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Reality is almost always wrong

@serricoj / serricoj.tumblr.com

serrico on LJ/DW | Jayne L on the AO3 | @serricoj@fanglitch.space on Mastodon
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otw july 2 board meeting: what the hell was that

so the otw (@transformativeworks) board had their Q2 meeting yesterday, which was highly anticipated given everything that's gone down in the past months:

  • the @end-otw-racism campaign demanding action from otw on their own commitments made three years ago to better address racist harassment in otw and on ao3 (btw, support end otw racism's current campaign #Vote To End OTW Racism!)
  • recent revelations about how otw has mistreated its volunteers, regarding azarias and how the org reacted after the CSEM attacks on volunteers last year, as well as how the policy & abuse committee (PAC) is overworked and treated by the legal commitee overall (documented here)...
  • ...and ongoing mistreatment of chinese, chinese diaspora, and chinese-speaking volunteers, particularly regarding an incident last year that put volunteers in mainland china at risk, and the board's recent unilateral decision to close the otw weibo account without input from the weibo account leads or any chinese-speaking volunteers
  • the AI shit

and probably more that i've missed, honestly. so! this is my summary of the meeting, focusing mostly on the issues related to racism; i have screenshots of the whole meeting but will at this point only share those i find most relevant/interesting! alt text will be included for every screenshot in the image, not below it.

and hold on, because this is going to be LONG!

Stolen shamelessly from other people’s posts because I wanna talk about GK and I don’t wanna wait for somebody to ask me about it:

✨ let's play 10 Qs for GK! 🎆

1- fave character besides harvey/twoface? Duela! At the beginning of the show I expected to be annoyed by the “Joker’s Daughter” ~zaniness~. But as the season progressed, Duela was given plenty of material to show that the “Joker’s Daughter” stuff was often more a facade she played up than who she was as a person, and she had plenty of feelings and insecurities hidden beneath. And the actress never missed a step: she nailed every bit of outrageousness AND every hint at deeper emotions. She was great throughout.

2- fave harvey/twoface scene? A tie between Harvey waking up in Rebecca’s bed with no fucking idea how he got there and freaking out about it (because MISERY AND TRAUMA :D :D :D) and Harvey’s speech to Duela in the finale (because OH, HARVEY; OH, DUELA; AWW FEELINGS).

3- fave dynamic between 2 characters? HARPHANIE, because they’re so frickin’ sweet together. Although Carrie and Duela are a close second, especially because of how much fun it was anytime they teamed up and had to deal with their polar opposite vigilante styles.

4- best character development? My first thought was to say Brody, because he was initially presented as a boilerplate Dumb Jock Antagonist but ended the season a firm Good Guy and staunch member of the team. But character-wise, despite his teenage-boy rivalry with Turner, he was shown to be a generally decent kid pretty early on, so it was less that his character developed over the course of the season than it was that his role in the show changed. Therefore, I think Stephanie had the best character development. She started the show relatively sheltered, disagreeing with her parents but dutiful-daughtering her way through life, and lending logistical and tech support to the team but not getting into the action on the ground; she ended the show in the thick of the action with actual fighting skills, spectacularly on the outs with her family, and having realised she’s into girls. I believe the technical term is “a glow-up”.

5- most memorable line? “Sorry, ‘Sharper’?” “What? ‘HARPHANIE’?”

6- fave plot twist? Mr The Joker is...not the father.

7- what did you think of twoface? I...liked what it looked like they were doing with him ‘round about mid-season more than I liked what they actually ended up doing with him. Specifically, I liked the idea that Two Face was something the Court had done to Harvey; I was less into the revelation that Two Face had existed in Harvey his whole life. HOWEVER, I do really like that Two Face is Duela’s biological father, and I can’t have that plot twist if Harvey and Two Face weren’t timesharing their body all along, so. I forbear. Also, I really liked the scene-and-a-half we got of scarred-up Two Face at the end, so I am disappointed that we won’t get to see where that goes.

8- something you loved about the creation/design? “How will the audience be able to identify that these cityscape establishing shots are Gotham?” “Hmm, how about we CG a big ol’ ZEPPELIN into the sky?” “Yeah, that should do it.”

9- anything you would change about the season 1 plot or characters? I wish they’d handled Rebecca a little differently. I called that she was the real head of the Court of Owls pretty early on, partly because they were trying so hard to make her seem so passive and damsel-in-distress that her whole thing just ended up screaming FEMME FATALE. (See also: her wardrobe.) I think they could've given her much more of an actual personality from the start, especially in light of the second reveal--which I had not called in advance and is just the right flavour of ridiculous--that she is in fact Dr Leviticus, 200-year-old mad scientist working on perfecting immortality. I just feel like, if they'd put her in jeans once or twice and shown her enjoying a hobby that wasn't sleeping with Harvey's dissociated identity, the first twist would have felt less inevitable, and the second twist would’ve felt more impactful from a characterization POV.

10- what did you think of the season 2 setup? I like that the Knights as an ensemble were poised to continue their vigilante work in addition to whatever soapy melodrama they got up to in their personal lives. I REALLY liked that Two Face was positioned to perhaps be the s2 Big Bad, which would probably lead to Duela having to convince the other Knights that they can’t just fight Two Face, they also have to try to get Harvey back. But as far as the cliffhanger’s concerned: meh. Despite a game performance by the actor, Turner was the epitome of Unremarkable White Dude and absolutely the most boring character in the show. I’m glad that the only actual cliffhanger we were left with was about him, because that means I don’t actually care that we’ll never get a resolution.

💌 thanks for sharing the love! #GothamKnights 🦇💋