aw format no

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about a name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

it's well made, well shot, well directed, the music is interesting, the costumes are both thoughtful and subtly period accurate, the sex scenes are intentional and, again, accurate to what hooking up when you're like 18 actually feels like...the actors are of course attractive but they look like real people. the characters are varied and well fleshed out, the acting is really, really strong

so many shows and films shoot and then slot in whatever music kind of fits or could be licenced in the budget after time, but you can tell that the scenes in hr were shot with that specific music in mind. and the same intentional approach runs through the whole thing

In the first movie alone, some of his greatest hits:

Successfully pickpocketed Rick on their first meeting, without Rick so much as joining the dots until later.

Survives a pitched battle on a burning ship without a scratch, and somehow gets the key from a burning hook-handed enemy mook in the process. (“And did I panic? I think not!”)

Survives a pitched battle in the Hamunaptra ruins while drunk, through liberal use of cover and picking off targets at range.

Rolls a Nat 20 on his deception check to avoid being massacred by a large group of hynotised enemies in the museum.

Survives the final pitched battle with the undead (again, through liberal use of cover, hiding and running).

Successfully makes his intelligence roll to translate the Book of Amun Ra (with the Help action from Evie).

Successfully uses the resulting control over the undead mooks to even out the battlefield, including the genius brain move of sending them after Ankh-Su-Namun to both save Evie and distract Imhotep.

Successfully pickpockets a lich while being strangled by him to regain the key and enable Evie to use the book to banish Imhotep altogether.

Yes, he’s fairly flimsy in direct battle, and if at all possible refuses to get to melee range with anybody. So he’s a ranged rogue, and has a tendency to use the environment to his advantage. But he’s clearly designed around Sleight of Hand, Charisma, and a decent sprinkling of Intelligence, and prefers to use object interactions and battlefield control to even out his odds. For all that, though, he fully will stay in melee range if he has no other choice, and take the opportunity to pickpocket the BBEG while he’s at it.

I didn't realise before, but this whole battle starts with Evie telling Jonathan that the only way to kill Imhotep is to open the book and read the spell to banish him. Jonathan says it's locked, they need the key, and Evie then tells him it's in Imhotep's robes.

When Jonathan sends the priest mummies after Ankh-Su-Namun with the spell on the cover (saving both Rick and Evie in the process), Imhotep is coming right for him. However, Imhotep is then briefly disabled by watching the brutal murder of his lover all over again, and Jonathan ... could have run. There's a beat there where Imhotep is completely focused on something else, and Jonathan absolutely has the presence of mind to use that, but he doesn't. Imhotep, now incensed that Jonathan has murdered his lover, promptly spins back around and goes to murder him back, and is only stopped because Rick returns the favour from earlier and saves him.

At which point a lightly-strangled Jonathan stands back up and tells Evie he got the key.

He fucking stayed put on purpose because he knew they needed the key, that Imhotep had the key, and that he was the only person who could fucking pickpocket the BBEG mid-strangulation and get away with it, so long as someone could swoop in before the undead wizard actually killed him. Imhotep is immortal and immune to damage if they don't do something about that. This is a fight of attrition they cannot win. And his sister told him what they needed to stop it, so Jonathan went and got it.

He cheerfully calls himself a coward, and then he goes and fatally pisses off a lich as a distraction, and then stands still to be murdered for it in order to get close enough to pickpocket the immortal pissed off undead. It wasn't that he took the opportunity while being strangled, he set up being strangled in order to have the opportunity.

Gay people are INCREDIBLY ANNOYING for production when they are on reality shows cause they always do shit like this. Reality shows pick their cast specifically for people who will create drama, so it tracks that bringing in some gay people (in the era that I worked, 2013-2018, this was considered to be new and interesting) would diversify people enough to create some conflict. To a degree, this was true.

But what actually happened was that the gay person, or worse, people, would end up estranged from the other people because Straight People Who Are Fucking Nuts in a way that would be ideal for a reality show are very different from Gay People Who Are Fucking Nuts.

There's one particular instance I remember in which our Gay Person tm wasn't getting into drama and no one could figure out why. Any time anything happened it would just defuse almost instantly. Eventually we prodded during a solo interview and one of the guys said something along the lines of "Mayn gay marriage just got legalized n shit if I yell at this guy I'm being a homophobe". This meant that our gay was COASTING along in this reality show cause no one would vote him out!!

But you know what the PINNACLE of this was?

DATING SHOWS.

One... Very popular dating show I worked on (you know the one) has an unofficial, unwritten rule: you can only have 1 queer woman in the cast of ladies. This is because for a solid few years, if ever there were two bisexual women in the show, they would ALWAYS abandon the man and run off together instead. You can't have contestants saying shit like "this guy has no personality and sucks ass. I prefer this girl I met who actually listens to me". Like this was an actual epidemic in the casting. It happened over and over for YEARS and they couldn't find a way to stop it without literally separating the women from each other, which obviously wouldn't be good for the show. They also couldn't show this was happening because that. Uh. Would be pretty bad to reveal to audiences.

Eventually they just decided to subtly prod and see if women who were going on the show were gay and then avoid having two on the same season at the same time. To my knowledge they still do it this way.