I Love The Power Maura Has Over Jane. Since It Was Not Enough To See The Series, I Have Seen It Again

"We cannot read the darkness. We cannot read it. It is a form of madness, albeit a common one, that we try." - Maggie Nelson, Bluets

Murphy’s law, applied to fanfics.

- The fic starts out great, nice style, language, captivating summary. It’s unfinished and has been abandoned since 2013.

- The fic is complete, nice style, language, tons of kudos speak for themselves. It’s about your NOTP.

- The fic is about your OTP,  it’s complete, it’s kinky as hell. The plot is absolutely dumbass.

- The plot sounds great, it’s about your OTP, it’s complete. The characters are horribly OOC.

 - Everything is perfect in this fic, starting from the first letter and ending with the last full stop. It’s exactly 800 words long.

- The fic’s word count is a six-figure number, it’s about your OTP, characters are compliant with your head-canon. It’s dull and boring as seven hells.

- The beginning is enthralling, everything’s great, the plot, the style, it’s long and it’s even about your OTP. It features something that makes you close the tab as soon as you open it, like father/daughter incest or mpreg or some other squicky thing. 

- Everything is perfect in this fic, the length, the characters, the language, the style, you forget you’re reading fanfic, thinking it’s a masterpiece of true literature, you cry tears of joy and write a huge review full of gushing love and then rush to the author’s profile to read every other thing they’ve written. It’s their only work.

Maura & Jane | Rizzoli & Isles 2x03

In twenty years, Netflix will launch Rizzoli & Isles: The Maine Event as a short run series where Maura writes mystery novels based on old BPD cases while Jane challenges all the young people to “no blood, no foul” basketball games on their at-home court. When she’s not breaking noses, Jane assists the local sheriff with their more difficult cases that require her particular brand of sleuthing.

They have a small menagerie of animals left to them by Korsak and Angela lives in the guest house so she can pop in like Sophia on The Golden Girls, to ask inappropriate questions about Jane and Maura’s sex life.

Sign our petition at whitehouse.gov! Or should it be stateofmaine.gov? Maybe let’s just send psychic messages to Netflix while I work on a time machine.

Not my gay ass becoming utterly obsessed with Rizzles in 2023 - I mean, this kind of queerbaiting is torturous 😭

Just watched this movie a second time and yes. I am still 100%, utterly of the opinion that this is a masterpiece of rare intelligence, invention, creativity and wit. The actors are amazing and Blanchett's performance is a joy to watch, she's so so phenomenal.

I've read some pretty awesome analyses and explanations of the movie by now and will say more on that matter soon, but I find it so puzzling that some people immediately dismiss this gem as tedious and problematic and hard to get into ? I also understand why some people prefer not to watch a movie about a character as potentially unlikeable, power-hungry and selfish as Lydia Tár, but at the same time, I just - well, I personally do not think that movies that have this clear "good guys/bad guys"-seperation are typically the most stimulating and mesmerizing ones. I found the character of Lydia Tár complex and difficult and yeah, she's definitely abusing her power and status and she probably even had a large share in literally destroying young conductor Krista Taylor (first, her career, then, the woman herself...), but I also like the fact that this movie shows that people like Tár, as disgusting and horrifying as they are, are not merely monsters, but have, for example, a soft spot for someone (in Tár's case this is her daughter Petra), strong likes and dislikes, that they even sometimes do good deeds . Life would be so easy if it were all black and white, but it's not and most people have better and worse traits. Most people have done really, really bad, fucked-up shit, but have also done some really admirable and kind stuff, so... that's what basically makes us human and I think it makes exploring characters like Lydia so interesting to me - and no, I do not condone her actions and her reasoning, but some people seem to mistake greatly enjoying and being greatly fascinated/moved by a movie with automatically agreeing to the things its protagonist does and says?!

I could watch this movie many more times. I will probably even watch it again at some point in the nearer future! Yes, it's not an "easy to get into" movie. It does not answer every of the viewer's question. It also does not state that it has a definite, clear stance on anything; it merely raises questions and it's also extremely questionable (to me) whether it really is that much of a movie about Me Too, Cancel Culture, Power Dynamics ect. Yeah, these issues appear throughout the movie and are a part of it, but I just don't think that is what it's essentially about.

And I love these kind of movies, the kind that need time to be properly processed, the kind dthat spark conversation and make me want to go down a rabbit hole of information and research and exchange; the kind that are challenging and unruly and maybe not what they seem or so much more than that...

Phenomenal stuff. Beautifully made. Original, intelligent. Then when things went mad they went really mad. Blanchett extraordinary, as we know. Great support, great music, great build up, great ending. All films should be made with this level of intelligence, bravery, confidence. Amazing.

#married (1/?)

"Pleasure of Business" Fanfic - Smut but make it an Incredibly well written Love Story, as well!

Title of Fic: "Pleasure of Business"

Author:  TheWillOfMythal

Fandom/Pairing: "Orange Is the New Black", Alex Vause/Piper Chapman

Synopsis: Young, beautiful Piper Chapman is a businesswoman on her way up, having founded her own enterprise together with her good friend Polly, is dared by said good friend to visit a high-class, females-only sex club. She awkwardly tries to appear unimpressed but then she is approached by the owner of the establishment itself: Mysterious, sophisticated Alex Vause, who is also amazingly handsome, starts talking to the flustered newcomer and only a little while later, Piper finds herself signing a contract for lessons, err, sessions in sexual pleasure. Alex normally does not take on clients herself, but because her employees are all fully booked, she decides to make an exception (yeah, like that's the only reason Al, come on!) and thus, the two women find themselves together under the most erotic, but also kinda bizzare circumstances of having a client/mistress relationship. While Alex tries, at first, to maintain a stricly professional attitude, Piper soon finds herself absolutely smitten with the older woman who oh so expertly teaches her how to have not only highly satisfying intimate encounters, but who is also considerate, empathic and remarkably clever. The storytelling is excellent, the creative plot makes it all the more intruiging and the character development is so, so believable and really does the characters justice. And well, yeah, the smut is not to be scoffed at, either! Not everybody can write intimate scenes that are not only hooooot times ten but also depict the character's emotions and their growing feelings for each other so masterly.

Rating: M

https://www.fanfiction.ws/s/13005797/1/Pleasure-of-Business

"The Girl Upstairs" - a Slow-Burn deliciously put together, served with some extra layers of angst, fluff, banter and seasoned with sexiness ;)

Title of Fic: "The Girl Upstairs"

Author:  laok

Fandom/Pairing: "Grey's Anatomy", Arizona Robbins/Calliope Torres

Synopsis: Callie and Arizona are both 2nd-year-med students living in the same house off-campus during university terms. They do not get along at first - like, at all. Arizona lives upstairs from Callie and their first encounter happens when she throws a very loud student party, making Callie race upstairs and complain about the noise. Knowing our fierce ladies, it's not suprising that Arizona does not only not back off, but that they enter some kind of weird, but incredibly well written and believable "Who can annoy the sh*t out of the other one more thoroughly"-competition, with Callie watching horror movies as loud as possible during the most inconvenient hours and Arizona playing Disney songs at full volume. They develop very creative insults to haul at each other, their fights becoming a seemingly never-ending source of amusement to their respective friend-groups. However, they both share a passion the other one does not know about (because, like aforementioned, they are too busy getting on each other's nerves and behaving like rabid dogs whenever they encounter each other): They love to cook, with Callie even secretly running her own quite successful "Students-on-a-Budget"-specialized cooking blog she takes great pride in. When a nice stranger starts to leave encouraging comments on her blog regularly, Callie finds herself able to open up a little, although she is still going through a tough healing process after several heartbreaks she had to endure. "C" and "A" start to exchange e-mails, while Callie and Arizona find themselves trapped in a very uncomfortable situation when in one of their classes, they are paired as lab-partners and forced to work together. What begins as a total disaster, though, seems to very slowly unfold into something much more pleasant, maybe even... well, pleasurable?

I love me a good slow-burn and this one really manages to have it all: the enemies-to-lovers arc simply makes the pining, the yearning, the questioning, the misunderstandings between these two even more intense and the author of this fic has really done justice to both characters, managing to let them be very much Callie and Arizona while developing her very own, original story that could (and should, if you ask me!) easily be turned into a lesbian romcom with alll the right ingredients for our touch-starved souls and little hungry-for-happy-ends-hearts. Yes, it is a veery slow slow-burn, but that's exactly what makes this piece of fiction so special because of the way we really get to know Callie and Arizona on a deeper level, the author doing such a great job of giving insight to their fears, hopes and thoughts. I'll definitely enjoy this one again!

Rating: M

This is such an important take on the "Dead To Me" ending! Yeah, I know. The series is a dramedy and bad things are supposed to happen but I don't feel the final 3rd season really gives credit enough to Judy. Of course, good people die in horrific ways every day. Sometimes it seems that the better and purer a person, the more bad luck they have in life (yeah, I'm talking about reality here - sadly, this has been my experience too often by now). But this story about a very special friendship, a very close bond between two complex, layered female characters really did not deserve this ending. And to me, this whole "bury your guys" and "heteronormative happy ending the billionth" DOES seem kinda problematic. It's like there is no actual desire to commit to the bit and make room for true diversity in TV. It's like, in the ending, the female lead still has to find her happy-ever-after in a male protagonist, and there is this whole emphasis on a heteronormative, "traditional" family life. The bond between Jen and Judy was strong and wonderful and ran deep. There was literally no point in just killing her off. It maddens me that it seems that especially queer women in the media that are not "everybody's darling" always seem to have to pay some kind of price - it's the same with Marla Grayson in "I Care A Lot" - how often do male, heteronormative protagonists get away with atricious deeds?! Yeah, Marla is defo NOT a good person, but there seems to be a whole double-standard-thing going on. And I think the problem can be rooted to the simple fact that the whole entertainment business consists of people and in people in this society, there still is ingrained a whole bunch of problematic, toxic belief systems and stereotypes. I do hope that by raising our voices and questioning such storylines, there will be more happy endings for LGBTQIA+ characters. We deserve them as a community <3

Judy was a queer character in a queerplatonic relationship in which, after years of suffering, frustration and anxiety, she could have gotten to fulfill her dreams, having a family, raising three children, one of them from the very beginning, side by side with her partner.

I don't really care how neatly killing her fits into the bury your gays trope, but the truth is we could have gotten a beautiful, original, queerplatonic found-family ending in a show that entirely revolves around the unlikely but infinitely loving relationship of these two women, and instead we got heteronormative ending number 93837637373738338 and dead queer number 827266262727117.

It looks like true partnership between women, be it romantic or platonic, can never survive heteronormativity. One or both will die, one or both will marry a man and leave.

Truly unoriginal and disappointing. What was even the point of making Jen pregnant if they were never going to raise that child together. What was even the point of giving Judy cancer, just to further traumatize Jen after the death of her mother and husband, just to further traumatize the boys after the death of their dad.

Killing one of the main characters is always an easy way out, I know, it packs an emotional punch and fits the fact that the series is ending because it's the literal ending of the character, but jesus, isn't it the laziest most overused trope in the world. More so if they are women, more so if they are partners, more so if they are queer. Really didn't expect this show to end on such a disappointing note.

Judy deserved so much better. So did Jen and the boys. So did the whole narrative and so did the viewers who where invested in this series. What a total trainwreck.