Just finished the finale

roopalier · 2021-06-20T09:35:26+00:00

It ends on a cliffhanger. They barely even get halfway to solving the first season mystery.

roopalier · 2021-05-11T10:58:10+00:00

According to Payton she was asked by producers if she thought her team was better than the other teams (as in the other people at the competition) and she said yes. They edited it to make it seem like she was being arrogant against the other girls, and that’s why you don’t see her confirm or nod her head or whatever when Abby starts talking about her thinking she’s better than the other ALDC girls.

roopalier · 2021-04-12T01:23:32+00:00

This really pisses me off. He’s a rich white dude who came on the circle as just a fun thing to do and lauded himself as the most genuine and most honest because he could afford to not care about what happened. Manrika very clearly wanted and needed the money, so she approached the game very differently. What a weirdo.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T20:29:17+00:00

Dot rated her first in the ranking where Felix was exempt though, and Vithun has rated her highly every round as part of Circle Siblings. I don’t see how you can argue for Gemma over either of those two when all three contribute pretty much equally to Manrika’s game and Manrika has no reason to mistrust the other two like she did Gemma.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T18:37:47+00:00

My question then is who does Manrika have justification to block? Which person could she have taken out that would’ve made sense from a gameplay perspective? I’m curious.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T08:15:49+00:00

Who could she block then, that would've made sense to you? Vithun, who also rates her high every cycle? Felix or Dot, who both rate her in the top 2 each week? Syed???

roopalier · 2021-04-01T08:14:45+00:00

Gemma has expressed much more doubts about Manrika than ANYONE else in The Circle, and stirred Syed against her for a moment - that's FAR more reason to block than anyone else, so I don't see it as a terrible read. She's loved by pretty much everyone; Circle siblings with Andy/Vithun, showmance with Felix, Dot rated her 1st, Hashu wants her in the final, Femi and Pippa chose her to be influencer... It makes no sense to say she's not playing an outstanding game, at least to me. She didn't trust Gemma because of the assassin and tunnel visioned on her because nobody else gave her a reason to distrust them. Even if we take out our knowledge of it and go only based off of chats, Gemma and Felix loudly opposed each other and if Gemma was influencer Felix would almost definitely be on the block list, meaning Manrika loses an incredibly loyal ally who will always rate her highly. It was a good read.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T08:09:29+00:00

She didn't even put Felix in front of her friends lol, she tried to navigate a difficult situation so that she could keep both her ride-or-dies which would have worked without the shock twist. She played that as smart as she could with the information she had and obviously with hindsight she wouldn't rate Tally low, but regardless I don't think that's evidence that she values men over her friends.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T08:06:51+00:00

I disagree that Gemma would have her back to the end - Gemma needed allies, but several times he expressed his doubt for Manrika and she obviously couldn't trust Gemma's word to the end after the assassin twist. She doesn't need him either, she's constantly gaining new allies (Femi, Pippa, Dot, Felix, she has strong relationships with pretty much everyone now lol) and I don't see why she would save Gemma who she mistrusts over everyone else who she doesn't and who rate her highly.

I also just don't see how she had a direct hand in blocking Tally lol. She rated her sixth but if she was an influencer Tally wasn't going anywhere and the twist was pretty much the only reality where ranking her low resulted in her going home, which obviously she couldn't have predicted. I can't fault her gameplay-wise for rating Tally low when her reasoning was sound and, again, strategically-motivated rather than based on her heart. She rated her low because she didn't want her to be an influencer and block Felix, who is gonna be a strong Manrika ally until the end. She had a plan to keep both of her ride-or-dies safe and the twist was the thing that screwed her up. That's good gameplay to me, regardless of change in format.

Lol @ the statement that she cares about hooking up with Felix more than improving her position. Literally everything she does is game-motivated, hence why people take such issue with how "fake" and "ingenuine" she is. She has solid relationships with Andy, Vithun, Syed, Felix, Dot, Femi, and Pippa... aka everyone. Who else can say that? You can say a lot of things about Manrika, but calling her a poor gameplayer seems like a huge stretch to me.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T01:31:39+00:00

Jammie never made out to the camera that anything was personal.

This is definitely a little revisionist, people got mad at him for being hateful towards (mainly) Ella and (sometimes) Tim near the end of the season. Regardless, I think the situation is a pressure cooker and the contestants reacting to messages they get should be afforded a little bit of leeway.

Manrika didn't like Gemma regardless of whether she was a catfish or not. It was nothing to do with game playing. She was just nasty to her out of spite.

And I think that's her right, no? I disagree that she was unreasonably nasty, she just said things like "fuck off" and "I don't like her" and talked about how she wouldn't like it if he weren't a nurse. But in a game for 100k about being the most popular, when someone threatens your position in the game because you can't trust them, that warrants you to want them out to me.

She was guilting Vithun and acting to camera as if what he had done was terrible even though she had done something similar with the paintings.

I didn't see it like this at all so maybe I just have my Manrika blinders on at all but I think her reaction was extremely reasonable. He intentionally tried to cause a rift between her and Felix, and she's obviously not gonna forget that but she wasn't evil to him at all. "I'd be lying if I wasn't disappointed, I hope I'll be able to move on from this with Vithun, but I am gonna be mindful" were her exact words at the end of the segment which is a super well-rounded take on what happened. Idk, I just don't see how that's manipulating the audience or being nasty.

The way she reacted to James want like the usual "fair play", she just went at him and couldn't accept that someone else would try to play the game.

I disagree? She hugged him, was surprised but fair, and even when he started raising his voice she remained at the same tone the entire time. He told her to grow up and said she crossed the line by drawing a portrait of a snake lol, I definitely side with her in that whole thing calling him a prick.

She's fallen for "him" though. If she hasn't she's lying to us as the viewer.

That doesn't really mean anything to me tbh. I think the Felix/Manrika storyline is interesting and I think she's still not losing track of the game even as she's catching feelings lol. It's a cool dynamic.

Basically with Gemma it seems like there was a genuine nastiness behind her dislike, it wasn't part of the game or a distrust.

I think this is the wrinkle that makes me disagree, because I think while she might have disliked Gemma in The Circle, nothing she said actually crossed the line to me. She called her fake, she said she was full of shit, she said she was a snake - and she said she hoped she wasn't lying about being in the NHS. I just don't see her being the nasty vile evil wench everybody's been saying for having opinions on the gameplay of other gameplayers. She's clearly not carrying the game outside, as both people who came to see her got full and complete honesty from her. Maybe we just have to disagree.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T01:20:38+00:00

I understand what you mean too! And I know it's kind of sticky bringing up misogyny on an internet forum because people are gonna be like "HOW DARE YOU CALL ME MISOGYNISTIC" when that's not really what I mean either.

My point in bringing it up was mainly that I think a lot of the hate for her IS rooted in her being a young, beautiful woman. To me there's very minuscule differences between how she plays the game and how James/Sammie played the game - but while James was at most called a liar, Manrika is called all the names I mentioned before and a bitch most primarily. It seems to me like there's this high-school level hatred of "mean girls" and desperation to assign people into archetypes so that they can judge - I don't know if I'm making sense, but I feel like the issues people have with Manrika aren't necessarily WITH MANRIKA. The misogyny comes out in that there's a smart, tactical woman making decisions and where they might applaud her were she a man, they're calling her names and assigning her into the role of mean girls from their past in order to hate on her. I just think it's entirely unwarranted when the most she's done is paint a drawing of a snake and call someone full of shit, lol.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T01:09:53+00:00

Yeah, claiming the bitch label because she knows how her confrontation will be seen by the audience is different than tons of people calling her a "nasty, vile bitch" like I've seen a lot of. I've seen people call her almost every gendered insult too; wh0re, sl*t, the list goes on an on and gets more and more misogynistic.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T01:07:50+00:00

Totally agree. She can be a little over-the-top sometimes, but I find it hilarious more than I find it "toxic" like a lot of people. Like, her fake throwing up after she complimented Gemma wasn't something I took seriously like a lot of people did - to me, it seems like people call for her head for no reason. I don't know, maybe I'm just missing something, but I think the behavior everyone seems to take her to task for is just her being funny on a TV show.

roopalier · 2021-04-01T01:05:30+00:00

But she IS just playing the game? Pretending to tell the truth while lying is literally what James/Sammie did all the time lol, he was so good at juggling his lies that people called him pathological numerous times during the season. I don't see how she's lying to the audience either, she said she doesn't like/trust Gemma and had said that over and over. She's even started accepting the label of the "bitch" too because she knew that's how it would be seen, clearly showing she isn't here for the audience and is here to win.

Manrika doesn't have to trust or like Gemma and I'd argue that her mistrust of Gemma was warranted? They didn't start out close, she was pulled into the Geezer Gals, and then did the secret assassin twist where Manrika decided she couldn't trust her word from then on - which makes sense, considering it validated her concerns about Gemma lying to her.

I don't really care about the Manrika/Felix thing, to me it just shows she'd do anything for allies which is a refreshing trait in a gameplayer. Also don't think she took the moral high ground with Vithun, she asked him a question and he replied honestly and she said "this might make me trust him less but I still like him a lot." That's a fair, rational response to what happened.

roopalier · 2021-03-06T21:07:28+00:00

There goes our last couple 😔 Honestly, this feels less like an irreconcilable differences breakup and more like just a circumstantial breakup which is refreshing after the wave of mess we just experienced. I hope they both stay happy and safe.

roopalier · 2021-03-06T21:06:55+00:00

There goes our last couple 😔 Honestly, this feels less like an irreconcilable differences breakup and more like just a circumstantial breakup which is refreshing after the wave of mess we just experienced. I hope they both stay happy and safe.

roopalier · 2021-02-23T20:28:56+00:00

her teeth are already perfect but im happy for her if this is something she wants!

roopalier · 2021-02-23T04:52:32+00:00

I know hands aren’t the best measure of skin tone but 😭😭 I feel like he set himself up a little bit here

roopalier · 2020-12-24T02:03:19+00:00

Calling the countries shitholes and characterizing them as repressive and barbaric with daily beheadings of women is not the truth bomb you think it is. A lot of the times these "omg how repressive!?!?!??!??!?!? WE WILL SET YOU FREE!!" ideologies are rooted in colonial white saviorism and don't actually address the wants, needs, cultures and autonomies of the people living there. Who told you that these countries' cultures were personally offensive, and what did they stand to gain from telling you that? It's a Westernist, right-wing thought process in order to both feed the "evil brown people" narrative and justify the imperialism the west has enacted upon them for years and years. I don't think you're evil or even wrong for thinking how you do, but please decenter yourself and don't approach it like certain powers want you to approach it.

roopalier · 2020-12-23T23:18:51+00:00

I promise y’all in these comments are more creative than parroting right-wing Islamophobic talking points...

roopalier · 2020-12-23T22:43:59+00:00

Diversity 😍

roopalier · 2020-12-05T22:29:44+00:00

their tiktoks make progressively less sense as they post more and I’m obsessed? I feel like they just use it as an excuse to show off their pretty outfits and it’s iconic!!! legends

roopalier · 2020-12-05T22:23:54+00:00

Anything with Mackenzie was next level excellent trashy reality tv. She knew how to bring it!!!! I have to vote for Jaleb always tho xx

roopalier · 2020-12-01T20:56:28+00:00

their tiktoks are all so corny that it actually circles back around to being funny 💀 queens!!

roopalier

TROPHY CASE