Kryptonlives

Delta Slim drinks because he's traumatized by the horrors Black people of his time face. And he's kind and compassionate, encouraging and reassuring Sammie, and sacrificing himself to save everyone else.

Pearline literally saved Sammie's life and sacrificed herself to protect him, a boy she had only known for a day. It shows her kindness because she could have easily stayed back when Remmick tried to bite Sammy and not endangered her life more than necessary.

The movie shows us that preachers blindly condemning those sinners are wrong: Sammie is only alive because drunkards, philanderers and gangsters (Smoke) gave their lives to protect him. They are people, with flaws and qualities.

Hogwood (the man who sold the twins the mill) and the KKK are very obviously bad, they are outright malicious bigotry, they use the n-word and plan to lynch the moore's and their community, they are so blatantly racist and hateful it's unavoidably obvious

remmick and the vampires however say that they believe in equality, say that they want to create a community, and yet remmick's goal throught the movie is to both metaphorically and literally steal sammie's ability for his own goal of reconnecting with his irish ancestors, a white man wants to harm a young and upcoming black man and use talents for his own goals without giving any regard to said black man's autonomy or agency

when sammie sings 'I lied to you' in the juke joint and calls forth the spirits from the past and future, it's a blend of cultures; west african, east asian, native american, and african american song and dance blend together across time and space to tell the stories of blues; where it takes its inspiration from, the music genres it then inspired, the complex history of black american culture and its intersections with other peoples of colour in the USA

when remmick and the vampires kill and turn the people in the juke joint, and then perform rocky road to dublin, only remmick's irish culture is on display, there is no influence from the black and asian people he has forcibly assimilated into his song, it's juxtaposition with the earlier scene is blatant, remmick is more than happy to assimilate people of colour into his 'community' of 'equals', and yet its only whiteness that is celebrated, that is normative

remmick claims that he's doing people a favour by turning them immortal, conviently ignoring that he literally has to suck the life out of them to do so, trapping their spirits on earth, he claims that he's the good guy, that the KKK were gonna come and lynch everyone at the joint in the morning anyways, conviently ignoring that he's doing the exact same thing; a white man leading a mob to kill a bunch of black people

in the final confrontation with sammie remmick repeatedly dunks him into the river, a forceful baptism. both the celtic irish and enslaved west africans had their religions suppressed and destroyed by colonialsm, had christianity forced upon them by the british empire, and in that scene we see remmick repeating that cycle, using christianity to inflict harm, and sammie reclaiming christianity, despite all the complex emotions he has arround it, as many colonised peoples have and still do, when he recites the lord's prayer

remmick and the vampires are no less racist than hogwood and the KKK, are no less predatory or evil, they're just less blantant about their bigotry, they represent the system, the normalised white supremacy that is seeped into the very foundation of culture in america, the point isnt that remmick would call any of the black characters in the movie the n-word, i dont think he would, the point is that his exploitation and desacration and inserting-himself-into-when-he-wasn't-invited of the juke joint is a microcosm of what white people have done to black american arts and culture since ever since there have been black and white people in america, and even before that

it was like "look we're letting you keep your culture christianity is so permissive it's all-encompassing no don't ask about the content of the culture we're asking you to take on or the changes we're requiring of your cultural perspective or the stories you need to forget in favour of new stories" and then also st patrick "banished the snakes" (read: pagans)... i think it makes a staggering amount of sense that the irish villain would be doing a version of this especially because of the centrality of catholicism in irish culture to the point that being a catholic who hasn't examined any of the above and basically thinks it was a good thing that we were converted because god is real and jesus was the messiah (i.e. self-reinforcement)... is seen as actively being irish about it.

even the language about "saving" is similar; christianity today continues to insist on using the term "saved" to mean "converted", which is SO UNCOMFORTABLE, but that's what's happening here; he's "saving" them BY killing them and killing their culture. and he's like "it's fine because they're still the same people they're just doing my stuff now" literally because, within his framework of the universe, that is the correct way to look at it. and for him to realise what he's doing is wrong he would have to realise that a central part of his irish identity, that continues to define ireland against the protestant brits to this day, particularly in the north... was an imposition on the irish that, in a fair world, wouldn't have happened.

For example, Kimiko’s entire arc this season and the fact that the only way they’ve given her speech and autonomy is through speech used to make jokes about watching porn and speaking like a 12-year-old. The fact that Annie is clearly the leader of a political resistance against Homelander, but they’ve completely sidelined that storyline, we’re told about it but never actually shown it. The fact that they reduced the character of Marie Moreau to a plot device, when she was supposedly meant to be key to defeating Homelander. The fact that they turned Sister Sage into a literal meme. Like, suddenly she’s the smartest woman in the world, but she can’t understand emotions… sorry, what? Intelligence isn’t just memorising facts, it has multiple forms, and emotional intelligence is one of them. So if she’s the smartest person in the world, she has to be the smartest in every sense. But then she somehow can’t even figure out something like Soldier Boy being completely in love with a Nazi. The fact that Ashley has barely served any purpose this season, when she’s been there since the very beginning of the show, and has had zero meaningful character development until the very end when it looked like she might finally get some after what happened with A-Train, but nothing ever came of it.

But above all, there’s something key: the way Soldier Boy is handled.

He’s a deeply misogynistic man, and in his first season he had more layers. But this season, his only function is basically to make jokes about fucking with women, very basic “hetero dude” humour about bragging that he’ll stick it in anything. And no one, absolutely no one, ever calls him out as the pathetic example of fragile masculinity that he is. A man who hides behind the mask of the “fuckboy alpha male” persona to compensate for emotional dysfunction and a fragile ego, constantly reinforcing his identity through sexual conquest because that’s all he has. And it’s obvious. If you actually said two sharp things to him, he’d fall apart. He’s not impressive, he’s a mess. He’s arguably even more pathetic than Homelander in a way, because Homelander is psychotic and mentally unstable, whereas Soldier Boy is just a washed-up nepo baby coping through sex, drugs, and ego inflation, because he has no real emotional regulation skills. And the moment you strip away that persona, there’s nothing there. If you told him his entire “sexual conquest identity” means nothing, he’d crumble emotionally, because that’s the only thing propping him up.

And in a show written by women, that kind of character would’ve been dismantled immediately, because he’s the textbook example of fragile masculinity. Instead, nothing happens to him. Why? Because it’s written by men.

It is a connection that, even though it might have space for physical intimacy, absolutely does not care for it as a driving factor. You are not my friend but i wouldn't reduce you to just my lover, because i wouldn't care if we never touched as long as i had you around me because i need you so much.

"it's america day" no it's haymitch's birthday thank you very much

the "I don't want them to change me. turn me into something I'm not" to being turned into a mutt version of himself pipeline

This YouTube comment has been on my mind since I finished SOTR so this is what I came up with:

Lucy Gray was the mockingbird, living on the outskirts of district 12 and was there at the wrong time when they were forced to stay there after the Dark Days. They were subjected to the Capitol’s politics despite not being a part of Panem, technically speaking. Lucy Gray became part of the Games and, likewise, the mockingbird became affiliated with the Capitol through the jabberjay’s release into the woods, but it still continued to sing its own song.

Haymitch was the jabberjay, a Capitol tool that did what it had to in order to survive. The Capitol thought they could control them, but they retaliated in the form of rebellion. Haymitch refused to be a piece in their game and tried to end it, and the jabberjay, in the eyes of the Capitol, created a freak of nature that showed the Capitol’s lack of complete control.