I need you young people to know it was almost never this hot when I was a child. Millennials and Gen Xers are all nostalgic and excited about summer because it was about ten to twenty degrees cooler to experience it back then!
I cannot express to you how FAST it has gone. I grew up in a world that does not exist now.
We're starting on the path to reverse it, globally. You might not know how much solar has EXPLODED in the last decade or two. It's gone from a side thing, a weirdo novelty that was just Not Viable... to whole countries investing in infrastructure.
but we have to keep fighting big oil and fascism everywhere we can in order to keep on this road to a new better less scorching burning earth.
But any time you wonder wtf the weather is doing- THIS IS NOT NORMAL, NO. THIS IS NOT WHAT IT WAS EVEN TWENTY YEARS AGO.
Even Gen Z probably remembers the era of a summer news cycle that wasn’t 50% forest fires. I’m in my mid 40s and I don’t think I was ever once aware of a forest fire impacting my life or being a newsworthy story before my mid-30s.
I take it back SDL I am not ready for the feature presentation. Bring back the cartoon antagonists who can't act their way out of a paper bag. I don't want to feel bad for Bianca and her look of anguish the second Fina isn't looking at her even if I too would be hopelessly in love with Fina ten seconds after I met her.
Ribbing done. Preparing for Intarsia - now with (what an idea) a little practice!
Am I considering how to adapt the Jersey pattern to make really excellent hats and scarves with telltale colors? Well. Wouldn't it be great?
closing statement from an article about being intersex & the possible connection of gender expression and sexuality in intersex individuals, published in The Gay Liberator, 1970s
[ID: a picture of an article that says, “Hopefully gay liberation will continue to raise confusing issues until the world at large becomes so confused and befuddled about sex and gender and all that people can finally stop worrying if "it's a boy or a girl" and get around to being free to be and to love people.” /end ID]
Second - trying to think this through from a point of storyline and structure - what are they going for, and is it a silver lining? (wait, this got a little longer, let me put it underneath a cut)
The more central the telenovela heroine, the more she suffers (I fully expect Begoña about to be shipped off to Pelahustán and Beatriz replacing her for a while at this point). There is no doubt here how central the Mafin plot and Marta as a heroine are. None. Also why set up this suffering if not towards a reward?
Fina refusing Marta's gifts and help offers two first-glance readings: Either, Fina is pushing Marta away and marks distance because she doesn't want her close and is uncomfortable with her presence (but then she wouldn't be so happy sleeping with her). OR, Fina is pushing Marta away because accepting Marta's gifts translates to "Needing Marta". To "Unable To Live Without Marta". And that is the one thing Fina cannot allow herself because losing Marta is the one thing that has destroyed her before. And I'd say that frames her entire Argentina experience.
Following up from that: why can Fina accept gifts from Bianca, then? a) because losing Bianca has not destroyed her and will not destroy her, since Bianca has never been as existential to her as Marta (a battered Fina would not let anyone else that close. Survival instinct). And b) because Fina reacts to Bianca in a hierarchical manner she has romanticized. Fina acts not from choice, but from guilt (actually, there is Old Fina underneath this: Fina whose sense of justice compels her to even out scales, even at her own detriment). Fina has been groomed into a role there that starts at 0 agency and 100% guilt. Bianca - or is that what Bianca has told her? - has nursed her back from death's door. Fina is supposed to be grateful, charming, attentive to her wishes, the rebellious talented younger photographer that Bianca can pride herself on having tamed (and meat-tagged, with jewelry). And now Marta is made to watch that Chacracore Tale that Bianca apparently loves to perform for an audience. For her circle of artists friends back home as well, perhaps?
Very interesting how vulnerability (and that is linked to the capacity of suffering placed in telenovela heroines) is made into a currency here: Marta offers it to Fina in spades, has in fact made Fina thaw quite a bit through giving her that. Bianca does categorically not offer it, even though Fina reads Bianca's manipulativeness (yelling and crying on the phone) as vulnerability. And Fina is still desperately scrambling away from it because Bianca has her perform dependency as a prerequisite for affection.
Finally, the focus on Marta's emotions in that high drama dyke tea signals very clearly for whom the audience is supposed to root. Bianca is marked as a veiled threat from her first take. She broadcast manipulative behavior before she even appeared (not knowing her arc is so short I might have expected she would ensnare Fina all the way into next season). She is there to be loathed, to wreak havoc, and to then leave again. She is there to bolster the Mafin narrative (even if she will break them up to now, in the short run), not to replace it - which is a certainty that was not broadcast as clearly around Cloe. So I guess we can lean back and scream and enjoy the ride and scream some more since they have improved there and have cast a seasoned stage actress (who also playwrights, and got awards for playwriting a queer story?) who will deliver exactly that kind of underhanded micro aggression this storyline needs.
This is set up to side with Marta and Mafin. And the Chacel - the emotion and vulnerability offered as a gift by Marta, opposite Bianca's material wealth symbolized by jewelry - will still make a return, I think. As will the lost status of "wives" that stands to be regained.
Chacel or Chacra, Fina? Chacel or Chacra?! All long-term torched point at a path to the former (eventually).
amandla
prguitarman
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
turnnoffyourmind
gamechangershow
romaincrisis
gummygunk
