everytime i read absolute batman i find bruce's face so jarring bc it will literally be the grittiest fight scene ever and then he will take of his mask and its like awwww hes just a baby
Was trying to make a joke about TV writing to my friend the other day and had to pause and go "...does the phrase 'surf dracula' mean anything to you?"
image description: tweet by @/topherflorence, reading: back in the day if u did a tv show called surf dracula you'd see that fool surfing every week in new adventures but in the streaming era the entire 1st season gotta be a long ass flashback to how he got the surfboard until you finally get to see him surf for 5 min in the finale /end description
I love the fact that when Monica asked Ava if she's in an open relationship with Deborah, Ava could have easily lied for her own interest, but no. Even in this imaginary scenario, Ava couldn't pretend for even A SECOND that Deborah would EVER be okay with sharing her with someone else. They're absolutely insane for each other and I love that about them.
this is a love story. unequivocally, undeniably. not in theory or subtext, but thematically, cinematically, and in structure, in rhythm, in every choice they make for (and because of) each other.
ava and deborah share an intimacy so instinctive it initially defies categorization. we see and name that from the start of their intimacy.
almost immediately after ava begins caring for deborah post-surgery (despite being her writer, not an assistant), they begin sleeping in the same bed—not sexually, but with the kind of embodied trust reserved for soulmates. when the dynamic shifts—when ava is hospitalized with a ruptured ovarian cyst—deborah storms the ER, demands competent care, threatens legal action. she insists that ava be protected.
this becomes a pattern: they defend, protect, rescue one another. repeatedly.
deborah keeps ava on as her writer through every misstep, every betrayal, every slight. even after a betrayal so severe it warrants legal action. and yet, deborah drops the lawsuit. the woman who sues for sport, for fun (as damien notes in season 2: “why doesn’t she just fire you? she loves firing people”) chooses instead to forgive. to give grace. she does what she never does.
in that same vein, deb, the woman who “doesn’t do funerals” cancels a major show on tour to speak at ava’s father’s funeral. she turns a tour bus around when his ashes are misplaced. she refuses to listen to the rest of her team because ava matters. ava is important. she climbs into an actual dumpster to recover them. she risks her public image, her legacy, her career, to preserve ava’s peace of mind.
they forgive each other in ways that rewrite their DNA. ava returns again and again, even after humiliation, rejection, grief. she returns to deborah even after losing her relationship. she returns after requiring therapy to move on from deb. she fights for deborah—not just for a job, but for recognition, acknowledgment, and most of all: affection and devotion. and deborah, sharp-edged and self-protective, softens. she allows herself to be reshaped. but only for ava.
their relationship is more physically and emotionally intimate than anything either of them shares with anyone else. their glances linger. their hands find each other and hold just a beat too long. their physical closeness—touches, brushes, embraces—is neither casual nor professional. deborah teaches ava to float in a pool, gently cradling her, whispering reassurance. “you got it,” she says, when ava begs, “don’t go.” and she doesn’t—not really. she never truly leaves. ava’s presence calms deborah’s performance anxiety; when asked to choose one person to focus on in the crowd, she doesn’t just choose ava—ava is all she sees. the words flow for her. they always have and always will. and deborah knows it.
this isn’t one-sided, either. it’s not unrequited. it’s not one-sided. ava isn’t just pining after deborah. they circle each other. they’re caught in each other’s orbit. so when ava explores new romantic relationships, deborah’s jealousy, possessiveness, and territorial claim over ava simmers to the surface. she mocks. she jabs. she lays possessive claim: “she lived in my guest suite.” when ava cruelly distances herself (“i just wrote jokes for her”), deborah’s face crumbles. this isn’t about the work. it never was.
they are intertwined. deeply. dangerously.
when deborah finally wins late night, ava is the first person she wants to hold. in fact, they hug, ava pulls back to look at deb in her driveway, deb still holding her in her arms, both of them sharing a deeply intimate and gleeful moment looking into each others eyes, and they hug again.
and when ava (temporarily) quits, and truly leaves because of a culmination of stress leading to a breakdown, deborah breaks. we see it in 4x06: deborah, disoriented by the loss of ava, finds a photo of herself in ava’s drawer and finally understands the depth of ava’s devotion. she misses her so much that she’s touching her sweater ava left in her office. rubbing the shoulders of the woman who crashed out and left. she can’t even focus or enjoy herself. she spirals. rosie’s words (“laughing with the best people in the world”) only deepen her ache. deborah misses that. she misses her.
deborah once said marriage was about laughing together. and ava makes her laugh. constantly. effortlessly. they can’t exist normally without the other. they are inseparable. the oxygen feels differently without each other. it’s why she begged her not to leave in the woods. it’s why she can’t stop thinking about her. “you got in my head,” deborah admits in one episode. “you’re in my head,” ava echoes. more importantly, deborah confesses “you made me want more for myself”.
they make each other better. ava challenges deborah’s ego. deborah challenges ava’s cynicism. they’re not here to comfort—they’re here to elevate each other. yin and yang. two halves of a whole.
ava has sacrificed everything for deborah. her time. her heart. her relationship. her sanity, at times. she’s lost, over and over, and still, she chooses deborah. she stays after cruelty. she writes through tears. she demands vulnerability. and she’s the only one who sees deb intimately, even more than family in her life, even similar to marty who has known deborah similarly for years. she knows her behind the sarcasm, the power, the performance.
again, this isn’t unrequited. deborah is fiercely protective of ava. even in silence. even in subtlety. when others dismiss ava, deborah defends her with a raised eyebrow or a single, cutting line. she doesn’t need to say “she’s mine.” it’s written into her every movement.
and this all culminates (and is evidenced) in 4x09. on live television, she says it:
“and now i’m being asked to fire someone i love who did nothing wrong.”
not “someone i value”, not “someone who matters”, not “someone important.” she chooses not industry words, but her heart: someone i love.
the rainbow lens flares that follows on screen when deb draws her line? the rainbow line? that’s intentional. unmistakable. the line is ava. no one can take ava from deb, and that’s the point. even bob pointed it out: “for her? really?”
deborah vance, who has fired friends, estranged her daughter, sued employees, and does not do funerals—burns down everything she’s built, everything she’s ever wanted, for one person.
ava.
that is not mentorship. this is not family. it is not platonic. that is a love story. it’s a gut-wrenching, electric, volatile, transcendent love story. not just age difference, but so much more. it transcends careers, family, trauma—it’s irrevocable devotion.
and they are soulmates. they are messy, magnetic, irrevocable soulmates. they are drawn together by a force neither of them can name, and neither of them wants to escape.
they are caught in each others’ orbit.
because if this exact story were between a man and a woman, no one would hesitate to call it what it is. no industry execs would hesitate.
and when the emotional core of your show is this undeniable, this consuming, this deliberately and intentionally romantic, it’s only a matter of time before hbo has to say the quiet part out loud.
“The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?”
— Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg commenting on how weird gendered defaults in entertainment are, and why we should think twice about them. Excerpted from this longer original post.
(via 360degreesasthecrowflies)
it’s something about the aggressively obvious 2020s makeup too on everyone in every movie no matter what the time period is. it’s the 19th century they do not have highlight!!!!
look at meg march in 1994 vs 2019. they both look great! however! emma watson is wearing very obvious lipstick, mascara, concealer under eyes heavy foundation etc etc. you can see this at a glance. i literally in making this comparison had to google if this was a promotional image that she took or actually a still from the movie because her makeup just looks like normal 2019 makeup that a girl from 2019 would wear!!! (not to mention her costume. different post.) then look at trini alvarado on the other left. obviously she’s wearing tons of makeup because she’s in a movie and she has tons of lights on her all the time but it doesn’t look she is!! you can see circles under her eyes!! she doesn’t have The Shine to her face that emma watson does. she looks so much more believable as a girl from the 1860s not because she’s a perfect representation but simply because she does not Obviously Have On Modern Makeup
Thank you for making this about make-up trends, which have become noticeably more ridiculous, instead of 95% of posts on this subject which are about bullshit like “please let balding men exist again 😢🎻” (when we’ve had a Daredevil with a receding hairline for ten years lol)
In a lot of other 90s period movies like Titanic there is obviously anachronistic make-up, that’s always been a thing. But it can stick out a lot more in movies now that the standard of what a woman’s made-up face should be is just sooo much and a “simple” look promoted on TikTok will take like 30 products.
TIL Many haunted houses have been investigated and found to contain high levels of carbon monoxide or other poisons, which can cause hallucinations. The carbon monoxide theory explains why haunted houses are mostly older houses, which are more likely to contain aging and defective appliances.
Tbh I originally thought OP was talking about haunted house attractions, like you’d visit around Halloween. And I mean, I admire the commitment to providing an authentic-feeling experience. Sure, Mr. MurderHouse Inc, I’ll huff your spooky computer duster if it makes the ghosts cooler, fuck yeah. Isn’t that basically what Shaggy from Scooby Doo was doing?
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