you know because byler hasn’t fully left my brain yet…watching other shows can be annoying…especially ones that feature romance…because I see those romantic couples feature the same visual language that byler had in canon…intimate framing, heartfelt dialogue, romantic music, romantic tropes, scenes with emotional weight in regards to each other’s character. and the thing is these ships will end up together. that’s for certain and there’s no debate.
I was rewatching atla…a show that is well-written and well-crafted…and kataang features consistent heart-to-hearts like byler did to build up their dynamic…simply to show that these two characters have a bond that they don’t have with the others. the usage of romantic tropes like kataara being the one who is always able to calm down aang from his avatar state/mike being the one to pull will out of his trances and comfort him the best out of anyone else, kataara and aang saving each in dramatic emotional ways/mike and will doing the same for each other (s2 shed scene and s5 sorcerer moment), the characters’ individual arcs complement each other and they’re both actively shown to be a team. it is frustrating.
also just watched bridgerton s4 p2…and yeah this show is more messily written compared to the former (this season was better in many ways)…what i find great is the inclusion of a queer romance with one of the siblings…francesca and michaela…I’m so happy to finally see a central queer storyline that’s sapphic no less…and I can hardly hold my excitement in for their season. so far in s4 p2 their scenes are shot with intimate framing, romantic music and we get a closeup handhold shot…which in film language…is usually romantic.
these are all established romantic things and byler scenes are shot in the same way…they got a closeup handhold shot too…they are shot differently to all the friendships within st like friendship heartfelt conversations don’t look like that but shot similarly to romantic couples (specifically lumax, jopper, jncy) in the show. so many parallels to these couples through framing, music, tropes, dialogue, etc.
byler also parallels romantic couples in other shows simply by framing and music and dialogue because this is a shared visual language that helps set the mood for a romantic pairing. whether we look at a well-written show or a more messily written show. it is a shared visual language. this is why “byler has no canonical basis” arguments are just wrong wrong wrong! if you’re looking at the show from a craft perspective the romantic nature of byler is fairly obvious. the snowball was built up across the span of 5 seasons using the same visual language as other romantic pairings but unlike other romantic pairings the avalanche failed to happen. that’s what makes it frustrating.
denials of the romantic nature of byler and the queerness of mike in a canonical capacity need to stop. even if it didn’t happen it’s fairly obvious that byler is canonically romantic and that mike is queer. it’s baked into the narrative and overt subtext by the end of st5. i’m gonna stop pretending i think the “we made up byler and mike is straight” takes are possible because I don’t. you’re just wrong.
Like, it's been decades of this, I put Clean Cat away when I was sixteen bc I listened a bit too much to what my father said about how no girls would wanna come in your room and see your stuffed animals, theyd think you were (slur) and I, of course, said yes sir, and boxed him up and decades gone and still its never been right. Not with a balled up hoodie, not with a pillow, not with another animal the rough size and shape of the stuffed cat, it really is like just a missing piece of. Me
I'm not sure if I'm too early or too late for this ask but what would Mother's Day look like for Ripper? I imagine it not being too great 😅
I won't lie to you, anon. Ripper wouldn't notice it's Mother's Day. Ripper wouldn't even keep track what day of the week it is, unless it's necessary for investigations or shenanigans. In fact, I don't think they'd realize it was Mother's Day until after a month has passed.
Not to say that Ripper would have no resurfacing issues about their mother in general, but at least it wouldn't be at that moment. Less suffering for them.
Alex, on the other hand, would have so many flashbacks, so many relived moments of his childhood that ended up disappearing in an instant. Feeling all sad and shit and wondering about all the what could have been. About all the things he could have done to avoid it. Feeling alone in a world of deceit, just very close to breaking down but he also can't because he has to stay steady for his sibling.
He won't be sleeping that night, nor the week to come.
rn the roomie is showing off the House Weaponry and i was thinkin abt the way marc kind of . seems to ? avoid fighting with knives ? and was just like . exploding bc im. watching the way marc brawls on the rooftop & he . he constantly knocks knives to the ground but he keeps his own hands weapon-free. the moment marc gets his hands on a knife, the fight’s over too quick (at least for bad guy #1)- and suddenly steven takes the wheel.
and then the next time there’s a knife in Marc’s hand it’s certainly not nice and shiny like it was before- no, it’s buried in bad guy #1’s gut. there’s so much more blood.
… listen i came into this ask wondering if marc and jake had different styles of fighting with weapons- with knives specifically- and walked out with too many more questions than i had answers.. Marc’s movements with the knife were. very certain and fluid- well practiced, even. and yet he seems to shy away from picking one up- he sticks to his fists.
It doesn’t help that there’s not much footage on how jake uses a knife, we just see the .. result. anyways this is for you to munch on when you find a spare thought cos i know this’ll be rotating in my brain on repeat for a goooood long while. skdjdksj byeeee
Percy, have I ever mentioned how much I love when you talk to me about House Weaponry? lsdgjskljgs ANYWAY. I have.. commentary on this.
So, in that scene on the rooftop, there's three guys he's fighting total, five knives (the particularly flashy guys are carrying two. Y'know. For funsies, I guess.) The confrontation starts with Marc being, bless his heart, more himself than we see very often. A little sassy, a lighthearted jab here and there. Oh shit, you killed him? I needed to talk to that guy. Oh. What, are we dancin'? We fightin'? What are we gonna do? He's more comfortable, the situation more familiar.
And throughout the fight, he's more focused on getting the knives out of their hands. He disarms, but he doesn't necessarily take advantage of the weapon itself. (It's something we learn in combat self defense, your best chance of survival is to take the knife out of the fight entirely.) Marc's strategy is this:
Guy #1: Dodge the first slash so the knife is already directed away from him, takes his wrist holding the second knife, forces it in the same direction so both points are no longer a threat, and uses his own momentum to push him away, falling to the ground.
Kid and Guy #2: In the time it takes Marc to land a solid kick on someone else, the kid manages a good slash against his back, distracting him from the older men. When he tries again, Marc grabs at the wrist holding the knife, twisting the joint in a way that makes it fall from his grip. It's important to note too that he hesitates for a second, striking his back with an open palm instead of a closed fist. Less pain, more jarring or surprising than anything.
Guy #1 again: He crosses the guys arms across each other, making it pretty difficult to near impossible to stab forward. He brings his knee up to strike his wrist, and so another knife falls. The second knife comes up, and Marc strikes again to the same result.
With every motion and decision Marc makes, a weapon falls to the ground. But he doesn't reach for it, not until the end. And even then he's angry, the adrenaline is pumping, he's reaching for that familiar violence, but at the last moment, Steven steps in. That's enough.
And I used to think it was so strange, because Marc's very familiar with utilizing the crescent darts when he's wearing the suit. There are multiple times he uses them to stab, to cut, to slash, in the same way a knife would be handled. So why did he seem so against taking advantage of a dropped weapon, when he was very clearly outnumbered? And then I remember this line:
Or it was just a way for me to keep being what I've always been. A killer.
And that is Marc's entire struggle with his identity as Moon Knight, isn't it? He refuses to accept that certain satisfaction he finds in his own violence, because in doing so, he thinks he's confirming everything his mother ever made him believe. He finds it easier to use those weapons wearing the armor because he thinks he can almost.. draw a line between himself and what he becomes as an Avatar. He can separate the two.
And by trying to put those different parts into neat little boxes, that is what causes him to believe he hates being Moon Knight. Because he puts all that anger and violence, those things that he hates, all in that same box. That internal conflict arises when the line becomes blurry, or it disappears entirely, like that moment on the rooftop.
I don’t know if Killing Eve will ever address what happened after the bridge or not, but if they don’t we’ll be left to fill in a HUGE blank. Hopefully it does get addressed at some point, but if not I saw one reviewer’s theory (who is also a self proclaimed Villaneve fan) who said she thinks Villanelle ended up walking away to go off and try to better herself for Eve.
At first, I was like hmm...not sure what she’s basing that off of. Because from my point of view an act of mutual acceptance happened on that bridge so there was really no need for V to try and change. But then the more I thought about it, it actually could explain how things ended up where they are now.
On the bridge, Eve asked Villanelle to help her make it stop. The only way Villanelle knew how to do that was to walk away from Eve. Yes they both turned back, but Villanelle knew that if she stayed she would be dooming Eve to a fate that Villanelle had been so desperately trying to escape from. So Villanelle walked away. But faced with the reality of never seeing Eve again, she decided to try to become “good”. She decided to try to become someone who wouldn’t encourage Eve’s monster the way she had done in the past. So she finds a church and desperately begins the journey of trying to reform, so that she can be the type of person who would still be able to be with Eve.
However, Eve may not have seen Villanelle walking away as a act of sacrifice. She may have seen it as an act of rejection. Eve turned back, she turned back for Villanelle. So Villanelle still choosing to walk away may have stunned Eve. Here is a woman who had been relentlessly wooing and pursuing Eve and right when Eve finally lets herself surrender to that reality, V walks away. So maybe that’s where this “change” stems from. Maybe Eve wanted to completely burn down her old life and build a new one. Maybe she wanted to be someone who doesn’t let her feelings control her, someone who doesn’t ask, but just takes what it is that she wants. But underneath this rough, hard exterior is still the woman who was left standing alone on a bridge. That may be the anger and hostility that we see towards Villanelle. I read an excerpt from an interview that alluded to Eve being “heartbroken” by Villanelle. I’m not sure when or how else this heartbreak could’ve occurred.
So Eve finally, finally, finally starts to get her feet under her again. She’s more self-sufficient, stronger, tougher, takes no bullshit. Then she starts receiving baptism invitations from the very person who drove her to these lengths. And this INFURIATES Eve, because how dare she? After all this time, how dare V just try to walk back into Eve’s life? So when they finally come face to face, everything just bubbles over. Eve doesn’t want to hear her or see her. She just wants to keep everything buried. So when Villanelle has the audacity to call her out on the fact that she hasn’t changed, Eve snaps because it’s true. Eve still cares. Even though she doesn’t want to, she does. But she’s not about to let Villanelle know that, so she marches over and slaps her and definitively lets her know that she is a “different person.”
On Villanelle’s end, this is all utterly confusing. Because here she went on this journey to “change” just so she could be with Eve. So she’s not prepared to face rejection and this different Eve. She has spent months (I’m assuming) molding herself into a person who, in Villanelle’s mind, should have been welcomed with open arms by Eve. So it is completely jarring for her to discover that this isn’t the case. That all of her efforts seem to be for naught. That Eve no longer cares. Villanelle’s social skills aren’t nuanced enough for her to pick up on any underlying factors that may have played into the fish tank interaction with her and Eve. So for V, slap=rejection=God is not real because if he was, this wouldn’t have happened. V being “good” now would’ve been enough to bring Eve back to her.
So I think there’s a lot more going on under the surface than we realize. I just really hope that the show puts some effort into addressing it and working through it.
Please don't think just because Destiny's Children turned into a cult of personality, they didn't follow the typical counterculture talking points of that era. Spirituality, sexual freedom, civil rights, women's equality, definitely liberal drug use on the followers' part, and you better believe Dave wasn't the only one who heard Klaus' warnings about the Vietnam war -- he had those statistics right at the top of his head. Also keep in mind the first major protests didn't start until 1964.
Oh honey darling sweatheart, no no no, i am so sorry its your ask that is going to be on the recieving end of this onslaught you've just walked into the intersection of everything that makes my brain go brrrrrrr
First of all, if we are going with the rule that klaus can't take part in things that hadn't at the time he was dropped into the past, he certainly cannot be starting a hippy dippy cult. Hell, he shouldn't be strutting around looking like a hippie either!
If the beatles are still in liverpool, don't even think about the age of aquarius, you get what i'm saying?.
Hippie culture was so heavily tied to the anti war movement for a multitude of reasons, you can't have the culture of one without the other. Its the same with music, its the same with the rise of cults in this era, it all ties back back to each other and none of these things were as we know them today until the mid to late 60s, certainly not prior to 1964 and definitely not 1960
So if its historically inaccurate to have Klaus fighting against the war in Vietnam in 1961, it's just as inaccurate for him to have started up a cult.
But, for me at least, that doesn't matter one bit. Because Klaus isn't a person of the 60s. He was born nearly 3 decades after the fact. Everything he knows about this time, save for his ten months in the war itself, is how the rest of us learned. Books, movies, music, the odd recollection from someone who lived through it, perhaps.
When you take someone with ideals influenced by a time or movement and put them into that time before those beliefs were created, it's nigh impossible to keep them from bringing those ideas in too early.
Its a common trope in time-travel fiction, but it's because characters are human.
Most of them, at least, want to make the world a better place, and being put in the past feels like a key to that, because for once, you have a cheat sheet. No one knows what's going to happen in life, but now you do.
Humans also love to impress. They will play Chuck Berry at their parents prom years before it's released. They will show someone the palm sized computer they can keep in their pocket that has more technology in it than what sent man to the moon.
And do we really think Klaus would be taking note of historical accuracy? The love of his life has less than a decade to live before dying tragically, he's just seen the world end, and for all he knows, he's the only one of his family who made it. If he knows there was a movement to stop the war, why the hell would he care if he joins it a couple years too early?
Though, to be fair to the point, I will dive in a little bit to how the cults of the 60s functioned with the aesthetic Klaus and his followers adopted as well as with the anti war movement.
As you mentioned, all of this falls under what we now call the counterculture of the 1960s. It was called this because quite literally, it was *countering* the culture of the time.
the world the flower children of the 60s were born into was tight laced, kept up appearances, and abided by strict social rules. they danced the foxtrot, they starched their shirts and sent their boys off to die.
everything they did from then on was to fight against that. it was all an act of rebellion, an act of rejection. the status quo they were dying for needed to know they were not abiding
That's why the aesthetics of stereotypical cults and hippies were and honestly still often are used interchangeably, because a lot of cult leaders would use theseaesthetics and buzzwords to draw young, passionate folks in.
now, given how Klaus has an almost reverse view of all this, entering the decade with the knowledge of how it ends, this is how I can see him accidentally attracting a following by just bringing forth what the 60s were getting to, only sooner.
Because, honestly, if we are talking about cultural shifts and all that jazz and how that spurred these touchstones forward, if especially in line with season 2 of tua, the shift started when Kennedy was shot. That;s the turning point.
(As a history goof, i would argue that the real linchpin was the assassination of Robert Kennedy, not JFK, but we're not really talking about history history rn lol even though this is incredibly long already and I do apologize I just loveeeee this shit)
So, if Klaus wouldn't have been allowed to be an anti war activist prior to 1964, he couldn't be a cult leader in the way he was either. Because technically, historically, the true unrest of the 60s that spurred the attraction to cults, that got these social movements into unruly high gear, doesn't happen until the Hargreeves are all back together and Klaus has abandoned Destiny's Children.
Charlie Manson wasn't getting shit into gear until around 1967 and the other well know American cult of the time that *did* run at the same time as Destiny's Children, the People's Temple (Jonestown ring any bells?) was specifically run as a Christian community under the guise of being marxist liberation. And they weren't even doing traditional cult shit until the mid-60s either.
Now, onto Klaus. In s2, the cult is not much more than set dressing. It gives them a cool place to stay and a handful of characters to interact with. Either way you slice it, it was an underused aspect of the season.
But more importantly, what was the role the cult was supposed to fill in the story?
in my opinion it boils down to these points:
Klaus is a charismatic little bitch and he can attract all sorts of people to him with insane ease
Klaus is not good at dealing with things and instead throws his energy out to externalities, obsessions even
He needed to be infamous
Lets take stock of Klaus within the first days of arriving in Dallas, 1960
he is 59 years in the past with only his ghost brother
they have just come an earth literal seconds away from total annihilation
days before his sibling ended the world, he was actually much closer to the time he is in now. he's just spent 10 months in Vietnam, 1968
the last days in the war, he lost the love of his life to a gunshot wound to the chest. he bled out in his arms.
he's wearing bowling shoes
Literally, though, from Klaus' own words, we know he has never loved anyone like he loved Dave. And now, he has nearly a decade to prevent his death.
As viewers, we can see starting Destiny's Children as a distraction on Klaus' part, and that's understandable. Who wouldn't want a lighthearted distraction to the tune of the summer of love? (which, again, wasn't until 1967 but..)
But, if we're to believe Klaus' goal of keeping Dave alive, shouldn't we also be inclined to think that maybe, even if it wasn't his intent, he was a bit too passionate about the cause to be read as anything but an anti war activist? That even if he tried to just blend in, he'd end up getting a little too heated in conversation? A little too pointed in what he said to kids debating on enlisting? Things that when overheard time and time again, would make certain people think he had a certain agenda?
Because really, what about Klaus in season 2 makes him a cult leader? The throngs of people? Fine, but why are they following him? The wild outfits? Sure, but that's just Klaus, isn't it? Even his followers seem to have taken more from him than he ever led them. The whole time, it seems like Klaus attracted people with no intention of spreading shit. He needed food and a place to stay, so he groveled. It grew from there. He got in over his head. Because Klaus is smarter than he realizes. Who the hell can accidentally start a cult?
Anyway, its a disservice to the character. because yes, its impressive, but what did it really do to further the character? we don't even get to see how it affected his relationship with substances! we are just told he's sober. sober in the 1960s. in a supposedly hippie cult. okkkkk.
the plotline and concept on the whole just doesn't check any boxes and it doesn't add any depth. that's why I am so critical of it. I don't care if Klaus had a go at being an asshole cultist that he'd have to atone for, just if it's done well. And it wasn't. And I honestly do not believe it is in Klaus' character to act in that way. That's why I think it would have made more sense for him to have ended up as an accidental activist rather than an accidental cult leader. Because it'd be just as selfish– he'd be in it for one person and one person only. But maybe it wouldn't stay that way. It'd lead to the same reach and infamy, without the blurriness and crude steterotyping and reliance on cheap humor.
This got verryyyyy long and I bet it also makes 0 sense, but I do not have the braincells to try and make it more lucid, I'm sorry. I just love both these topics very much sooooo a lot of words.
If anyone ends up actually reading this you are amazing and I love you and we should probably be mutuals and talk
