I checked the Mulan tag in your blog and I saw the Mulan/Aurora part and I have a stroke. The feels, the open wounds

Awwwww, right? God, they did them so dirty! And Mulan in particular, repeatedly. Just because they were obsessed with their twists and reveals and needing to SHOCK people with a damn romantic relationship?? But in a way I’m almost glad Mulan Rouge didn’t happen so I could go back to SW guilt-free. Possibly there was some pressure to not make a Disney Princess queer but they seemed to be building up to it so I won’t let them off the hook for how poorly they handled it all.

Why is Sterling so sure everything will be ok with her parents if they found out about her an April? Sorry i found that odd. Just look what happened when she drank. She was kicked out the house. So you mean to tell me Sterling just thinks her parents will be like ok i suppose its ok. Its just oddly placed. What your take on it?

Well, I think the show gets that people, and teenagers in particular, make decisions that aren’t always the most logically sound. They don’t do a cost benefit analysis, it’s often I want this to be true, so I’m hoping it is. We do that all the time, how many decisions do we make that we know we’ll pay for later, but we’re just hoping it’ll magically work out, sleeping late, eating unhealthy, skipping a class, procrastinating on literally anything? It doesn’t make sense, it’s just the best option in the moment. April herself was falling into that in ep 8 and 9, she knew there was no way she could come out safely, but oh, she wanted it. 

But Sterling in particular has led a bit of a charmed life until the last ep. Like, okay, she breaks the rules (sleeping with Luke, drinking) and faces the consequences (school ostracization, mother kicking her out of the house), but the being kicked out of the house was about as gentle as possible, and when her mom found out about the sex it was a bonding moment and the drinking somehow fixed the school situation! So she’s actually come out on top. 

She WAS scared about what to do with April, as she told that lady in the throuple, April could tell her parents, but she went ahead and kissed her anyway because in the moment, she couldn’t do anything else. And then she (rightly) freaked for two seconds until even THAT somehow amazingly worked out, against all odds, as we well know. You surprise the most Christian high maintenance girl in school with a kiss, it’s lottery probability not having that backfire badly. 

There are some people who make high risk decisions again and again even when they turn out badly and they just spiral. This kid is rewarded again and again, like, I would have understood her optimism even if only half those things had worked out. She’ll think, oh, they’ll be fine, or at worst, I’ll spend a night out on the lawn, but honestly? She’s not thinking of the consequences at all, it’ll work out.

Omg is there f/f in away?? (Spoilers pleeaase :D)

Yes! The main cast are five different astronauts, the actual lead being Hilary Swank’s American mission commander, and also men from India, Russia, and Ghana/Britain, and then a woman from China, Wang Lu. She has a husband and young son but we see in flashbacks how she met the team comms person on the ground, Chen Mei. 

Mei’s in the first couple of eps as mostly a background character but ep 3 is when we really delve into her and Lu, and although she’s sent away and not in the remaining 7 eps (boooo), there’s still hope for them after this three year mission to Mars is over. It’s…really sweet and specific to these characters, who and what they are, where they’re from. I liked it.

As always, All the Lilies did the work and put together their story for anyone who just wants to watch that: 

https://twitter.com/_allthelilies/status/1302607861579567104

I wasn’t expecting lovecraft country to stumble the way it did the last few mins of this ep. Everything about the intro of the two-spirit character to the last scene felt so disrespectful… I’m hoping they fix it next ep, or at least acknowledge how they visited the same genocidal colonizing violence the white ppl did, but even if they ~teach a lesson~ or whatever it’s really shitty they used indigenous/two-spirit ppl like that.

Yeah, I was shocked, since so much of this show is explicitly about awareness of this kind of thing. Even if it was deliberate to show that Black people can be on both sides of colonizer violence and even if that’s actually acknowledged on screen instead of them focusing on the plot, the end result is still this person violently killed and then no longer on the show. I make a big deal about representation coming from actually being visible and in front of us because otherwise, it’s inevitable that no matter how much sympathy we had in this ep, by next week and then onward, we’ll have moved on. It is simply how this works. It won’t even be like George, who lives on by people still remembering and mentioning him, who will mourn Yahima?

And my other concern was like, the focus on the genitals. Honestly, I haven’t even been fully comfortable with the nudity level for Tic, I’m sure they have their reasons and the actors are comfortable with it and maybe it’s like, to take control or make it more matter of fact and less salacious, but it just feels like if certain people are oversexualized by so much of society still, is it really worth showing these kinds of shots? I know it’s HBO and they show women all the time but that’s kind of my point, I don’t love that either. 

Maybe they will reverse it, even if the actor only has this one IMDB entry for the show, that could be to avoid spoilers. But…I don’t have lots of faith in that. And we will move on.