#npbfag

Bringing back 18 unique queens only to give 1 of them the free pass to the crown doesn’t exactly feel gratifying for a 12 episode season of Drag Race. Especially in a format that relies on lip syncs but doesn’t have the courtesy to treat them like genuine performances that should be judged fairly. Ginger is incredibly talented in comedy, acting, and camp performances. In her peak during season 7 (when she should’ve won, let’s be real Violet wasn’t quite ready yet) Ginger was the lip sync assassin. However, that was 10 years ago. Lip syncs have changed a lot since 2015 so it’s not surprising that Ginger can’t keep up as well in the lip syncs. What is surprising is Ginger winning 5/6 lip syncs she was in during AS10. Even Ginger was surprised every time she won and even during Rate-A-Queen when she was given the top spot as the most dangerous lip syncer.

The finale was unbearable to watch from the seeded bracket, to the song choices being tailored for specific queens (I love Bosco but I don’t love a song being put on the options solely for her), to pretending like the queens were actually selected at random for choosing the songs (again, I do love Bosco but these were some shenanigans)

Everything after bracket 1 was actually a pretty hard watch. MIB’s dedication to being the villain of the season really took the fun out of why she was a good villain in season 15: she wasn’t playing it up for the camera. MIB now has a following built on her characterization as a shady pot-stirrer, but now it seems like she feels the need to prove that she’s “still evil” and it just comes off as irritating. Jorgeous spent most of her bracket focused on MIB in a way that made it hard to form any new connections to her before the semifinals. Bracket 3 has been critiqued to death but what I will say is that Daya, Cynthia, and Ginger were probably the 3 queens with the least likelihood to object to what production was doing, and guess who moved on to the semis?

My final thoughts are

The queens done the dirtiest (I think the term “robbed” is dumb):

Kerri Colby

Aja

Cynthia Lee Fontaine

Denali

Acid Betty

JORGEOUS

I’m delusional so here’s the actual ending to the season instead of the one we got: