Yeah, I liked the implication that Finn isn’t just one faction, like Rebellion or Jedi, but the face of the war itself. It matches my own thesis that Finn goes beyond group affiliation and is his own man.
I knew Finn was initially a white character named Sam, but I didn’t know Poe (or “John Doe” in the early stages–I wonder if “Poe” came from “Doe” lmao) was Black! I’m really glad Finn was ultimately cast as a Black character and Poe was nonblack, for all the fandom mess that ensued. I’m also REALLY glad they ditched the plot with Finn/Sam being “reborn” through a tribal ritual on Jakku. This is why it’s important to question top-of-the-head thinking and go deeper, I think, because the stuff floating at the top of your head is predudice and cliché a lot of the time. Also glad we never got the “Doom Star.”
I’m not sure what crack some of those kink alpha/omega nuts are smoking, but hey, that racist juice gotta em tripping.
Gaston is meant to be a dumb, funny, sexist parody of Disney princes for kids. It’s a kids movie! I mean, yeah it’s a Walt Disney kids movies so it’s still dark as fuck, but he was meant to be funny. Not some…whatever the fuck some people turned him into.
I mean if you guys are looking for a complete monster who was borderline a rapist and racist, and probably the worst piece of garbage ever to grace the Disney screen, just look at Frollo from the hunchback of Notre Dame… seriously besides having the coolest and most epic villain song ever, dude is freaking Satan.
Seriously, if you can find a worst Disney villain than this, damn. He is like OG evil.
Gaston is more like a sexist dumbass who was trying to keep furries out of his town, which is kind of understandable.
But then again he was played by Wolverine… maybe he was an undercover furry.
And on Broadway he’s just a dork.
But seriously if people are legitimately comparing Gaston to Poe or especially Finn! Then you motherfuckers are crazy.
But here’s a Finnrey AU: Anastasia
And for the Reylows:
Don’t act surprised…we all knew it’d come to this
I will say though that the Kylo Ren Gaston parody songs are the funniest things I’ve ever heard
Thanks to @naemerydae who inspired this sithpost
Y’all Frolo is fucking terrifying. I love the hunchback of Notre Dame so much, I watch it all the time. This dude literally told Esmeralda to surrender herself as a sex slave to him or burn. My girl said “guess I’ll die”.
We stan Esmeralda
Rey pretty much made the same choice. Ren offered to be her teacher, and she knew if she surrendered he would take her off-planet, saving her life. Knowing this she still beat his ass just so she could literally lie down to die with Finn.
Spoilers for Seven Seconds below the cut in reply to @atoffandhisbobby, discussing the ending of Season 1 and characters.
Yes, I groaned out loud. It was not unexpected but it was still a letdown that stayed uncomfortably with me, as it was meant to. It also contradicted prior information as far as I could tell, because I thought the charge carried 5-10 years on conviction? The show’s treatment of the law was confusing toward the end, I’ll have to rewatch to see if I missed something. I mean I was also caring for a rowdy toddler while the show was on, I certainly could have missed a few things.
I thought KJ and Nadine were meant to be clear parallels, both troubled young women with substance abuse issues who Fish was effectively fathering. I can understand if people don’t like that KJ, who is a grownup professional and fully acts it in pivotal scenes (her standoffs with Hennessy are like… wow), is portrayed like a little girl at heart who needs a caring father. I nevertheless thought it was a moving depiction of how emotional neglect/abuse can stunt internal growth and trauma can cause people to regress.
You can also see KJ start to rely less on Fish toward the end, telling him he has done his job and he has to let her do hers, gaining more and more maturity with a new sense of purpose and conviction. Fish having to hold up KJ, sometimes literally, was a refreshing dynamic too because he is clearly her helper and support and not the other way around. I think the next time they meet it’ll be more as equals, which is one of the many reasons I want Season 2 and hopefully more. My biggest reason is wanting the cop gang to go down burning, of course.
Growing up in an abusive household is a fucking trip dude……If you’ve never had someone angrily wash a dish at you or fold a sock in your direction then how are you gonna understand why I get nervous when you quietly do the laundry, or why I ask “are you mad at me?” when you set the bag of groceries down too hard? It’s a totally different way of living and it impacts you long after you’ve left the situation.
This is so important.
Abused kids speak a language you can’t learn
I think a lot of people misinterpret this post to mean that folding a sock angrily at you is abusive, and that’s not what it means at all. The fear abused kids feel at this kind of behavior is a conditioned response because we know what comes after. Its about sitting there terrified and waiting for when they will snap.
This is actually a symptom of PTSD, which is more common among child abuse victims than modern veterans
I still don’t get what this Seven Seconds negative anon (link) was talking about. Maybe it’s because I’m not Black and don’t have the same perspective, but I thought the show was very good overall and I loved KJ’s character to the end. The whole show has ungodly amounts of pain and heartbreak, that is true, given its subject matter. It is not an easy watch. I cried a lot through it, especially during Latrice’s and Isaiah’s scenes, and hugged and kissed my child throughout. It may well be unwatchable and retraumatizing for many members of the U.S. Black audience, which is why I hope nonblack and international audiences will support it all the more.
That said, unless I’m given more insight I’m going to stand by my stance that “torture porn” is a deeply unfair characterization. The ending of Season 1 was actually more hopeful and healing than I’d been dreading, though the journey of grief is never a straightforward one and I hope there will be a Season 2 and beyond for more complexities to emerge even as the characters progress. There is unbelievable pain, yes, but the show doesn’t wallow in it and portrays the characters worst affected as dignified and resilient while also showing them to be messy and human.
As for KJ, follow me below the cut so I can fistfight anon with spoilers.
Why wouldn’t I like KJ after watching the whole thing? She is and remains an amazing character! Yes, she is not the best lawyer as she herself admitted, and she probably did a lot of damage to an already difficult case by humiliating herself in court, getting her bad moments on film, and being removed from court just before closing. She’s a highly flawed character, that’s been established from her very first appearance.
And you know what? I loved that about her. She didn’t give up. No matter how many times she got knocked down, no matter how many mistakes she made, she just got up and kept punching and punching until she eked out a kind of underwhelming victory, legally speaking, but still a victory. She wrecked her career to do the right thing, as did Fish. If she hadn’t gotten Teresa to blurt out the location of the grill Jablonski would have walked scott free.
Arguably her biggest victories were out of court, though. She talked Latrice into cooperating instead of trying kill Jablonski, a quest that would have destroyed Latrice and her family. Though the sentence was underwhelming (and, though I may have missed something, contradictory–I thought the automobile manslaughter conviction came with a mandatory 5-10 sentence?), having the truth come out in court was still healing for Latrice. Both Teresa and Marie ditched their demon cop men. The cop gang showed their hand and killed a young white girl. These developments will have important implications for Season 2 and beyond (please let there be a Season 2).
Was I supposed to dislike KJ because of the children who starved to death after KJ arrested their brother? Again, I might not be impacted the same way as Black audiences, and I understand if people hate her. Nobody hated her for it more than KJ herself. Fish, who had always been sympathetic to her or at least amused by her antics, was horrified and called her out on feeling sorry for herself. He couldn’t even bear to be in the same car with her, and I might have reacted the same. It also put KJ’s behavior in so much more persective, though I can see if some people see it as excessive.
That said, I find it believable that it happened without any malice on her part given how deeply fucked up the legal system and the associated social services are. It wasn’t the assistant attorney’s job to check up on any dependants a defendant might have. The arrested youg man probably told someone or tried to tell someone and it got dropped, or no one heard him out in the first place. Handling situations like this requires clear lines of information and cooperation across different parts of bureacracy, and that clearly broke down in this case.
KJ was, in other words, taking on the guilt of a broken and racist system because no one else would. Could she have checked? Yes, and maybe the children would have lived. But the thing was, it’s like trying to stop a broken dam with your own body. One person’s diligence can’t make up for a system that is meant to work with thousands of people working together.
This scene, furthermore, was meant to be in clear contrast with Jablonski and DiAngelo’s earlier scene where DiAngelo told Jablonski he was a good man and that trying to keep that self-image of himself was breaking him. (The closing statement, of course, shows that Jablonski was anything but.) Here we have two men who won’t even accept the consequences of their own action, and on the other hand we have KJ who hates herself for not having gone above and beyond. The episode is asking, who’s the actual good person? What does being a good person or a bad person even mean?
So no, I don’t hate KJ, though I don’t blame others if they do. I love her, flaws and all, and I want to give her a hug. She owned up to her mistakes, she came back and back and back in the face of humilitaion and knockdown and tragedy, and she won a profound and difficult victory that may seem piteous at too high a cost but is a part of something bigger.
Spoilers for Seven Seconds, Episode 8.
What are they doing hiring one lawyer for four co-defendants?! Is this how they go with cop cases? There are such serious conflict of interest issues with one attorney representing two or more co-defendants who may at any point want to testify against each other or strike a separate deal with the D.A.
I understand that cops in the U.S. are practically unprosecutable and that’s why they have the confidence to do this, especially when the case concerns the death of a Black boy they’re demonizing as a gangster. But does the New Jersey Bar Association have any Thoughts about clients being pressured to waive their objections to the conflict, potentially sacrificing more advantageous plea deals?
I guess not. Because again, they’re cops, and as long as they don’t turn on each other they’re bulletproof. I bet they’re plenty happy customers too. Now I think Latrice had the right idea and Jablonski at least should have been made to pay with a bullet between the eyes. It looks like the only way anyone can get justice against police in the U.S.
I finished the first season of Seven Seconds and I loved it! There were a lot of twists and turns that gripped me, and the characters, particularly K.J. Harper the young assistant attorney character and Latrice Butler, mother of the slain teenager Brenton Butler, had amazing arcs. Joe “Fish” Rinaldi, the cop with a conscience, was solidly lovable as K.J.’s helper and replacement dad, while Isaiah, Brenton’s father, had a profound character arc of his own that moved me deeply. The villain characters Jablonski and DiAngelo had complex emotions and relationships, too, while still being vile human beings. They also blatantly left unfinished business for another season, and I really hope there will be one because this is good stuff.
If you’re looking for a well-produced and well-written, suspenseful social/legal drama with excellent acting and unforgettable characters, particularly with Black women’s personal journeys squarely centered, try this one out. It is not an easy show to watch and I imagine it’s even more so for Black viewers, but it swept me along with the narrative and characters and I personally enjoyed it.
L.J.'s Obsessions 