TIFU by putting 1 1/3 cup of vegetable oil in my brownie mix when it was just supposed to be 1/3 cup. Then I mixed it all together with the hand mixer before realizing 😭
BUT I SALVAGED IT sorta. I managed to separate 1/2 cup of the oil back out of the mix though I did end up giving up at that point and just threw in half a cup of flour and hoped it would balance it out. I ate one and I think it’s fine. Probably
I need to go to a rage room but not to vent and resolve anger issues. I just want to stim by chucking things across the room at full force without consequences
Roadie rambles mafin things under the cut. Like, a long ramble. A stupidly long ramble. I was thinking in circles about this while hiking with my dog this afternoon and decided to write it out in the interest of purging it from my brain. And then I decided to share it with all of you, because why not. But it's long. You probably don't actually want to read it. I'm not putting it in the tag. lol.
Okay, so, back in May, I realized I had to break up with the novela, at least for awhile. I realized it wasn't making me happy, and I was engaging with it sort of compulsively; it reminded me of scrolling algorithm-driven socials where the dopamine hits keep you refreshing even if the content is making you feel gross. (I quit those too, several years ago now.)
The difference, at least for me, is that I get so much more out of fandom engagement than I did with socials; it inspires me creatively, gives me great pleasure to nerd out with other interested people, and at its best makes me feel more connected and engaged with others, not less. So I decided that sometime in July I'd check back in and see if I wanted to re-engage, in part because I figured by then there would have been some leaked news about contract renewals that would give some insight into the story they were going to tell. So I did, and based on what I saw, I decided to check back in, albeit with a bit less intensity. So I've been around more the past week or two.
But then what I also saw, poking around various sites, was a hell of a narrative about a disgruntled showrunner deliberately torpedoing a beloved ship. From what I can tell, folks are saying that he was hoping to replace that ship (mafin) with a different one (marloe) he had advocated for to the top brass. Why, exactly, was he so invested in replacing the old with the new? Well, in the mode of most conspiracy narratives (because yes, it's a conspiracy narrative) we can only really speculate as to the "why." And I don't really believe the narrative that That One Guy Has It Out For Us. For one thing, I've been in fandom long enough to have seen that same story told in so, so many versions across so, so many fandoms, because conspiracy theories copy each other that way.
That said…
Mafin has turned weird. Right?
The other day, I rewatched some of the scenes between Marta finding out about the blackmail and Fina's eventual return. Man, that was good. They were building up so much tension. They kept elevating the stakes (Fina refused all help, nobody knows where she is, oh wait we found her but she's been deathly sick, Marta decides she has no choice but to go to Argentina). The formula for this is that the stakes escalate and escalate and then you have a huge cathartic climax.
The prison arc is a good example of that formula: the arrest, the risk Marta takes by visiting Fina in prison, Marta calling lawyer after lawyer and nobody being willing to take the case, rumours flying around the fabrica making us wonder if Fina will ever be safe there again, Claudia wondering if she can still be her friend, Fina's condition and resilience visibly deteriorating in each subsequent visit, Marta finding out Fina is going to be released—but then Fina gets assaulted in prison before Marta gets there to take her home. It's a lot.
But we get two cathartic scenes to unpack all of the tension: the scene between Fina, Claudia, and Carmen in their room, and then the scene where Fina breaks down in Marta's arms outside the Mafinca. In both of those scenes, Fina has to narrate the stakes of her potential future suffering (outlining in detail what her sentence will be if she is found guilty at trial) and past suffering (outlining in detail what Santiago did to her in the cell). In both cases the detail feels uncomfortable to the viewer; it feels voyeuristic to watch, like we're being asked to get off on her trauma. But what the show is actually doing is trying to force us into the kind of deep empathy with the character that will allow us to experience her relief along with her when she finds out that everything is going to be OK, which, because of the genre, we know it will be. Fina waking up the next morning magically Much Better because she told Marta the truth about Santiago and Marta responded by loving her even harder—that's not realistic. But this is the fantasy that shows like this sell: no matter what horrible thing you go through, you can be healed by having someone love you harder than the violence could hurt you. This is what drew me to this show in the first place: I enjoy that fantasy, unrealistic as it is, and it's so hard to find renditions of it that speak to the kind of love that I'd want to imagine being healed by.
But all that buildup of Marta's suffering before finding Fina? There was no climax. No relief. A lovely reunion scene, albeit a bit underwhelming to many of us, though that may have been inevitable given how we'd built it up. And almost immediately, Fina is sneaking around. Our first shot of her in bed with Marta has her lying with her eyes open, already watching for something we can't see.
And on top of that, we have the complete vacuum of Fina's experience in Argentina, apart from her apparently idyllic (if unpasteurized) life on the ranch. I've been waiting, waiting, waiting for Fina to give us the equivalent of those cathartic post-prison conversations, but about what she went through in Argentina. She told us she struggled at the start; we know she had brucellosis and was hospitalized for several weeks. That's it. And at this point, it's been long enough that I think we won't ever get more detail on that.
And for the formula of how a show like this works… this is weird. This setup should be CATNIP for soap writers. It's the definition of soapy! And yet.
Plus, other irregularities. The weird lack of physical intimacy between Marta and Fina that we know isn't the fault of the actors; I don't think Brunet came back from maternity leave with a sudden insistence that there must always be Room For Jesus between her and Belmo when they kiss. And they set up Cloe for a much more substantial arc, albeit they never seemed to settle on whether that arc was Future Villain, Romantic Rival, or what, and then they ended up just writing her out as nothing.
So, I don't know. I don't buy the Big Bag Showrunner Has It Out For Us; I've heard it too many times in too many shows. But I DO buy that there may have been disputes behind the scenes between executive levels. I know very little about TV production and I know nothing about how it works in Spain, but I know there's the network that distributes the show (A3) and the company that produces it (Diagonal) and they're not always on the same page about communication and probably not production either. See: A3 releases huge announcements via formal channels that "Fina ha vuelto" and a week later the showrunner (who I assume works for Diagonal) says "We don't know if Fina is coming back." That was the most egregious but I remember chatting to @mrsdaphnefielding about other ones.
And honestly… this kind of makes sense. Everything I'm saying here is pure speculation, but:
I know disagreements between networks and production are common, but on a typical 16-episode show, those would be resolved before filming starts. But on a daily show, they probably don't have that luxury of time; things play out in real-time, albeit 4ish months delayed. Plus, Brunet said in interviews that when she came back she had no promises/plans for the long term, she wanted to see how things went and decide later. So they had to come up with an arc that could potentially end with writing her out.
But if you're A3, you make your money selling ads and subscriptions, and fan engagement is what gets you both of those things. And Mafin gets you fan engagement.
But if you're Diagonal… again, this is pure speculation. But I bet Diagonal did not anticipate Mafin. If they wanted a dynamite lesbian couple they'd have had the actresses screen test together. Belmonte, for their purposes, is a middle-aged veteran workhorse of an actress with the kind of striking, angular looks that suit the corporate exec ice queen brief. And the fact that they very seriously considered pairing her with a second middle-aged woman in Carolina LaPausa as Fina (per LaPausa in several interviews, she auditioned for Fina and Brunet auditioned for Luz and the production waffled for ages on which actress to cast in which role) suggests they intended this to be a side plot on the level of Damian/Digna, Carmen/Tasio, Claudia/[pick your fighter], etc. Studios are ageist AF. They wouldn't consider pairing two women in their 40s for an arc they imagine will be central.
But then Belmonte emerges as a freaking force of nature on screen (I truly don't think they expected what they got from her), and they pair her with Brunet and they set fire to every scene they share, and oops, your second-tier lesbians are dominating all the press and all the social media engagement for your oh-so-hetero afternoon soap. Tatay and Sanchez, who presumably are getting paid more and are the leads, are getting a fraction of the media buzz. The annoying queers in your socials are saying they think Begoña should be with Luz instead of Andrés and they're saying it loudly enough that Sanchez and LaPausa are both being asked about it (and lowkey agreeing with it) in interviews.
So if you're the showrunner… suddenly you have four actors with lead leverage in terms of salary and scheduling demands, a massive audience percentage that's vastly more invested in your secondary arc than your primary arc, and a network that's pressuring you to help them capitalize on all of that.
Plus… I assume they've got solid contracts to keep Sanchez and Tatay around for a long time. They surely don't have that for Brunet and Belmonte. If those actresses decide to be done, a huge chunk of your audience is gone overnight.
So… a solution to all this would be to tank the ship onscreen. Take the character beloved for her kindness and humour and make her cold and uncaring. Doesn't hurt that you've spent the previous weeks leaning into the other option (Cloe) being self-sacrificing and loving Marta more than she loves herself, making for a hell of a messy contrast.
It feels a lot like the fan theory about Mattel pulling their funding from Young Justice because the audience was disproportionately young girls and Mattel didn't think girls would buy action figures. The showrunner denied this influenced the cancellation… but the showrunner doesn't sell toys, so I'm not entirely sold on the validity of his denial.
What does this mean for the future? I have no idea. People seem to expect this Bianca arc to last another month or so, with the fallout for Mafin lasting a few weeks beyond that; who knows if any of that is true. If it is, it won't be mafin's last arc of the season. Rumours are that both actresses will be back in the next season, but again: just rumours. And if so, would they sustain this dynamic or rebuild a version that's more like what they had before Brunet left? I have a hard time imagining they'd commit to this version of Fina for a whole additional year, but if they're trying to shift their narrative center back to Began who were "supposed" to have it all along, who knows.
This is all speculation. I dunno. Hyperfixation brain is hyperfixating so I wrote it down to get it out of my head. If you read this far… thanks, and also, I'm sorry? But also tell me if I'm crazy.
