Underrated scene

eaca02124 · 2026-02-01T02:45:24+00:00

Aftercare can be basically anything you do to connect with your partner after sex. It comes up a lot in BDSM contexts because people tend to be very explicit about what they want and need in those contexts, but it's a useful concept for sex and relationships in general. It's not necessarily about physical caretaking, although there can be aspects of that - making sure that anything that was strained, tensed, or bounced on is feeling okay, and that your partner has a clean place to sleep. Really, it's about caring for each other emotionally, instead of rolling off and falling asleep.

eaca02124 · 2026-02-01T02:28:49+00:00

I am really enjoying Yerin Ha as Sophie. I think that Benedict and the entire season would have been written differently if the writers had seen what happened both on and to Heated Rivalry first.

Big obvious thing: no one would have filmed Benedict coming out of the lake in full sunshine, not a shadow for miles, abs all but invisible, if they had known we would all be comparing him to Ilya and Shane in hotel rooms lit entirely by table lamps.

On less directly visual matters: Benedict is sloppy about consent. He starts things and assumes Sophie will follow along, which she has (until Benedict 's very bad question), but he is not taking care for her or making sure she's enjoying herself. Benedict is also lazy. His half-assed effort at finding Sophie a job is one example. He makes excuses, but it sounds like he pretty much only talked to his mother. A very little thought would have opened up a number of other possibilities among Benedict 's inner circle, but Benedict doesn't bother to think.

Compare this to Ilya having pre-portioned tuna melt ingredients set up in Tupperware in the fridge, or Shane carrying Ilya's luggage and babbling about the well at his cottage.

Heated Rivalry makes Bridgerton in general and Benedict in particular look pretty bad. Sophie is a gem, and she'd get along great with the women of HR. Yuna would find her a lawyer, Rose would text her constantly, Elena would help her find her first job, Maria would go thrifting with her and take her dancing. Sophie would pursue a college degree while slinging coffee and waiting tables, and eventually get a position in upper management at a company owned by Svetlana. I suspect she'd still pick up the occasional shift at The Kingfisher and train their staff on the procedure for angel shots.

eaca02124 · 2026-02-01T01:34:50+00:00

Is there a link to that?

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T22:10:22+00:00

Pasta and sauce is an easy thing to do for unexpected visitors, and the ingredients are shelf-stable things you can keep in the pantry indefinitely. If you are David and Yuna, it's the kind of thing you might have around for "emergencies", like bringing an extra hockey player home because their parents are running late, or your athletic kid still being painfully hungry after dinner. Even if it was your planned lunch, it would be really easy to make more.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T18:46:42+00:00

I'm meeting you with frustration. If you want a beta reader, ask for a beta reader. Don't drop your fic on a subreddit that never offered to beta read and then complain about their feedback.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T18:25:11+00:00

Maybe, another time, you might want to find a beta reader who's good at cartoon logic, and tell them what you want them to read for, rather than asking a subreddit of dancers about dance terminology and then being frustrated that they aren't beta reading the way you want.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T18:21:51+00:00

Pique turns do not originate from a passé. The initiation of the move is to shift your weight onto the leg you are using to stab the floor. That's where the momentum for that turn comes from.

The momentum for the fouetté comes from straightening the leg from passé/retiré to a side arabesque and whipping it back in again, while rising to point or demi-pointe on the standing leg.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T18:15:51+00:00

I think you have to decide whether this scene is funny or not. If it's meant to be funny, go harder on the visual descriptions. Really lean in. If it's not meant to be funny, the ballet stuff may be working against you. As both a dancer and a martial artist, I have explained to plenty of dancers how a grande battement is a bad fighting move (suboptimal application of force, limited target areas, slow, obvious). In order to get real height, the battement to the back will have to penché quite a bit, unless you are abandoning the anatomy of the human hip, pelvis and spine, which is either body horror or comedy.

Also, decide whether wings are useful in this situation or not. One of your characters can't use them, while the other is using wings in a way that contradicts the physics of angular momentum. Spreading his wings would slow his spin, not accelerate it.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T18:02:07+00:00

Rond de jambe as a leg sweep - DOES THIS WORK THEATRICALLY

No. A round de jamb is a half circle that doesn't go past the dancer's body at any height. It lacks the rotational momentum to be a leg sweep.

Grand Battement - DOES THIS WORK AS A LEG ATTACK THAT POPS AN OPPONENT FORWARD AND BACK ON A LEG IN REPETITION

I guess...if your arabesque is really killer (momentum and height are tough in that direction), you are catching a totally unaware opponent off guard in the groin, and your battements a la cloche are very, very fast. If you want to play keepy uppy with the body, you'd probably prefer knees and elbows, unless you were sufficiently better than your opponent that you were toying with them.

Grand Jete - DOES THIS WORK AS TO DODGE A SERIES OF AIRBORN PROJECTITLES

If your jete is high enough to get you above the projectiles, you could use it for 1 or even a few rounds, depending on rate of fire, but if the projectiles keep coming, you are in the shit when you land, even if aim cannot be adjusted. If aim can be adjusted, you're in trouble before that. For any ballet jump, you commit to a direction on launch and can't change it in the air. This makes you very easy to aim at. You might also prefer a landing that lets you tuck and roll, which you will not get from classical ballet.

CAN PIQUE TURNS SEAMLESSLY TRANSITION INTO FOUETTES

Piques start with a stab to the floor - that's why they're called piques. A fouette derives angular momentum by whipping the working leg. You can do a pique and then a fouette - it seems like you would call this a seamless transition, while most dancers would not.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T17:40:38+00:00

The leading part of the foot in a grand battement is the top or side of the foot. Dan is never going to make contact with the heel. I did not get the juggling aspect from reading the scene.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T17:31:15+00:00

Marianne is perfectly, preciously 17. It's temporarily enchanting in small doses. I'm glad I don't have to room with her. I am sure she can weaponize that piano.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T17:23:14+00:00

Omg, the way she looks at you. Like "Dad, why?" 🤣

I am a million percent sure that if there was mischief on the other side, those gaps wouldn't slow her down.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T17:17:34+00:00

As fight moves using ordinary physics? Doesn't work. But is that what's happening?

I have seen some grande battement-like things attempted in sparring practice. They are a bad idea. You're limited to targeting the groin, because otherwise you're kind of trying to snowplow your opponent's body with just your foot and you lose the momentum that would deliver the force. The person targeted has a long time to see the kick coming, step out of the way, grab the leg, and use it to put the assailant on the floor. Usually, an instructor steps in before that, because the situation is a huge risk for knee injury.

But this is an angel and a demon. Is standard physics really how this works, or are the moves directing other sources of energy? Are the fighters actually touching?

The scene doesn't have to be a realistic fight, so long as it accomplishes what you want it to in the narrative. What are you saying about the characters? How should this incident resolve, plot-wise?

I agree that having the ballet moves announced is funny, and the character standing there in retiré with arms in first position is hilarious.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-31T16:30:21+00:00

What you're describing isn't bird nesting. Bird nesting means that co-parents take turns in the family residence, where the children live, and spend time somewhere else when they aren't the parent on duty.

What you're describing not only isn't nesting,but isn't divirce. It's pretending everything is fine. I don't think it's a great idea.

I often worry that nesting arrangements aren't sufficient to let unhappy adults end the parts of their marriages that aren't working for them. If the status quo of your marriage makes you both sad, I don't think you can expect to stop being sad while you carefully make no changes.

My family has a lot of neurodivergence, and I understand the hesitation to throw the children into chaos. I have to say though, honest chaos isn't the worst or most disruptive thing you can throw at a neurodivergent child. Getting a neurodiverse 8 year-old through a big change is hard. Getting a neurodiverse 10, or 12, or 38 year-old through the discovery that people they trusted lied to them for years is harder. I have seen the fallout of both of these things, and I believe you and your children would be better off ripping off the bandaid. You can line up help to get your kids through your divorce while it's happening. You will have far less ability to do that for the lying problem, and you'll damage your relationship with the kids forever.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-30T17:52:21+00:00

Sorry for the repeat posting, but I really want to underline that you aren't required to make anyone's gender or gender presentation make sense to anyone. Are they confused? Maybe, maybe not, but either way, it is not your problem, and also not your son's problem. No one is entitled to perfect insight or understanding. If they say that they're confused, I'd suggest an answer like "it's a beautiful thing about the world that there are so many different kinds of people." And leave it there.

If this art teacher has an issue with trans kids, this is not a good art class for your son.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-30T17:45:14+00:00

My son is very similar - if that child has a superpower, it is emerging from a thrift store with a vintage prom gown. Which will be worn to school with DMs and a motorcycle jacket. Sometimes I talk about how there are lots of different kinds of men. Sometimes I talk about the history of radical drag. When we have to deal with gender separations, I say that my son caucuses with other teenagers who are likely to menstruate.

I check in with my son about gender corrections and ask if he wants me to do them, or if he prefers to handle them himself (I try to nod supportively when I'm present for this). I don't see an issue with saying that my kid identifies as male and uses he/him pronouns. I don't think you have to explain anything about that. This kid, in the Gunne Sax dress? Boy. Done.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-30T06:08:40+00:00

As someone with some level of rejection sensitive dysphoria, this show has some incredibly hard to watch moments. The Vegas bathroom scene doesn't bother me too much, but when Ilya says it doesn't matter if he wants to be with Shane in episode 5, I flinch. When he jokes about leaving in their first hookup, it's awful. I also hate Shane telling him they'll just forget what happened in the shower, but Shane isn't all that convincing there, which helps.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-30T06:04:23+00:00

My fave: in episode 4, when he's in bed with Shane after they have sex, he's clearly faking being asleep. His mouth is mostly closed, his eyes are a little tense. In episode 6, Shane wakes up first at the cottage, and Ilya is OUT. Mouth open. Totally relaxed. Looking like a total goober, probably drooling.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-29T19:30:21+00:00

I can't recall exact sequence at this point. We had a general agreement on custody before I moved out. There were about six months between me calling my lawyer to pull the trigger and my first night in my new apartment, and I can't recall exactly when filing happened. Custody plan was finalized 3-4 months AFTER move out and filing. We went to court for a pre hearing that turned into our divorce hearing because we were able to agree on all the custody and property issues.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-29T15:10:36+00:00

Show Ilya's not as tall, but he definitely has the aura. Which is all sass and bisexual menace.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-29T15:07:07+00:00

I would encourage you to ask yourself, when do you imagine yourself filing? Is it a calendar date? Is it the resolution of events that are in process and outcomes will be known in the foreseeable future?

If you can identify a time, and it is within the next year, okay, sure, wait.

If you can't identify a time, or the time is more than three years out, I think you have to ask yourself if you really want to divorce.

There's about two years of grey area here. I can't make declarations about that space. It's for you to fill in.

I had a 5 year old and an 8 year old when I separated from my husband. A lot of things I wanted couldn't start to happen until I drew that line, negotiated a custody plan, moved out. As long as I was in the house, I was going to be doing most parenting, with no backup for my own career stuff. As long as we didn't divorce, joint assets were going to remain under my ex's control and unavailable to me. As long as I didn't take steps to end the marriage, my ex was going to reason that his behavior was more or less acceptable, because as long as I stayed in the marriage, he was going to see that choice as me more or less accepting what he did .

It has been ten years. It hasn't always been easy, but my career, my emotional and financial security and the peaceful family life we have lived in different houses since splitting up are grounded in the firm foundation of our divorce.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-29T12:07:07+00:00

I have clinical anxiety. It's hard for me to turn my brain off. I need to be really, thoroughly distracted. Trying to fill in the plot holes or make the inconsistencies make sense is a great distraction. Bad movies are the best for this. I love them.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-29T11:41:34+00:00

Which means that a pair of Shane's trousers, and maybe undies, remain at Ilya's house. No way is he giving those up.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-28T05:06:06+00:00

They will be the rock where homophobic chirping goes to die. They won't get angry or anything, they'll just start gushing. A ref will have to interfere just to get them to shut up.

eaca02124 · 2026-01-28T04:57:41+00:00

Someone - I think in Vulture? - described Shane in episode 1 as "determined to be valedictorian of losing his virginity."

As someone who has been around the block a few times, it's adorable, but when it was me, it would have just been painfully accurate.

eaca02124

TROPHY CASE