randomlibran replied to your post “hilary listen the old guards slayed me. I mean the plot the pacing the...”
The pharmacy scene for me was not a filler. I can't remember who wrote the post but this was such an important observation. The female solidarity in that pharmacy where the pharmacist asks if she needs help after she observes her looking around helplessly, her jerk at the police sirens, a weary look made me think about women who face abuse on a daily basis and then has to go about their lives, it's just that small moment when someone else recognises their pain and offers kindness or help. This help sometimes is a beacon for many of them. These small moments are insignificant yet are so very important to be highlighted. That's why I too like it mildly and not looking forward to the sequel which needs to happen soon-ish.
Oh no, you are absolutely 1000% correct. I didn’t mean it was “unnecessary” in that “this scene serves no purpose,” but “oh my god I can’t believe they actually wrote it this way, I FEEL GAY JESUS IN THIS CHILI’S TONIGHT.”
Because there are are SO many tropes that they could have gone for there instead, and they didn’t. Obviously the scene is important in that Andy has lost her immortality, isn’t healing her wound automatically like she normally does, and needs to go find human medicine, something that she has no idea how to work with because she hasn’t needed it in so long. But the usual trope for a Strong Female Character (tm) would be, of course, that she’s strong, that she doesn’t need anyone to do it for her. She could just rip off the shirt and try to take care of it herself, try to hide it and just push on, and the narrative could frame it as that being the more “admirable” choice, because of course a woman who’s Strong doesn’t feel Emotions. She kicks ass, that’s a personality trait. Etc etc every male writer of female characters in action movies ever. But instead they show us Andy, the tough-as-nails leader of the team, wandering around the pharmacy, lost and confused, and that’s okay. She’s scared, and that’s okay too. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her. This is not held against her in any way or punished in the narrative.
Or they could have gone the Unnecessary Heterosexuality route and had a Heroic male character step in to help this poor woman who has been hurt and doesn’t know what to do, look at this gentleman, #NotAllMen, etc. I sorely need to rewatch this film, because I was holding my breath the whole time for something cringeworthy to happen, especially after I was otherwise really enjoying it. There wasn’t a moment until almost the end when I had the distinct and very clear feeling of “oh my god I love this.” I was SO prepared for Andy to die because that’s what happens: the female character dies, gets fridged, sacrifices herself for the men’s emotional development, etc. And when then she DIDN’T die, I was like “wow I wonder what it says about all the media out there that has made me SO conditioned to expect that she would, and she doesn’t get a story after saving the world, she’s only good as a tool and then she’s dead and she doesn’t get a happy-ever-after.”
I haven’t read the comics, so I don’t know how Andy’s story progresses (or if they’ll change/adapt it for TV) but I love the thought that this badass Amazon warrior now has to learn how to live as a.... human. She’s still relatively young, physically speaking, so she has time to face a life and what that would look like rather than just fighting all the time. And of course Quynh is back and my gay heart loves the Drama and wants them to see each other and for there to be feelings and then get married and ride off into the sunset shh.
But in light of all that, we have the woman watching Andy in the drugstore, you think there’s going to be some tedious manufactured conflict where she doesn’t trust her or thinks she’s stealing, and instead Andy comes up with her basket, clearly at her wit’s end, and the clerk asks if she needs help. Then we get this very romantically shot, lowlit scene with the woman gently patching up Andy’s wounds, their faces together, the clear UST (and of course just the f/f solidarity and Women! Helping! Women!!!!) and not even asking what happened to her, just there to help because she needs it, and for that to be a choice visually celebrated by the narrative and added to Andy’s character and....
I just have a lot of feelings, okay.
