Condor Flugdienst is a German airline which operates medium-to-long-haul scheduled and charter flights with a specialty in flights from Europe to locations associated with vacation and leisure, such as the Mediterranean. They’ve been doing this for 70 years now, but in April 2022 they unveiled an overhaul of their livery. They would get a quick start on rolling it out, as they very confidently ordered 59 new planes to paint it on!
Oh boy.
The worst thing about this livery is that it’s not a thoughtless choice. It’s very intentional and very thought out, and that makes me sad because I’m about to angrily insult someone’s earnest hard work. In fact, they have an entire webpage dedicated to their inspiration and thought process. It will be the source of all images and quotes used in the remainder of this review.
Vacations are striped. And Condor is vacation.
Umbrellas, beach towels, ice cream shops..who doesn’t love them and the stripes will make you smile. They stand for easiness, freedom to experience the world, for the gentle breeze in your hair, sunshine on your face and now for Condor. In the future our fleet will also be in this new design. For decades, stripes have had meaning in our way of life. Timeless, elegant and recognizable – just like us.
I hate to say it, but they’re right (despite the fact that the paragraph is written pretty jankily). That’s a really clever association that’s clearly been thought out and is very recognizable. Like, in isolation I really like this idea. It just sucks that it’s very ugly?
I mean, it really doesn’t help that they picked a colorway that blends right into this picturesque island landscape for this particular shot, but I think what I’m angriest about is that despite committing to this absolutely vile candy cane look they didn’t even extend it to the wings and nacelles, which would have really hammered home the beach blanket look! Also, the black text is practically invisible and looks super out of place. It feels like they have this vision but they get so wrapped up in it that they mess up all the details and forget to make it good.
But the green is very purposeful, too.
Our five colors: Sunshine, Passion, Sea, Island and Beach.
Colors are not only found around the globe on holidays, they also stand for the fact that our world cannot be defined by a single color. Therefore our “Fleet” is looking forward to a new design, visibly striped and colorful in Sunshine (yellow), Passion (red), Sea (blue), Island (green) and Beach (beige).
I really really like these! This feels really nice, the rare airline livery with an explicit meaning that reflects what it doesand isn't just vague corporate jargon about how the color blue somehow reflects Scandinavian identity. If you’re going to do a jellybean livery this is how you should do it - every aspect of the livery swapped, visible at a glance, bright and exciting, everything intentional and explicit in its purpose.
I love the idea and it makes me angry that it looks hideous.
Like, it could be good. They could have tried horizontal stripes, maybe, even diagonal stripes, or some sort of wave pattern to them. I don’t know. With how much care was put into the idea surely someone could come up with something better than I have.
My friend @elyvator's (who took the above photograph) mother recently flew on a condor flight. There's something so surreal about seeing this big garish thing parked in a miserable soggy grey airport next to tarmac and a jet bridge and concrete.
You could miss the text entirely if you weren't looking for it. The stark white engine adds to the perception that the wing doesn't even look attached to the fuselage - like it's floating away. This doesn't belong here, and not in a good way. This isn't a plane that screams 'I might be on an awful rainy airport apron but I'm going to take you to a magical faraway beach', this is a plane as seen by someone still half-asleep after a party with a throbbing head while they're going downstairs to get a glass of water. And it had so much potential to not be that, to be something good. They came up with a great idea and then made every possible wrong choice in implementing it.
I can at least work up a bit of ironic affection for it, a sort of charm in its ugliness. It’s not the planes’ fault, and they wear it as well as they can. They’re still fundamentally cute to me. But that’s not what I’m here to judge. I’m sorry, airplanes. I'm sorry they did this to you.
This...this hurts me. It really does.
condor is getting Runway Runway’s first ever grade of F.
I love the thought process. I love everything about the idea. This could have been so fantastic if only they didn’t make it ugly.
AN ADDENDUM
I still agree with everything I have said here. However, I have since slightly reframed condor's standing. To fully understand how I feel about this airline, I recommend this as a sort of part two to this post.
Summary: Galaxia's main satellite, V-113, fights for independence by frequently attacking the other planet. Any attempt to destroy Galaxia's tranquillity keeps failing, until the young prince Geron gets involved in a scandal that earns him the exile.
So it’s been a very long time, but sometimes you find a comic that’s so offensive that you can’t NOT talk about it. This comic would be Galaxia, the most ham-fisted transparently obvious rip-off of a more popular comic I have ever seen. I will even admit that it’s written more poorly than the original too, though we all know how I feel about Starfighter.
Nope, nothin’ alike at all.
ANYWAY, I came across Galaxia on Tapastic, and I expected to find lots of Starfighter fangirls in the comment section, but maybe we’ve moved passed the days of petty comment sections a la Teahouse, because mostly it’s people doing what they do best: offering bland compliments and requests for more. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but you’d think at least someone would be like, “Um, hey, so this is so fucking blatantly stolen from Starfighter. Maybe at least avoid the black and white color scheme?” But nah. We are cool with plagiarism if there’s buttsex.
Not that Starfighter is the most original webcomic ever made but come on— it has artistic themes that are immediately recognizable. If I knew ripping off something popular while contributing absolutely none of your own creativity would grant you 3.6K followers, I shoulda been doing Teahouse parodies from the start.
And everyone who actually works hard on their comic sheds a single tear.
Like all shitty yaois, this one starts out with sex, because sex sells and if you don’t have a plot (it won’t), sex is the best way to get fans. I honestly do not know this character’s name (and I’m not sure the author does either), but he manages to fuck at least twice, so... PRIORITIES!
See? It’s different from Starfighter because he has a star tattoo on his cheek. Totes magotes not Starfighter, ok.
Thanks for the “smooch” action tag. Wouldn’t have picked that up without it.
I don’t know if Council is spelled wrong because our author did not consult spell check or if it’s supposed to be a sci-fi thing, like when people write vampire as “vampyre” or whatever. I’m gonna go with the former.
As an underage what? An underage drawing of absent artistic integrity? Also, if you need to subtitle your comic in order to explain the rules of your universe, you are not telling your story correctly. I especially like how they upped the age of consent to give this comic the FEELING of pedophilia without the CONTENT of the pedophilia. It’s okay, we all know he’s 12 in spirit.
GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUUU-UUUN oh girls just wanna have fuuuuuuuuun.
Allow me a moment of self-indulgence because now I feel like this comic is stealing from ME now (I kid; I’m never original, but I try to be subtle about it, lol). Granted, Justin had a much different reaction than *BLUSH BLUSH DESU*
ANYWAY ENOUGH OF THAT
I think we’re supposed to root for the Cai— I mean… whatever this guy’s name is, even though he’s just as much of a sexual harasser as the others. But it’s okay, semes can literally rape someone and people think it’s hot.
This is some SERIOUS anime profile mouth going on. Why is his mouth on his jawline? Ya’ll need to learn how to draw some goddamn lips.
Virgin looks. They’re a thing! Why did no one tell me this? Here I am, showing my virgin face to the world like it’s nothin’, and not a single rapist has licked MY cheek!
I appreciate that this comic is light on stealing the quality of Starfighter’s art but big on stealing Starfighter’s (weak) storyline. Sexual predator asshole main character? CHECK! Spineless scrawny wimp who he is for some reason obsessed with? CHECK! That’s pretty much the whole plot, right?
Another heinous case of anime profile mouth, or as I now shall call it, CheekMouth. Also, I like the doctor showing up out of nowhere to take him somewhere private. I’m sure his intentions are good, as they always are in yaois.
I will never understand these comics that are set waaaaaaay in the future but for some reason the society hasn’t managed how to figure out glass eyes yet. Everyone’s got a goddamn eye patch. Like, people hardly wear eyepatches now. You mean to tell me we’ve got space ships that can traverse the galaxy but no surgery to replace eyes?
Glass eyes don’t exist, but the KKK sure does! Man, we as a society have come far!
The star is gone from his face and I don’t know why. Was it the licking?
Ah yes, look at this obviously-above-the-age-of-19 boy. Definitely doesn’t look 12.
You know what I want in yaoi? Some goddamn sluts. People who know what they want and what they like and actually ask for shit instead of being all ~*~I just don’t know what’s happening to me, what are these FEELINGS~*~. Yaois often come across to me like the internal monologue of a 40-year-old man hitting on teenagers. “Yeah, you don’t like me now, but once I touch your boob you will be so overwhelmed by my sexual prowess!”
Over this weekend, I had you all fill out a questionnaire. Now, every question that's on there was on there for a reason, but some of those reasons are a bit more straightforward than others.
This one, for example, was something I had already been using a survey for, and I figured using my followers would meet a higher standard of science than using my coworkers and a few discord chats. If anything, it is needlessly biased in favor of the airline in question, since my followers include many Airplane People. And boy do the results speak volumes.
I removed the wordmark from this picture of an airplane and asked you all what airline she flies for. (Let's pretend the title of this post doesn't spoil the answer.) The answers were overwhelmingly consistent.
32 out of 77 responses, a stunning 45%, identified this plane as flying for United Airlines.
I mean, not hard to understand why. The only things that are different are a slightly darker shade of blue, minor tweaks to the logo on the tail, and the easy-to-miss detail that the mystery plane is registered in Panama. (In fact, the only way to recognize what airline it flies for, in my own opinion, is that the airline's ICAO code is in the registration. Again, not something the average person would spot, or indeed should be expected to.)
The second most common response was either not responding, or saying that you don't know. (Actually, a lot of people expressed unsureness, but these people outright refused to guess.) The third most common response was AT&T. The phone company. In a similar vein, another respondent guessed Euronews, the news show.
Then we have four people who guessed Continental.
This is completely reasonable, since their livery is just the old United livery - rather, United's old livery is stolen from Continental during their merger. I get the sense that the difference between people who immediately assume United and people who immediately assume Continental is whether they were over or under a certain age in 2012.
A handful of other specific airlines were guessed. I'm not going to touch on all of them, including the ones I've already reviewed - I'll just leave a little collage of the miscellaneous guesses.
Okay. So the answer is obviously that this is, as it says in the title, Copa Airlines.
Three people actually guessed this correctly, and two of them live in Latin America. Copa (Compañía Panameña de Aviación) is the flag carrier of Panama and one of the largest carriers in Latin America. I find Copa's livery to be almost powerful in how tragic it is. It wasn't always like this.
Back in the day Copa had its own livery, its own branding. And I'm not going to linger on the fact that these are Iberia colors, because a lot of airlines use similar colors but this says COPA on it in huge text in two places.
This might seem like a weird case of self-sabotaging plagiarism, but it actually came about in a way I find far worse. Copa and Continental had a marketing alliance, with Continental having a 49% stake in the company until 1999, when it was increased to 51%. Immediately, Copa, in addition to partnering with Continental, began to use the same frequent flier program and - what I care about - the same livery.
I don't even have it in me to care about how the livery is boring and the font is ugly, how it's a far worse version of it than what Continental and then United wore. That is like seeing a corpse and being disturbed that it has a bad haircut. This airline is wearing a livery almost universally recognized to be that of a different airline. What is even the point of painting your planes with your name if you care this little about having an identity? You might as well be operating as United Express.
The worst thing is that United has changed their livery now. They don't have a majority stake in Copa, and haven't for well over a decade. Copa has its own fleet, its own routes, its own holding company, its own frequent flyer program, its own history, its own name. So why is it still wearing a livery that was never its own to begin with?
Maybe they don't want to commit fully to the retro look. But there is so much room in the world for this vibrant color scheme, this large legible wordmark, and this adorable little airplane underline logo. If only they hadn't committed to having planes that, if identifiable, are identifiable as a completely different airline.
And that makes me angry. That defeats the entire point. It makes me feel a potent mix of disgust and pity. This is an empty, broken thing. Not even a husk. A little shriveled creature inside of a very large, empty, cold jar. Any life would be better than this, if it could just be alive again.
F.
I have opinions on its overall appearance, sure. And I am not factoring them into this final rating. You copy Continental's homework and change it a bit, you get failed for plagiarism.
Just...you're allowed to do more than breathing. You've had Continental's livery for decades. At any moment, you could say 'no more', and you could decide that you care about being Copa Airlines. I really hope you do that soon.
I mentioned this was coming beforehand. Today we’re diving into a livery that has a lot more going on than you might think at first glance, a haunting portrait of what Lufthansa’s livery wants to be - the livery of the only airline to be mentioned in more or less every YTP ever made, SAS!
This isn't actually the modern livery, sorry. I'm a fraud. This is an anachronistic 2007 Avro RJ that apparently even back then had a livery basically all but identical to the modern one save for the lack of the SAS text. It still bodies Lufthansa and then some. I just had to find a place to slide it in because it's a very funny image that I love very much.
Legally known by the extremely catchy name “Scandinavian Airlines System Denmark-Norway-Sweden”, SAS was founded in 1946 as a consortium of the national carriers of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. This makes it among the very few airlines to currently serve as the flag carrier of multiple countries.
It’s been around for nearly 80 years, but it’s only had four liveries in that time. I mention these because I think it’s worth contrasting with Lufthansa, which bled off traits over the decades until it was nothing but a dry husk. Unlike the slowly putrefying decrepit corpse which is Lufthansa, SAS is a young adult trying to find her identity who can't stop dyeing her hair different colors and deciding she hates it. Let's talk about those phases, and where we ended up at the end of it all.
1946 - The Original
image: Bene Robió
This picture is of a modern plane, OY-KBO “Christian Valdemar Viking” (all SAS planes have names ending in ‘Viking’) wearing a retro livery, but it contains the only part of SAS’s original livery of any interest at all.
If we zoom in we can take a look at the end of the cheatline, where it morphs into the figurehead of a Viking longship. This is a nifty little touch that represents their national identity and is itself sleek and nicely designed.
And it looks even better on the 747.
It’s also the only notable thing about this old livery, so it’s not worth lingering on for too long. I thought it was worth mentioning because it's neat, but this livery was literally adopted when they very first began flying - in 1946! At that point it was pretty rare to see airlines have any livery at all aside from their name painted on bare metal. This was actually above and beyond for the time.
image: towpilot
It didn't look half bad on the DC-3, either. This was a consistently nice style and for its era I would say it was pretty good. But are we judging by the standards of the time? No.
So, for the time I would probably have given it a high grade. But it is not the time.
So I am giving it a C-.
There are still things to like about the longship design, don't get me wrong. But there is just literally nothing else going on, and it's not enough to have the only piece of your livery that's actually identifiable be so small and easy to miss.
1983 - Belly Stripes
image: Lars Wahlstrom
In 1983 they swapped to this livery, commonly known as “belly stripes”, designed by the iconic Landor Associates, prolific purveyors of liveries. It’s a pretty abrupt change, isn’t it? I like this livery, actually. It’s nice, if understated. The stripes are specifically the colors of the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish flags. Apparently they worried the figurehead would be hard to understand (fair) and the association with Vikings might be bad optics (yet they continued to name their planes this way).
Like I said, it’s nice. It’s fine.
This, like the original livery, is something that can be evaluated by modern standards or by those of its time. In 1983 majority-white liveries weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now and planes still frequently had cheatlines and all-over color and even bare metal fuselages so the bare white plane with the tiny bit of color and the nice font was actually something of a statement. Even by modern standards it’s executed a lot nicer than many similar liveries, but the market is just so saturated that it only really works in the context of its time, I think. Having a plane be nearly all white is no longer an artistic choice. It's a non-choice. And that's the world I live in, and that has to color how I look at this. But all the same...I can't tear myself away from it. In photographs from the time it is as pristine as newly fallen snow.
So I'm giving it a B.
I like the belly stripes livery. It's a neat and unique way of showcasing the flags. It's cleanly executed. I like that the stripes are diagonal instead of straight and that they're aligned with the letters, which are also in a very nice typeface. I just wish it existed in a less Eurowhite-saturated environment where it could shine to its fullest.
I somehow never noticed how adorably stubby the pre -30 DC-9 models were. Thankfully this has been remedied. Just look at her. Like a really round bird hopping through the air.
I think it’s interesting how, while Lufthansa slowly lost creative interest but only ever became a different design altogether in a sort of Ship of Theseus way, SAS fully overhauled their livery multiple times. They’re definitely trying to find something that works for them, regardless of the cost. They refuse to rest on their laurels. I admire that mindset, and it’s not ended badly so far.
And then it was 1998.
If you look very closely you can see something horrible in the distance.
No, okay. It can't be as bad as you're making it out to be, you say. And you are a fool for saying this.
Oh no. Oh no. Sweetheart, what happened to you?
So, this is really really bad. Really really really bad. This looks like it was designed with the same philosophy I used to design original characters in middle school - oh, I like this color, let me add it without considering the overall balance or composition. This design was made by people who were paid to make it.
This has almost all the features I hate most in a livery, all the way up to the abrupt color transition at the tailfin, but an additional one: that absolute atrocity right at the front. If you’re confused what I’m referring to, I don’t blame you - they made it nearly invisible. If you squint very hard, though, you can see ‘SCANDINAVIAN’ above the windows and ‘AIRLINES’ below it, completely illegible due to being painted in a silver color barely darker than the main fuselage itself.
It looks amazingly funny with rear-mounted engines, though. That's her fanny pack.
All I can really say is: why. Why did you do this? Why.
I am actually somewhat ashamed of how little I noticed this when out in the wild. It’s a testament to the sheer saturation of mostly plain liveries with a hint of red and/or blue that this monstrosity blended into the background and evaded my notice. (And in my defense I’ve never been to one of their focus cities so sightings have only been in passing.)
This might sound harsh, but I'm about to say this and stand by it. Here is a better SAS livery from the same time period.
With the engine covers on it looks like one of those plastic tips they put on toy pistols. Also, doesn't keeping the red engine caps defeat the purpose if you also have red engines, since they're meant to be clearly visible so you don't accidentally try to use the plane with them on? Do they not have a different color available for red engined freaks? Many questions.
That's right, SAS's 1998-2019 livery fails the Star Alliance Test!
What is the Star Alliance Test, you ask? It's very simple. Star Alliance is an airline alliance - basically a club for the world's most elite carriers to hang out in and codeshare. The three major alliances all have special liveries that they might have a couple planes from each of their members wear.
I hate alliance liveries. I think airline alliances should be represented by a little symbol on the airline's standard livery, not the other way around. I would like to know what airline this plane is from before I know if it's a member of OneWorld or SkyTeam. And if I need to know that they usually have a symbol for the alliance somewhere on the plane anyway.
The Star Alliance logo on a SAS ATR 72, directly behind the cockpit window and in front of the door. If you really squint you can even see the words 'Star Alliance' written underneath it.
Star Alliance is my least favorite. SkyTeam's livery actually looks pretty good. OneWorld's is the ugliest at base, but it lets the airline keep some of its branding at the back of the plane, which makes me hate it less. So Star Alliance loses by default. (Let me know if you'd like a full review for these, though.)
The Star Alliance Test has exactly one question. Would I prefer that all this airline's planes were forcibly repainted into Star Alliance liveries instead of allowed to remain in their current state?
In this case, yes. I very much would. And that means there's only one grade I can give to this livery.
F. See me after class.
That's right. Fly away. Ideally to get repainted in something more presentable.
The 2019 Overhaul
(To clarify, when I compared Lufthansa to SAS in my post about them I did not want to imply that they literally copied SAS - their revised livery obviously came out a year earlier, and they were definitely developed privately around the same time to keep up with modernized trends surrounding livery - they’re just similar safe, non-revolutionary concepts that SAS executes a lot better.)
I don’t normally buy the whole ‘the darkness must come before the light’ line of thinking, but SAS clearly does. Because even here, in this abomination, are the building blocks for what would become something reasonably decent. And, in 2019, SAS made that happen.
Those are engine covers, by the way. There's no red on the engines. There's actually a tasteful silver trim under there.
So, this is what we've achieved. At first glance, it looks pretty similar to Lufthansa, but the closer you examine it the clearer the differences become.
First, the white fuselage. Well, actually, that’s not the case for SAS. It looks white in bright sunlight, but it’s actually an off-white beige (Pantone 9083C). You can see that in this picture of an SAS plane parked next to a SWISS plane, and when you put a bunch of Scandinavians in crisp white shirts in front of it.
image source (left): Daniel Ross | image source (right): SAS
I mean, no, it’s not exactly neon pink or anything, but it’s still a noticeable change in tone relative to other planes, and that means it’s a decision someone made. And that makes me happy.
I think the world has begun to somewhat agree with me on the whole non-integrated-tail-colorblock being bad to look at, because SAS has also extended the stripe of blue down to loop under the rest of the fuselage. Honestly, if I were them I would have made it wider so it covered the full empennage on t-tail models, but that might make it look weird in its own way - I’m not here to design liveries, I’m here to complain about them. I just think it's still a bit too small to make the jet look fully balanced with the big SAS at the front.
The awful red engines have been replaced with a far more tasteful alternative - silver with a blue stripe at the front and silver trim on the very front edge. I like that a lot. No criticisms.
The silver text has been kept, but it’s been reduced from a bunch of small letters to just a very large SAS, which is a lot clearer even when in low contrast. It’s difficult to nail down my thoughts on this. Obviously it’s an improvement, and I wouldn’t want it to be removed entirely, and I’m not sure if a more solid, emphatic version, maybe in the same blue as the rest of the livery, would actually be better or not. I think I overall like the silver wordmark? As long as it’s not a really bad angle it’s visible enough, and it adds something a bit interesting. Even if it is illegible at least they also have the name on the tail. It probably helps that it’s only three letters long. Still, nobody is going to be confused about what airline this plane belongs to.
I think the wordmark looks its best on turboprops wearing the livery. I honestly feel like most good jet liveries look awkward on props and vice versa, but this transitions very well. Not many major airlines still fly props, and almost none of them adapt their liveries well to them, but the wordmark fills the space really nicely on the shorter fuselage of the ATR and the high wings break up the line in a way that looks pretty darn nice to me. More airlines need to fly props, and they need to take notes on how to make a livery work for them.
Aside from the too-small amount of blue, my one real outright complaint is the very small Noto Sans(?, unsure) ‘Scandinavian’ written on the engine nacelles. It feels pointless and looks out of place. It looks extra out of place because the rest of their livery is in Rotis semi-serif, and the combination really clashes. It’s a little baffling, because they certainly have the option of just using the SAS logo again - the only other place they use the full ‘Scandinavian’ is on the belly. My personal suggestion would be bringing back the longship figurehead for the engines, but that’s just me. It just looks more like a watermark than a design feature.
Look, I never said I loved the SAS livery, but someone clearly designed it. The implementation is still a little shaky in parts, as if the airline is regaining its footing after the red engine years, but it’s stumbling towards being good and it’s just short of the point where it can sit down and rest and reflect on its progress.
SAS gets an overall grade of C. Which is also what the GPA of the other three came out to, I think! My calculations are admittedly a bit improvised.
Makes Lufthansa look like chumps, though. I think we can all agree on that.
Summary: Nino is in love with a beautiful girl who appears only in his dreams, is she real or just a part of the imagination of Nino?
My Review: You know, sometimes I really try hard not to be “that artist/writer” who laments over what gets popular while your own work gathers dust in the corners of the internet, but sometimes I really want to whine. Today I will be whining, and a comic called “Red Dress” I found on Tapastic is gonna help me out.
As someone who has never really “gotten” the draw of manga and yaoi, I understand that much of anime and manga’s style and sense of humor will always go over my head no matter what. Sometimes, no matter how long I sit and stare at something, I’m still like “WHAT IS THIS”. Like that interior design trend of having shelves in your kitchen instead of cabinets. Why anyone wants to show off to every visitor the Disney collector mugs you got in 2005 from your one visit to Orlando is a mystery, as is the inevitable layer of dust that will gather on all your grandma’s old dishes you don’t have the heart to throw away. Also, white kitchens. Why are white kitchens a thing? So your toddler has a proper canvas to wipe their snot across?
ANYWAY, I’m not here to bitch about interior design, though God knows I could do that. I’m here in hopes that people can explain to me this:
Like, if it were porn, maybe I could get it? No one expects quality in porn. it’s like hot dogs. You eat hot dogs because you like the taste of hot dogs, not because you expect good nutrition. People like porn because they want to see a dick and/or vagina, and if it’s delivered in a poorly rendered, poorly written comic, who gives a shit, because PENIS.
This is not porn. It’s just this trope I have yet to understand, where boys dress as girls. Integral to this trope is that the boys are never ever suspected to be boys unless told otherwise. If disguising low voices and adams apples were so easy, I think trans women would have a much easier time in life (well, also if people were less transphobic. I guess that’s the main problem).
I don’t get crossdressing. Okay, so I do, but not in the way it’s used in so, so, so much yaoi shit. Here’s the thing: I am all about defying gender norms, about dressing how you want, about feeling comfortable in the body you’re in. But crossdressing fics never defy gender norms— they reinforce them. They fall into the pit of heteronormative bullshit that denies any conversation about gender variance and demands huge suspension of disbelief. Worst of all, feminine clothing is used as a way to degrade and embarrass, not to empower.
Anyway, on with the comic.
It’s like I’m there.
Look, I’m a decent artist with an art degree. I can’t even draw my own stupid face and make it look like me. You’re telling me some high school student can draw a woman and some classmate is like “oh yeah this is a guy in our class”. WTF.
You can’t have yaoi without the “well, he’s close enough to a woman and he’s pretty so I guess I’m gay now”. Nooooot how that works, okay. Fucking straight people can’t even handle a gender conforming woman with a dick. You’re now trying to tell me high school boys are down with a boy just cuz he kinda looks like a woman he fantasizes about.
NO SEMPAI I AM SO MANLY.
This uppity woman won’t let me touch her body without her consent. WHAT A BITCH.
Why would you have your hair long if you don’t like it? Granted, I had long hair in high school and I begged my mother for years to let me cut it and eventually she caved, but I am a woman and my mother was a very traditional person who made her daughters wear dresses one day of the school week in elementary school, thus forcing me into my “tomboy” stage I probably wouldn’t have had if it weren’t for her forcing femininity on me, because now I vastly prefer dresses to pants, and I could have gotten there without loathing girly things for five years….
ANYWAY. Boys generally aren’t forced to have long hair, and it’s really not that hard to get a haircut if you hate it so much. BUT! We live in Yaoi-land, where boys are somehow conditioned to act just like insecure teenage girls, being complimented all the time when they just know how ugly they really are.
Second of all, can anyone tell the difference between any of these characters? I have no clue who is who because they all look exactly alike.
For some reason, a student can convince a teacher to give a student extra credit, enough extra credit for an A. I have no clue if this artist understand how math works.
Later, Purple Eyes tells Redheaded Child that he only helped him out because he wants to bone him. Niiiiiice.
Also, because the entirety of this comic takes place in a mauve void, I have no fucking clue who is doing what or where.
So usually I try to figure out the ages of those doing these comics before I criticize too much because at 15, I was no Van Gogh either. However, no info on this author is readily available to me, so I’ll go ahead and ask wtf is up with these profiles. This is the damage manga and anima has wrought about this generation of artists: no noses and drifting mouths that end up in the jaw region. When was this ever okay. I can usually tell when an effort was made to draw a nose. No effort was made here.
They are both men, but I see this as more male entitlement. So hey, you look better with your hair down, and because the world should operate in the way I see fit, you’re not allowed to have a hair tie.
Let’s just say that if someone pulled this shit on me, he’d be getting punched in the face.
Look, maybe I don’t understand siblings well, having two of my own and everything, but usually siblings try to convince other people not to date their siblings because siblings are gross. Second of all, hello to the “female accomplice” trope in yaoi, where the women must always try to convince the uke that the seme is right for them, often lacking any and all evidence to support their claim.
Yeah, he “forgot” he had a girlfriend. But that’s okay. She’s the “bitch” who refuses to hug people on command, so I’m sure she deserves it.
So in the end, it’s possible that Blondie is being set up to come out as genderqueer and/or trans. The problem with doing something like that in a stereotypical yaoi is that people like me attribute it all to the “crossdressing” trope, which comes with its own set of sexist pitfalls that don’t exactly work in favor of trans or gender non-conforming people.
Beyond the confusion of Blondie’s gender orientation (I honestly do not know who is who in this comic; they all are identical except for hair color, in both appearance and personality, so their names are a mystery), the story/plot is non-existent and I have no clue what the comic is actually about. The author is not a native English speaker, which can be a hindrance to dialogue, but at the same time, I’m not sure how much it being in Spanish would improve the format. It’s just… shallow. Shallow and confusing and utterly bereft of backgrounds and scenery that would help me place what panel where. Everyone seems to have a crush on everyone else for no reason, because actual conversations don’t happen. Everyone blushes and darts around subjects like 14-year-olds with crushes (which I guess is cute if you’re 14; being 27, to me it’s just annoying and obnoxious). I don’t know why anyone likes anyone else, outside of “he is pretty”.
Honestly, it’s a comic that’s bad without being overtly offensive, and I would probably just ignore it if it weren’t for the fact it has nearly half a million views and 4000 subscribers. I just don’t understand, and if anyone is willing to explain it to me using small words with limited “Kawaii!”s, it would be appreciated. I choose to believe that Tapastic isn’t solely dominated by 14-year-olds (no offense to 14-year-olds; I was one once, and now that Trump is president, I envy how naive I was then), but I can’t think of any other reason this comic is so immensely popular. No porn, bad art, bad writing, boring dialogue.
(Also, my apologies for being away so long. I honestly have no excuse beyond “I didn’t feel like it”. It’s not just this though; I don’t write much these days at all. I wrote this because frustration motivates me, lol. I’m still working on my dumb webcomic. That’s… about it. Sorry. :()
So a few caveats. I didn't stream this; it was on TV -- FX -- by chance and I had nothing else to watch, and you know they edit crap out of there like nobody else's business, so this is what my review is working off of. Generally there's enough plot information to get by, but if you feel like my review is tainted because of the inferior cut, please let me know. I will probably never watch this movie again, but your input is always good.
Second, I went through my old reviews and 2 ephrons is apparently the lowest I've ever rated anything. This was worse.
Third, wow, it's been two months since my last review. Sorry about that, guys!
Synopsis is simple. Sandra Bullock plays Margaret, who is a frigid terrible boss at a Manhattan publishing firm. Ryan Reynolds is her assistant. She's going to get deported, so she decides to use him as a coverup so that she can get citizenship. He uses the opportunity to get her to give him a well-deserved promotion, but they end up going to his parents' house in Alaska where they fall in love. She does the big reveal at the wedding altar, and he flies to New York to get her back. They really become engaged (for real) the second time. The film ends with their interview with INS.
It's late. I've been procrastinating on my work. This is not going to be tremendously thorough or nice.
This movie did not care about Margaret at all. She has really no sense of character development throughout the whole thing, except she does get one singular scene where she confesses that the reason she's a giant bitch is because she was orphaned as a teenager and now… I don't know, that is supposed to explain her emotional deficiencies in some way. This movie probably emphasized the fact that Margaret is nothing more than a prize by using her downfall as a counterpoint to Ryan Reynold's success because he is a Hard Worker and she treated him like shit and didn't recognize him, and he is a Good Person who is family-oriented, and she's a giant bitch, but he brings her down a peg so that's good.
I was so throughly bothered by so many things in this movie mostly because this is something that positions itself as a romantic comedy but is largely critical of women and women in charge in general. It's all about how Ryan Reynolds' character never got the accolades that he deserved, despite slaving away in a position that emasculated him (there are three jokes alone about how, because of her tendency to blow up at him for small shit, he orders her light cinnamon soy latte which is not Manly Coffee), but this finally gives him the opportunity to Show Her What Her Place Is, Get What He Deserves, and yeah, also something about love.
On top of that, this movie is not subtle at all about the racism. You have Oscar from The Office playing a Latino man who's basically a caricature, insinuated to be an illegal immigrant, and speaks with an accent. On top of that, every time Margaret is in front of US Immigration officials, her answers are basically well, it's not like i'm brown or anything, i'm from Canada! Which is always fun.
That aside, writer apparently didn't do his research because the law doesn't even work like that anymore. I think in order for the marriage to qualify you for citizenship, it has to have been for a minimum duration of five years. (It's been a while since I've looked at US Immigration rules, like five years or so, but still. If anything, they'd be more stringent now.) But that's a small point.
What I find most egregious is that this movie offers the literal bare minimum when it comes to the work it has to do. There's no explanation for why they think they love each other, especially when (in context) this comes after three years of unrepentant, uninterrupted abuse. like…? And then, I have no understanding of who Margaret is as a person, why she does anything that she does, and why she's in love with him. In fact, the only thing I do know is that she's actually more in love with his family than with him which is the only thing in the film that offers a concrete explanation of anything, but makes the relationship appear even more sleazy than it's set up to be in the narrative!
Low points included: someone in the office shouting show her who's boss! in response to the final make-out in the movie; a confession scene that was in front of the entire office that was just embarrassing; and Ryan Reynolds making her propose in the middle of the day by making her kneel on a NYC sidewalk block when she's wearing a skirt and four inch heels and asking him nicely.
