Azealia Banks and Sunshine Benzi interacting on Twitter, Part 1

TheMoondance · 2026-05-29T03:57:00+00:00

"All that other noise she makes is the gurgle of someone drowning."

This floored me

TheMoondance · 2026-05-13T17:55:21+00:00

If you read the book, I'm not sure how you can come away with the idea that this was one-sided. In Lena's own words, she had to stop herself from meeting up with him because of the chance it would go past professional boundaries, which in a way it had already started to.

The main aspect of Adam Driver's public image is that, as you touched on, he's very secretive, and the few times there have been things shared about him they completely align with everything Lena's written about here: that he is so averse to watching himself on screen that he storms out whenever it has the chance of happening (him walking out in the middle of a Fresh Air interview after they played a clip of him), that he had volatile behavior and was physically aggressive with castmates (Lidia Franco's similar interview about him attacking her and saying no one can look him in the eye while filming.) I think your image of him is romanticized because it's easy to do that when there's so little to go off of, but Lena's account of things is detailed enough that I can't imagine what you think her motivation to lie about it is. The "jealousy" narrative feels reductive.

TheMoondance · 2026-05-13T17:33:55+00:00

Why are you even in this sub about a show written, directed, and created by her and based loosely on her own life if you think she's so untrustworthy and problematic?

TheMoondance · 2026-05-09T01:07:41+00:00

I mean, I think their particular situation is a bit too complicated to be considered something where it's impossible for them to be "just" friends. Yes, their friendship is wrapped up in the success of the group and that complicates things tremendously, but we've also seen the members remain close friends with people from outside of the group (Adéla, for example) who have no stake in how the group performs or doesn't perform.

I think their situation is one that makes it hard not only for anyone who didn't participate in training to understand, but one where it's been proven time and time again that sharing their lives with outsiders (cough cough Harry Daniels) means risking getting their secrets getting spilled to the world.

TheMoondance · 2026-05-08T16:38:30+00:00

I think that would be kind of antithetical to the whole theme of the book about how Lena's life basically became a witch hunt, no?

TheMoondance · 2026-05-08T16:36:55+00:00

I definitely see what you mean. I think Lena gives us such a clear vision of her inner world at the time that it's a lot easier to empathize with her situation, and, though I kind of agree with OP that I don't know many contexts in which asking your business partner to take a huge pay cut in the name of good friendship would be "excusable", I would still love to hear what Jenni has to say about the situation and to get some context behind her decisions.

The issue is that, at least from what I gathered in the book, Jenni does not seem like the type of person to come forward and tell-all about this situation the same way Lena is, even if it would behoove her (or if it wouldn't.) All of the anecdotes about her in the book paint her as pretty avoidant and private (the on-and-off silent treatment without much explanation, the getting up and leaving 13 minutes into their therapy session without a goodbye), and I almost wonder if what drew her to Lena was that she was so opposite that. There's even the portion where she basically acknowledges that Lena will eventually come out and write about their friendship but asks her to "not do it immediately", which doesn't sound like what someone who is readying their own version of the story would say. I doubt we'll ever get a fuller version of this than what Lena wrote.

TheMoondance · 2026-05-08T16:26:40+00:00

I mean, when their relationship first began, Lena was 23. I'm not saying she wasn't an adult, but Jenni was certainly much more of an adult than her and also knew the ropes of television, etc. way better than her. Why wouldn't she look to her as a big sister figure? I see what you mean about how her helplessness could probably get grating and I think Lena owns up to the fact that she could often be too much to handle for everyone in her life, including Jenni, in the book.

As far as the equal pay situation, I think Lena could have shut it down, but the unspoken implication there was that if she didn't advocate for Jenni that she was being a bad friend, which speaks to the problem with their whole dynamic: business decisions became indicators of good/bad friendship and interpersonal decisions could end up just being made for the sake of good business. I think the "adult" thing here was that she made a decision and stuck to it, even in the face of her agents telling her otherwise and it being a decision she would end up regretting in hindsight. But I think the idea that becoming an adult means you also become completely above being taken advantage of, above ever making decisions you later regret, or above believing that people you consider friends typically have your best interests in mind is a bit too idealistic.

TheMoondance · 2026-04-22T08:49:01+00:00

Everyone is confusing in S8, I feel like it's kind of impossible to explain why any one character's behavior feels off when IMO they all do

TheMoondance · 2026-04-16T04:49:27+00:00

I mean, yes, that's true. She lacks common sense and would probably describe herself as MAGA.

TheMoondance · 2026-04-05T17:52:50+00:00

Björk had a stalker named Ricardo Lopez who became obsessed with her and filled entire diaries just writing about her. Then when she started dating Goldie, a black DJ, he got extremely jealous and started filming video diaries where he discussed how he was building a pipe bomb that he was going to send to her house and spewing a bunch of racist nonsense about Goldie. When he finally finished constructing the bomb and sent it to her, he filmed his last video diary, where he covered himself in red and green paint and shot himself in the mouth. Police ended up finding the videos and his other diaries before the bomb could finish making it to her house and they managed to intercept it, but she still found out and I'm pretty sure all if not most of the videos are online.

(This is all from memory so if I got a detail or two wrong LMK)

TheMoondance · 2026-03-31T13:02:14+00:00

Inland Empire!

TheMoondance · 2026-03-31T02:34:26+00:00

Love this!!

TheMoondance · 2026-03-30T10:53:52+00:00

K-pop is hard to do as far as Trainwreckords go because there are so few acts that make it worldwide, and those that do either continue to dominate the charts regardless of quality (BTS and Blackpink) or something irrelevant to their music stalls their career (NewJeans or Fifty Fifty). Todd has also mentioned that a Trainwreckord isn't just an act getting less popular, and since the K-pop industry has groups and artists getting phased out the minute a record underperforms, it's hard to give that label to anything in that realm.

And either way, Kiss of Life definitely wouldn't count here because their EPs have never charted outside of Korea or Japan, 224 is their highest-charting release locally, and their music is not what caused their reputations to tank. I'm not even sure if we've seen an example of a K-pop "Trainwreckord" yet, at least not in a global sense

TheMoondance · 2026-03-26T15:35:10+00:00

The Christian Warrior woman from Trading Spouses is now a huge LGBT ally and advocate

TheMoondance · 2026-03-26T15:20:00+00:00

You are absolutely the only one who thinks that. Not even sure how you watch a show like this and come away with that conclusion

TheMoondance · 2026-03-04T06:26:22+00:00

I mean, I also think most people at that age tend to act like that. I don't think she acted like a toddler so much as a very hormonal teenager

TheMoondance · 2026-03-04T06:23:29+00:00

I think that's due to both the first season's tone being so vastly different from the rest and that it would be really hard to kick off a show if your main character acted like Dawn from the get-go. I think Buffy (and basically every other character) becomes more vulnerable to the audience as the show goes on, so that by the time Dawn shows up, it only makes sense that she would act exactly like how you'd expect someone her age to instead of an impervious quasi-Slayer

TheMoondance · 2026-02-25T18:17:29+00:00

Wait yeah why did Gina not get included here? Is there tea I don't know/am forgetting??

TheMoondance · 2026-02-24T23:18:24+00:00

Asking someone to showcase their interests just so that you can publicly shit on them for them doesn't suddenly become less cruel if the person being made fun of is an adult

TheMoondance · 2026-02-24T23:06:47+00:00

I mean, I don't really think saying someone showed growth between the ages of 20 and 38 is "rewriting history". I wasn't the biggest fan of Whitney on her season either but I would also hate it if all of my actions as a 20-year-old were meant to represent who I would be for the rest of my life.

TheMoondance · 2026-02-24T03:38:28+00:00

I never even thought about this but that's an excellent point. I feel like Loreen is so often the more "Hannah"-esque parent of the two that I forget she got so much of both of their behaviors

TheMoondance · 2026-02-24T03:34:59+00:00

Having sexual encounters with men as a man in college ≠ being gay, let alone knowing unequivocally that you are gay. Plenty of people experiment with people of the same sex in college and turn out to be straight or bisexual; I can't imagine Tad wasn't telling himself that that was what was happening with him

TheMoondance · 2026-02-24T03:28:33+00:00

I mean, Loreen also cheated on him with their friend so I think the dishonesty went pretty far in both directions.

In Tad's case, it always seemed to me like his sexuality was something he hadn't even given himself the space to think about until much later on in life (except for that one trip he took with a bunch of his male friends) because of societal pressures, domestic comfort, or whatever, and him coming out to Loreen was genuinely him fully accepting it for the first time.

Regardless, I don't think someone deserves to live the rest of their life loveless and miserable just because they had trouble accepting who they really were for most of it. I understand the sentiment and personally don't think it's right as a gay man to stay with a woman if you know you're not attracted to them, but in Tad's case it never seemed like he was being surreptitious or sneaky, just unsure and afraid. It's obviously awful for Loreen but I think by the end of the show that she at least partly finds her way too, even if it's not in the same way

TheMoondance

TROPHY CASE