#spiderverse spoilers

Cool story and all but lack of consent much? “Marry me or die!” If the genders were swapped there would be rants about sexism and being forced into marriage. Smh

Thank god I wasn’t the only one to think about it

So I’ve seen a handful of comments like this on this post, and people can have their own opinions etc etc but that also means that I get to have an opinion about your opinions! and my opinion is that you’re* completely wrong and I’m going to tell you why

*this is a generic you, not the above posters specifically, their nonsense just happens to be at the top of my activity page and has therefore been chosen as the default sample

OKAY so there are two main reasons why the above criticism is not the scalding tea you* seem to think it is (and is in fact powdered Crystal Light that’s only partially dissolved in lukewarm bathwater), and the first one is

1) the ‘omg this is problematic/abusive’ argument, which I’m going to call Reading Comprehension Failure, because, my good personages, did you read the fcking thing? at all? The Berkshire Lady does not in fact force this dude to do ANYTHING! She challenges him to a duel which he shows up for! Willingly! One might even say consensually! He came to the grove ready and WILLING to have a fight with someone! And when she made her counter offer she wasn’t holding her sturdy rapier to his throat? she didn’t have goons holding his arms? 

All she did was say ‘either go through with the fight–the prearranged fight that you knowingly signed on for when you showed up–or marry me instead!’ and then she walked away for an hour to let him think about it! He could have chosen to fight. He could have gone home. He even had a buddy to back him up, while the Berkshire Lady doesn’t have any companion mentioned in the ballad at all. Gentle reader! this is not what coercion looks like! 

2) Now I’m going to address the second argument, the ‘this isn’t actually progressive’/’just imagine if a MAN did this’, which I think of as Y’all Don’t Know Anything About Ballads. Because the POWER SWITCH IS WHY THIS BALLAD IS RAD AS FUCK. Flipping the power dynamics IS progressive, especially in this ballad from approximately 1709ish. 

More than one person has tossed out the ‘imagine if this was about a man forcing himself on a woman! then you’d see!’ but my dear people, I don’t have to imagine because there is literally an entire extensive subgenre of ballads that are specifically about men coming across women alone and taking advantage of them. Often they steal a Symbolically Significant Piece of Clothing, or sometimes a Symbolically Significant Food/Crop Item, but we ALL KNOW WHAT IT REALLY MEANS except maybe the people who failed the reading comprehensive don’t so I’ll clarify, the theft of the whatever = rape. This is such a big subgenre of ballads that Terry Pratchett does a whole bit about it in Monstrous Regiment, because Sir Terry knew what was UP. 

So yeah, I can compare, and now we’re getting to the really juicy bit, the really Fuck Yeah This is Subversive stuff, BECAUSE The Berkshire Lady’s Garland aka Wife or Knife is sung to the tune of another ballad, a ballad called The Royal Forester. 

And The Royal Forester is a jolly little ditty that is LITERALLY about a guy meeting a woman in the woods, ‘robbing her of her maidenhead’, and then refusing to tell her his name before riding off and leaving her. She figures out who he is, takes her case to the king, the king says ‘oh oops, well we’ll find him and if he’s married, we’ll hang him! but if he’s single, he’ll marry you’. And the twist ending of that ballad is that the Earl’s daughter ends up married to the blacksmith’s son, ha ha what a good joke. ha ha. 

I mean, fuck that, right? So yeah, you take the tune of THAT ballad and slap this new narrative on it, this story about a badass woman of wealth and independence choosing her own husband based on her own desire even though he’s significantly below her social station, proposing to him in the most ridiculously badass way, marrying him without revealing her beauty or wealth, and then trolling him as her first married act? 

YEAH. IT IS IN FACT SUBVERSIVE AF

And bonus point 3) This ballad is about an independent woman acting on her own desires, including (VERY clearly if you read the actual ballad) her sexual desires! That’s a cool thing that we don’t see very often, women in control of their identities and tuned into their desires AND valuing those desires. 

IN CONCLUSION the Berkshire Lady was a top and y’all can’t handle her

no I don’t accept constructive criticism

THANK YOU for coming to my ted talk

good DAY

Originally posted by rrrick

So where is the “why”? Is my phone glitching or did you just not post it yet?

There’s a whole long post here, idk I can see it just fine

I mean, we literally have research that says this. With TV it works because shows are DESIGNED to have segues/scenes where advertising can go, so we perceive it as less disruptive. You can’t just drop advertising in any old where. Shockingly, people fucking HATE that.

I feel like Reeves is one of the few genuinely good people left in the world of celebrities

To my understanding Reeves lives in a nice but relatively small apartment and only keeps enough of his paychecks from each movie to live comfortably, maintain a cushion, and take the occasional vacation, and then he just gives the rest away without fanfare to people who need that money. He’s living the kind of lifestyle I feel like a lot of us would be happy to have with access to that kind of money.

Please watch this video

PLEASE WATCH THIS VIDEO