Rue! (she/they) Fandom veteran. Metas, fics, body language 101, and shenanigans of all flavors. SPN, The Witcher, Stranger Things, Penny Dreadful, RPB and other nonsense.
Countering Fan Harassment (aka the Please Stop section)
Please Stop Being Gross About Joseph on Main
Please Stop Reposting Stolen Photos!
Please Stop Body Shaming Joseph
Please Don't Traumatize the Smol Englishman
How to Stan Without Being a Wanker
Characterization, Reference, Clarifications
Eddie Munson Mythbusting
A Midwest Monster 1 + 2
The Doofers' "Mean Eddie" lives in 'The Hellfire Club'
Chrissy Trusted Him - How Could I Not?
Saint Billie Jean of Running: The Heart of Eddie’s Storyline
Could Eddie Return As Kas the Bloody Handed?
John Bender's Bones: Eddie Munson's Fictional Founding Father
The Rehabilitated Jerk: Steve Harrington's Brat Pack DNA
Eddie is NOT Flagging - No, really. 1 + 2 + 3
How To Do A BDSM
Eddie Munson is not a music snob
Eddie's a Natural Ash #7
Eddie Does NOT Have A Mullet
Metalheads do not wear messy-cute ballerina up-dos
Eddie's Watch(es)
This Just In: Eddie Munson Is Not A Goth
Why Those Handcuffs Aren't As Kinky As You Think
'Poor' Is Not a Synonym for 'Dirty'
Eddie's Place (aka Stop Fetishizing The Poors Plz)
No, "Heavy Metal" Is Not a Porn Magazine
80s Kid Lit: The Baby-Sitters Club
How to Tell Sociopaths From Regular Ol' Jock Assholes in 5 Easy Steps
Jason Carver is NOT Billy Hargrove
Could Eddie kick Jason's ass?
Demobats: A Crypto-Forensic Study
Living in a "Post-Eddie" Stranger Things fandom
“Steddie is just two conventially attractive white guys” (Anti-Slash bias) 1 + 2 + 3
On 'fetishization' and selective narrative control (-aka- Steddie vs. Eddissy) 1 + 2 + 3
Do Steddies have to 'justify' shipping Steve and Eddie?
Eddie is special
Steddie On The Page vs. Steddie On The Screen 1 + 2
Rue Being 'Normal' About Joseph Quinn 1 + 2 + 3
JQ's Key Contributions
Meanwhile, the Doofers...
Joseph deserves partial writing credit, at this point
You ain't seen nothin'...
It's not often I share wildly personal details or stories on the internet however I am somewhat compelled to do so. Last Friday I suffered a fall on to to tarmac. With the help of Dr's it seems I have a possible fracture of my Scapula (shoulder), I am icing and resting and safe. As you may have realized in my last post, we have new music coming and we shot the video on Saturday so when you watch it you are watching a man with a broken shoulder give his all. There is a unique punk attitude to that, that I have always taken with me. I'm not suggesting anyone do the same!!! Please look after yourselves and be cautious, our fragile frames are given to us and we must do what we can to care for them. With great love and looking toward the horizon.
Stop being messy on main about your situationship.
The reason he keeps telling you he likes you but doesn't want to be with you is probably because he doesn't trust you.
He shouldn't trust anybody right now - but especially not someone like you.
This is the kind of shit that people like Gwen Stefani pulled with her ex, Gavin Rossdale aeons ago: manipulating him and constantly pushing him to get serious and marry her when he just wasn't about that life. People think it's girlboss of Gwen, but I never saw her as anything but manipulative - she would openly talk to the press about plotting to get him to marry her, even though he didn't want to.
So yah. Vibe check failed. xp
So - it's been a bit since the second half dropped and I've only watched it once through and I don't know if I can make myself do it again (ep 7 - oof). But I wanted to get my thoughts out, especially after hearing that the last 2 eps of this season were the worst reviewed episodes the show has ever seen.
With Joey insisting on big-upping the Radskier romance, I'm afraid I must take that support apart. Because while, yes, I absolutely do love and appreciate him for pushing for this so hard (I'm a queer writer - I will never not say that representation of queer people in art is not only important, it's essential), the problem is that he was trying to do this during this weird, transitional season for the series - because like it or not, this is Henry's last season (and he was barely in it, this season, anyway), so it was generally a really weird, bad time to do this, timing-wise, imo.
For me, the biggest reason the relationship doesn't work is the same reason most of the rest of the season doesn't work - because TPTB have over-simplified the storylines, hacking a majority of them away entirely even though that leaves them with almost nothing to do over the first five episodes. That's a whole lot of time for a whole lot of nothing to be happening on the screen.
TPTB blame the American audiences for being too dumb and not being able to understand complicated politics of this universe, but they already watched the first two seasons - which has pretty intricate plotting and story arcs to keep track of - so it's clearly not a matter of dumb Americans not understanding complicated plots. There just weren't any, this season - not the way they've structured it. All we really see are the end-results of all the machinations that we should be seeing on screen (and would have, in previous seasons) and that's incredibly disappointing for me, as a viewer. It leaves the show feeling empty - like a display house with a bunch of bland furniture in it.
Full disclosure - I haven't read the books, I've only played a couple of the games for an hour or so before packing it in. High fantasy is not really my bag, usually, even at the best of times, but the characters and performances in the series impressed me, so I stuck with it and I came to genuinely love these characters.
I know a lot of people keep going back to that argument - "well, if they followed the books/games more, then the show would be better!" - yeah, but TPTB didn't like the books OR the games, so that's that on that. They're running the show, they decide what gets touched on, on the show. It's an adaptation, people. Not every adaptation is going to be droolingly faithful to the original text, even under the best of circumstances.
That being said, though - my biggest issue with the writing this season has been the constant instances of the writers TELLING, but not SHOWING - which is basically the number one cardinal sin in writing, afaic. And with the Radskier plot, they sort of clunked these two characters together like a 9-year-old girl would her Barbie dolls, to much the same narrative result.
We have Jaskier speaking passionately about Radovid to one of his gfs and the man he describes is literally nothing like the man we meet on-screen. This thoughtful, deep, sensitive person Jaskier describes so ardently has no association to the person we see on screen except his name. For all we know, Jaskier could be talking about someone on another continent entirely, were it not for the fact he calls him by name.
The biggest issue, along with the 'show, don't tell' curse, is the way they do not have these characters 'earn' any of this storyline. There an awful lot of coincidences and chance meeting type things, but we maybe see them have a total of two lengthy exchanges with each other, and they're both excruciatingly awkward, and not in that 'I've got a crush, so I feel self-conscious' way, either.
I keep trying to explain this and go at it from different angles to explain how and why this bugs me so much, but the short-short version is: Radovid isn't enough of a character or a presence in the show, full stop, to even be considered a serious, legitimate love interest for Jaskier. Not with the way they've taken almost zero screentime to show him being or doing ANY of the things that Jaskier has said he is and does -- and, in fact, make sure to show us that he's actually nothing at all like Jaskier thinks and comes across as this hollow shade of a creature more than a character. You might say 'ahh, don't you think they did that on purpose?' and no, no I really don't think they did.
But what I think happened was - Joey had it in his mind, this romance idea, and TPTB knew everybody wanted more Joey/Jaskier and wanted SOME kind of romance for him (whether it was with Geralt or Yen or whoever), so they gave him that storyline, but also don't seem to have helped much with ... actually fleshing out any of the actual storyline, itself. In a case of what seems almost like malicious compliance from TPTB, they just told exactly the story Joey wanted them to tell - straight across, no depth, no nuance, no intimacy, no care.
All you have to do is look at Tissaia's relationship with Yennefer to see that it's entirely possible for them to write intense, intimate connections between characters and they don't even have to spend that much time doing so. Granted, Tissaia and Yen's relationship is very complex and deep and has been on-going since s1, but if they could do THAT, then they should have no problem with writing a worthy romance storyline for Jaskier in just a handful of scenes. Ultimately, they just didn't want to, it seems.
I don't blame Joey for this, not at all - his heart was and is always in the right place, when it comes to the show and his character, but I have a strong feeling that they really sold him out on this one. They did him so dirty and then make it seem like he should be grateful that they went with his idea at all. Suffice to say, the optics of the whole thing - especially with all these stupid fucking articles crowing about The Witcher's New Pansexual Love Story! - are just dreadful.
I hope Joey doesn't take this too hard, because I know it's really important to him for this part of Jaskier's story to be represented, but -- there's just no THERE there!
In order for me to love Radovid, I have to believe that Jaskier loves Radovid -- and the Radovid we met was categorically NOT the Radovid Jaskier falls in love with, which is the most critical flaw of this whole story arc, imo. Because - as you could probably see in this post - it causes INFINITE amounts of dissonance in the head, and dissonance just doesn't make for enjoyable viewing.
Tbh, I'd rather have a whole new spin-off series called The Bard Show than season 4 of whatever mess they're going to insist on still calling The Witcher with Kraft Hemsworth as Geralt.
Like - can we just skip the train wreck and get right to the damage control, please? >.<
(And let's be real here - it wasn't 'supposed' to be the Bard Show, but lots of shows start out as one thing and wind up becoming something very different in the end. Like how it's called The Witcher but Henry was in season 3 about 15 minutes total screentime xp At this point, the mission statement of the entire series means fuck-all, so why not do The Bard Show? Really.)
So there's stuff going around about Joseph getting cast as Johnny Storm for the upcoming Fantastic 4 movie. The only problem is, these rumors have been floating around for like a whole year or more, now, by this point - but it doesn't seem we've had anything concrete show up in terms of contracts, etc. Which makes sense, considering how the entirety of SAG-AFTRA is currently on strike, so chances of them announcing that right now are slim, I think.
Plus? That entire IP is cursed. They've tried relaunching the thing like half a dozen times, at this point, with multiple different casts (or possible casts) and they always wind up falling through somehow or stinking worse than last week's garbage. Yet, because they just. can't. stop. wanting all of your money, I guess that means they're going to try yet another head-on run at this thing and see if they can make it work this time, even though it's literally never worked any other time they've tried it.
I was already feeling the superhero franchise fatigue big time - like WAY before Secret Invasion started stinking up the joint recently - so believe me when I say, I was noooooot excited to hear even the faintest inkling of a rumor about Joseph being connected to that mess.
Do I think he can do it? Of course. That's not even a question.
The issue here, for me, is he can and absolutely should do better - especially this early on in his career - than to hitch his wagon in ANY way, shape, or form to the MCU. Or, truly, any other huge, long-standing franchise system like that.
Joseph's just too damn gifted to be wasting all that talent on the fucking MCU, full stop. If he gets tangled up in that mess, he can say goodbye to his career for the next however-long-until-Disney-deigns-to-free-him - like, seriously, getting into bed with Disney is worse than freaking Scientology.
So - it's been a bit since the second half dropped and I've only watched it once through and I don't know if I can make myself do it again (ep 7 - oof). But I wanted to get my thoughts out, especially after hearing that the last 2 eps of this season were the worst reviewed episodes the show has ever seen.
With Joey insisting on big-upping the Radskier romance, I'm afraid I must take that support apart. Because while, yes, I absolutely do love and appreciate him for pushing for this so hard (I'm a queer writer - I will never not say that representation of queer people in art is not only important, it's essential), the problem is that he was trying to do this during this weird, transitional season for the series - because like it or not, this is Henry's last season (and he was barely in it, this season, anyway), so it was generally a really weird, bad time to do this, timing-wise, imo.
For me, the biggest reason the relationship doesn't work is the same reason most of the rest of the season doesn't work - because TPTB have over-simplified the storylines, hacking a majority of them away entirely even though that leaves them with almost nothing to do over the first five episodes. That's a whole lot of time for a whole lot of nothing to be happening on the screen.
TPTB blame the American audiences for being too dumb and not being able to understand complicated politics of this universe, but they already watched the first two seasons - which has pretty intricate plotting and story arcs to keep track of - so it's clearly not a matter of dumb Americans not understanding complicated plots. There just weren't any, this season - not the way they've structured it. All we really see are the end-results of all the machinations that we should be seeing on screen (and would have, in previous seasons) and that's incredibly disappointing for me, as a viewer. It leaves the show feeling empty - like a display house with a bunch of bland furniture in it.
Full disclosure - I haven't read the books, I've only played a couple of the games for an hour or so before packing it in. High fantasy is not really my bag, usually, even at the best of times, but the characters and performances in the series impressed me, so I stuck with it and I came to genuinely love these characters.
I know a lot of people keep going back to that argument - "well, if they followed the books/games more, then the show would be better!" - yeah, but TPTB didn't like the books OR the games, so that's that on that. They're running the show, they decide what gets touched on, on the show. It's an adaptation, people. Not every adaptation is going to be droolingly faithful to the original text, even under the best of circumstances.
That being said, though - my biggest issue with the writing this season has been the constant instances of the writers TELLING, but not SHOWING - which is basically the number one cardinal sin in writing, afaic. And with the Radskier plot, they sort of clunked these two characters together like a 9-year-old girl would her Barbie dolls, to much the same narrative result.
We have Jaskier speaking passionately about Radovid to one of his gfs and the man he describes is literally nothing like the man we meet on-screen. This thoughtful, deep, sensitive person Jaskier describes so ardently has no association to the person we see on screen except his name. For all we know, Jaskier could be talking about someone on another continent entirely, were it not for the fact he calls him by name.
The biggest issue, along with the 'show, don't tell' curse, is the way they do not have these characters 'earn' any of this storyline. There an awful lot of coincidences and chance meeting type things, but we maybe see them have a total of two lengthy exchanges with each other, and they're both excruciatingly awkward, and not in that 'I've got a crush, so I feel self-conscious' way, either.
I keep trying to explain this and go at it from different angles to explain how and why this bugs me so much, but the short-short version is: Radovid isn't enough of a character or a presence in the show, full stop, to even be considered a serious, legitimate love interest for Jaskier. Not with the way they've taken almost zero screentime to show him being or doing ANY of the things that Jaskier has said he is and does -- and, in fact, make sure to show us that he's actually nothing at all like Jaskier thinks and comes across as this hollow shade of a creature more than a character. You might say 'ahh, don't you think they did that on purpose?' and no, no I really don't think they did.
But what I think happened was - Joey had it in his mind, this romance idea, and TPTB knew everybody wanted more Joey/Jaskier and wanted SOME kind of romance for him (whether it was with Geralt or Yen or whoever), so they gave him that storyline, but also don't seem to have helped much with ... actually fleshing out any of the actual storyline, itself. In a case of what seems almost like malicious compliance from TPTB, they just told exactly the story Joey wanted them to tell - straight across, no depth, no nuance, no intimacy, no care.
All you have to do is look at Tissaia's relationship with Yennefer to see that it's entirely possible for them to write intense, intimate connections between characters and they don't even have to spend that much time doing so. Granted, Tissaia and Yen's relationship is very complex and deep and has been on-going since s1, but if they could do THAT, then they should have no problem with writing a worthy romance storyline for Jaskier in just a handful of scenes. Ultimately, they just didn't want to, it seems.
I don't blame Joey for this, not at all - his heart was and is always in the right place, when it comes to the show and his character, but I have a strong feeling that they really sold him out on this one. They did him so dirty and then make it seem like he should be grateful that they went with his idea at all. Suffice to say, the optics of the whole thing - especially with all these stupid fucking articles crowing about The Witcher's New Pansexual Love Story! - are just dreadful.
I hope Joey doesn't take this too hard, because I know it's really important to him for this part of Jaskier's story to be represented, but -- there's just no THERE there!
In order for me to love Radovid, I have to believe that Jaskier loves Radovid -- and the Radovid we met was categorically NOT the Radovid Jaskier falls in love with, which is the most critical flaw of this whole story arc, imo. Because - as you could probably see in this post - it causes INFINITE amounts of dissonance in the head, and dissonance just doesn't make for enjoyable viewing.
[ID: tweet from Dean's Coffee (WGA and SAG-AFTRA Unity) @/deans_coffee that says, "Please join us on 8/10 at Warner Bros for the Supernatural picket and get a free iced coffee sponsored by the Winchesters writers!!" Attached is an image of occult symbols, dice, and an old book with the text, "Picket On My Wayward Son - at Warner Bros. from 9-12 on 8/10. Join Winchesters & Supernatural writers, cast, & friends to picket for fair wages." end ID]
If you can't physically go, consider:
supporting Dean's Coffee here to get coffee to the picket lines!
donating to the Entertainment Community Fund here to support industry workers affected by the strike!
I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say
