not arguing with a woman with big brown eyes. whatever you say beautiful
Jennifer's Body (2009) dir. Karyn Kusama
me @ 14 watching this movie:
people who don’t watch horror movies are SO confident that they know everything there is to know about the genre. like it’s okay to not know things. it’s okay if you don’t like friday the 13th or whatever. i promise you don’t need to make an ass out of yourself on the internet about it
horror is an incredibly diverse genre, because there is potential horror in everything. it’s in nature, it’s in architecture and technology, it’s in human relationships, it’s in folklore, the past, the future, the mundane. there are horror movies from all over the world. it is straight up anti-intellectual to pretend that the handful of B slashers you’ve vaguely heard about comprise the totality of what horror has to offer. If you’re just not interested in horror, or if you dislike certain subgenres of horror, then that’s fine, you’re not obligated to like anything at all. but smugly announcing that you don’t like horror because you dislike a handful of VERY specific non-universal tropes is just as stupid as saying that you hate comedy because you don’t like adam sandler movies.
this is what I mean by anti-intellectualism btw
(that's a lesbian) Ella Purnell as Jackie Taylor YELLOWJACKETS: 105. Blood Hive
girl dinner. fattest fucking plate of pasta you've ever seen in your life
"writers deserve attention more than actors" literally only 2% of actors can pay the bills with acting. For every megastar on screen there are a dozen other people in the shot who are SAG. Acting gets so glamorized but there are SO MANY people in SAG who NEED residuals to live on. Background Party Girl #4 needs her check too!!!! There are people who play recurring characters on syndicated shows who cant afford health insurance!!! Ke Huy Quan gave an oscar winning performance and LOST HIS HEALTH INSURANCE the next year.
sorry but it’s actually so horrific how little of a sense of community people have, how little regard they extend towards the other humans around them. killing people for being loud on the subway or turning around in your driveway. loading your gun and waiting at the door because a child ran your doorbell unexpectedly. ring cameras, neighborhoodapp, community watch group Facebook pages. you’ve assigned yourself the role of the one true peacekeeper and casted everyone else around you as a threat to be controlled. there’s no connection or love or compassion. just a deep distrust and hatred.
and the people who face the most significant consequences from this are the ones who are already deemed as outsiders. people of color, especially Black people, disabled people, people with mental illnesses, homeless people.
sometimes i still think about the fact that nancy is one of the most powerful, plot-critical characters in stranger things, and how she has led her own arc every single season–from driving the search for barb to taking down the lab to figuring out the flayed to being a fucking general by the end of season 4. and about how she was taking care of the kids during the last half of s3 and how she was the leader of the hawkins group in s4. like, i really cannot emphasize that enough. once the main character with superpowers and the actual war veteran chief of police are out of town, nancy is the unquestionable leader. the person everyone turns to without thinking twice. i’m serious. nancy is a teenage girl who has her every move questioned and doubted and still the only people more powerful than her in the show are a girl with superpowers and a war vet.
and when danger–physical danger–shows up, she doesn’t fucking hesitate. she’s diving straight into the upside down. she’s leading the older group to safety again. she’s shoving aside the 5 different traumatic experiences she just witnessed to put together a multi-step military operation and she’s taking point to go shove a shotgun in vecna’s face. and yeah, they end up not being alone when they face vecna because el is there, but nancy doesn’t know that. she’s fully intending on going to kill an adult man who has control over an entire dimension and has been murdering people with his mind, even though she has no backup, no superpowered el, no hopper and his government contacts, nothing.
and yet.
AND YET
the vast majority of natalia dyer’s press for s4 was about a love triangle. and i get it, a lot of interviewers can’t get away with not asking those questions, but you know what else you could ask about? nancy’s growth over the last 4 seasons. how it felt being the leader of the hawkins gang. how she thinks nancy feels after losing another friend. what was running through her head when vecna had her. what her thoughts are regarding nancy’s plan, or what’s going through her head during that final scene when she’s *checks notes* standing behind the show’s protagonist and looking at The Plot as it rises from the ground.
or, i don’t know, ask her what it’s like being the person handling guns on set. what those upside down night shoots were like. what her thoughts are on nancy’s choice of college! what she thinks about the perm! for fuck’s sake there are only a thousand different questions that would’ve been far more interesting or at least personal to her character. but no. every interview boils down to team steve or team jonathan, as if a tired, already resolved love triangle is anywhere near as interesting as literally any other part of her character
I can’t stop thinking about the way that when Robin hears Nancy’s name in Season 3 she rolls her eyes and calls her a priss, but then not five minutes later she runs into Nancy in the flesh who’s apparently in the thick of the insane situation Robin has become unwittingly wrapped up in. Her makeup is smudged and her hair is messy and she’s terse with Robin and all Robin can do is utter a flustered reply while giving her this look:
And then shortly afterwards Robin watches as Nancy plants herself in front of a station wagon full of kids and shoots at an oncoming speeding car with a pistol, fully ready to sacrifice herself to protect them. That night at the Star Court Mall changes everything Robin thought about this dainty, pretty, prissy girl who turns out to be a certified badass with nerves of steel.
After this, Robin is smitten. She volunteers to go with Nancy the moment an opportunity presents itself. When they’re waiting in the library, she assumes that Nancy has some genius trick up her sleeve because since Star Court she’s built up an idea of who she is in her mind: brilliant and brave and tenacious. Robin is so desperate for Nancy to like her that she loses all pretense of sardonic aloofness that we see around other characters and the words start spilling out, exactly as she described when venting to Steve about how she behaves around girls she’s crushing on.
Robin is self-conscious and apologetic about how she comes across to Nancy, she repeatedly tries to diffuse the underlying tension between them in any way that she can, and is particularly keen to emphasise the platonic nature of her friendship with Steve. Despite barely knowing Nancy, she starts using the nickname “Nance” right away. There’s a sincere and earnest effort to win Nancy’s approval and affection; Robin needs it more than she even realises.
And the thing is, it works. Nancy starts off cool and irritable and exasperated (which, one should point out, may be in no small part because she’d been up all night looking for her friend who she just found brutally murdered - cut her some slack folks!), but after those two hours with Robin in the library, she realises that she’s remarkably bright and creatively minded and complements her own logical way of thinking so well. You can see the journey she undergoes in that short period of time written on her face: bemusement and impatience soon give way to respect and the dawning realisation that she’s met her intellectual match, someone with the same insatiable curiosity and a whole new way of seeing the world to show her.
Nancy has so many emotional walls built up from years of repression and trauma, especially surrounding having and losing friends (not to mention, potentially, her own repressed queerness), but Robin despite her insecurities over her lack of filter and tendency to ramble and her other personal quirks manages to steal in past those defences. After that first encounter together, Nancy wants Robin by her side at all times. Even though she knows Steve, Dustin, Lucas and Max so much better, she picks Robin to come with her to Pennhurst, she asks Robin to explore the Creel House with her, she has Robin ride shotgun with her in her car. They stick together as a pair at every turn.
This is so, so important: Nancy grows to like and care about Robin because of her being totally and utterly herself. The Robin whose mouth moves faster than her brain, the Robin who is relentlessly inquisitive and goofy and clumsy, the Robin who is at her most overtly neurodivergent around her. And Robin is slowly but surely finding confidence in herself and courage through that relationship, she’s taking risks she never would have before, and learning that her perceived flaws are actually strengths. When talking to Warden Hatch at Pennhurst with Nancy, it’s her runaway way with words that saves them and leaves Nancy incredibly impressed. The unmasked, unfiltered, beautiful gay disaster Robin Buckley is the person Nancy comes to admire and develops a deep fondness for.
It’s been said many times before, but Robin and Nancy complete each other. As we’ve just established, Nancy quickly becomes a source of reassurance, inspiration and affirmation for Robin. And Robin is someone who can keep up with Nancy’s laser-focused fixations and faced-paced thinking, who can challenge her to consider things she never would have otherwise. She also encourages Nancy to be more honest with herself and makes her feel at ease at a time when she’s more lost than ever. Robin is always carefully reading Nancy and respects her opinions and feelings; she’s the friend and confidant Nancy has been missing in her life all this time since losing Barb.
When they’re talking in the woods, it’s not what Robin says about Steve or Jonathan that Nancy latches onto. What truly takes her aback is the realisation that Robin considers them to be friends, and both quietly, bashfully blush and smile to themselves at that confirmation. However adrift Nancy might be from her complex feelings over Jonathan and Steve or her unhealed emotional scars, she’s found an anchor in someone. However insecure Robin might feel about herself, she’s found a girl who she doesn’t have to pretend with.
And then we come to perhaps the most revealing scene of the season so far: when Eddie, Steve, Nancy and Robin are on the boat over Lover’s Lake. The parallels to Tammy Thompson are evident as Robin stares at Nancy who can’t pull her eyes away from Steve, and the way in which the camera focuses on the two characters in the frame imparts so much more than Robin simply being happy for the rekindled feelings of her friends. Her longing expression breaking into a soft smile and the bowing of her head feels like the sad acceptance of something she believes to be unattainable for her.
Nancy demonstrates her trademark reckless abandon to protect the people she loves when she dives in to rescue Steve without hesitation after he’s pulled under, but Robin’s reaction is gut-wrenching as she cries out Nancy’s name and reaches for her. And then Robin, who beneath her snarky facade is far more scared than she likes to let on, pushes down those fears and without wasting a second moves to go after her with a sense of resigned determination. The framing of this scene, the dialogue and Maya Hawke’s performance make it clear that Robin is willingly following Nancy Wheeler into hell. As Eddie says, that’s as sure a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen.
Regardless of whether the romantic subtext is intentional or this relationship is supposed to remain strictly platonic, Nancy and Robin’s blossoming friendship is a very special one. Having swiftly dismantled their presumptions about one another, they’ve found true synergy, inspiring and pushing each other to be the best versions of themselves. In spite, or rather because of their differences, the two are slowly but surely forging a profound bond that is already one of the most charming and memorable on the show to date, and with any luck, we’ll get some meaningful and moving payoffs to their arcs together in Vol 2. Perhaps, through each other, Nancy and Robin will finally find the closure, catharsis and connection they’ve been yearning for.
Thanks so much to @meanlesbianrobin for providing the accompanying screenshots!
ryan murphy is going to hell for a lot of things, but mashing up unpretty by tlc and i feel pretty from west side story and turning it into a sapphic duet that sounds like a fleetwood mac song is absolutely not one of them
I love that the Conjuring fandom is all in agreement that while yes, the spooky ghost and demonic shit is cool, what we really love is the married middle age couple loving each other and having an actual healthy relationship.
I will also admit that I love how writers in this fandom have filled the FanFiction tags with steamy smut of the middle aged demonologist couple having a healthy sex life. I’m 95% sure that’s down to a) DILF!Patrick Wilson and b) MILF!Vera Farmiga but also the on-screen relationship is just beautiful and healthy so that definitely plays a part. Whatever the reason, truly appreciative of you all.