Variable Star

May we all someday reach even half this level of Skill and Power while weilding our own weapons of choice.

Train and Fight! Love Women and Love Yourself!

what i’m trying to say here, in essence, is this:

A film that indulges in the hopes and dreams of women and/or girls. A film that has a happy, fuzzy, ridiculously unrealistic ending.

word which refers to movies characteristically geered at young females in their twenties and late teens. Must include: love scenes, kissing, something sad, a happy ending

A sappy film that is generally geared towards women. It is always a love story, usually a comedy, and nausea inducing in men.

Term for a movie geared for women. Quite often seen on cable TV like The Hallmark Channel and endorsed by people like Oprah. These movies make women the heros and show life from a woman’s perspective. Most men hate these films cuz they are cheezy and dumb. Pussy-whipped men like them…or pretend to.

A movie that embodies all that is wrong with the world; a movie which displays a gross over-indulgence into, and exploration of, the workings of the female psyche and the accomanying emotional tendencies.

Pornography for women.

every complaint i have EVER seen about thor (2011) was about anything contained to earth: jane, darcy, not so much selvig, thor being hammer-less and learning to calm down and be gentle, women only liking it because hemsworth is a 6′3 outback steakhouse victoria’s filet mignon with twinkly dream eyes

but i think that’s because that’s the sentimental part of the movie, the emotional part. it’s driven by a romance and the intellect of a woman (arguably two). thor has to learn to get in touch with his softer side in a world that’s a bit more fragile than his own, furthermore there’s no other steaks– i, em, i mean men like him to balance out. there’s no male audience vessel in this movie

none

oh, you’re thinking selvig? i’m thinking not! there’s no male audience vessel. 

men can’t relate to this movie

I mean, it's a nice thought with some truth to it, perhaps, but the major reason no one really liked Thor from the first movie was that his character arc was poorly written. Regardless of what genre he became or was intended to be, his character arc failed to establish several key moments which left his development incomplete, unfocused and vague.

Changing the genre of Thor's story only highlights different problems with it.

Sure, the Thor parts of Thor could be called a chick flick. It just can't be called a good chick flick. In a better chick flick (and a better movie in general) the climactic scene would have involved Audience Avatar Jane Foster more. I'm pretty sure that, in the actual movie, you could just replace her with a sexy lamp and nothing would change.

I think the genre dissonance and its effects you're describing has merit, but I think it the writer(s) more than anyone felt it's effects, which caused them to turn out a subpar character arc for Thor that pretty much no one liked. I mean why else would Thor be subjected to such confused writing when Loki's character arc was written almost textbook perfect? I think the Thor writers didn't know how to tell the story they were telling (which is essentially Disney's Hercules*) and still make Thor a Manly Man.

(I have SO many thoughts on the character development in this movie, not in the least because the juxtoposition between Loki's well written character arc and Thor's badly written one is so weird since they were both written by the same people. But I will not put those here because this post is long enough already.)

“When a woman thinks that her house is on fire, her instinct is at once to rush to thing which she values most. It is a perfectly overpowering impulse, and I have more than once taken advantage of it … A married woman grabs at her baby; an unmarried one reaches for her jewel-box.”

Holmes uses this social norm and order to stage an attack and find out where Adler hid the photo in her house. He drops his guard and is so proud of himself because he knew that this would work, he knew that if he created disorder,  “natural” order would attempt to counteract that disorder.

Adler defies those social orders and norms: she is an untitled American woman who earned her own money through a career as an opera star, instead of relying on a husband or family to have financial security; she outwitted Holmes because she cross-dressed and indicated that she frequently did so, allowing her to have a lot more freedom roaming around London on her own terms, and her stage career aided that so that she could act like a man easily; and she didn’t care one bit about her reputation or being a “pure” woman, had several boyfriends, and was known for being an “adventuress”. More importantly, she had the ability to defy those social norms while simultaneously being able to present herself as the ideal respectable and under-estimable Victorian-era woman.

Adler literally defeats Holmes by dressing in drag then happily goes off with her new husband whom she loves very much. And Holmes respects that and is thoroughly impressed. Not only does he respect that, he realizes that he was on the wrong side of things, that he shouldn’t have agreed to take on the case for the King of Bohemia. This is the exchange that follows after Holmes, Watson and the King read Adler’s letter.

“Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?”

“From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes coldly

Holmes takes Adler’s side and realizes that the photograph is her protection from the King, not something she intended to use as a weapon against him. Adler never exploited the King to get what she wanted, only kept it as a safeguard of her own happiness. She made sure she had a way of ensuring that she alone guided her future.

Irene Adler is “the woman” to Sherlock Holmes, not because she was sexy or he was in love with her. She was a reminder that real life doesn’t always follow what social norms and order are to be expected, that people shouldn’t be taken on face value or respected just because of their title or apparent respectability and ability to follow social order and norms, and that there are two sides to every story.

Last night the local cinema showed Sound of Music and I saw it again for the first time in a LONG time–holy shit, the way this actress portrays a character who is arguably the sole antagonist of the film besides the Nazis…

It’s stated that the Captain has been spending months of his time away from home and his children running from his problems WOOING the everloving crap out of this lady who is both TITLED and WEALTHY AS SIN, and they genuinely seem to care about each other! They’re alike in ages and life experiences, they’ve both known the hardship of a lost spouse, they should be a fine match and they ARE.

And in swans Julie Andrews, the governess aka the nanny, and the duchess sees the sparks flying between the man she loves and this random nobody. She goes to confront Maria fully expecting to play coy and underhanded, pointing out their chemistry and that the Captain might “think himself in love just because a woman loves him first” (SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE EH DUCHESS? THAT’S DEFINITELY NOT YOU AND THE CAPTAIN, RIGHT?) only to have Maria go “SHIT that’s what my feelings are??? ABORT ABORT ABORT.” 

Maria: I’m going to pack all my things and leave I M M E D I A T E L Y

Duchess: Oh….kay???? 

She genuinely thought there was going to be back and forth, and sneering jibes, and ‘oh did you want him? too bad’s, and instead Maria is as pure as the driven edelweiss. 

Later the Duchess starts realizing she doesn’t know what to do with kids, she’s never spent time with them before and suddenly there are seven, WHICH AGAIN WOULD HAVE BEEN FINE WITH THE CAPTAIN before he met Maria and remembered he actually liked his family. This dude was already fucking off for months at a time and never hugged his children and didn’t let them play–he wouldn’t have thought twice about packing them off to boarding school once he married the Duchess. Before Maria. 

The scene from this gifset though is just. Ugh, pure gold. The duchess finds the captain watching Maria from the balcony. By this time they’re engaged, bc Maria left and with her went every ounce of the Captain’s emotional awareness. The duchess starts lamenting that the captain is a hard man to buy a wedding gift for–she’s babbling, laughing, pointing out that she knows him very well but that he already has everything he needs, and she can only give him frivolous things like a yacht or a summer home, and–

The captain interrupts her. They’re smart adults who’ve seen the world. This is not their first romance. And he knows that she knows they can’t go on as they have been, and he apologizes. “It’s no use, you and l. I’m being dishonest to both of us… and utterly unfair to you.”

She could fight him. She could scream and rage and she’d have every right to do so. She loves him. At the very least it seems she’ll have to listen to him break it off with her. 

And she doesn’t let him do it. “Don’t say another word, please,” she tells him, and then dumps him on her own terms. “Fond as I am of you, I really don’t think you’re the right man for me. You’re much too independent. And I need someone who needs me desperately… …or at least needs my money desperately.” 

It’s honest, and funny, and kinder than he deserves. But she deserves better, and I don’t know that I’ve seen another movie that lets the rival in love realize that on their own.