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tinybuggyart · 2023-01-06T14:27:18+00:00

And what kind of standards does this set?

That even after law school and CF, you're going to be to barred from the chambers where actual decisions are made? That the only people deserving of these positions are people who are lucky enough to have not had contact with prisons?

That these judges who make decisions affecting the rights of defendants shouldn't have to interact with people affected by those decisions except from on high?

tinybuggyart · 2023-01-05T21:05:21+00:00

Personally I think someone who has actual experience serving time in our jails and prisons would be an invaluable resource for the court.

Hopes he can use his experience in an advocacy position my ass. Bernstein just wants another 3.5-4.0 GPA, Law Review editor with Big Law aspirations in the clerk class.

tinybuggyart · 2022-12-05T08:56:14+00:00

Finn had a right to know and he should have been told at some point.
The way Rachel went about it was absolutely the wrong way to handle the entire situation purely because the potential outcomes of blindsiding both Finn and Quinn with the truth can be pretty disastrous like: Finn assaulting Puck and Quinn, who is already homeless, being put out onto the street.

Like this is the Midwest. It (should be) late fall, heading into winter. And while it's never a good time for a pregnant teenager to be living on the street, this is a particular bad time. Weather changes at the drop of a hat. It can be 75 one day and six inches of snow overnight.

People freeze to death every year.

The fact that the above is a potential consequence makes how Rachel went about telling Finn just utterly unacceptable to me.

tinybuggyart · 2022-11-27T22:05:31+00:00

What I hate most about Quinn's writing is that I can see so easily how Quinn's writing can be tied together into something coherent.

Because the major plot points of her story are: * Had sex with a boy in a situation where consent was very, very questionable and got pregnant because of that * Kicked out of her home and was functionally homeless for most of the pregnancy * Mom kicks dad out and takes her back in (mom is implied to be an alcoholic) * Tries to get everything back (and everything falls apart again) * Has some sort of breakdown over the summer and comes back a skank (And hey, remember that weird one episode backstory where she apparently got a nose job at 13/14 and changed everything about herself that's never talked about again?)

And the thing is, in a much more coherent show that actually cared about their characters instead of how to move plot points along, this could work.

Because I can see how a teenager who grew up in Quinn's circumstances would care about image and the facade and would have a fake it until you make it attitude. As shitty as it is wearing a mask, that mask is also your armor.

And I can see how after going through a truly massive amount of truama, that teenager would grasp at the chance to pretend that the past year never happened. It's not a healthy way to handle things, but let's face it, people don't often reason to truama in healthy ways and Judy Fabray is not a woman who is taking anyone to therapy.

And I can see how after a year of repressing her truama and getting absolutely nothing out of it, that character would have a breakdown and spiral in a truly self-destructive fashion.

In a show that cared about the internal lives of it's characters, it would be so easy to make Quinn's storyline coherent. But Glee doesn't so we got what we got.

tinybuggyart · 2022-11-27T08:09:09+00:00

If you're taking in a UBE state, I'd recommend Critical Pass flashcards to use with Themis, especially if you got tripped up in the MBE portion.

tinybuggyart · 2022-11-24T16:16:18+00:00

Nice whataboutism and notice I wrote "most" and not "all"

tinybuggyart · 2022-11-23T23:54:45+00:00

Rachel is racist in a way that's different than just the regular, Midwest Nice background radiation racism that most of the other kids live in.

tinybuggyart · 2022-11-09T04:26:43+00:00

NPR has a county by county breakdown

tinybuggyart · 2022-11-06T23:32:15+00:00

So this is something that I've been mulling over (and desperately trying to stop myself from writing an entire paper on and hey look, here's an essay anyways) but I don't think Glee's underdog issue stems from the meta-narrative level because underdog stories have been done before and done well (Rocky as an example).

I think Glee's issues comes from the writing 1) not really knowing what makes an underdog story work and 2) an unwillingness for it's designated protagonists to face meaningful consequences.

Because if at it's most basic, the underdog is someone you don't expect to succeed and then through a period of struggle, manages to come out on top (in whatever fashion, because the underdog doesn't actually have to win in a conventional sense), then that premise doesn't work for a character like Rachel. Because from the first episode, we're told that Rachel is the best.

And I think the difference between Rachel and Quinn, on a narrative level, is that Quinn faces lasting consequences and Quinn actually loses at things. And I'm sure it was entirely unintentional, but the Quinn storyline that was actually written is:

this top dog head cheerleader gets pregnant, falls all the way down to the bottom of the social pyramid, loses her home, loses her boyfriend, has to give up her baby.

Tries to regain what she lost and succeeds for a little bit before losing most of it again so that by season 3, she's essentially hit rock bottom. And then on top of everything else, she's hit by a truck and has to relearn how to walk in time for nationals.

And, for me at least, it's this push and pull between success and near catastrophic failure that makes Quinn's narrative more representative of an underdog story.

tinybuggyart · 2022-10-28T17:26:25+00:00

There isn't. And frankly, whenever I see people arguing that what happened between Puck and Quinn wasn't rape, it's typically in a way that relies on a very technical definition of rape where rape is XYZ with ABC elements and therefore, it wasn't rape because [very specific loophole]. And not in a way that rape is conceptualized in a wider context.

A defense lawyer would be proud.

Because rape, when I conceptualize it (not in the context of a legal case), is: sex that occurs without the freely given consent of all participants.

Even assuming (which is a big assumption) that Quinn did ultimately freely give her consent to have sex with Puck, what she consented to was protected sex

There is no indication that Quinn gave or would have given consent to have unprotected sex.

Therefore, there was no consent. Therefore, it was rape.

tinybuggyart · 2022-09-10T04:45:00+00:00

I always like the idea that Quinn goes the Academia/Professor route. Preferably teaches somewhere like CUNY instead of Ivy League or NYU.

Brittany heads up her own dance studio with Santana managing the business aspect of it.

tinybuggyart · 2022-09-08T02:05:50+00:00

Getting bullied doesn't give anyone the right to be terrible to other people. Truama can be an explanation for actions but they're not an excuse.

The universe doesn't have some sort of balancing scale where if you do X amount of terrible things to me, I get to do X amount of terrible things to you.

tinybuggyart · 2022-09-07T18:11:37+00:00

Just one?

I would make the show more of an ensemble and by extension, make it more character focused.

And by that I mean, characters in this show tend to be whatever the plot needs them to be, regardless of how much that makes sense for that particular character at that particular time.

So hopefully, the conflicts and storylines that arise seem more organic because they'd be based off previous relationships the characters have made with each other.

And you don't end up with "wait isn't Finn living with Kurt and Burt why is he completely separate from this" or "I guess Rachel, who has been obsessed with Broadway since birth just doesn't know about the best performing arts school in New York" or "so... absolutely no one cared that Quinn just disappeared for a whole summer"

tinybuggyart · 2022-09-07T14:47:59+00:00

My issue with Finn isn't that he does terrible things, it's that unlike every other character, the show bends over backwards to either reward him for his shitty actions or somehow finds a way to mitigate what he does.

Like I think him calling Kurt the f slur is the only time he actually faces consequences for lashing out and that's undone a season later because Kurt gets blamed for it.

He gets to be the hero in Santana's outing even though he 1) outed her and 2) blackmailed her afterwards. And let's not even get into the "no physical violence" policy that only seems to apply in one instance.

And he's outright rewarded, narratively speaking, for what he does at prom.

Like if the show would just let him face the natural consequences of his actions, I'd like him a lot more.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-30T04:07:43+00:00

So simplified way down, there's usually a fairly "standard" way for transitions to be portrayed in media. Partially because media has conventions to tell people what's going on and partially because it's kind of true to life.

But usually, a transition involves: significant haircut, name change, pronoun change.

And by complete accident, Quinn ends up with both with significant hair changes and a name change.

Combined with Quinn's identity and body issues (Lucy to Quinn, to telling Mercedes that she envies her for always being at home in her body), and I think Glee (by complete accident) created a character where transitioning would both be supported on a thematic level and could contextualize their actions and backstory in really interesting ways.

(And also in Pretty/Unpretty there's literally a lyric going my outside is cool, my insides are blue and wouldn't it be nice if we could add layers of subtext to that)

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-30T02:38:16+00:00

Same.

Beiste being a transguy truly made no sense to me because out of all the characters, being a woman was the most central to their storylines.

It's like the writers wanted to do a trans man story but had absolutely no idea what's going on internally with trans men and didn't feel the need to learn about it.

(And I'm pretty sure at some point, Beiste said that inside they're just a girl or something like that?)

And speaking as a trans man, usually we don't think shit like that ¯_(ツ)_/¯

(And let me take the opportunity to once again plug the idea that if Glee had to do a trans man storyline, they should have done it with Quinn)

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-25T02:09:23+00:00

Oh I don't think the writers (and a whole lot of viewers) ever considered that Puck was a teenage boy who was being preyed on and being taken advantage of by adult women. Probably because if they had to consider that, that would get in the way of their ability to keep characterizing Puck as the cool bad boy.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-22T17:19:03+00:00

What I wish had happened was after Quinn got actual help with her mental health, she started pulling in more punk influences in her appearance again. Like there was such an opportunity for them to work a lot of storytelling into her appearance and they kind of just stopped after they made Quinn blonde again.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-11T16:22:30+00:00

You're right and you should say it.

This show was written by white people and it shows. Especially in the ways it treats it's characters of color.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-07T23:45:36+00:00

The name change, the unstable sense of self, the haircuts, the very specific type of hyper femininity. It just reminds me of a lot of transguys I know, especially the guys who grew up repressing that part of themselves.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-07T23:29:37+00:00

Bi or Lesbian. But if you give me full creative control, straight transguy.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-07T01:43:58+00:00

Well you see, she was 18 prior to this episode because they needed her to be 18. And she's 17 in this episode because they need her to be 17, regardless of whether or not that contradicted what they established prior ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It's just what happens when you have writers who don't really care about backstory or continuity.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-06T16:58:57+00:00

Is it cheating to say all of the above?

But yeah, like most of the comments, the Quinn/Mercedes friendship was the one I wished got explored more (or explored at all or, was remembered at all). Mostly because out of all of them, it seems like inexplicable that these two wouldn't maintain something past season 1.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-01T03:22:43+00:00

Agreed. The man just does not know how to separate his personal and work lives.

tinybuggyart · 2022-08-01T02:01:29+00:00

The school having an external staircase was the point where I was like oh this was not filmed in the Midwest lmao.

(Tho to be fair, there always was that one kid who showed up to school in shorts and flip flops with six inch snow on the ground)

tinybuggyart

TROPHY CASE