#artpatricktashi

“Art was the victim!” Did you miss the part where he started stirring shit up between his best friend and his best friend’s girlfriend in the hopes they’d break up and he could get with her instead? Or how he chose to cut off his best friend entirely to side with Tashi because Tashi blamed said best friend for her injury (literally he doesn’t even talk to Patrick about the argument? Ever? Just kicks him out of his life because Tashi wants them to LMAO)?

“Patrick was the victim!” Did you miss the part where Patrick spends like 13 years willfully reinserting himself back into a relationship he no longer gets to be a part of all because he’d rather ruin them and come between them and repeatedly hurt them if it means he knows they still think about him, rather than taking ownership of his actions and coming to terms with the fact that they no longer think about him at all? Did you miss the fact that he’s a giant flop on top of being a giant asshole?

“Tashi is an evil cold manipulative bitch who doesn’t care about anything but tennis and comes between them!” Okay what we’re not going to do is 1) act like those two losers weren’t active participants in the vast majority of what was happening to them so that we can blame everything on the woman 2) forget that Tashi spends the entire movie both being incredibly horny for yes tennis, but tennis very much including Art and Patrick specifically, as well as bringing a wrecking ball down on her own life repeatedly because she physically cannot go on without having all three of them in her life.

“The three of them are ALL terrible, bad people!” Are they or they neither good nor bad but a secret third thing (messed up, regular people)? Are they or they all three simultaneously the one’s holding the gun and falling into the graves they’ve dug for themselves?

“The movie promised me a throuple and then didn’t even deliver!/it was just a regular boring old love triangle” Did you miss the part where Patrick was the person who taught Art to jerk off? Did you miss the part where Tashi encourages them to neck her until they’re close enough for her to back away and leave them kissing each other as she watches with horny amusement? Did you miss the fact that they’re both playing for her number? Did you miss Art molding himself into the person who could obtain the glory that Tashi was denied? Or how he saw his fiance/wife kissing her ex boyfriend who also happens to be his ex best friend in Atlanta and then spends like 10 more years doing absolutely nothing about it? Did you miss “Don’t I matter?” “Not to the most obsessive tennis fan in the world” “I’m not talking about tennis” followed by an Art who has stopped caring whether he wins or loses caring, by the end of the match, more than he’s ever cared before, because Patrick DOES matter and because he’s STILL playing for Tashi’s number? Did you miss the part where for about 15 seconds there they were actually playing tennis and they understood each other completely and so did everyone watching and it was a bit like they were in love or like they didn’t exist and they went somewhere really beautiful together? HUH?

Society: "You can't undo the mental fuckery caused on queer people and racism implied by Saltburn".

Zendaya: "Fuck that, like every other Spider-Man M.J. before me, here's my tennis movie, and, just like the one before mine, it will involve queerness, and will also have two posh white boys in love with each other even more so than they are with my character and it will be rife with metaphors alluding to that".

Tashi just wanted them to be their best. The way that Art was literally in-frame on the poster that she okayed as his manager when she cheated on him with Patrick ... The way in which the ball is served can signal "I fucked your wife," and "I love you," as well as "I love you, too, asshole". Patrick was indeed an asshole because he knew that Art and Tashi would let him be one. I also think that he knew some time before the sauna scene that they were in love, whereas Art didn't know until he mirrored his own preferred serve at the end, and Tashi knew all along. The focus on their knees at the end was also a clever nod to Tashi's injury. She makes Art and Patrick the best players that they can be, Patrick will always catch Art, and Art will always be the ice to Patrick's fire. ... I kind of wish that Zendaya would make them do a sequel where they're a happy polycule, during which, Art and Tashi are coaching Patrick through a Grand Slam.

now you're at the mailbox, turned into good neighbors / my husband is cheating, I wanna kill him