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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3793 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 14, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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My wife had me watch a random episode of Bridgerton, and I think I hated it more than anything I'd ever watched in my life.

For starters, the entire episode was premised on how this fetal alcohol syndrome looking short fat lady was so desirable and attractive to all these young handsome rich gentlemen. I couldn't verify she has fetal alcohol syndrome... but I did verify the actress is Irish. And oh god, the sausage finger. The short, stubby, Wall-E style sausage fingers. On an actual human being.

The episode kicked off with about 30 scenes in 30 minutes of about a 3 or 4 lines each. It was horrific. I felt like I was watching a TikTok doomscroll, and when I said this, my wife pointed out the title of the episode was literally "Tick Tock". I remember when I was watching Better Call Saul I was so impressed with how much they let a scene breath. An episode might only really have 4 or 5 scenes, but my god how they built up, and each one communicated an important insight into a character, even if it didn't move the plot forward in a concrete way. This was the antithesis of that, and it wounded me on a deep, spiritual level.

Then it got to the sex scene, where the aforementioned Ms Piggy got plowed, and it was horrific. I cannot believe they put that nude body to film, those bloated shapeless tits splayed out on those portly stomach rolls. I felt like I was watching beastiality. Especially with the attempts to beautify and romanticize it. The Black Mirror episode where an MP literally had sex with a pig was less disgusting.

All in all my wife had a wonderful time watching me suffer through her trashy romance show. She started the next episode while I shook it off, went upstairs to shower, and then sat down to finish Crime and Punishment. Which I did, and it was fantastic.

Started watching BCS because of this post. I'll watch the 2nd episode tonight but probably won't manage more than a couple a week.

I also came back to this thread to add that I just came across this...weird...Reddit post just now. Here it is (I was scrolling /r/all if you must know). It's bizarre that everyone is being so insistent about how good-looking the actress is. The circling of the wagons around "Ms Piggy" kind of give the whole game away.

I wish I could wrap my mind around that. Is it performative? Is it a fetish? Or have these people been subjected to so much demoralization propaganda that they now worship ugliness and degeneracy? That they've been pavlovian trained to wound themselves spiritually on uglification?

Is it performative?

My theory is yes, it is performative.

It's a way of ostentatiously showing in-group solidarity by demonstrating you know what things ought to be lauded. This will get you a lot of praise from the in-group. Add on some very stylistic expression of praise for "the correct thing to like" (i.e. the whole "crab legs" thing) and now you get a bonus for creative expression of solidarity.

The first rule of reddit since around 2018 has been that if the post is a matter of opinion and is massively upvoted, it's probably an ill-conceived and kneejerk adherence to the most stereotypical, un-nuanced progressive norms. If the same is true but it is a matter of fact, the upvoted post may or may not be true but will have no sourced links as support. Reddit has lost all credibility for me except niche DIY subs or anything related to anything practical, where bad advice is usually immediately called out as such.

Better Call Saul had some of the best cinematography I've ever seen on a TV set. The way they used visual cues to tell the story was almost unmatched.

The first two seasons of Better Call Saul were a masterpiece of noir writing and film-making that was on par with or exceeded anying Breaking Bad had done, CMV.

Channeling the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight:

I can't baby, because you're not!

Its a deep cut and i like it ;-)

I've never watched Bridgerton, dislike the premise and the genre overall, and now, after Googling the actress, have a serious beef with her for breaking out that dumb old canard, "people in The Past had no hygiene," in a public interview.

But if I'm reading your comment right, you're saying that you watched an episode of a comedy TV show that:

  • featured a female protagonist played by an actress whom you found facially and physically unattractive
  • implied that in its fantasy historical setting, with many other social factors at play, several high-status men were interested in marrying this character
  • showed this person having sex
  • also had many very short scenes, in an episode specifically stylized and labelled as a riff on TikTok videos

and that on those grounds, you were filled with rage and "hated it more than anything [you'd] watched in your life"?

Then it got to the sex scene, where the aforementioned Ms Piggy got plowed, and it was horrific.

Well, no. Nuclear war is horrific. ALS and prion diseases are horrific. Whatever is being experienced by any remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza is horrific. But this... - what should we call it? how should we describe this body? is it a portent of disease and disability, an abdication of potential, or is it a body into which is inscribed a steadfast refusal to press oneself into a form that would be more conducive to capitalist-utilitarian labor? - this body cannot be horrific unless the image of such a body occupies a particularly peculiar position in your libidinal economy.

Nonetheless if it does occupy such a position for you, then that is still in a certain sense commendable, as a form of taking responsibility for one's own horrorscape. The root of any experience that could be properly called "aesthetic" is the determination to find what is most uncanny in what is most familiar. If you did indeed experience the uncanny in such an otherwise innocuous stimulus, then the film, as well as your particular receptive experience of it, was a success.

what should we call it?

pre Wall-e nirvana

What bothered me most about Bridgerton was the love interest storyline where Queen Charlotte at court plays matchmaker and tries to set up Daphne (daughter of a Viscount) with a Prussian royal prince (not an heir but presumably legitimate), described as the Queen's nephew. What bananas, crazy-town balderdash, nonsense. I think Daphne could be believable be a mistress or a morganatic second-wife to an older Prince, but what is portrayed in the show is nonsense. If the conventions of Royals only marry other Royals is out the window then what is point of a Regency setting? This bothered me so much I never had any interest in the later seasons at all.

Couple this scene with the one where Daphne's eldest brother tearfully gives up his actress girlfriend. As if he, a bachelor with rakish tendencies and a titled Viscount with his presumably own inherited fortune lacks the freewill to break convention here is odd coupled with my earlier gripe. The more likely scenario being that he would try and marry for money but keep the actress as a mistress and have a second family.

The structure and content sounds terrible, but the actress you're talking about seems...fine? It's Piglet from Derry Girls. The quality of guys chasing her is probably fantastical/farcical, but you're really catastrophising a chubby woman existing on TV.

I'm on Coil's side here. It's...a choice.

It's a weird choice, sure. But it's not something which merits the seething hate on display here. I don't want to watch fat people bang either, but I just don't watch. It's not a big deal.

It's not a big deal.

to you, and if true you will leave the thread for greener pastures; for everyone else here like Coil it's a sign of the current demoralization campaign through adoration of the ugly and decadent.

Don't be so dramatic. There's no such thing taking place.

hmm, so you are on step one of the Narcissist Prayer.

This actress is not merely chubby. Chubby I can handle. It was a combination of being chubby, short stubby limbs disproportionate to her torso, and a face/skull verging on deformed. It felt like I was watching some fetish video of someone taking advantage of someone with a chromosomal disability. It looked like evidence of a crime.

To be fair, just about anything looks amateurish and gratingly simple when compared to Better Call Saul.

I had no familiarity with the cast or the chonker in question, but the Wiki is hilarious:

In 2018, while Coughlan was appearing on stage in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at London's Donmar Warehouse, she wrote a piece for the Guardian calling out unfair scrutiny of women's bodies in theatre criticism.[24][33][34] In the following year, she made headlines again for rebutting the Daily Mirror's comment on her 2019 British Academy Television Awards look: "Not the most flattering". She tweeted "I mean incorrect @DailyMirror I look smokin’, sorry bout it".[24] Following the 2021 Golden Globe Awards, she retorted against other comments on her weight on Twitter.[35]

Personally, I am completely lacking the ability to feign confidence about my worst traits.

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