theyll ever address that. but so far she seems very willing to stick it out
I JUST had a conversation with my friend about tonight’s ep and basically said all of this! I super, super love Carina, which, maybe it’s easy to do because I’ve also mostly just seen her on this show and she’s only been allowed to be a supporting character and what’s not to love about an endlessly supportive upbeat sweetheart. Because yeah, even with the “I don’t fix broken people” line that seemed to imply she wasn’t going to put up with all this, she is putting up with a lot.
And I love Maya too and of course she’s a victim and it’s super sad to see her be grateful to her abusive dad, it’s so hard for her to separate her achievements and identity from his abuse, obviously, this is a big, important arc for her, but they’re getting close to a line where it’s just Maya pouring a LOT on Carina and Carina just taking it with no other role in this relationship. Maybe there was meant to be a balance, with her brother, maybe next season, but I assume it’s actually going to be deliberate on the part of the show where Carina’s like, okay, you can’t talk to me like that. We’re starting to see Maya exhibit the same behavior her father did, pushy and bossy and I’m sure it comes from a place where she thinks that’s the best way to achieve success, but it was abuse then, and it’s just not going to get good results now. If Emmett is too scared to go back into the fire, fine, in the moment, deal with him quickly and effectively, but at some point, you have to get to the root of the matter, you can’t just give him an errand as punishment and that’s it. And in the heat of the moment or not, you can’t talk to a fire victim like that.
The show’s being way too obvious about this arc to just assume it’ll be brushed away, things are going to come to a head, I just hope Carina and their relationship won’t be a casualty on the way.